Kanji Amazingness
As you may know, I am mainly learning Japanese at the moment. I have other irons in the fire too but I'm principally concentrating on this one for now.
OK so why am I doing that? Well every language has its strong points and in the case of Japanese there are plenty of art forms that I'd like to know better, which will be helped by knowing the language. Also plus I know so many Japanese people by now that it's embarrassing that they have to speak in English just for me. Well, I like Hiroshige and I like Bashō so I will be able to appreciate them better with more Japanese skills (one because obviously he wrote in Japanese, and the other because although they are images, I'm sure there are things to read about them that don't exist in English). Who knows, after I know more about them, I might not like them any more! Perhaps I have an English idea about them now...
So I am doing Japanese and as with everything, I am taking the most difficult thing first. In this case, it is the writing system. For some reason, everybody thinks it's really difficult - and it is, if you learn it in a difficult way. But obviously it is supposed to make sense, so there must be a sensible way of learning it. In fact there is. For the Chinese characters they use (called Kanji, or "Chinese characters", which is a good choice of name), they either come simply or are more complex and contain several elements. In all cases, you can give a name to the different parts and make up a story about them that makes you remember them instantly. For example, "sushi" has "fish" on the left, and "delicious" on the right.
鮨
I wonder if you can see that. If not, here is another one. "Fish" and "delicious" are of course English, and nobody Japanese calls them that - we have just chosen one meaning to remember them by. (Each one is made up of other smaller parts too which we have to remember first, e.g. "delicious" has got "spoon" on the top and "day" on the bottom - it's **so delicious you can eat it with your spoon all day**).
That character is a good example because I have only seen it once - I have never written it down or practised it but I still remember it because sushi is delicious fish. It's not because I have a photographic memory, it's just because I have a memory, the same as everybody else in the whole world.
The normal method of learning Kanji is essentially to copy them out again and again until you remember them. In fact Japanese children take 12 years to learn all the characters they officially need for reading a newspaper these days. However in this way of learning, you only have to write it once - or even never!
Now each character has several ways of being pronounced, but if you learn all this information at one time then it is harder to remember because you are of course struggling to remember the character and the pronunciations. If the character is already familiar then you've got a "hook" to hang your pronunciations on. So that's why this method - the method used in James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" - concentrates purely on the one-word meaning of each character first of all. There may well be other meanings, but just one is required to get it in your brain for ever.
Anyway, I have been getting on with this and it really works. It's like magic. And this week I read my first sentence for which I knew all the characters. I can't pronounce it or understand it of course, but I think it's an important step! You can work out what things probably mean. E.g. "telephone" has two characters, electricity and talk. So that makes sense even if you don't know it is pronounced "denwa".
So this is a method which is slow at first - I can hardly say anything at all, yet I'm supposed to be "learning Japanese" - but really quite soon it should start going a lot faster. I'm astounded so far!
It's the same with learning anything properly. Everything is ruined in the beginning and you can't do any of it at all, but one day (if you do it every day) - you have mastery!
But without starting at the beginning, it is all a bit of a muddle - though it works, after a fashion, more or less.
You don't have to learn things in this long way at all, but it's so good to be in control of what you want to do. There's nothing quite like it!
OK bye for now!
OK so why am I doing that? Well every language has its strong points and in the case of Japanese there are plenty of art forms that I'd like to know better, which will be helped by knowing the language. Also plus I know so many Japanese people by now that it's embarrassing that they have to speak in English just for me. Well, I like Hiroshige and I like Bashō so I will be able to appreciate them better with more Japanese skills (one because obviously he wrote in Japanese, and the other because although they are images, I'm sure there are things to read about them that don't exist in English). Who knows, after I know more about them, I might not like them any more! Perhaps I have an English idea about them now...
So I am doing Japanese and as with everything, I am taking the most difficult thing first. In this case, it is the writing system. For some reason, everybody thinks it's really difficult - and it is, if you learn it in a difficult way. But obviously it is supposed to make sense, so there must be a sensible way of learning it. In fact there is. For the Chinese characters they use (called Kanji, or "Chinese characters", which is a good choice of name), they either come simply or are more complex and contain several elements. In all cases, you can give a name to the different parts and make up a story about them that makes you remember them instantly. For example, "sushi" has "fish" on the left, and "delicious" on the right.
鮨
I wonder if you can see that. If not, here is another one. "Fish" and "delicious" are of course English, and nobody Japanese calls them that - we have just chosen one meaning to remember them by. (Each one is made up of other smaller parts too which we have to remember first, e.g. "delicious" has got "spoon" on the top and "day" on the bottom - it's **so delicious you can eat it with your spoon all day**).
That character is a good example because I have only seen it once - I have never written it down or practised it but I still remember it because sushi is delicious fish. It's not because I have a photographic memory, it's just because I have a memory, the same as everybody else in the whole world.
The normal method of learning Kanji is essentially to copy them out again and again until you remember them. In fact Japanese children take 12 years to learn all the characters they officially need for reading a newspaper these days. However in this way of learning, you only have to write it once - or even never!
Now each character has several ways of being pronounced, but if you learn all this information at one time then it is harder to remember because you are of course struggling to remember the character and the pronunciations. If the character is already familiar then you've got a "hook" to hang your pronunciations on. So that's why this method - the method used in James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" - concentrates purely on the one-word meaning of each character first of all. There may well be other meanings, but just one is required to get it in your brain for ever.
Anyway, I have been getting on with this and it really works. It's like magic. And this week I read my first sentence for which I knew all the characters. I can't pronounce it or understand it of course, but I think it's an important step! You can work out what things probably mean. E.g. "telephone" has two characters, electricity and talk. So that makes sense even if you don't know it is pronounced "denwa".
So this is a method which is slow at first - I can hardly say anything at all, yet I'm supposed to be "learning Japanese" - but really quite soon it should start going a lot faster. I'm astounded so far!
It's the same with learning anything properly. Everything is ruined in the beginning and you can't do any of it at all, but one day (if you do it every day) - you have mastery!
But without starting at the beginning, it is all a bit of a muddle - though it works, after a fashion, more or less.
You don't have to learn things in this long way at all, but it's so good to be in control of what you want to do. There's nothing quite like it!
OK bye for now!
Labels: communication, fun, language, teaching, technology, writing
posted by Philip Howard at 8:21 PM
2 Comments:
For now I'm doing that too, focus on the kanji meaning rather than in his readings, but I'm not that sure is a good way of learning... What I'm trying to do now is at least remember that meaning in his kun'yomi –japanese reading–, which is usually the way an alone kanji, representing a single word unit, is read.
I think is a good complement to the "normal method of learning Kanji" (write them again and again) but not an alternative; that practice is really needed. ;)
I think as well that the native Japanese readings (Kunyomi) are good for remembering with. Maybe if I knew Chinese I would remember the On readings better?
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