Michael Ruther wrote:
> Brandon Berg wrote:
> >
> > I'm sure that most of you veteran students of Japanese have already
> > figured this out, but many new students probably haven't.$B!!(J I
just
> > started learning Kanji, and have found that for every kanji I learn,
> I
> > learn at least one word (assuming that I don't know them
already).$B!!(J
> This
> > is because almost all Japanese words are composed mostly
> > of the various kanji readings. <snip> However, in many courses, the
> learning of Kanji is
> > delayed until the student has been studying Japanese for several
> months,
> > even as much as a year.$B!!(J During this time, a valuable
learning aid
> is
> > lost.
> >
As a child$B!!(J learning hantze (Chinese) we had to memorize each
kanji
first and then learn variants of$B!!(J its meanings when concatenated
with
others, later. So we recognised the form, then meanings when
used in a sentence. That seemed simpler as each kanji in Chinese have a
unique reading - now I have to grapple with 2 or 3 ways of reading for
both onyomi and kunyomi. I understand that junior grade japanese
memorise the hiragana first and
later,$B!!(J learned kanji sharpens the meanings and improve writing
style
in terms of understanding the entire sentence.
> $B!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(J If the thought of learning all those complex
characters
> seems daunting,
> > one can still benefit from learning the readings for the
kanji.$B!!(J
> For
> > example, I knew that 'kin' means 'gold', but not that 'kon' and
> 'kane'
> > and 'kana' also mean 'gold'.$B!!(J You do not need to know the
kanji for
> gold
> > in order to know that gold can be represented by 'kin', 'kon',
> 'kane',
> > or 'kana'.$B!!(J If you know that 'zoku' means 'belong' or
'genus', it
> is
> > then easy to remember that 'kinzoku' means 'metal'...$B!!(J Also,
if you
> want to put
> > this to use immediately, whenever you learn a kanji, you should
> learn a
> > few words which are derived from that kanji.$B!!(J Or, conversely,
you
> could
> > learn the kanji which make up the words you learn (obviously, you
> > couldn't do this for every word which you learn...I'm trying to
> learn 30
> > words a day, and I obviously cannot learn 30 kanji a day).$B!!(J
> However, I
> > don't recommend the second method, because (I think) that kanji are
> > taught in a particular order, so that they build on the kanji taught
>
> > before.$B!!(J For example, the kanji for 'water' is taught in
first
> grade,
> > due to the fact that it appears as a radical in a *lot* of other
> kanji.
> >$B!!!!!!!!!!!!(J <snip>
Wonder if someone from this thread can recall how native japanese
progress from pure hiragana to the ability to understand a kanji-type
sentence, especially with the variant forms. One guess is that the
"helper hiragana"(okurigana) allows the eye (or mind) to quickly select
the right reading form - quite a feat to the beginner to read a text
fluently for the first time.
> I think learning kana is the first thing to do,
> really learn both of them then,
> $B!!(Jtackle kanji including stroke order and kun/on readings.
> the next hurdle is knowing which reading is correct for which use of
> the
> kanji.
Added to this difficulty are the other features of glottal
stops,$B!!(J
particles etc which if not given the appropriate pause makes it as
confusing,$B!!(J just like reading an English sentence without commas
etc.
Maybe that is why there are so many ways of rephrasing a Japanese
sentence for the nuances in meanings. Once the mind is wired up with
practice, I guess it is obvious.
Kian T Yap (Upbringing Chinese, English educated, Japanese interest)