Importance of stroke order?
 

I've had a lot of sources go on and on about the importance of stroke order when writing kanji. According to Heisig, the importance "cannot be overstated" and that just makes me wonder: how come? If you can write the kanji and it looks like it's supposed to, how and WHY does it matter what order you wrote it in?

If you write out of order, your kanji will probably still be legible, but it will look funny. Odd angles and proportions. Sometimes that makes very similar looking kanji quite confusing. Also knowing the order can be important later on if you get an electronic dictionary. Mine only works efficiently if I use the correct stroke order.

Experienced readers of Japanese can "see" stroke order. The "sarifs" will often point in the direction of where your next stroke will start, so if you are out of order, you can often see it in the writing.

It may not make a difference... If you are writing very slow, very carefully, and all while paying attention to balance and the like.
But if you write any faster, it will both become obvious that you are writing them in the incorrect order and possibly even become illegible.

With messier handwriting or quick writing that borders on "script" - it matters immensely. If you`re writing with the correct stroke order your pen can never leave the paper and still be totally legible, as the stroke order will leave a distinct pattern.

It`s really hard to explain, but does indeed make a huge difference in legibility. In some cases, with certain hiragana or katakana it may not matter (も being one that drives both me and my son crazy as it seems to defy the normal rule of stroke order... Plus everyone in the family writes it the "wrong" way)- but kanji is pretty unforgiving.

Exactly. If you write a Kanji out of order, in front of a Japanese person, he might not recognize it, even if it's correctly rendered. Not always. Not usually. But sometimes.

Stroke order also helps you remember how to write some of the more complicated characters. If you write it the same order every time, you're not going to miss a slash or dot here or there.

If you input Kanji with a touch screen, then stroke order is very important. Otherwise, who cares?

A lot of people do if you wanna know the truth.

This is a very accurate and well thought out answer.

I have studied Japanese and Chinese. I questioned stroke order a lot, but came to understand that it really is important. Not only can kanji look "off" if written with the wrong stroke order, but sometimes they become illegible.

But sometimes stroke order simply doesn't make sense.

For instance, when you write 十, you write the horizontal and then the vertical stroke, i.e. 一 and then l.

But when you write 田, after writing "n", you need to write the vertical stroke first, i.e. l > 7 > l > 一 > 一.

Also, when you write 過, you are supposed to write the radical at the end, i.e. write 咼 first and then the radical. But what difference will it make if I write the radical first?

If you grab a kanji dictionary, you will see the need for knowledge of stroke order.

One day the batteries on your electronic dictionary with character recognition will run out.

That isn't even what this thread is about.

You haven't even read the other members' posts. Telling a beginning student that the stroke order is bull**** isn't going to help him in any way.

You'll find nothing about any language makes sense 100% of the time

It might make sense when you write vertically in cursive style, I am not sure about it though.

Sheer opposite, dude, sheer opposite....

Deffinitely, you are right.
I failed to express what I wanted to say.
I wanted to say the stroke order, 咼 first and then the radical, would make sence when you write vertically in cursive style.

FWIW, in Chinese, the stroke order is horizontal then vertical for 田 : USC Chinese Group Character Project . Maybe you're just learning the wrong language? :ywave:

Stroke order is a tradition, and it shows what you know about the language itself.
It's not heavily enforced, but if you are seen doing them incorrectly,
they will think it's weird

Sometimes I think that beginning students shouldn't even be dealing with kanji though. When I was studying Japanese in school I always studied kanji and I could never remember any of them. It seemed pointless after a while (and incidently it was)

I eventually just gave up on writing and focused 100% on speaking and listening and now I'm pretty fluent (although my writing/reading isn't that great). However now I can pick up kanji much quicker, and when I read stuff and can better picture what is going on.

You are definately right though... a student who is just beginning writing should probably be careful of stroke order as it can look like a mess otherwise. I've had a couple of Japanese students who's writing looks terrible (I suspect stroke oder as well as some other problems) and they get made fun of for it.

I agree, considering that each Japanese Kanji has at least 2 pronunciations.

Japanese first graders learn kanji. 'nuff said.

To play devil's advocate for a minute, though, those first graders are learning another part of the language they see and hear on a daily basis. I liken it to how when I learn a new word in English, I feel like I start to notice when it is used and it's meaning is reinforced in my mind. (Example, I had never read the word dearth before this last semester, but I looked it up to understand part of some class-related reading. Then I noticed my Dad use it, and he says he hears it all the time.)

I'm not saying that beginners should be exposed to Kanji, but the argument that second-language learners should be comparable to first graders who learn it as their native language is a bit silly. You're smart Kyle, so I'm sure you know how we learn languages as a child is different from how we learn as an adult. Those first graders who learn kanji also see said kanji everywhere and start to use them on a daily basis. This isn't the case for learners of Japanese as a second language (with the exception of maybe Chinese speakers, but of course that's not entirely the same reading :p ). I do think beginners should be exposed to Kanji and encouraged to use them, though.

If you do not learn Kanji from the beginning, you can't link the onyomi and kunyomi of the same Kanji together.

Kyle, with all due respect, those first graders are 5 and 6 years old. I think saying something like "'nuff said" after a statement like that only helps what I'm trying to say when you really get down to it. That's 5-6 years of constantly being exposed to the Japanese language. That's the kind of exposure you still won't obtain even if you've studied the langauge in your own country for many many years. To say that someone should learn kanji in their second year of studying, in my opinion, is an unrealistic expectation and the time required to memorize the kanji would be much better spent elsewhere. Forcing first/second year learnings of Japanese learners to learn kanji, you are putting them at a faster pace than actual Japanese learners and I can't comprehend the logic in that. This is why people who learn languages for like 10 years still can't come close to a native 10 year old's language ability.

This goes with the idea that teachers feel the need to replicate their own education when teaching a language. Just because 1st grade was your first year in school and you were learning kanji doesn't necessarily mean that it would be beneficial for first grade learners of Japanese (with a different L1) to be learning kanji. I think it would be better to think of Japanese as a second language students to be thought of as babies in terms of Japanese. I know that word baby has a negative connotation and I don't mean it that way. I mean that the beginning should focus more on listening and observing rather than what kids with 5 years of listening and observing under their belt are expected to do.

Most people who study Japanese get fed up with it very early on. The beginning is fun and you get to laugh at all the new sounds and at the weird phrasing of the English translations for vocabulary. After all that has worn off and you go into your second year and are expected to memorize kanji (on top of hiragana and katakana) it just seems useless. It's like there's a whole year dedicated to learning how to write letters. Letters are boring and are just like a fake langauge anyways. They are things that would be better focused on after there is a foundation of spoken langauge. Studying letters first leads to comparing Japanese letters (characters) to English ones, thus the brain applise English reading rules to Japanese words slowing down the learning process. Another side effect is the completely boring task of memorization of abstract characters. I think most people who learn a langauge want to learn how to speak it-- there are some people who genuinely want to learn it in its written form, and I think they are the exception. In other words, most of us would be better off enjoying communication before we stay up all night worrying about kanji.

HOWEVER, exposure to kanji should definately be there as soon as writing is taught. I think there is no harm done with putting furigana on top of kanji to help expose learners to it.

I agree that spoken japanese and listening skills shouldn't be back-benched in favor of writing and reading skills, but I also think it would be highly flawed not to teach kanji. By your second year of language learning as an adult, you should be more than capable of applying yourself to kanji use. Using 'It's hard and boring' as an excuse not to is frankly feeble. Not all elements of language learning can be fun. I will say though, that rote memorization of kanji is an incredibly poor way to teach it and if that is how your teacher approaches it, I can appreciate how frustrating and nonsensical that it can seem. Kanji however, is a non-negotiable part of becoming fluent in Japanese. Regardless of whether you like it or not, you cannot fail to learn it and then claim to have a high level of Japanese.

I can see what you're saying, but at the same time, most people approach japanese learning as late-teens and adults. We come with a full set of developed mental faculties (although given some students, you'd wonder) and so we can learn more directly than children. We're not trying to learn what 'frog' is at the same time as learning the word 'frog' because we already have a mental concept of 'frog', if you follow my drift. Yes we don't have the exposure to the language, but written skills form a big part of education and reinforce key aspects like pronunciation, intonation and word segregation. The last part is particularly kanji-related. Knowing where the kanji part of a verb ends and where the hiragana starts is one of the chief ways you can tell how to conjugate it.

Certainly after 5 years of Kanji use, I find it very hard to read a hiragana-only sentence, because it's not clear where words end and certain words I'm more familiar with as Kanji. Just yesterday it took me a couple of tries to read さかなや because it kept coming out as さかーなや and confusing me. I wouldn't have had the same issue with 魚屋。Similarly, Kanji give good hints to unknown words. Suppose you saw うそ written somewhere. You wouldn't have a clue as to it's meaning unless you already knew it, or you might think 'oh, it means lie'. written as 鷽、however, I can instantly see that it's not 'lie' but something else, and given that it has the character for bird in it, I can assume that it's either a sort of bird, or related to birds.

Additionally, as adults, we have other difficulties. Despite being child-level in Japanese, you would (I hope) still want to be considered an adult, and sound adult. In japan it's quite acceptable to be kanji-illiterate as a child but as an adult, it's a skill you need.
If you arrive with almost fluent speaking skills but no kanji recognition, you are to all intents and purposes, illiterate, and furigana is generally much scarcer than you'd like. And you will be expected to be able to read kanji- not all communication in Japan is verbal; think of all the signs, instructions, information you -read- on a daily basis, just navigating around town. Neglecting a full set of reading skills is like cutting off your foot and then trying to run a race. You will stumble at the starting block.

Again, this is pretty feeble reasoning. I've met people who've come out of easy-street, fun japanese courses. Their Japanese usually sucks and they flounder when they get to Japan because, surprise, surprise, they can't read or write a darned thing. So they become highly dependent on literate people to help them out. At the end of your second year (university level) you should have a reasonable level of self-sufficiency.

You describe a writing system as a 'fake language', which only goes to show that you're utterly ignorant of how to use it correctly. It is not a fake language, it is highly formative in the structure of Japanese, even down to a social level (Non-PC characters, for example). Your attitude suggests both bad learning and bad teaching.

Again, this suggests your learning experience is flawed and biased. I learnt Kanji in context in addition to rote learning and I certainly wouldn't call them abstract. They might not all be as explicit as 木 but there are patterns of logic to kanji construction, which clearly you've not been taught.

Agreed. However, using 100% furigana 100% of the time doesn't actually teach you to read Kanji; most people skim from hiragana to furigana and get a certain attentional blindness to the kanji symbols (ie, they barely glance at them), and it promotes an over dependancy on furigana, which in real life isn't used that much. Teen novels and manga perhaps, but if you're allergic to reading, then you're not likely to be opening many japanese books.

I don't think I'm getting my point across... writing is, in a sense, a fake language. I'd like to think of it as a completely different language- if that makes sense. Writing is an interpretation of spoken language, which is the purest form of a language. Another thing, as far as learners of Japanese go... at a high school or college level, as soon as the kanji starts happening, people start dropping out.

I think learning a second language as an adult has more disadvantages than advantages. The mother language gets in the way of the L2 more often than not (especially in languages as different as Japanese and English). It is my opinion that starting from scratch, like a child, would be easier. I have many many friends who are bilingual. They started learning English when they were about 5 years old (although they grew up in America, so they were somewhat immersed in it though their parents did not speak English). Their English is great and their mother language I would assume is passable (although probably lacking in the written department). The examples of how your native langauge gets in the way are almost infinate. Intonation in general seems to get applied incorrectly all the time. Phrases and expressions that are culturally specific... what to say and when. etc etc. I remember someone saying something like "彼はトクベツ” with special emphasis on 特別 as though it would carry over and mean something like "he's 'SPECIAL'" with a nudge and a wink as it would in English. There are other things too... like how people say プリン is pudding, when it is in fact flan (and dictionaries are guilty of this too). Just like how　カボチャ is said to mean pumpkin, when it indeed doesn't look like what we call pumpkins. It may be a type of pumpkin (or winter squash or whatever the hell it is), but it's not what we call a pumpkin. Dictionaries are sometimes incorrect or too overly simple in that they make things out to be a simple math equation of a=b... even though there are many exceptions. This is where spoken language comes in to play. I think rather than relying on someone elses perception of a language (as would be the case when referring to a dictionary or looking for a quick translation of something) it's more beneficial in the long run (albiet a slower path) to use your eyes and understand what a word means to you.

I got to a point in my language learning where I just gave up and literally TRIED to forget most of what I'd learned so I could give a shot at learning from scratch. I had plenty of Japanese friends and I just decided to listen to as much of their conversations as possible. That's how I developed my ear.

I'm not saying that writing or kanji should be ignored forever, but I think students would benefit if they could just listen to the language and learn it that way first.

Just because we're adults and start learning a language doesn't mean that we're gonna sound like adults in that language. There's no reason for baby talk either, though.

I've read a couple of Japanese books-- ones aimed at elementary school kids. I'm not gonna push myself to understand every nuance of something like yukiguni or something like that.

I'm not saying I'm the best learner by any means... but I feel like you're questioning my intelligence. A book or two that I've seen recommended on this site for Japanese learning were actually written by some of the teachers I had, by the way. I'm not trying to brag, but my Japanese is perfectly fine. It can still use a lot of work. My spoken Japanese is fine, I would assume, as I'm mistaken for a Japanese over the phone. After talking to someone for a while, I could tell them I was born in the area that I live and they will seriously believe me... even though I'm standing right in front of them as white as white can get with my brown hair and green eyes. There are certain things that no ammount of studying from a book or cramming will get you, and that's what I was looking for-- a means to communicate.

However, the more I think about it, the more I realize there IS a big part of this picture that I'm not seeing (as I am not really connected with it). People who study Japanese are usually into manga and stuff like that, so they are looking to study written Japanese as a way to understand the 'source' of what they like. I can accept that... but for people outside of that demographic, I'd suggest more listening and observation of the Japanese language. With that said, am I really the minority here? Is that what most people want? To understand how to read Japanese right off the bat?

Please don't get me wrong though, Columbine... it is obvious that Kanji is a totally important part of learning Japanese and it would be bogus to dismiss it completely... all I'm saying is that it could be ignored for a year or so longer than it is presently for Japanese as a second language learners. There's no doubt that kanji also helps with speaking/listening to Japanese. Hearing a word that you've never heard before and understanding it because you've imagined its kanji is a good feeling as a learner and without a dobut an integral part of the language.

And I do apologize to the topic creator as my argument has strayed quite a bit from the topic at hand.

I am going to step in as someone who is both fluent in Japanese and an actual linguist who did a long term(ish) study on this, and say that I pretty much agree with most of what steven is saying... And that it looks like parts of what he is haying has been sadly misunderstood.

Kanji IS important. But there is little point in pulling it out as soon as it generally is if the aim is to reach functional fluency as soon as possible. If your goal is written translation, etc, then there is a point to weighting kanji over spoken fluency... But in most cases that isn`t the goal, and kanji does little other than discourage.

I posted a summary of the study somewhere here in the past but can`t find it to link to, so will quote from a copy I saved from around 3 years ago (because I never wanted to summarize the thing from scratch again...)

In a study involving 32 (of school age 6+) children and 87 (between 18 and 49 at the start) adults acquiring Japanese as a second language over a period of 2 years - those with the highest level of fluency at 6 months, 1 year, and at the end of the period were those who chose a learning method following the path of "least resistance" - that of acquisition based on frequency with guidance. In other words, learning based on the frequency which they encountered words and patterns, with guidance for harder bits. This was true for both adults and children.
Those who had the highest level of fluency at 3 months were the same group that had the lowest levels at the end of the 2 year period - the adults who were in a strict course, starting with polite forms and adult grammar. They had the advantage on the earliest tests as they were further along with reading and grammar in the first session, but quickly lost that advantage as their acquisition slowed quickly after this point. They were also unable to adapt to a situation - a skill that was prevalent from the 3 month stage with the other subjects.

The study was conducted to compare acquisition based on learning order, and whether there was a difference in optimal order between adults and children.

Those in the "strict" course were not all in one school (or school at all) and were not using the same textbook or method. The thing that tied all of those in that group together was the following of a "traditional" study order, which is followed by the majority of text books. This is all beginning with polite speech then written language, with introduction to more informal forms coming very much later.

We started with 100 adults. 13 dropped out or left the program when they gave up on Japanese - and almost all of them were in a traditional study order, all of them leaving after beginning kanji. We also noted a huge difference in confidence between the groups, with the textbook ordered group having the lowest, and the frequency ordered having the highest. Traditional ordered learners showed higher levels of stress and confusion when encountering words, patterns, and situations with which they were not familiar. They also expressed a greater negativity overall.

Even the most motivated learners tend to lose momentum very quickly when they start being pushed to learn to write in a language they are not verbally proficient in.
I think this is what steven is trying to point out. If you are a poor speaker of Japanese, jumping to kanji so quickly is going to do the opposite of helping you... It will do very little other than discourage and frustrate - even in an immersion situation.

Both small children and adults are capable of learning a language in similar ways. An acquisition pattern based on listening and learning doesn`t mean that adults will sound like small children - the peer group is different. People baby talk to a baby, and then when they go off to school they are surrounded by peers with relatively basic language skills. An adult learner gets a form of baby talk (simplified basic language), but one they reach a certain point learn from peers. And an adult`s peers are adults. They won`t end up speaking like a small child because they are not in the same situation.

THIS.
If you do not know the word, or would not easily understand the explanation of it in Japanese, there is no reason to learn the kanji at that point.
I see SO many people trying to pick up vocabulary by cramming kanji, which seems completely silly. Especially when they are trying to remember on, kun, and a handful of meanings - a bunch which only apply in one single compound.
It`s far more natural, reasonable, and flat out easier to already have the vocabulary and apply the kanji to it. When you see a known word written in kanji, it should be a matter of "So that`s how it is written!"
Obviously there are exceptions to this, but there is absolutely no reason that an elementary learner should be dealing with them. Other things are much more important than your "kanji count"- like, say, working toward actually being able to communicate.

Nyororin

I think learning to recognize a kanji and remembering how to write it are 2 very different things. I think it's okay that learners don't write in Kanji. Even Japanese write things like 皮ふ. And in JLPT we can see words like 火さい(災 is beyond that level).

But learners should be able to recognize and understand Kanji, at least the basic ones, because modern Japanese is still heavy in Kanji, to the extent that a Chinese who have no Japanese education can understand around 20% of Japanese text.

Okay. At the very very least, learners must learn the basic 100~200 kanji such as 日月木水人大小一二三…If learning these easy Kanji is a challenge for someone who aims at being a fluent speaker, I strongly recommend him to think twice before investing his time.

Also, if you teach learners the origins of the Kana, chances are they will learn more than 50 kanji without paying extra effort. も＞毛、や＞也、け＞計、あ＞安、い＞以、ク＞久、れ ＞礼. Why not?

Finally, to be honest, can a fluent but illiterate Japanese speaking foreigner find a respectable job in Japan? (It is a question. I really don't know the answer.) And yes, if you don't know how to read Kanji, you are illitereate.

I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying. No one has said that it is a waste to learn kanji, nor that you shouldn`t know some.

What IS being said is that they should not take the level of priority that they typically do in the learning process. You should NOT be working on your kanji before you have a good grasp of the spoken language. You should not be trying to memorize a kanji when you may not even know a SINGLE word in which it is used. They SHOULD be studied, but NOT as quickly as they typically are.

The example of 5 and 6 year olds learning kanji is given. It`s actually 6 and 7 year olds (you have to be 6 to start 1st grade) - but regardless, the kanji they learn are for words they already know. They don`t get a list and learn to read a bunch of "on" and "kun" readings. They start with one meaning, the most familiar to them, and don`t even touch on and kun until later. But yet it`s used as an example that even elementary Japanese learners should be picking up kanji from the start.
My son knows about 5 kanji, a couple compounds with multi kanji (like kindergarten and the name of our town, etc)... But despite being far far behind in language skills - he is STILL "fluent".
Children who start learning kanji already know the language. Being expected to learn the language THROUGH kanji is a bit odd, really, and is the root of some serious frustration for learners.

But that isn`t what anyone is saying. Once you get to the point where you ARE fluent you absolutely should know your kanji (and really shouldn`t consider yourself fluent if you do not.) What I am saying, and think steven is saying, is that learners who are still in the early stages of learning should not be dedicating so much of their time to kanji and should instead be working on actually learning to SPEAK Japanese.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.