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Would it be possible to learn only Hirigana/Katakana and ignore Kanji altogether?
by Someguywhatever 8y ago
Would it be possible to learn only Hirigana/Katakana and ignore Kanji altogether?
- theandrewbailey 8y agoNo. Even the word for Japanese in Japanese is 日本語 (Nihongo), all Kanji.
- Grue3 8y agoNo. You won't be able to read anything that isn't designed to be read by kindergarteners if you can't read kanji (at least primary-school level [1]). But even learning the most common ones is really useful. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%8Diku_kanji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%8Diku_kanji
- nayuki 8y agoI traveled in Japan with friends, and we were all Japanese language learners. We could all read kana, but only I could read kanji, so I took the opportunity to evaluate how our experiences differed. In terms of street signage (e.g. train station names, place names, restaurant menus, merchandise shopping), it's very hit-and-miss if you only read kana. Place names are almost always full kanji (especially on maps), but trains and buses usually display the kana version (as well as romaji). Kana will allow you to identify products named with foreign words, as well as some Japanese words that are written in kana for various reasons. Otherwise, any real sentence is written with kanji, with kana only acting as the glue between the substantial words. Bottom line is that if you don't read kanji, you are missing out on a lot of Japanese text. It would roughly be the equivalent of bleeping out every English word that is more than 6 letters long.