Job Discussion Forums

[Sweeney Todd]

[Sweeney Todd]

On second thoughts, to hell with it, blessed are the peacemakers my foot!

Let's rumble!

This Canuck character seems to have an unerring ability to chase the wrong fox and then to give himself a medal when he catches it.

Nobody is disputing that learning Hiragana is fundamental to understanding written Japanese. That's so clear that it doesn't need to stated, let alone proved.

What is being proposed is that learning Hiragana will not prepare one for learning Kanji. These, and I want us all to be absolutely clear on this point, are two quite different propositions.

A student of Japanese will, after learning Hiragana, need to make a separate and renewed deed of effort in order to gain some competence in Kanji. Regardless of the roots of Hiragana, it is now so different from Kanji that a student cannot simply step from one to the other as automatically as night follows day. He / she will need to do the spade-work and settle down to learn it.

Now, that is the fox we are chasing on this thread and no other.

[nonsmoker]

[furiousmilksheikali]

[Sweeney Todd]

[sethness]

Japanese ability might hurt, or might harm, your career chances.

During school hours, don't use Japanese, or use it veeery rarely in order to explain difficult grammar points or to give examples of slur and slang, helpful mnemonic devices, and so on. Use ENGLISH when talking to your coworkers, especially in front of students.

However, if your intended location will be in the deep countryside where few locals speak English, then the school will really value your ability to speak Japanese OUTSIDE the school. They will feel that any Japanese ability will help you to be happy and well-adjusted in the community.

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As for whether learning Hiragana and Katakana will help you learn Kanji... yes, but only a little. Get in the habit of looking at a shape, listening to the sound, and finding some silly mental picture that helps you remember the sound, meaning, and shape.

Another poster said that you could learn Hiragana and Katakana in a single weekend. I agree-- assuming that you use silly mental pictures to connect sound and shape. (See "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci" for more info on this.)

As to which will be most useful to you at first, I'm going to go AGAINST the majority opinion here, and say "Katakana". There are over 3,000 English, Spanish and German loan-words in Japanese, all written in Katakana-- so if you know how to read Katakana, you will be able to get by surprisingly well. Almost everything you see in a sports shop, restaurant, or computer store, for example, will be describable using foreign loan words.

As for learning Kanji-- it's a mess, man. You'd study like a monk-hermit for years to learn enough to halfway read a newspaper. Your time would be far better spent, imho, learning the spoken language.

[ironopolis]

To the OP, it's certainly true that your ability to speak Japanese will be infinitely more relevant than your ability to write it.

But I'd advise not to completely ignore learning any kanji. One of the advantages of actually living in a country whose langauge you're learning is that so much you see around you seeps into your brain and helps your general knowledge and ability in the language keep improving a little. But if you can never read anything of what you see every day, then this advantage is completely lost.

Of course, be realistic in your goals. Being able to plough through a Japanese newspaper is neither a realistic goal nor one you're likely to aspire to much. But even just a bit of an ability to understand signs you see every day, restaurant menus and other everyday stuff is both a realistic goal and one that'd help you get so much more out of life in Japan.

Just a little kanji knowledge will also help your vocab knowledge improve rapidly too. You'll often find you see combinations of individual kanji that you learnt and the penny will suddenly drop what the combination means - then as you see the same kanji word every day you'll remember it a lot better than if you'd just written down in hiragana or romaji in a notebook.

[6810]

[Sweeney Todd]

[JU!]

[fat_chris]