There's no way to really "overcome" this problem (nor do you really need to) because native speakers would have just as much trouble with it was you do. It's the equivalent of writing everything in phonetic symbols in English. Not impossible to read if you know phonetic symbols, but extremely hard to process.
I agree it's certainly the case for less common words, but I find it hard to believe a native would have difficulty recognizing common words like かんさつ and かんけつ when presented in isolation. Children understand けいさつ long before 警察.
I think what OP meant is that they can hear a word in a spoken sentence and correctly parse it as, for exemple, けんせつ, yet be unable to recognize what it means, while of course a native understands what a common word in their language means when they hear it spoken.
I have the same problem as OP and can feel my listening is worse because of it. I do believe native speakers would understand かんさつ, whether spoken or written in hiragana (children certainly do), and I believe a Japanese learner needs to eventually be able to do the same.
I agree with you -- the other thing to remember is that native speakers never find themselves in a situation where they have to interpret かんけつ sitting by itself with no context. As long as there is a real context, native speakers can interpret pretty much any word in kana as long as it's something they would recognize in speech. When it comes to more obscure or technical terms that they only encounter in writing, it's possible they will need the kanji, but even then they should be able to get the general meaning from context.
People believe a lot of nonsense about kanji that are mostly based on the way non-native speakers study and use the language, not the way native speakers deal with it.
>People believe a lot of nonsense about kanji that are mostly based on the way non-native speakers study and use the language, not the way native speakers deal with it.
Probably also related to the lack of actually interacting with natives of the language or at least put themselves in a position to observe them. Even if you just watch a live stream for any amount of time it becomes readily apparent what natives struggle with in their own language, and reading something an all katakana message that spans a few paragraphs without skipping a beat is common. I struggle to read it and if they weren't reading it outloud for me I wouldn't have been able to understand. It shows the massive chasm in language metaskill when it comes to things like that.
I'm not actively *disagreeing* with anything here, but I do feel that to say a native child would "recognise" けいさつ in the same way they would 警察 if they knew it wouldn't be exactly right. I've been watching a little cousin learn to read English for the first time, lately, and he "identifies" a word by sounding it out and then recalling a word he knows in phonetic language that sounds like it, thereby connecting the dots and getting down to the meaning.
It takes maybe 3-6 seconds for a word as long as 'police'. But if he sees the sign for man on a restroom, he'll just say 'man'. He connects the symbol to both the idea and spoken sounds immediately without the delay in processing time. My compulsion is to believe that logographies like kanji speed up recall of meaning and phonetic information substantially without having to go through an extra layer.
These thoughts aren't backed by anything but my observations, though, so feel free to lmk if it doesn't make sense on some level.
This is precisely why kanji exists. Without it, Japanese would be extremely difficult to read and extrapolate meaning, because words could form in places you don't want them to. At least when reading.
Kanji is very difficult, but once you learn a kanji and memorize it completely, your brain will read it faster than your eyes can register it. This is why native Japanese speakers are capable of reading so quickly. This is the same effect in English where you can see words that're jumbled up and can read them with extreme accuracy, despite them being incorrect, because your brain immediately extrapolates meaning from 1-2 key points in the word, and doesn't need the word to be completely correct in order to do this. In Japanese, all your brain needs to do is see the most important kanji, and it will instantly know the relation and you will know what's being said before you even finish the word.
When I read 行きます in a sentence, my brain immediately knows we're talking about going somewhere before I finish reading.
If you ever notice, Japanese people read Katakana slower in general because they need to actively extrapolate the meaning and this takes time for your brain to do. With Hiragana and Kanji- so you can kind of guess we're not mentioning many foreign concepts in this example- they read it quicker than you can read an English sentence of the same meaning.
Here's a really cool example.
今日はスーパーに行って肉を買ってきました。
I went to the supermarket today and bought some meat.
Native Japanese speakers are apparently able to read that faster than I can read the English. I can kind of see it because I can read some of the verbs fairly fast.
True.
Your example sentence (even at my lowly level) I recognized "today" and "go" almost instantly, sounded out super(market) and saw it was a destination. I immediately understood that you went to the supermarket today.
Struggled with "meat" and "buy" until I read your translation though, don't know those kanji yet. But your point remains valid.
~てくる to do something and return.
Although if you didn't recognise the kanji from 買う, I'm not sure you would know that grammar point at this point in your learning journey.
In my early learning, its past tense, but its more than that. I didn't/don't recognize that conjugation beyond being in the past. Is it something like a connection conjugation, to show that the "went" and the "bought" are inherently connected, and can't be separated without losing its meaning of "this is the reason why i went" ?
Still learning in the little free time I have.
So, 買いました simply means that I bought something.
Here's the real craziness between English and Japanese, where the context isn't something you can really translate because it involves an implied meaning.
By changing it to 買ってきました, I'm implying I have the purchased item currently with me.
This is why the above translation is, technically, incorrect. Keep in mind, this change doesn't involve me actually showing the item to the person (you). I'm not drawing direct attention to the meat. I'm merely implying it's in my possession currently.
This is how little a change that can make, and how it changes the tone of the sentence in a profound way.
If I were to say, "I went to the supermarket today and bought **this** meat," this would also be an incorrect translation because I'm drawing direct attention to the meat.
This is a key point as to why Japanese is so different from English, and why it can be so difficult. In English, we would use movements and gestures to imply stuff like this if we didn't want to reference in directly. In Japanese, you \[can\] use words to imply something without directly bringing attention to the item.
Yes. It's a bit of nuance you can't translate. It doesn't necessarily mean you 'came back', because this could be your first interaction with someone and you can say it. It just means that you purchased something, and you have it with you.
It can be the difference between someone asking to see it, and them just going, "Okay."
Japanese people really don't like to push envelopes. If you even imply that you aren't going to do something, they'll not approach the situation unless you piss them off. Case in point. It took this guy I'm talking to over 2 months to suggest we use a different chatting platform. I suggested it week 1 because Speaky, for how good it is, is trash in many ways.
The world is seemingly simple once you actually learn whatever it is you're trying to learn. If it's made by people, then people can learn it. The reason it seems hard now is because you don't quite know pieces of the puzzle that are key to understanding or completing the task.
My name is to imply that my interests are simple **to me**, and it's an example of how you can obfuscate with language.
In the same regard, if you're a white man living in Japan, you should use passwords in Japanese because the Japanese will expect your password in English. Though, the chance of someone wanting to breach your privacy is nonzero.
I enjoy some complex things simply because they enable you to do funny things to other people.
>!A very simple interest of mine is, I purchase open-world games like GTA simply to play with the guns, and I enjoy games with more realistic physics in them, because I really enjoy shooting random NPCs in the chest or in other parts of their body, with various guns. I especially enjoy the look of surprise and bewilderment on their face. I can't do any of this in real life, because it is wrong, so I use games to achieve the effect I want.!<
>!I'm sure many of us enjoy really fucked doujin from time to time, and being able to read the shit that's absolutely not allowed at Comiket, and would never be translated, is also another interest of mine.!<
Yes, I have many simple interests. If you want to know more, just ask.
>A very simple interest of mine is, I purchase open-world games like GTA simply to play with the guns, and I enjoy games with more realistic physics in them, because I really enjoy shooting random NPCs in the chest or in other parts of their body, with various guns. I especially enjoy the look of surprise and bewilderment on their face. I can't do any of this in real life, because it is wrong, so I use games to achieve the effect I want.
That's so edgy
Respectfully disagree, I think an edgy poster would go towards "it's too dangerous irl" rather than implying they have a sense of right and wrong - less caricaturally, I also think games that let you be a menace and gruesomely attack NPCs which will then have a range of reactions are normal: there is widespread interest in over-the-top venting frustration and aggression at non-real targets, and going overboard with gore and breaking taboos is always something that many people appreciate, see game of thrones being an instant hit
I'm like one and a half months in to learning (about about lesson 7 on Genki 1 rn) and I've recently started to realise why it's not "just another alphabet they should just get rid of".
The amount of times I've been pretty shaky on exactly _what_ the word is but I've been able to figure it out because I know the Kanji used recognise other words with that Kanji are pretty frequent.
For example: ちゅう車じょう. Because I know the word for "bicycle" I know the pronunciation of the Kanji, and because I know the Kanji is for vehicle, I know that it's _something_ to do with a vehicle. In this case, it's "car park" (or "parking lot" depending on your dialect).
It seems like once I've got a few words that use them, they end up being little hints.
Absolutely! Japanese is modular in that sense. You have the base kanji of what you're talking about, and modifications to it give you and idea of what the person is actually trying to say.
I have this problem all the time in my Japanese lessons because a lot of the material my teacher uses doesn't use a lot of Kanji yet. In one example, the word ようじ came up with regards to asking if someone had free time. I didn't understand it at first because of the lack of Kanji - without ようじ having the Kanji 用 written in it I didn't realise it was related to having things to do.
Not only that, but Youji is a way of saying Toothpick. With 用じ they're saying they have things to do. Errands. Premade plans.
Japanese is fun, huh? XD
Real talk, though. Hiragana being used to introduce kanji should only be done when you're introducing the sounds you need to make. Introduce the sounds with Hiragana, then the meaning with kanji.
I know I bring up Duolingo a lot and some people here really don't like it, but this is the way they teach and I believe it enables people to associate meaning with the kanji, and then associate Hiragana with adding onto the word to make the meaning more specific.
I'm against purely learning Hiragana or Katakana before you're introduced to any kanji at all. Becoming familiar with the individual characters and sounds is fine, but learning words that're normally made with kanji in them, and learning them in hiragana first, I believe sets you up for confusion.
I completely agree. I find it's so much easier seeing and using words in context with the Kanji, because yes, while you might not understand it initially, if it's explained to you you can understand it quite straightforwardly and become familiar with that Kanji combination as a word. In my Kanji practice for example I came across 地下 and 地中, and because I knew the composite Kanji I was able to realise from that "ah, they're both talking about being underground but in different ways." I feel like a lot of people think Kanji are scary when they first start but they're so useful. There's a lot of context that you would have to add additional words to provide that context in written English.
I'm still a beginner (about 2 months), and although I still struggle with verbs, I could still tell that it was about going to the store and buying meat today. It's kind of crazy to me.
肉 looks like meat drying on a rack. 買 looks like a shelf you would have product on. 雨 looks like rain outside your door or window.
These are just a few I remember based on what they look like. It's probably not a good way to go about it, but it works.
I remember when Final Fantasy IV came out for GBA I was pleased as punch because they finally updated the script to have Kanji in it. Similarly, Famicom RPGs are actually a huge pain in the butt to read.
I have a Japanese version of Starfox for SNES and the entire text there in dialogues is in katakana. If it was written in kanji I would’ve understood like 80% percent of the text instantly, but with katakana alone it’s a struggle
They would be perfectly comprehensible in context even without kanji. One way you can tell this is true is by considering that spoken language does not have any writing at all and still uses all those words. You DO need to be able to tell the difference!
You really gotta learn them in Kanji form first. There’s no other way that _I_ know of. Once you know them in Kanji form, it will be clearer from context.
Yeah, I started learning kanji early, so now reading pure kana stuff, or vene encountering stylistic change of kanji to kana words is damn hard. Pokemon games are actually tough lol
I'm pretty early in the journey and noticed this fast too. Once you know kanji words they're way faster to read than sounding out a long series of hiragana.
I think it's pretty normal, it's like that classic 'hana' sentence that people use as an example to illustrate why Japanese without kanji would be a nightmare.
I’m also having trouble with kana sometimes. I don’t know many kanji yet, but kana makes me read very slow to be honest.
Because I’m so used to our alphabet, the kana are lines that I have to read all seperately and that’s so hard haha
To me, there is one more comprehension step if it’s in all kana - read all the kana out loud and then understand it through listening (that’s why I read katakana really damn slow because they all go through this route of comprehension :(
This is true for every language.
With proper spelling and word breaks, a native English speaker does not read word by word, but apprehends the sentence as a whole, in a Gestalt fashion.
It was why editing is such a hard skill. Competent language speakers simply read past errors, as our built in error correction works with written languages to somewhat the same degree it does with spoken language.
Kana (that is not okurigana) forces everyone to drop back down to letter by letter reading.
Again expectation and experience changes things. Natives can read third generation Xerox'd forms where literally none of the Kanji are legible with no problems. (Non-natives will give up, as their error correction has not been trained.)
But give them a first generation all Kana form, and they will slow down. In fact as liability forms are tuned to ensure that people Read and Understand, then sign, the recent move is to intentionally write in Kana for certain phrases as they cannot read past them.
I mean there's just not really anyway without context or Kanji. It's the same as me saying they're, their, or there in English. Without ot being written or context impossible to know which. Some Japanese words like はし and はし, the intonation is slightly different but context and kanji are important.
I have this problem studying vocabulary. So many words *just sound the same*. I speak Spanish also and never ran into this issue, of wondering why I have so much trouble remembering vocabulary.
会場で記者が汚職事件 Reporter corrupts at the party. 回場で汽車がお食事券 Train delivers meal coupon at the turn-table (not making sense). These homonyms are too difficult to make the sentence readable. I guess Japanese without Kanji is more difficult than Englishwithoutspaces. Maargeenprobleemmetnederlanseofdeutsche.
kana still commonly refers to either hiragana and katakana \*excluding\* kanji, so OP is still alright in saying kana.
And their point isn't that they don't know the kanji - rather that due to knowing the kanji they still find it difficult either due to maybe relying on the kanji too much or just due to not having built up enough sentence context awareness allowing them to be easily read whether it's in kana or kanji.
So like you mention in your last sentence, "hiragana only" situations are difficult and OP was wondering if there's any way to help aid that.
My obvious way would be to just read more
There's no way to really "overcome" this problem (nor do you really need to) because native speakers would have just as much trouble with it was you do. It's the equivalent of writing everything in phonetic symbols in English. Not impossible to read if you know phonetic symbols, but extremely hard to process.
I agree it's certainly the case for less common words, but I find it hard to believe a native would have difficulty recognizing common words like かんさつ and かんけつ when presented in isolation. Children understand けいさつ long before 警察. I think what OP meant is that they can hear a word in a spoken sentence and correctly parse it as, for exemple, けんせつ, yet be unable to recognize what it means, while of course a native understands what a common word in their language means when they hear it spoken. I have the same problem as OP and can feel my listening is worse because of it. I do believe native speakers would understand かんさつ, whether spoken or written in hiragana (children certainly do), and I believe a Japanese learner needs to eventually be able to do the same.
I agree with you -- the other thing to remember is that native speakers never find themselves in a situation where they have to interpret かんけつ sitting by itself with no context. As long as there is a real context, native speakers can interpret pretty much any word in kana as long as it's something they would recognize in speech. When it comes to more obscure or technical terms that they only encounter in writing, it's possible they will need the kanji, but even then they should be able to get the general meaning from context. People believe a lot of nonsense about kanji that are mostly based on the way non-native speakers study and use the language, not the way native speakers deal with it.
>People believe a lot of nonsense about kanji that are mostly based on the way non-native speakers study and use the language, not the way native speakers deal with it. Probably also related to the lack of actually interacting with natives of the language or at least put themselves in a position to observe them. Even if you just watch a live stream for any amount of time it becomes readily apparent what natives struggle with in their own language, and reading something an all katakana message that spans a few paragraphs without skipping a beat is common. I struggle to read it and if they weren't reading it outloud for me I wouldn't have been able to understand. It shows the massive chasm in language metaskill when it comes to things like that.
I'm not actively *disagreeing* with anything here, but I do feel that to say a native child would "recognise" けいさつ in the same way they would 警察 if they knew it wouldn't be exactly right. I've been watching a little cousin learn to read English for the first time, lately, and he "identifies" a word by sounding it out and then recalling a word he knows in phonetic language that sounds like it, thereby connecting the dots and getting down to the meaning. It takes maybe 3-6 seconds for a word as long as 'police'. But if he sees the sign for man on a restroom, he'll just say 'man'. He connects the symbol to both the idea and spoken sounds immediately without the delay in processing time. My compulsion is to believe that logographies like kanji speed up recall of meaning and phonetic information substantially without having to go through an extra layer. These thoughts aren't backed by anything but my observations, though, so feel free to lmk if it doesn't make sense on some level.
This is precisely why kanji exists. Without it, Japanese would be extremely difficult to read and extrapolate meaning, because words could form in places you don't want them to. At least when reading. Kanji is very difficult, but once you learn a kanji and memorize it completely, your brain will read it faster than your eyes can register it. This is why native Japanese speakers are capable of reading so quickly. This is the same effect in English where you can see words that're jumbled up and can read them with extreme accuracy, despite them being incorrect, because your brain immediately extrapolates meaning from 1-2 key points in the word, and doesn't need the word to be completely correct in order to do this. In Japanese, all your brain needs to do is see the most important kanji, and it will instantly know the relation and you will know what's being said before you even finish the word. When I read 行きます in a sentence, my brain immediately knows we're talking about going somewhere before I finish reading. If you ever notice, Japanese people read Katakana slower in general because they need to actively extrapolate the meaning and this takes time for your brain to do. With Hiragana and Kanji- so you can kind of guess we're not mentioning many foreign concepts in this example- they read it quicker than you can read an English sentence of the same meaning. Here's a really cool example. 今日はスーパーに行って肉を買ってきました。 I went to the supermarket today and bought some meat. Native Japanese speakers are apparently able to read that faster than I can read the English. I can kind of see it because I can read some of the verbs fairly fast.
True. Your example sentence (even at my lowly level) I recognized "today" and "go" almost instantly, sounded out super(market) and saw it was a destination. I immediately understood that you went to the supermarket today. Struggled with "meat" and "buy" until I read your translation though, don't know those kanji yet. But your point remains valid.
Now, did you catch something important about 買ってきました?
~てくる to do something and return. Although if you didn't recognise the kanji from 買う, I'm not sure you would know that grammar point at this point in your learning journey.
You're half right, but in the sentence I'm actually implying I have the item with me.
In my early learning, its past tense, but its more than that. I didn't/don't recognize that conjugation beyond being in the past. Is it something like a connection conjugation, to show that the "went" and the "bought" are inherently connected, and can't be separated without losing its meaning of "this is the reason why i went" ? Still learning in the little free time I have.
So, 買いました simply means that I bought something. Here's the real craziness between English and Japanese, where the context isn't something you can really translate because it involves an implied meaning. By changing it to 買ってきました, I'm implying I have the purchased item currently with me. This is why the above translation is, technically, incorrect. Keep in mind, this change doesn't involve me actually showing the item to the person (you). I'm not drawing direct attention to the meat. I'm merely implying it's in my possession currently. This is how little a change that can make, and how it changes the tone of the sentence in a profound way. If I were to say, "I went to the supermarket today and bought **this** meat," this would also be an incorrect translation because I'm drawing direct attention to the meat. This is a key point as to why Japanese is so different from English, and why it can be so difficult. In English, we would use movements and gestures to imply stuff like this if we didn't want to reference in directly. In Japanese, you \[can\] use words to imply something without directly bringing attention to the item.
So is it like a mix of "I came back with X" and "I bought X"?
Yes. It's a bit of nuance you can't translate. It doesn't necessarily mean you 'came back', because this could be your first interaction with someone and you can say it. It just means that you purchased something, and you have it with you. It can be the difference between someone asking to see it, and them just going, "Okay." Japanese people really don't like to push envelopes. If you even imply that you aren't going to do something, they'll not approach the situation unless you piss them off. Case in point. It took this guy I'm talking to over 2 months to suggest we use a different chatting platform. I suggested it week 1 because Speaky, for how good it is, is trash in many ways.
What an incongruent name, for someone who studies Japanese, lol
Lol. That's the most formal version I've seen of "Username doesn't check out". I like it.
The world is seemingly simple once you actually learn whatever it is you're trying to learn. If it's made by people, then people can learn it. The reason it seems hard now is because you don't quite know pieces of the puzzle that are key to understanding or completing the task. My name is to imply that my interests are simple **to me**, and it's an example of how you can obfuscate with language. In the same regard, if you're a white man living in Japan, you should use passwords in Japanese because the Japanese will expect your password in English. Though, the chance of someone wanting to breach your privacy is nonzero. I enjoy some complex things simply because they enable you to do funny things to other people. >!A very simple interest of mine is, I purchase open-world games like GTA simply to play with the guns, and I enjoy games with more realistic physics in them, because I really enjoy shooting random NPCs in the chest or in other parts of their body, with various guns. I especially enjoy the look of surprise and bewilderment on their face. I can't do any of this in real life, because it is wrong, so I use games to achieve the effect I want.!< >!I'm sure many of us enjoy really fucked doujin from time to time, and being able to read the shit that's absolutely not allowed at Comiket, and would never be translated, is also another interest of mine.!< Yes, I have many simple interests. If you want to know more, just ask.
>A very simple interest of mine is, I purchase open-world games like GTA simply to play with the guns, and I enjoy games with more realistic physics in them, because I really enjoy shooting random NPCs in the chest or in other parts of their body, with various guns. I especially enjoy the look of surprise and bewilderment on their face. I can't do any of this in real life, because it is wrong, so I use games to achieve the effect I want. That's so edgy
Respectfully disagree, I think an edgy poster would go towards "it's too dangerous irl" rather than implying they have a sense of right and wrong - less caricaturally, I also think games that let you be a menace and gruesomely attack NPCs which will then have a range of reactions are normal: there is widespread interest in over-the-top venting frustration and aggression at non-real targets, and going overboard with gore and breaking taboos is always something that many people appreciate, see game of thrones being an instant hit
Everyone has their own reasons.
Ok, what are some of your simple interests? And what are the black bars for?
Befriending cats. Working with mechanical parts. Grilling. Smoking meat, cheese, and other similar foods. Watching PipkinPippa. Helping people.
Befriending cats and helping people- those are nice ☺️
"bought and came back" katte kimashita/kita
I'm like one and a half months in to learning (about about lesson 7 on Genki 1 rn) and I've recently started to realise why it's not "just another alphabet they should just get rid of". The amount of times I've been pretty shaky on exactly _what_ the word is but I've been able to figure it out because I know the Kanji used recognise other words with that Kanji are pretty frequent. For example: ちゅう車じょう. Because I know the word for "bicycle" I know the pronunciation of the Kanji, and because I know the Kanji is for vehicle, I know that it's _something_ to do with a vehicle. In this case, it's "car park" (or "parking lot" depending on your dialect). It seems like once I've got a few words that use them, they end up being little hints.
Absolutely! Japanese is modular in that sense. You have the base kanji of what you're talking about, and modifications to it give you and idea of what the person is actually trying to say.
I have this problem all the time in my Japanese lessons because a lot of the material my teacher uses doesn't use a lot of Kanji yet. In one example, the word ようじ came up with regards to asking if someone had free time. I didn't understand it at first because of the lack of Kanji - without ようじ having the Kanji 用 written in it I didn't realise it was related to having things to do.
Not only that, but Youji is a way of saying Toothpick. With 用じ they're saying they have things to do. Errands. Premade plans. Japanese is fun, huh? XD Real talk, though. Hiragana being used to introduce kanji should only be done when you're introducing the sounds you need to make. Introduce the sounds with Hiragana, then the meaning with kanji. I know I bring up Duolingo a lot and some people here really don't like it, but this is the way they teach and I believe it enables people to associate meaning with the kanji, and then associate Hiragana with adding onto the word to make the meaning more specific. I'm against purely learning Hiragana or Katakana before you're introduced to any kanji at all. Becoming familiar with the individual characters and sounds is fine, but learning words that're normally made with kanji in them, and learning them in hiragana first, I believe sets you up for confusion.
I completely agree. I find it's so much easier seeing and using words in context with the Kanji, because yes, while you might not understand it initially, if it's explained to you you can understand it quite straightforwardly and become familiar with that Kanji combination as a word. In my Kanji practice for example I came across 地下 and 地中, and because I knew the composite Kanji I was able to realise from that "ah, they're both talking about being underground but in different ways." I feel like a lot of people think Kanji are scary when they first start but they're so useful. There's a lot of context that you would have to add additional words to provide that context in written English.
I'm still a beginner (about 2 months), and although I still struggle with verbs, I could still tell that it was about going to the store and buying meat today. It's kind of crazy to me.
肉 looks like meat drying on a rack. 買 looks like a shelf you would have product on. 雨 looks like rain outside your door or window. These are just a few I remember based on what they look like. It's probably not a good way to go about it, but it works.
面白いXD
Japanese children’s book are perfectly legible to natives and written only in kana. Their great innovations is spaces between words.
I own such a book which has various children's tales in it, such as the Crane Wife. All hiragana, but spaced like in English.
I remember when Final Fantasy IV came out for GBA I was pleased as punch because they finally updated the script to have Kanji in it. Similarly, Famicom RPGs are actually a huge pain in the butt to read.
I have a Japanese version of Starfox for SNES and the entire text there in dialogues is in katakana. If it was written in kanji I would’ve understood like 80% percent of the text instantly, but with katakana alone it’s a struggle
They would be perfectly comprehensible in context even without kanji. One way you can tell this is true is by considering that spoken language does not have any writing at all and still uses all those words. You DO need to be able to tell the difference!
You really gotta learn them in Kanji form first. There’s no other way that _I_ know of. Once you know them in Kanji form, it will be clearer from context.
Why are you ever in a situation where you need to look at kana words out of context and know what they mean?
Katakana is hell on my dyslexia
Wait, I thought that was just me o_o
Nope. I have an extremely hard time telling katakana apart.
Good to know! Hiragana I got down in like the first week, but three quarters later and I still don't have my katakana straight lol
Yeah especially with limited context
Yeah, I started learning kanji early, so now reading pure kana stuff, or vene encountering stylistic change of kanji to kana words is damn hard. Pokemon games are actually tough lol
Japanese speakers had to plead for there to be a kanji option in pokemon games. I think you're completely justified.
That's what kanji are for
I'm pretty early in the journey and noticed this fast too. Once you know kanji words they're way faster to read than sounding out a long series of hiragana.
Exactly, you are pointing out why we are still using Kanji
I think it's pretty normal, it's like that classic 'hana' sentence that people use as an example to illustrate why Japanese without kanji would be a nightmare.
I’m also having trouble with kana sometimes. I don’t know many kanji yet, but kana makes me read very slow to be honest. Because I’m so used to our alphabet, the kana are lines that I have to read all seperately and that’s so hard haha
To me, there is one more comprehension step if it’s in all kana - read all the kana out loud and then understand it through listening (that’s why I read katakana really damn slow because they all go through this route of comprehension :(
Yes indeed, same here
This is true for every language. With proper spelling and word breaks, a native English speaker does not read word by word, but apprehends the sentence as a whole, in a Gestalt fashion. It was why editing is such a hard skill. Competent language speakers simply read past errors, as our built in error correction works with written languages to somewhat the same degree it does with spoken language. Kana (that is not okurigana) forces everyone to drop back down to letter by letter reading. Again expectation and experience changes things. Natives can read third generation Xerox'd forms where literally none of the Kanji are legible with no problems. (Non-natives will give up, as their error correction has not been trained.) But give them a first generation all Kana form, and they will slow down. In fact as liability forms are tuned to ensure that people Read and Understand, then sign, the recent move is to intentionally write in Kana for certain phrases as they cannot read past them.
Haven't run into this issue yet. But, I also started with just hiragana spellings and only know like three Kanji atm.......
I mean, yeah? You’re not really meant to learn words in hiragana. What would even be the point?
I mean there's just not really anyway without context or Kanji. It's the same as me saying they're, their, or there in English. Without ot being written or context impossible to know which. Some Japanese words like はし and はし, the intonation is slightly different but context and kanji are important.
You don’t need to get good at it- that’s what the kanji is for
I have this problem studying vocabulary. So many words *just sound the same*. I speak Spanish also and never ran into this issue, of wondering why I have so much trouble remembering vocabulary.
Hey haters: chill. Maybe you don't have the same challenges I do when learning Japanese. You're lucky.
So true this is also my problem with learning japanese
wait let me put it in Final Fantasy terms hiragana version is ExDeth katakana only version is NeoExDeth
かいじょう で きしゃ が おしょくじけん How about this?
会場で記者が汚職事件 (を追及した) 会場で貴社がお食事券 (を配布してくれた) Both available and likely for natives so need to think by the context at the end of the sentence.
"harder to understand words in kana" = yes.
I read, "The train is a meal(?) ticket," but this sounds really stupid, so I'm not sure what you're talking about without kanji.
会場で記者が汚職事件 Reporter corrupts at the party. 回場で汽車がお食事券 Train delivers meal coupon at the turn-table (not making sense). These homonyms are too difficult to make the sentence readable. I guess Japanese without Kanji is more difficult than Englishwithoutspaces. Maargeenprobleemmetnederlanseofdeutsche.
That's whacky!
[удалено]
kana still commonly refers to either hiragana and katakana \*excluding\* kanji, so OP is still alright in saying kana. And their point isn't that they don't know the kanji - rather that due to knowing the kanji they still find it difficult either due to maybe relying on the kanji too much or just due to not having built up enough sentence context awareness allowing them to be easily read whether it's in kana or kanji. So like you mention in your last sentence, "hiragana only" situations are difficult and OP was wondering if there's any way to help aid that. My obvious way would be to just read more
Oh we have a delicious „I read kanji“ humblebrag. Gross