Japanese is a wierd and hard language!!!
 

I took japanese for 1 year in college and im starting to feel sorry for the japanese kids when they have to learn this language. I dont understand why they need to have 3 alphabets(hiragana,katakana,and kanji). I think its kind of stupid to have katakana for foreingn words. And Kanji, i think its the worst to learn. Many kanji have the same name which makes them hard to learn.
They should just had stick with Hiragana.
This is just my opinion.

The classic うらにわにはにわ、にわにはにわにわとりがいる。has already proven why it is impossible to ditch Kanji. You just have to put up or shut up.

The classic first wall every student hits. Half of students never get past it.

wow calm down. u dont have to cuss.

From someone who does read Japanese relatively fluently... You have NO idea how horrific it would be to try to read through a novel written in Hiragana alone. I think I`d be beating my head against the wall within minutes. My son`s kindergarten level books even frustrate me. (Written very very simply in Hiragana, with spaces added to help show where one word begins and another ends.)

Reminds me of Korean.

really? well for me its really easy to read hiragana. i study so much that it's no problem. and with the spaces added is so much easier and thats suppose to help. i dont understand why its hard for u.

I`ve never seen a Korean children`s book... How do they make it easier to read? I`ve always thought Korean was technically phonetic, with pieces combined to make individual "characters"... (Please correct me if I`m wrong.)

You tell me which one is easier to read.
うらにわにはにわ、にわにはにわにわとりがいる。
裏庭には庭、庭には二羽鶏がいる

庭 - Garden
裏庭 - Backyard
羽 - Counter for Chicken
鶏 - Chicken

thats for every for almost every asian language.

hiragana its easier for me ofcourse cause thats the one i learn the most. i understand that kanji would make it shorter and easier, but that problem is that many of them have the same name which confuses many people.:o

You are right, but now they NEED spaces because they almost wiped out Hanja/Kanji from their writing system. But I still see Hanja used every now and then in the newspaper.

Look I don't disagree with you that I think it's a terribly confusing system, but... we all have to put up with it and it's fantastic quiz material. All the quiz shows in Japan feature in some form another, Kanji quizes.

Just to make you feel better, they tried to get rid of Kanji after the war, and firstly restrict it to something like 1800 characters, and they THOUGHT at the time they can reduce this as time progresses. Well now we are in 2009, Kanji Aptitude Test (Kanken) is one of the most popular cert in Japan, even more popular than English, and there is a so called Kanji boom happening. So obviously that didn't work.

I didn`t say it was hard to read. I said it was frustrating.

If you only know a small number of words, I`m sure it`s easy. But it`s a whole lot easier to sight read than it is to read by sound. A good example would be to read something letter by letter. I`m sure that in English you`re not sounding out every word you read as you get to it, right? As you become better at reading, you "sight read" words you know without ever giving thought to how you would sound them out.

With Hiragana only sentences, you cannot do this. You have to read it sound by sound and then combine those sounds into a word. This takes three or more times the amount it would take to just read something with Kanji.

Have someone spell a sentence out to you with no pause between each word, and see how natural it feels. :D

true,lol. Kanji makes easier but the problem is that many have the same name. Sometimes i just get confuse.

So how would it be easier if you removed the distinctions the kanji give you, considering there are so many with the same pronunciation (as in Kirakira's example).

Fluent readers read hiragana, but see kanji. The characters have meaning, where hiragana doesn't. Because of the limited sounds in Japanese, this is part of the reason getting rid of them would be near insanity.

I understand what you mean. I can read hiragana faster and easier than kanji, since sometimes I forget how to pronounce certain kanji characters, woops. But having kanji makes it a lot easier to understand the meaning of what is being written. Kanji is great. Once you know more and more kanji, you'd be much happier, haha.

It is easy for Japanese children to learn Japanese. Because they learn the words as sound and write down in hiragana then gradually learn kanji adding the concept of the words.

Kanji is useful because it carries higher or complicated concept in short form.

Korean people already found they need Kanji and will get back to Kanji world.

I personally never had a problem with having to learn the 3. It was something I knew I was going to have to do before I started learning the language. I also like the idea of the Kanji having meanings.

Also it's more like learning 1 as hiragana and katakana didn't take long at all. Both in a few days each or something, and that's probably slower than a lot of people have learnt it in.

I fail to see why Japanese is a weird language. It can be difficult because it is so different from western languages i have been taking formal lessons for about 4 weeks now and i am not having half of the problems people state they hit when they start. If you have these preconceptions and notions of the language you are not going to do well. I dont find Japanese weird i see as a language that has evolved over time like every language does and the result is what we see today. I knew i was going to have learn all 3 languages so even before i started my lessons i was self studying. I will admit i do get frustrated sometimes but I still dont think of it as weird.

are you still learning or have you given up?

OMG! WTF is that meant to mean!?! total mind fcuk on that one - Love it though.

Would you mind beefing it up for me please, kirakira?

Literal translation would be "In the backyard there are two, and in the front yard two chickens."

Basically, there are two chickens in the backyard, and two more in the front.

裏庭 = うらにわ = backyard
には = hard to translate directly, but here as "in"
二羽 = にわ = two (birds or rabbits)
庭 = にわ = yard
鶏 = にわとり = chickens

:D

裏庭には二羽、庭には二羽鶏がいる。　Not nearly so confusing when written using kanji...

From the way he's posting I'd guess he's given up, probably can't tell his あ from his お like the people in my class. Pure lazyness is what it comes down to.. The class people refuse to learn too.

I second what you say tho, i too have not had these "problems". The only time i get frustrated is when i try keep up with people who are fluent and I don't know the vocab to keep going.. I WILL GET THERE THOUGH!!!

HAHAHA! I agree, that makes perfect sense! I'm going to show that to my class teacher.
Thanks very much!

Are you a native Japanese? I think what MMM's point was, you're not necissarily SUPPOSED to read the kanji. Like, the meaning just pops in your mind. Like a hyroglyphic, so to speak. Right MMM?

Yes, basically that is right. Kanji are a little like Greek or Latin roots in English. you can know the meaning without necessarily knowing the pronunciation.

Haha, someone is having trouble with kanji studies? When it comes to kanji, you just have to take it or leave it. Kanji is not going anywhere.

What i found very helpful was to study the kanji's roots, what you will quickly find out is that each kanji is not just a random character with strokes here and there. There are a few base kanji that pretty much all kanji is made out of. Each kanji is a squared abstract picture of something. This 耳 is the drawing of an ear. This 門 is the drawing of an gate. so what is this 聞?

Aha! A ear at a gate, eavesdropping! And what do you do wihle eavsdropping? you hear. If you don't know the pornounciation of the kanji, you will probably remember what to hear in japanese is. You don't need to remember the pornounciation of each and every kanji, you will get far by just reading the picture or of your memory, and not how each kanji is pronunced.

I don't think Japanese is a difficult language and not weird at all or maybe weird for those who hear it for the first time?
I have have been self studying japanese for two years now and i still practice Katakana and Hiragana i know the meanings of some Kanji but these things takes time as for me i need to balance my japanese studying and my regular school work so i take one thing at a time and i try not to stress either

Kanji is hard? yes for someone but it is also hard for me sometimes but i just need more practice:vsign:

Every languages around the world are equally difficult in many ways.

Well it's only hard because it's not ur native language.

I study japanese, i think it's hard but you'll figure it out.

fundamentals help X_X

and if u get those down it gets easier

just practice practice practice

which i've been lacking to do lately

Am I the only one having a hard time believing that the OP is in college...?

Its hard but not really wierd.

shad0w, if your Japanese teacher is Japanese, she will already know the uraniwa thing. It's a very, very famous tongue twister in Japanese. Similar to
酢桃も桃も桃のうち（すもももももももものうち）
東京都特許許可局局長（とうきょうととっきょきょかき ょくきょくちょう）
カエルぴょこぴょこ三ぴょこぴょこ合わせてぴょこぴょ こ六ぴょこぴょこ（かえるぴょこぴょこみぴょこぴょこ あわせてぴょこぴょこむぴょこぴょこ）

And to Gamer4Life, I'm not sure where the cussing was in the second post in this thread. "Shut up" is most assuredly not a cuss word.

Speaking the language is quite easy to pick up although the writing is pretty hard with all that kanji combo stuff. If you want to learn it you just got to get on with it and stop worrying...