Job Discussion Forums

[ghost]

I am currently working as a teacher trainer in Korea, but would like to move to Japan when I finish my contract in Korea. I have never really been happy in Korea, and I think Japan would be more interesting.

I am interested in learning Japanese, but realize that at my age I would rather just learn conversation with 'romanji' characters rather than spending years learning 'kanji' (Chinese characters). I already went through the same thing when learning Mandarin in Taiwan in 2005-2006 - I was allowed to do the course with 'pinyin' because I argued (successfully) that I was not prepared to spend 2-4 hours each night 'memorizing' Chinese characters. The result of this was that my progress in spoken Mandarin was much faster compared with students who studied Mandarin in the traditional way, focussing on memorizing characters.

Has anyone here learned decent level Japanese with romanization rather than learning Kanji chinese characters?

I am interested in a school in Fukuoka called the 'Genki Japanese and Culture school.

A question: do the Japanese schools permit foreigners to learn Japanese with romanji, or are the foreigners 'forced' to spend hours and hours learning 'kanji' - which would take years of concentrated study to master for most people?

I think foreigners should have the option of learning kanji or not, and for those who do not wish to learn kanji, they should not be looked down upon as being lazy or inferior. It just takes too much time and investment for some people to memorize characters. Some people (visual learners) have little trouble memorizing characters, but others like myself (more audio type learners) have trouble sorting out and memorizing the characters. It is just not worth it. Have been there and done that in Taiwan with pinyin - but I had to fight the University Dept to 'allow' me to take the course using 'pinyin.' They said they made an exception for me because of my age! All the other students had to spend the bulk of their time memorizing Chinese characters. But in a survey I conducted at the Univ. in question, even after 3 years of assiduous study of Chinese characters, none of the students could read enough to understand the local newspapers! Is it really worth it? I think not, unless you are a Sino studies major with an objective for a career in the field.

My feeling is that many schools spend hours teaching characters because it is good money for the schools - takes the foreign students a long time to learn. Money in the bank for the schools. Few foreigners really question whether the investment in time and money for learning Chinese characters is really worth it.

Thank you for any information you may have about learning Japanese with 'romanji' rather than 'kanji'

Ghost in Korea

Visit to Fukuoka from August 27-31, 2007

[6810]

a. Japanese literacy is not required for most English instruction jobs in Japan.

b. Japanese literacy can however make you more autonomous and have far more control over your life than if you are illiterate.

c. If you plan on staying in Japan a long time, put in the effort to get literate.

d. If you won't be here for long, you can get by with spoken Japanese.

e. Sorry to sound like a d!ck, but sounds like you have spent an awful lot of time and effort avoiding kanji when, to be frank, the effort ain't worth it.

f. Whether or not you retain/memorise kanji is totally a question of learning style, motivation for use and pedagogical context.

g. It's your life, enjoy.

[Glenski]

You don't need to attend any school to learn Japanese. Study on your own. Plenty of books out there.

How long do you plan to stay here, if Japanese life agrees with you?

How old are you anyway?

[markle]

Before you have to tackle the mountain that is kanji you will take on the hill that is kana (hiragana & katakana). Kana is a phonetic system similar to romaji except that is based on brushstrokes and it is used everywhere, from signs, subtitling kanji, etc. Best part is that it takes no time at all to learn in fact I'd say that it takes as long as it does to learn a romaji system.

Sticking with romaji will only limit your learning options. Especially with a ready made system available.

[Apsara]

Even if you just learn the 48 katakana, that puts you at a great advantage for reading parts of restaurant, izakaya and cafe menus (they don't always have English), figuring out what you are looking at in the supermarket, reading shop and street signs etc.

A friend of mine didn't bother learning to read any Japanese until she had been here about 4 years and the when she finally learned to read katakana she told me it made a huge difference and she wished she had learned them much earlier.

It's up to you, but the katakana and hiragana aren't that hard to learn- you would probably need a week or so of a couple of hours a day, if that, to memorise katakana and then another week for hiragana, and being able to read them could actually improve your quality of life here.

[ghost]

[Hoser]

I've been in Japan for just over two years and I'm just seriously starting to study Kanji now (taking the JLPT in December). It's certainly handy for reading, especially the more common ones.

[J.]

pretty quickly and they ARE invaluable for simple reading but learning kana and reading them "in situ" is a completely different thing. It takes practice to be able to put the sounds together into words, and with some katakana that includes a lot of guessing, as the words are changed entirely in their pronunciation from the originating language.

Learning to read is a lot more than learning phonetic sounds; you actually have to be able to put the sounds together into words and that takes learning some Japanese. However, if you don't intend to learn kanji, the sooner you start learning kana the better off you will be. Probably it will stick better after you have a basic vocabulary, though.

Oh yeah and there are a lot more hiragana and katakana than 40-something when you include the secondary sounds and combinations. With the two systems, sometimes you tend to mix up similar looking characters. But it's doable and worthwhile.

Nice to see you using the "I" form.

[Apsara]

An example of where even a rudimentary knowledge of katakana came in handy: When I was living in share houses almost every single new housemate came home at some time with a litre of drinking yoghurt instead of milk. The packs look pretty much identical to milk cartons, but yoghurt is written on them in katakana.

Then one day I was at the supermarket with my newest housemate and she told me the week before she had come very close to buying drinking yoghurt instead of milk but had seen the katakana "yo" on the pack- she hadn't thoroughly memorised them but remembered that one because it looks like a reverse "E"- and she guessed it was yoghurt.

I know that there are compounds but once you have the original 48 charaters down I think the other sounds are pretty self- explanatory. It's a long time since I was learning kana (at high school in NZ aged 13) but I don't remember that being too much of a strain.

Knowing the kana also helps with spoken Japanese since knowing how the syllables work is invaluable to pronouncing the language properly in my opinion.

[Glenski]

ghost,
If all you want to do is get by with spoken Japanese, you obviously don't have to learn any characters. Just getting by, though, is pretty lame, IMO.

Yes, some people survive for a long time without learning any Japanese, spoken or written, and that includes kanji.

What is your interest in coming here? Going to stay a while? If so, I'd say do what you can to learn hiragana and katakana, pick up some of the major kanji (a few hundred will do), and learn the basics of Japanese grammar.

[alexcase]

Re: Japanese schools, I phoned two about classes and stated my vague level (Pre-Int?) including the number of kanji I know and they both said "Oh, it's okay, you don't need to know any kanji, we teach conversation". Schools that do use kanji often put Chinese students in different classes because they basically know it all already.

I would recommend learning kanji if you can, straight after learning kana. For one thing, it's fun- there are lots of game-like websites for learning and practising it. For another, it helps you make sense of the language. The number of homophones can get daunting until you realize where they come from. Thirdly, it's the only part of Japanese useful outside Japan, as it can also help you become a little literate in China and (to a lesser extent) Korea

[Noxness]

I have a question of my own, hope you don't mind Ghost. If I plan to stay here for a year, and no more, how in depth do you suggest my studies of the language be?

I understand the more I know, the easier life for me becomes.. but Glenski you mentioned that some people manage without even trying. So what would you say is the bare minimum?

[markle]

[alexcase]

Sounds like survival level to me! And most of the survival level stuff you will pick up just by copying other foreigners of a slightly higher level. One other motivatrion for taking it further is less danger of 9 months later finding out you have been saying wrong (and possibly embarrassing or insulting) all that time and the person you have been saying it to has just been humouring you. Trust me, it will take another 9 mionths for your embarrassment to wear off.

[gaijinalways]

Good replies. I think it really depends on a few factors;

how long you intend to stay here (not always easy to know as your intentions may change)

what kind of language learner you are

how much you intend to study (depending on your schedule and other interests)

what you intend to do with the language (job, every day language, travel, etc., cultural interests)

age (at least for me, it affects my ability to pick up new language)

I found studying Chinese without the kanji is/was totally doable. One drawback is that many Chinese (like Japanese people) don't know pinyin (Chinese romaji) and so can't answer questions about words related to it. Also of course for reading signs or filling out forms, kanji is indispensible.