5 ms·

Len Walsh's "Read Japanese Today" is a gem. By exploring the history behind the symbols -- using what the author calls a "pictorial mnemonic method" -- it's eas

Len Walsh's "Read Japanese Today" is a gem. By exploring the history behind the symbols -- using what the author calls a "pictorial mnemonic method" -- it's easy to learn many kanji in an enjoyable way. Before a few-month stay in Japan, I sampled a variety of books and audio programs. Now, looking back many years later, Walsh's simple introduction is the one I remember best. https://books.google.com/books?id=QcrXBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA1&pg=PT8#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=QcrXBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA1&pg=PT... http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Read-Japanese-Today/Len-Walsh/9784805309810 http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Read-Japanese-Today/Le...

TheRealPomax 10y ago
No question, his text is quite lovely, although also a part of the language my book (intentionally) stays away from. There are many, many ways to teach kanji, depending on how courses are taught (even learning it at home from books/internet on your own). Another good source for mnemonic-based kanji is Heisig's work, although I've found the best approach so far to still be "learning the kanji in the words we're using that week", with plenty of repetition and practice. It's tedious, but for a large number of people, effective! (but of course, not effective for all)
- ionforce 10y ago
  One thing that texts seem to ignore (in my never learned Japanese opinion) is that not all letters are equally important, if we equate importance with frequency. For example, the letter E is much more fundamental and useful to learn than the letter X. Thus, any alphabet shouldn't be looked upon as a sequence of equivalent letters. There are contours and characters and color... Things that are more obvious when learning with actual words/phrases.
  - TheRealPomax 10y ago
    That is not how Japanese works in the slightest. Kanji represent full words, often multiple ones (due to use in compound nouns) not individual letters without inherent meaning on their own.
  - khedoros 10y ago
    Japanese has 3 forms of writing (not counting use of the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals). 2 of them are used to write phonetically, and each has about 50 characters. They aren't too hard to learn, and are the closest equivalent to "letters" in written Japanese. One is used for phonetically writing Japanese words and for grammatical particles, and the other is mostly used for foreign words, sound effects, or things that you want to bring special attention to for some reason (I've been told to consider it similar to writing something in italics, maybe). The shapes of these have a somewhat-distant etymology to Chinese characters. Beyond that, there are 10s of thousands of characters with a much closer correspondence to the Chinese ones (although perhaps a number in the low thousands are commonly used in everyday life). About the first thousand are taught to grade schoolers. I don't think that the correspondence is perfect, but these are supposed to be the more common characters, in general (and are taught earlier for that reason). Roughly the next 1000 are taught during middle and high school. As a Japanese learner, we tended to have example sentences that introduced new grammar constructs, new words, and new characters for those words (if they're commonly written non-phonetically). I think by the 4th semester of class, the goal was to have mastery of the ~100 phonetic characters (the hiragana and the katakana), along with perhaps 500 of the non-phonetic characters (the kanji), along with different ways that various characters would be pronounced when used in different words. In general, I feel like we did cover legitimately useful words and characters, but that if the text (literally) left out the less-used "letters", it'd be a premature optimization that wouldn't gain you much. If you mean that more commonly-used words should be given priority, then I agree, in principle.
- aaron695 10y ago
  > (but of course, not effective for all) Learning styles are a myth. The best way is pretty much the same for everyone. You might argue repetition means someone might get bored and give up, hence a fun style is better even if it's slower.
  - Joof 10y ago
    Incentive matters. I'm ADHD, which turns the effect of the 'this isn't that interesting' dial up to 11. I could do repitition if I was going to Japan, but I probably would prefer the other one otherwise.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      I mean I didn't like it either when I discovered that learning isn't always either easy or fun, but we all hit that wall sooner or later.
      - Joof 10y ago
        There are degrees of how difficult it is for people to manage boring. In college I failed English I, Public Speaking, Ethics and a 1-credit seminar course. Multiple times. I also had solid recommendations from several computer science professors where I was top of the class and worked doing research for some time. Mornings are also pretty hard, but that's another thing entirely.
  - TheRealPomax 10y ago
    > Learning styles are a myth That's... an impressive opinion to hold. Good luck with that.
    - khedoros 10y ago
      It's probably based on the results of this study[1], and the giant raft of stories that followed it over the last decade. [1] http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ734402 http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ734402
    - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ank_the_elder 10y ago
Thanks for that link, I was looking for a book just like that when I tried to learn Japanese 10 years ago and gave up - I may give it another go soon.

TheRealPomax 10y ago

No question, his text is quite lovely, although also a part of the language my book (intentionally) stays away from. There are many, many ways to teach kanji, depending on how courses are taught (even learning it at home from books/internet on your own). Another good source for mnemonic-based kanji is Heisig's work, although I've found the best approach so far to still be "learning the kanji in the words we're using that week", with plenty of repetition and practice. It's tedious, but for a large number of people, effective! (but of course, not effective for all)

ionforce 10y ago
One thing that texts seem to ignore (in my never learned Japanese opinion) is that not all letters are equally important, if we equate importance with frequency. For example, the letter E is much more fundamental and useful to learn than the letter X. Thus, any alphabet shouldn't be looked upon as a sequence of equivalent letters. There are contours and characters and color... Things that are more obvious when learning with actual words/phrases.
- TheRealPomax 10y ago
  That is not how Japanese works in the slightest. Kanji represent full words, often multiple ones (due to use in compound nouns) not individual letters without inherent meaning on their own.
- khedoros 10y ago
  Japanese has 3 forms of writing (not counting use of the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals). 2 of them are used to write phonetically, and each has about 50 characters. They aren't too hard to learn, and are the closest equivalent to "letters" in written Japanese. One is used for phonetically writing Japanese words and for grammatical particles, and the other is mostly used for foreign words, sound effects, or things that you want to bring special attention to for some reason (I've been told to consider it similar to writing something in italics, maybe). The shapes of these have a somewhat-distant etymology to Chinese characters. Beyond that, there are 10s of thousands of characters with a much closer correspondence to the Chinese ones (although perhaps a number in the low thousands are commonly used in everyday life). About the first thousand are taught to grade schoolers. I don't think that the correspondence is perfect, but these are supposed to be the more common characters, in general (and are taught earlier for that reason). Roughly the next 1000 are taught during middle and high school. As a Japanese learner, we tended to have example sentences that introduced new grammar constructs, new words, and new characters for those words (if they're commonly written non-phonetically). I think by the 4th semester of class, the goal was to have mastery of the ~100 phonetic characters (the hiragana and the katakana), along with perhaps 500 of the non-phonetic characters (the kanji), along with different ways that various characters would be pronounced when used in different words. In general, I feel like we did cover legitimately useful words and characters, but that if the text (literally) left out the less-used "letters", it'd be a premature optimization that wouldn't gain you much. If you mean that more commonly-used words should be given priority, then I agree, in principle.
aaron695 10y ago
> (but of course, not effective for all) Learning styles are a myth. The best way is pretty much the same for everyone. You might argue repetition means someone might get bored and give up, hence a fun style is better even if it's slower.
- Joof 10y ago
  Incentive matters. I'm ADHD, which turns the effect of the 'this isn't that interesting' dial up to 11. I could do repitition if I was going to Japan, but I probably would prefer the other one otherwise.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    I mean I didn't like it either when I discovered that learning isn't always either easy or fun, but we all hit that wall sooner or later.
    - Joof 10y ago
      There are degrees of how difficult it is for people to manage boring. In college I failed English I, Public Speaking, Ethics and a 1-credit seminar course. Multiple times. I also had solid recommendations from several computer science professors where I was top of the class and worked doing research for some time. Mornings are also pretty hard, but that's another thing entirely.
- TheRealPomax 10y ago
  > Learning styles are a myth That's... an impressive opinion to hold. Good luck with that.
  - khedoros 10y ago
    It's probably based on the results of this study[1], and the giant raft of stories that followed it over the last decade. [1] http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ734402 http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ734402
  - 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ank_the_elder 10y ago

Thanks for that link, I was looking for a book just like that when I tried to learn Japanese 10 years ago and gave up - I may give it another go soon.