Importance of stroke order?

[sakaeyellow]

I was brought up in a pure Kanji environment-Hong Kong. No pinyin whatsoever. Just Kanji. And I can tell you that when kids here learn Kanji, 9 out of ten words are Kanji phrases they have never heard of before. I can guarantee that learning Kanji without first learning how to pronounce or use them is perfectly okay. There are tens of millions of successful examples here and there.

The advantage of Kanji is that you can guess the meaning even if you haven't encountered the word before. And there are words that can't be learned properly without Kanji. Examples are : 農夫vs農婦 買vs売

I agree that spending 1/2 to 1 year on learning Kanji alone, i.e. the Remembering the Kanji way, is a complete waste of time. But I think learners should learn the Kanji that appears in the textbook one by one.

[sakaeyellow]

Originally Posted by steven

Nyororin, I'm very happy that you came because it seems that you are able to convey what I'm trying to say better than I can.

I've studied linguistics quite a bit and it seems that while people assume that different methods of learning (as in order of things) should be applied to adults and children... but it seems that every time there is a study done on it, the opposite of this tends to become apparent.

So I think that languages, my experience being with Japanese and English, are taught in a very strange order that doesn't seem to make much sense. The order normal people acquire a language in is this: Listening, speaking, reading, writing... with observation being a huge part of listening. It's almost as though people go to great efforts to teach a language in the opposite order than is natural.

I'm not trying to bring down my teachers, as my college teachers explained very clearly that they knew what the natural order of acquiring a language was-- they had to focus more on writing and advanced stuff to comply with all of the 2世人 students who attended the classes.

I think as a teacher, it's hard to justify telling your kids to just listen to language for 2 or 3 years, but that would be the best prerequisit for any language course. Teachers have to have things to grade and that's why they apply writing so early on in my opinion (now I'm talking about non-college level). If you, as a learner, don't have to deal with school, I'd put you at an advantage in that you probably won't get burned out by all the work thrown at you. If that is the case, then I think you'd be better off listening to/watching as much Japanese conversation as you possibly can and your brain will do the rest (in understanding words and being able to figure out where words begin and end). After a lot of listening, I would advise trying to speak. The technology is there, so by all means record yourself and listen & compare your speech to native speech (although this may, too, be a little discouraging at first). After you've got your basics down, then make an attempt at learning how to read/write.

What I don't understand is, is that we have all kinds of technology. Language books are in my opinion so obsolete. I hope that someone will make some kind of 'video book' that has no written language and just focuses on spoken language and its context. Audio tapes alone don't make sense at all, as the context of the language is slimmed down a lot by subtracting the visual aspect to the language. Sometimes I think the schools in my area should show english television shows and stuff like that to elementary school students from first grade and up. Instead of buying all of these bogus books and materials, just give the kids ENGLISH in its pure form... but that's straying even more from the topic.

You guys all seem very adamant about the importance of written langauge. If you had to choose between written or spoken language as being more important, which would you choose? Personally, I think spoken language wins hands down. I wonder how much class time is allocated to spoken vs. written, and what the results of all that is. These are studies that would be nice to have-- although I'm sure they are already out there.

So that's kind of what I'm getting at, people are pushing for kanji learning when there hasn't been nearly enough studying time allocated for actual spoken langauge. I think that early on, focus should be put on cultural differences and spoken language (and by culture, I'm not talking about kimonos and green tea).

So I'm pushing for Kanji to be held back a bit, thus putting stroke order out of the question for beginners. I'd argue that stroke order should be taught simultanously with kanji learning though.

As a side note: I can't tell you how many people I've met who have talked to me about how they're gonna take the JLPT 2 or 3 and how they're cramming kanji for it and what-not. Some of them even come to me for advice. These are people who probably couldn't understand a lick of natural everyday Japanese, and yet they're learning kanji that I've never even seen before. The illeterate, but fluent person you guys are referring to is almost completely me. I can read a little bit but probably couldn't compete with a 2nd grade Japanese student. I may be a little late in starting to study Kanji (I've made many attempts in the past but don't have the attention span), but now I'm seriously starting it. It feels a million times easier to look at a kanji that I'm studying and know the words complete usage in spoken Japanese. I finally feel like "cramming kanji" has a purpose now (with years of studying under my belt now). I have my JLPT practice books that I've barely touched... but I'm gonna go ahead and skip those and just practice from whatever kanji is in the cirriculum for actual Japanese elementary students.

As for the importance of spoken or written language, if you want to pass JLPT, written language is much more important.

And in fact Japanese is relatively much easier to speak than European languages, though how to say it properly can sometimes be a headache. You may think that once you have achieved the spoken part, then the written part would be easy. But I think the spoken part is the easiest part. You still have a long way to go.

Crunching Kanji for JLPT is necessary. I am Chinese. When I prepared for JLPT 1, I also needed to spend a lot of time on Kanji. And I mean a hell lot of time, because Japanese has so many homonyms and each kanji has at least 2 pronunciations, sometimes up to more than five.

Learning Kanji is in fact like learning the letters. The real words are combination of several Kanji. You may have learned 設 and 計. But when you encounter 設計, I'm sorry, you still need to use the dictionary.

[steven]

Where are you getting this stuff from? Japanese is easier to speak than European languages... for whom? Maybe if I grew up in Hong Kong I could have some empathy for a statement like that, but even so that seems like such a sweeping statement.

I absolutely hate tests like JLPT and don't even want to bother giving them the money or satisfaction they want. I feel like i wasted my money on a couple of their books.

I didn't realize you were chinese and apologize for that. From your perspective why wouldn't Kanji be important? With that said, you were calling my learning experience biased... that may be so, but what about you?

"I was brought up in a pure Kanji environment-Hong Kong. No pinyin whatsoever. Just Kanji. And I can tell you that when kids here learn Kanji, 9 out of ten words are Kanji phrases they have never heard of before. I can guarantee that learning Kanji without first learning how to pronounce or use them is perfectly okay. There are tens of millions of successful examples here and there. "

I'm sure there are billions of successful examples, but have you looked at literacy rates for different countries around the world? There may be a corrolation between that method of thinking and literacy rates, but that is quite an assumption on my part and apologize if there are other reasons.

[sakaeyellow]

Originally Posted by steven

Where are you getting this stuff from? Japanese is easier to speak than European languages... for whom? Maybe if I grew up in Hong Kong I could have some empathy for a statement like that, but even so that seems like such a sweeping statement.

I absolutely hate tests like JLPT and don't even want to bother giving them the money or satisfaction they want. I feel like i wasted my money on a couple of their books.

I didn't realize you were chinese and apologize for that. From your perspective why wouldn't Kanji be important? With that said, you were calling my learning experience biased... that may be so, but what about you?

"I was brought up in a pure Kanji environment-Hong Kong. No pinyin whatsoever. Just Kanji. And I can tell you that when kids here learn Kanji, 9 out of ten words are Kanji phrases they have never heard of before. I can guarantee that learning Kanji without first learning how to pronounce or use them is perfectly okay. There are tens of millions of successful examples here and there. "

I'm sure there are billions of successful examples, but have you looked at literacy rates for different countries around the world? There may be a corrolation between that method of thinking and literacy rates, but that is quite an assumption on my part and apologize if there are other reasons.

The sound elements of Japanese (consonants, vowels, intonation and others) are clearly much simpler than their European counterparts, not to mention the past / non-past tense and gender-free grammar. The world is not fair. It is much easier for English speakers to speak understandable Japanese than for Japanese speakers to speaker understandable English. And from my own experience, if they see that you have different skin color or speak with an accent, they usually will slow down their speech and use textbook Japanese. Actually, when a Japanese does that to me, I know my Japanese sucks. LOL.

Also, if you are an English or Chinese speaker, chances are you are already equipped with 10-20% of the Japanese vocabulary. Many so-called Japanese words are in fact Japonized pronunciations of English words. Maybe because I speak Chinese and English, I find it easy to speak understandable Japanese than understandable German. Of course, it is only my personal opinion. Everyone is different. It is absolutely normal that you have different ideas.

If you take learning Japanese seriously, i.e. with an aim to improve your income instead of just another hobby, JLPT is something you can't avoid. Yes. You can achieve native level fluency. But there are thousands of competitors who also have achieved native level fluency, and with a JLPT certificate.

The illiteracy rate is high in China because many of those illiterate people have not even received any education. It has very little to do with the writing system. Hong Kong and Taiwan also use Chinese (the traditional, more complicated form), but the illiteracy rates in these two places are close to zero.

Steven, my point is: Do not study a lot of Kanji (the Remembering the Kanji way) at the beginning. I think you agree with me on this. But I strongly recommend that when you learn the word かう, you should immediately learn the Kanji 買. It will not only help you with terms like かいもの、ばいしゅう, but also saves you a lot of headache when you encounter the word 飼う. When we learn French, we do the same. When we are learning a noun, we don't just remember the noun, but also its gender so that we know whether we should use "le" or "la", "mon" or "ma". And when I learned English many years ago, I learned "go, went, gone" at the same time instead of individually. In other words, we need to learn things as a set. If the term you are learning can be written in Kanji, then learn the Kanji.

[steven]

I can see what you're saying... but I guess we just disagree on this one.

My main point is that the basics of spoken language should be learned before the written parts of it are attempted, as this seems to be a more natural process.

"English or Chinese speaker, chances are you are already equipped with 10-20% of the Japanese vocabulary."

I don't know about chinese... but I do appreciate the fact that there are a lot of loan words from English in Japanese, but their pronunciation is very distorted and their meanings often differ from the original in subtle to extremely different ways. There are a ton of words in English that are loan words from latin based languages or french, but there is an idea called "false friends" that plays a huge role in misunderstandings. I'm not sure where you got your 10-20% from either.

You might have something with the importance of learning things in a set... I think there is something to that. I think it is absolutely benefitial to learn the kanji of a word (as long as it's a reasonable kanji that is used) when you learn the written form of that word.

People definately slow down their language for me... that's very true, but the second they realize I understand them they go into normal speaking mode immediately, and I can tell the difference. In fact, I have to tone down my dialect when I figure out that someone isn't from around here so they'll understand me better.

With all that aside, I am probably an example of waiting to long to seriously study kanji (by my own standards even). I feel like an illeterate person would... reading something takes such a long time, so I'll just have my girlfriend read whatever it is to me and then with a bit of explanation I'll get it.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by sakaeyellow

The sound elements of Japanese (consonants, vowels, intonation and others) are clearly much simpler than their European counterparts, not to mention the past / non-past tense and gender-free grammar.

It is absolutely and demonstrably false that Japanese is easier to learn for a native English speaker than nearly every European language. You make the claim that the sounds in Japanese are easier, but I think they're easier in Spanish than Japanese. Beyond that, you're ignoring the most difficult parts of spoken Japanese: particles and counters. They easily make up for the "easy" gender-free grammar. Also, the lack of tenses in Japanese makes it more difficult for a native English-speaker to adapt, not easier! Spanish often has a 1-to-1 translation. Japanese rarely does.

Studies have been done. The Romance and Germanic languages are vastly easier for a native English speaker to learn than languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Russian, and Arabic.

Of course, Japanese is vastly easier for a native Korean speaker to learn than is English. I can understand why someone from Hong Kong would find Japanese easier than a Romance language (although it still leaves me incredulous, as you presumably grew up with English, too, which should make especially Dutch easy for you).

Edit: Here is a source for my claim. It comes straight from linguistic researchers and practical instructors with the USA's Department of State Foreign Service Institute, tasked with finding people to serve the government's interests in foreign countries. I think they'd know a thing or two about teaching languages, since that is what they do (among other things). Wikibooks:Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks

Notably, the claim is made by them that Japanese takes approximately four times as long (including 1100 hours spent in-class while living in Japan) as Afrikaans, Dutch, Danish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish. Tellingly, these are all Germanic and Romance languages!

As someone who has studied Spanish and Japanese, I can affirmatively say that Spanish is a joke compared to even spoken Japanese. A decade of studying Japanese hardcore, including a year in Tokyo, has left me skilled in Japanese. Two years of Spanish in junior high followed by a decade of not speaking it at all, and a few years of spending time with my wife's family a rare, few days out of the year has left me with an ear for about 70% of natively spoken Spanish.

[steven]

Kyle, not that I disagree with you or anything, but just for the record he said he grew up in Hong Kong. I'm assuming you're right about him growing up with English, but he also apparently grew up with Chinese. That might put more truth behind his claim that Japanese is easier, but that doesn't apply to everyone, as you have clearly pointed out.

With that aside, this is quite a generalization, but Chinese people don't have the best pronunciation in Japanese in my experience, suggesting that pronunciation doesn't come natural to them either (us being people from primarily English speaking countries). With that in mind, aside from Kanji and a few words that are similar, I'm not even sure that his claim that Japanese is easier than European Languages would even apply to himself especially seing as how he gerw up with English too.

Out of curiosity, how many languages do you speak (and are actually comfortable with speaking/understanding) Sakaeyellow?

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by steven

Kyle, not that I disagree with you or anything, but just for the record he said he grew up in Hong Kong. I'm assuming you're right about him growing up with English, but he also apparently grew up with Chinese. That might put more truth behind his claim that Japanese is easier, but that doesn't apply to everyone, as you have clearly pointed out.

With that aside, this is quite a generalization, but Chinese people don't have the best pronunciation in Japanese in my experience, suggesting that pronunciation doesn't come natural to them either (us being people from primarily English speaking countries). With that in mind, aside from Kanji and a few words that are similar, I'm not even sure that his claim that Japanese is easier than European Languages would even apply to himself especially seing as how he gerw up with English too.

Out of curiosity, how many languages do you speak (and are actually comfortable with speaking/understanding) Sakaeyellow?

I am comfortable speaking English (highly-educated native), Japanese (conversant), and Spanish (literate). I find Spanish much easier as far as languages go (and I can quite often invent a Spanish word and be correct thanks to my English nativity), but I've devoted a lot less time to it, which is why I consider myself better at Japanese (but I can read scholarly works in Spanish and cannot yet in Japanese, thanks to the marvelous Latin connection between Spanish and English). My spoken Japanese is much better than my Spanish, but that's because I spent a year in Japan speaking only Japanese. Were it not for kanji, my Japanese would be unassailably better than my Spanish.

On a different note, the notion that Chinese does not help dramatically with Japanese because they share few complete words is silly. That's like claiming that because Greek and Latin share few actual words with English that knowing them does not help you dramatically in English.

Kanji work like Greek/Latin affixes. For example, knowing the Greek prefix "pseudo" helps you understand a lot of new words like "pseudopod," "pseudoephedrine," "pseudo-anglicism," "pseudomorph," "pseudonym," "pseudoscience," with very littel addition effort.

Similarly, knowing tele, micro, scope, visio, audio, phono, etc. will explode your English vocabulary. Having studied Chinese and Japanese (my Chinese is atrocious, though), I can attest to the fact that learning new hanzi will improve your grasp of Japanese, too.

[sakaeyellow]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

I am comfortable speaking English (highly-educated native), Japanese (conversant), and Spanish (literate). I find Spanish much easier as far as languages go (and I can quite often invent a Spanish word and be correct thanks to my English nativity), but I've devoted a lot less time to it, which is why I consider myself better at Japanese (but I can read scholarly works in Spanish and cannot yet in Japanese, thanks to the marvelous Latin connection between Spanish and English). My spoken Japanese is much better than my Spanish, but that's because I spent a year in Japan speaking only Japanese. Were it not for kanji, my Japanese would be unassailably better than my Spanish.

On a different note, the notion that Chinese does not help dramatically with Japanese because they share few complete words is silly. That's like claiming that because Greek and Latin share few actual words with English that knowing them does not help you dramatically in English.

Kanji work like Greek/Latin affixes. For example, knowing the Greek prefix "pseudo" helps you understand a lot of new words like "pseudopod," "pseudoephedrine," "pseudo-anglicism," "pseudomorph," "pseudonym," "pseudoscience," with very littel addition effort.

Similarly, knowing tele, micro, scope, visio, audio, phono, etc. will explode your English vocabulary. Having studied Chinese and Japanese (my Chinese is atrocious, though), I can attest to the fact that learning new hanzi will improve your grasp of Japanese, too.

I speak Cantonese (native), English (native-level), Mandarin and Japanese. As for my Mandarin and Japanese, casual conversation is okay. But I will surrender if I am to speak these two languages in a debate or to persuade an uninterested customer to buy. And I have difficulty understanding non-Tokyo accent.

Let me suggest the definition of "I can speak xxxx language":
When you encounter a new German word, you ask a native German speaker in German what the word means. The native speaker answers in German. You understand it fully and thus learn that word. If you can do all these, you can speak German, because you have the ability to build your German vocabulary with German input only.

Let me tell you more about Kanji.
The Japanese imported Kanji from China more than 1000 years ago. Kanji at that time did not have phrases, because paper was very expensive. Each Kanji had an independent function. Phrases like 進行 and 生命 did not exist. But when the Japanese met the advanced Western culture 100-150 years ago, they used Kanji to translate Western concepts by combining two Kanji into a phrases. Examples are 民＋主＝民主(democracy),科＋学＝科学(science) and 電＋話＝電話(telephone). Phrases like these three had not existed before in Japan or China. And the Japanese invented a LOT of Kanji phrases! The Chinese did not invent their own version but simply imported the Made in Japan Kanji phrases into their daily conversation. Because of export and reimport, modern Chinese vocabulary and Japanese vocabulary in fact share a lot of words. When I say a lot, I mean at least 50%.

For you reference, in the official Chinese name of the People's Republic of China, i.e. 中華人民共和国, 人民(People) and 共和国(Republic) are Made in Japan Kanji phrases.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by sakaeyellow

I speak Cantonese (native), English (native-level), Mandarin and Japanese. As for my Mandarin and Japanese, casual conversation is okay. But I will surrender if I am to speak these two languages in a debate or to persuade an uninterested customer to buy. And I have difficulty understanding non-Tokyo accent.

Let me suggest the definition of "I can speak xxxx language":
When you encounter a new German word, you ask a native German speaker in German what the word means. The native speaker answers in German. You understand it fully and thus learn that word. If you can do all these, you can speak German, because you have the ability to build your German vocabulary with German input only.

Let me tell you more about Kanji.
The Japanese imported Kanji from China more than 1000 years ago. Kanji at that time did not have phrases, because paper was very expensive. Each Kanji had an independent function. Phrases like 進行 and 生命 did not exist. But when the Japanese met the advanced Western culture 100-150 years ago, they used Kanji to translate Western concepts by combining two Kanji into a phrases. Examples are 民＋主＝民主(democracy),科＋学＝科学(science) and 電＋話＝電話(telephone). Phrases like these three had not existed before in Japan or China. And the Japanese invented a LOT of Kanji phrases! The Chinese did not invent their own version but simply imported the Made in Japan Kanji phrases into their daily conversation. Because of export and reimport, modern Chinese vocabulary and Japanese vocabulary in fact share a lot of words. When I say a lot, I mean at least 50%.

For you reference, in the official Chinese name of the People's Republic of China, i.e. 中華人民共和国, 人民(People) and 共和国(Republic) are Made in Japan Kanji phrases.

Thanks for the lesson. I knew some of it already, but that 50%-shared-vocab figure is awesome.