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Exactly. I've started learning Japanese less than two years ago, and with some determination and a tool that supports efficient memorization (thank you http://w
by w0utert 11y ago
Exactly. I've started learning Japanese less than two years ago, and with some determination and a tool that supports efficient memorization (thank you http://www.wanikani.com http://www.wanikani.com) the writing system starts to 'click' once you've reached about 500 Kanji, which took me less than 2 years on a casual schedule. From there, recognizing and learning new words that are a combination of these 500 Kanji starts to come almost automatically (meaning, and reading). Latin languages have the same thing to some extent, but much less so, some words are composed by combining other words, but most things have their own proper noun which can only be remembered by rote memorization. For example the word 'swan' would be 「白鳥」 in Japanese, which would literally translate to (and is pronounced as) 'white bird'. Japanese, and I guess also Chinese, is full of these words.
I found the article narrow-minded and short-sighted, and can only assume the author never spent any effort learning a logographic language. I recognize the sentiment from back when I just started learning Kanji, but it doesn't take too long before your brain seems to 'rewire' for the different way to write, recognize and compose words, and you start to see the benefits.
- looki 11y agoI certainly never would have expected to meet somebody from WaniKani here. I agree with everything you said.
- Grue3 11y agoAh, but can you tell the difference between 白鳥 (swan) and 白烏 (white crow)? Consider that 500 kanji is equivalent to about 3rd grade of elementary school, you need to know much more to read most texts. And as you learn more, they become more and more similar-looking.
- w0utert 11y agoHaha, yeah well, of course it's not perfect, but let's not pretend Latin languages don't have their own unique set of problems ;-) I'm acutely aware that 500 Kanji isn't nearly enough to read even the most basic of texts, unfortunately... But considering it 'only' took me 1.5 years to get to this point at a leisury pace, I would assume that anyone should be able to get to ~2000 Kanji within 2 years if you really put the effort in. If you get to JLPT N5 (~2000 Kanji) you should be able to read anything but Japanese literature. Don't know how this works for Mandarin or other Chinese dialects, but I would assume there's a base set of around the same size that should be sufficient for daily life. The article title was implying the Chinese writing system is a 'brake on development', which IMO is nothing but hyperbole, and neglects that logographic writing systems also have their advantages.