Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I used to know how to write in Japanese

aethermug.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 277 posts

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#181

Post by derf_ »

joshdavham wrote: post #160

This article actually hits on a pet peeve of mine where I feel people sorta “mystify” kanji/hanzi unnecessarily. The truth is that there’s actually nothing particularly weird about being able to read some kanji but not be able to write them… You actually get close to my point here: > Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet. Yes! But have you ever heard of someo…

> > Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet.

When I was in grade school, I took notes for my classes using Tengwar (elvish) runes as a way to alleviate boredom and force myself to pay attention (just taking the table in Appendix E from Lord of the Rings and transliterating English letters into them). I could do this at a speed sufficient to keep up with a teacher talking, so pretty fast. I cannot read any of these notes today, much less write them.

If you don't use this stuff for a few decades, you do forget, even when it's just an alphabet.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#182

Post by superjan »

taeric wrote: post #179
jaylaal wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice comparison. When I was living in China, I'd encounter someone who forgot how to write the characters for a word on a weekly basis. I think the difference is that with Latin alphabets you can still misspell something, and having gotten it down on paper, still rely on phonetics to convey your meaning.

This is an area where the modern insistence that English isn't phonetic baffles me.

It’s probably more phonetic than Chinese but significantly less phonetic than Dutch.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#183

Post by teleforce »

jaylaal wrote: post #163
joshdavham wrote: post #160

This article actually hits on a pet peeve of mine where I feel people sorta “mystify” kanji/hanzi unnecessarily. The truth is that there’s actually nothing particularly weird about being able to read some kanji but not be able to write them… You actually get close to my point here: > Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet. Yes! But have you ever heard of someo…

Nice comparison. When I was living in China, I'd encounter someone who forgot how to write the characters for a word on a weekly basis. I think the difference is that with Latin alphabets you can still misspell something, and having gotten it down on paper, still rely on phonetics to convey your meaning.

Alphabet is such an underrated invention. It's probably higher in significance compared to the invention of wheel. It's the original "bicycle of the mind". For example, Korea pivoting from Chinese characters to its own alphabet or Hangul is very well documented including the positive effects it has in the much improved Korean literacy and civilization after the conversion. Fun facts anyone can learn Hangul alphabet in a single day if they wanted to but the same cannot be said to Chinese characters. If your mother tongue is Korean (e.g Korean American) that only just started learning, it only take one day turnover from illiterate to literate.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#184

Post by CamperBob2 »

Cyan488 wrote: post #164
Macha wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 0 kanji, it's such a small subset that it's hard to call that a finished job of learning to read or write as you'll be limited to material like kids books or NHK news easy.

Yes, I ignored Kanji completely while learning Japanese. I only learned words in hiragana and katakana from my SRS decks. I regret it because it locked me out of a lot of comprehensible input I could have used to actually progress in ways apart from learning the sounds of lots of words (even the sounds I learned were often wrong because I never heard anyone speak the words I was learning).

Am I the only one reading this thread and thinking, "Gee, this sounds like a job for AI?"

Why in the world should any human not from Japan devote limited time and brain capacity learning to read and write Japanese? It's literally a robot's job, at this point.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#185

Post by Macha »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #184
Cyan488 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I ignored Kanji completely while learning Japanese. I only learned words in hiragana and katakana from my SRS decks. I regret it because it locked me out of a lot of comprehensible input I could have used to actually progress in ways apart from learning the sounds of lots of words (even the sounds I learned were often wrong because I never heard anyone speak the words I was learning).

Am I the only one reading this thread and thinking, "Gee, this sounds like a job for AI?" Why in the world should any human not from Japan devote limited time and brain capacity learning to read and write Japanese? It's literally a robot's job, at this point.

It will take a lot of time for your Japanese language skills to get up to par with robot translation, that is true. It was also arguably true with google translate many years ago too.

But isn't this true for most things? It will take a complete beginner years to draw as technically proficiently as an image generation model, or to code as well as Claude. Even before AI, most Japanese media has been available in English translations for years now, and there aren't that many other interests where you could find Japanese speaking peers but not English speaking ones.

If your goal in life is to generate the most economic value per unit of time input, maybe then learning to draw, code, or speak Japanese no longer makes sense. And if that's your priority, you won't choose to do these things. But that's not why people take up these pursuits. So I don't think AI will have a huge impact on how many people start them.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#186

Post by Macha »

derf_ wrote: post #181
joshdavham wrote: post #160

This article actually hits on a pet peeve of mine where I feel people sorta “mystify” kanji/hanzi unnecessarily. The truth is that there’s actually nothing particularly weird about being able to read some kanji but not be able to write them… You actually get close to my point here: > Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet. Yes! But have you ever heard of someo…

> > Admittedly, I've never heard of someone forgetting how to write a letter from the Latin alphabet. When I was in grade school, I took notes for my classes using Tengwar (elvish) runes as a way to alleviate boredom and force myself to pay attention (just taking the table in Appendix E from Lord of the Rings and transliterating English letters into them). I could do this at a speed sufficient to keep up with a teach…

I learned how to write cursively in school, but as soon as it was no longer mandatory I switched back to print capital letters and some years later to print letters entirely, as it was just much easier for me to make legible.

At this point, it's fair to say I _have_ forgotten how to properly write cursive capitals, if I tried I'd just end up with print capitals with random tails for most of them.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#187

Post by nachteilig »

NalNezumi wrote: post #111

Don't worry it's common for natives too. Not born & raised in Japan but went to Saturday school for Japanese in Europe and I was excited to be able to read (and understand) the newspaper for the first time at middle school, because my Kanji caught up. From there it's usually very quick how much Kanji you can learn. But now, 20 years later? When I need to go to fill forms I flip up my phone and search for Kanji all th…

Is it this way for Hiragana and Katakana for you too? I just started and have not moved on to Kanji yet, and I already struggle to write them.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#188

Post by taeric »

superjan wrote: post #182
taeric wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an area where the modern insistence that English isn't phonetic baffles me.

It’s probably more phonetic than Chinese but significantly less phonetic than Dutch.

The term that would cover what you mean here is regular. And that is only in regards to correct spelling. Is obviously complicated when considering that we don't have official pronunciation across all dialects for the same word. Even if we do agree on a spelling.

But it is a complete non-sequitur to lead to the modern idea that English isn't phonetic.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#189

Post by jimbokun »

timr wrote: post #19
lyall wrote: post #11

When learning Japanese, I purposely chose to _not_ learn how to write any of it by hand. As the author notes, writing (by hand) is in fact a separate skill from reading. So I decided I would not invest my limited time, motivation, or brain space to writing. Overall it's been a successful approach, and I recommend it to new learners unless they have a particular interest in being able to write by hand or they feel str…

I went to an old-school language school where I was forced to take tests in handwritten Japanese. I probably still have some of that in my brain, but like you, I almost completely abandoned it as soon as I didn't have to take language school tests anymore. It's occasionally useful to write out a character, but on the whole, it's completely unnecessary now that we have computers with hiragana keyboards. As a partial a…

The time to grind Kanji is when you're ready to really push the breadth of your vocabulary.

While you're still picking up grammar it makes more sense to just pick up kanji here and there as you encounter them.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#190

Post by littlekey »

I went through Heisig's book THREE times, writing out each character and reviewing them multiple times each in Anki. I had several notebooks like the one in the OP article.

I still can't write most kanji.

The fact is that you simply cannot learn to write without practicing writing (in real contexts, outside of the notebooks); there is overlap, but it's the same thing as learning the "theory" of a math problem and then blanking once you're asked to solve a problem on a test.

If I try to visualize a word/character that I know, I often end up with a vague picture of the most salient lines, but missing some of the finer detail that would be required to write it out accurately. And I think this is largely fine, as handwriting characters isn't a very important skill anymore. Especially in Japanese where you can always fall back on kana and be understood.

I do still think "learning" the kanji is helpful because there is a system behind it, and understanding that system helps to learn words. To give an example, learning the 教/kyou in 教育/kyouiku (education) helps you make a connection to 教室/kyoushitsu (classroom), and helps you distinguish it from 勉強/benkyou (study) where you'd really think the kyou would be 教, but it isn't!

But crucially, this is all a visual recognition problem, nothing to do with producing the characters yourself. So I think the ideal learning approach is word-first but with some attention to the characters in the word, especially how they relate to other words with those characters/radicals or with the same readings.

Post reply on HN