Japanese is daft....

[SteveW]

Bloody daft language and bloody daft alphabet... been trying to learn some Kanji ) with the purpose of being able to read football results etc but its daft.

I managed to learn the "oh" one from Osaka, and the "To" and "kyo" ones from Tokyo.

Now how come the two wee squiggles To and Kyo make Tokyo but if I want to make Kyoto its not the two same squiggles the other way round? The Kyo is the same but the "To" is different.

Daft...daft I tells ya!

Still, if i add "San" that I already knew from Korea then I know a total of 4 Kanji which is 4 more than I did when I was born so thats progress.

[ironops]

Believe me, it's nowhere near as difficult as (a) it looks or (b) lots of Japanese themselves will have you believe.

You need about 1200 to be able to read most magazines and newspapers, which IF you think in terms of learning letters of an alphabet, like our mere 26, will put you off immediately! But you shouldn't think of it like that at all, because they're words, NOT letters. Think instead of learning 1200 (or however many you want to aim for - even 200-300 would get you a long, long way) compounds of words and it's a hell of a lot less daunting. Picking up kanji also multiplies your vocabulary enormously. The to ÔÔ of Tokyo means east, so think of the endless number of combinations that could give you.

As regards remembering them, you need to learn and practice writing them with the correct stroke order. I scoffed at this at first, thinking "who cares if you can read it" but actually learning how you put the picture together helps you retain it, whereas doing it haphazardly doesn't. There are quite a few good kanji books around with writing exercises to help you. If you're serious, you want a kanji dictionary for English speakers - Kodansha's compact kanji guide is the one I'd recommend. And if you do a google search for "kanji" there are quite a few useful sites for learners knocking around.

Good luck, mate! If after all this you're not that serious and just want J-League results, there is the English page of the J-League site!!

[SteveW]

ironops said:

Believe me, it's nowhere near as difficult as (a) it looks or (b) lots of Japanese themselves will have you believe.

You need about 1200 to be able to read most magazines and newspapers, which IF you think in terms of learning letters of an alphabet, like our mere 26, will put you off immediately! But you shouldn't think of it like that at all, because they're words, NOT letters. Think instead of learning 1200 (or however many you want to aim for - even 200-300 would get you a long, long way) compounds of words and it's a hell of a lot less daunting. Picking up kanji also multiplies your vocabulary enormously. The to ÔÔ of Tokyo means east, so think of the endless number of combinations that could give you.

As regards remembering them, you need to learn and practice writing them with the correct stroke order. I scoffed at this at first, thinking "who cares if you can read it" but actually learning how you put the picture together helps you retain it, whereas doing it haphazardly doesn't. There are quite a few good kanji books around with writing exercises to help you. If you're serious, you want a kanji dictionary for English speakers - Kodansha's compact kanji guide is the one I'd recommend. And if you do a google search for "kanji" there are quite a few useful sites for learners knocking around.

Good luck, mate! If after all this you're not that serious and just want J-League results, there is the English page of the J-League site!!

Yeah..I'll give it a try. I hate being one of those whiteys who goes to a country and speaks English to everyone and assumes they understand.

It also doesn't help when I turn on the telly and there is footy on and I can't tell which bloody teams are playing or who is winning.

[redneck13]

The writing system is easier than Korean.

[ironops]

redneck13 said:

The writing system is easier than Korean.

Just out of interest, what makes you think that? Obviously, what's easy for some people is less so for others so fair enough if that's what you've found. But I'm a little surprised as I've never heard any of the many Koreans I know in Japan or people who learnt Korean before Japanese pick the writing system as an "easy" bit.

I agree that its level of difficulty is vastly overplayed and overstated, particularly by lots of Japanese who aren't totally comfortable with foreigners mastering the writing system they want to believe as 'the most difficult in the world', i.e. hint, hint only 'the most intelligent people in the world CAN master it'.
But in a few years here, I've only heard those of Chinese background describe Japanese writing as easy.

[nyujeelandsaram]

I learnt to read Korean in about 1 hour before I even came to Korea for the first time.

Understanding it.... well now that's the hard part!!!

[teppic]

[nyujeelandsaram]

seriously though, what I mean't was that actually reading Korean out loud (or in your noggin) can be achieved in 60 minutes. And you are confident with a little assistance from the locals that your pronunciation is very close to the mark as well.

What is nice though is the amount of times you read something in hangeul and realise that it's actually "el-eek-teu-ron-eek-seu mah-kit-eu" written with some odd lines.

also once ya find out how the alphabet came about looking like it is (all consanants that sound the ssame look the same) and the order of the strokes on the vowels with the two negative vowel sound and positive vowel sounds not meeting in a sylable etc it becomes even more simple and logical than it already is.

[Ed.]

I totally agree with NJS (shouldn't you now officially be nyujeelandajoshi? - belated congrats, mate, & welcome to our circle of Hades).
Being able to read hangul in a day or two works wonders for getting a grip on other stuff, particularly vocabulary. You can read the words written on stuff and guess - or ask someone - what they mean.
I got my hangul reading speed up by trying to read as many signs as possible as I travelled through Seoul on the buses (which, incidentally, also gave me my first real appreciation of the meaning of the English word "hurtle".)
Having got the basics of the reading down in a couple of days, I also found that the subway signs helped with a few of the subtleties - such as consonants changing sound depending on what came after them (e.g. what should logically have been "Shin-rim" station being announced as "Shillim".)

There's no way, though, that the Japanese writing system is easier than Korean. For starters you have hiragana and katakana, both of which have more letters than hangul. Then you have the fact that Kanji is indispensible for everyday use, whereas you can get by in Korea without ever learning any Hanja, although it's useful.

[ironops]

Ed. said:

I totally agree with NJS (shouldn't you now officially be nyujeelandajoshi? - belated congrats, mate, & welcome to our circle of Hades).
Being able to read hangul in a day or two works wonders for getting a grip on other stuff, particularly vocabulary. You can read the words written on stuff and guess - or ask someone - what they mean.
I got my hangul reading speed up by trying to read as many signs as possible as I travelled through Seoul on the buses (which, incidentally, also gave me my first real appreciation of the meaning of the English word "hurtle".)
Having got the basics of the reading down in a couple of days, I also found that the subway signs helped with a few of the subtleties - such as consonants changing sound depending on what came after them (e.g. what should logically have been "Shin-rim" station being announced as "Shillim".)

There's no way, though, that the Japanese writing system is easier than Korean. For starters you have hiragana and katakana, both of which have more letters than hangul. Then you have the fact that Kanji is indispensible for everyday use, whereas you can get by in Korea without ever learning any Hanja, although it's useful.

Interesting, as that's how I picked up hangul also, from travelling around on public transport. I picked up hiragana the same way when I came to Japan.

Incidentally, you might be surprised to know how many Japanese people are actually very poor at writing or even reading kanji. Recently a friend who runs a small clothes shop chain complained that over half of her part-time staff could hardly read or write any kanji, and that she had to keep putting furigana (hiragana above kanji to help people who are either too young or too thick to read it) all over notices she wrote. Jokingly, I said I was surprised that so many Japanese were illiterate.

A more realistic comparison, which would probably see the Japanese as doing better (or less worse)than us, would be with the number of English speakers who are awful at spelling.

[redneck13]

There's no system of stacking letters or symbols in a certain way to create a sound as Korean has.
Japanese, it's just simple left to right.

ironops said:

Just out of interest, what makes you think that? Obviously, what's easy for some people is less so for others so fair enough if that's what you've found. But I'm a little surprised as I've never heard any of the many Koreans I know in Japan or people who learnt Korean before Japanese pick the writing system as an "easy" bit.

I agree that its level of difficulty is vastly overplayed and overstated, particularly by lots of Japanese who aren't totally comfortable with foreigners mastering the writing system they want to believe as 'the most difficult in the world', i.e. hint, hint only 'the most intelligent people in the world CAN master it'.
But in a few years here, I've only heard those of Chinese background describe Japanese writing as easy.

[nyujeelandsaram]

redneck13 said:

There's no system of stacking letters or symbols in a certain way to create a sound as Korean has.
Japanese, it's just simple left to right.

Why does that make it hard?

You can learn the order of the letters making up a syllable in about 20 seconds and visually it's a piece of piss to read quickly with them in a tiny block as opposed to spread along a line.

The human eye doesn't actually read anyway. It simply sees symbols it recognises as a block and sends a message to the brain telling it what it means anyway.

When you went over what I just wrote you didn't start at one end of each word and travel along it letter by letter. You glanced at the entire word and sucked up the info that way.

Therefore Korean just gets even simpler?

[ironops]

I think you're both right (redneck & nyujeelandsaram): it's true that the human eye sees a block of symbols it recognises rather than reading every symbol individually. But that's also why I think redneck makes a fair point - when the brain behind the human eye can't actually recognise the whole block of symbols, it has no choice but to read them to work them out. In that situation, I can imagine cases where the Japanese collection of symbols the brain doesn't initially recognise as a whole MIGHT be easier to work out than the Korean ones. Each Japanese symbol could be potentially instantly recognised, where the Korean ones could have 3 or 4 bits to work out.

However, if you're advanced enough in Japanese to read even a few hundred kanji, I'd say the equivalent level of advancement in Korean would see you being able to read anything without difficulty. So I'd stick with my view that Japanese doesn't have an easier writing system for westerners to learn than Korean. But there are many different ways of learning and I can perfectly well imagine the feasibility of redneck's point even if it's not my personal experience.

I suppose it also depends whether you judge by criteria of ability to ultimately work it out (which would suggest Korean being easier to read in most cases) or ability to recognise it as quickly as possible (much less clear cut).

From experience of living in both countries I find that there are proportionally an awful lot more westerners who get to a good standard in Japanese than there are who do the same in Korean. Additionally, there's a really enormously higher ratio of Koreans who can speak good Japanese than there are Japanese who can manage Korean well. I know there are factors other than the level of difficulty affecting these, such as the wider range of books and other materials available to English-speaking learners of Japanese, the greater likelihood of people having studied Japanese at school or college and the greater incentive for Koreans to learn Japanese than vice-versa. Yet still there's a fair bit to suggest that Korean is more difficult to master OVERALL, but not so much if you ONLY look at the writing system.

I sense myself arguing in circles here, which means time to hit the futon Personally, I curse both languages for making me crap at English

[nyujeelandsaram]

The thing with Korean is though...

there are so few combinations of syllables that I (even with my limited Korean skills) have seen every possible combination of letters and therefore can read every Korean syllable already. I don't need to start at the top left letter and work my way around. Each syllable is instantly recognisable to me and I was able to keep up with most of the hangeul on the screen in k-pop songs or translations to dvds a long time ago.

Of course being able to read and pronounce the word in a split second doesn't mean I know what the word means. For that I need my trusty electronic dictionary..... or just lean over and ask the missus. ;D

[SteveW]

Well if its any comparison i think by the end of my second week in Korea I could read some street signs, recognise some simple words like 'rice' or 'pub' or 'PC room' whereas in Japan after 2 weeks I can manage EXACTLY THE SQUARE ROOT OF JACK!

I can't even bloody eat unless I take someone along with me to work out what the hell is going on most of the time.

There are definitely more foreigners who speak Japanese than Korean but that doesn't make it easier just more studied.