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I used to know how to write in Japanese

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Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#91

Post by thaumasiotes »

pm215 wrote: post #68
timr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I agree that trying to learn kanji upfront is a silly idea. Heisig says in the introduction to RTK I that he learned 1900 characters "before the month was out". If like him you can do the whole set in a month and then have no further need of formal review or study beyond using them as they turn up, then I can see it not being a terrible idea. But as far as I can tell, almost nobody has a mind that works like Hei…

> I still had the problem I started with of "I want to write the word べんきょう but can't bring to mind the kanji for it", because I had no association between Japanese words and the English keywords for their component kanji...

If you didn't know what べんきょう meant, how did you know it was what you wanted to write?

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#92

Post by pm215 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #91
pm215 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree that trying to learn kanji upfront is a silly idea. Heisig says in the introduction to RTK I that he learned 1900 characters "before the month was out". If like him you can do the whole set in a month and then have no further need of formal review or study beyond using them as they turn up, then I can see it not being a terrible idea. But as far as I can tell, almost nobody has a mind that works like Hei…

> I still had the problem I started with of "I want to write the word べんきょう but can't bring to mind the kanji for it", because I had no association between Japanese words and the English keywords for their component kanji... If you didn't know what べんきょう meant, how did you know it was what you wanted to write?

I knew the word (including how it is spoken and what it means), so I would have no difficulty of understanding if it was said to me in conversation, I could read the word whether in kanji or hiragana, I could compose sentences in my head which used it and use it when speaking, I just didn't always remember how to write it in kanji...

(Here べんきょう is just an example: the same issue applies to essentially every word.)

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#93

Post by vidarh »

vunderba wrote: post #46

From the article: > On the surface, this atypical trait seems to explain quite well why I can draw a blank when asked to write the kanji for "plant" (植) from memory. I don't see the character in my mind, so it makes sense that I can't reproduce it on paper. While the author's aphantasia may have posed some recall issues - it wouldn't explain why they had ever been able to reproduce 植. Kanji has the concept of radical…

As someone with aphantasia, I'm also not convinced that is the cause. I can draw better than average from memory, and used to be quite good but haven't practiced for many years.

There are also animators and artists with aphantasia[1].

My spatial recollection is particularly good - I can sketch out precise diagrammatic drawings from memory much better than I can do artistic drawings.

So while it's not impossible that not having aphantasia would've been a benefit to him, I don't think there's much evidence that it's has any big effect on the ability to draw - something that also fits Ed Catmull's experience on surveying his old employees in the article mentioned.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#94

Post by timr »

astrobe_ wrote: post #66
timr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is substantially harder and slower to read a stream of hiragana than to read a stream of hiragana and kanji. I don't know if you know anything about the language, but it's not because of homophones (though that is certainly improved) -- it's chunking. Japanese written language has the property that when you see kanji followed by one of a very small number of hiragana patterns, you know you're seeing a verb. Stemmi…

Yet, that's exactly what you do when you read English - and many of us even read it as a foreign language with different roots and different grammar etc. So I don't understand how it would be more tedious in hiragana; it looks like a "just get used to it" thing to me.

No you don’t. There’s actually a lot of research showing that native English speakers don’t read letters, they read word shapes. And people who read fastest read in even larger groups of words, to the point of eliding segments of sentences or paragraphs entirely.

Chunking is incredibly important for reading speed, and reading hiragana is much closer to reading letters than words. My reading speed in Japanese is nowhere near native, but the way I’ve gained speed so far is almost exclusively by increasing my minimum comprehension unit: I see word patterns, common grammatical constructions, etc., and I don’t need to read them.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#95

Post by zdc1 »

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'm learning traditional Chinese and found that writing helps me recognise the components and strokes when reading the same characters.

If I just try and visually pattern match with flash cards, anything that's hand written or in an stylised font will throw me off. If I can sympathise with / recognise the stokes used, I find it easier to tell what character they're trying to show.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#97

Post by mastermage »

klausa wrote: post #77
bloak wrote: post #58

If you're doing an exam in China or Japan, do you write on paper, or use a computer?

Not the question you asked; but something that actually surprised me, as someone who has taken multiple language tests in the EU: The (semi-official) Japanese language tests do not test language production in _any_ way, even on the highest levels. You don't need to speak a single word, nor write a single character to pass the exam, it's all single-choice answers. AFAICT, the equivalent exams for Chinese and Koreans d…

I have recently had the experience of Labguage School in Japan and they also realy heavily lean into having just circle the correct parts or do somethign like insert correct Particle here.

While I have tremendous respect for the Japanese Language and people. The Japanese in all my exposure to it do not know how ot tech languages. Be it their own to people that do not know it or English to their own people.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#98

Post by mastermage »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #79
bapak wrote: post #30

A system fails when its natives don't know how to use it. So time to sunset the system, surely? I don't know why so many countries are so obstinately hanging onto something so difficult. Do it like Korea if you don't want to go the Vietnamese way.

How many Americans can write cursive? I think it's time to abandon the Latin alphabet. It's too inefficient.

Is cursive a requirement to write the English language correctly?

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#99

Post by mastermage »

hintymad wrote: post #52
bapak wrote: post #30

A system fails when its natives don't know how to use it. So time to sunset the system, surely? I don't know why so many countries are so obstinately hanging onto something so difficult. Do it like Korea if you don't want to go the Vietnamese way.

Are you sure? If anything, spelling along makes it hard to read Chinese or Japanese. Examples: can Japanese people correctly understand this: “かんじをせんねんいじょうつかっていたけいいからかんじをはいしするとぶんしょうによるいしのそつうにへいがいがしょうじるからです”？ In fact, the following two different sentences both have the same above kana： 「監事を専念異常浸かっていた敬意から監事を配しする飛ぶん商による石の疎通に兵が意を招 じる空です。」 「漢字を千年以上使っていた経緯から漢字を廃止すると文章による意思の疎通に弊害が生じる からです。 Or how about くさくさくさくらくらくさくさくさくさくさく…

I dont know who amongst the Koreans argues for the use of Chinese Characters. The vast majority of Koreans don't know even the small amount of Characters they still use. Even simple ones.

Re: I used to know how to write in Japanese

#100

Post by aarroyoc »

larsiusprime wrote: post #14

If native speakers are starting to have character amnesia too, does that suggest in the long run you would expect the writing systems to simplify towards the phonetic syllabaries? Or is the fact that we have computers as a mediating tool going to forestall that and just make things weird?

I'm just a Chinese student from the West so take it as just my two cents but I don't think it will evolve to phonetic syllabaries. Chinese has a lot of homophones so it's useful while reading to have an extra semantic meaning. They also say that once you're used to it, you read faster but at my level I can't confirm it. So with modern input devices you're basically simplifying the hard part of the characters, which is writing, and keeping the reading part where they're better than pure phonetic systems.
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