I’ll always remember the overwhelming feeling of illiteracy that struck me soon after I first arrived in Japan. You never really think about it, or comprehend it fully, until you’re here and it’s everywhere around you. You can’t read shit. You can’t understand the majority of what’s being said, much less what’s written. And I don’t think any amount of initial training can truly prepare you for the actual shock of moving to a country where the language is totally alien to your own. Granted if you’ve studied the language for a while, or come from a country with similar linguistic systems, you’re probably ok but that’s unlikely to be the case for a vast majority of the westerners who come to the country. I’m chuffed we did a basic Japanese beginner course before coming, but as I said I realised its miniscule relevance 2 hours after landing.

I actually rejoiced in this feeling of illiteracy and unability to read/write/speak for quite a while - it was a nice, alien feeling. Whenever I travelled before I always made an effort to try and speak a little amount of local linguo, if only to appear to be polite and make an effort, and stop the automatic feeling of alieness you get when being in a foreign country where no one speaks your language(s). The only time that proved impossible was in the Czech Republic where for some reason I was unable to remember any of the words I was learning for a whole week. Coming here to live and work though, I approached it differently. And being able to just lose yourself to an extent was actually quite pleasant, for a while anyway.

Soon enough I set about working on what little I’d learnt and quickly moved through my course book, deciding to opt for the self teaching option. Partly out of lazyness and partly out of a lack of time/money to get on with a proper course. The last language I learnt was self taught and as much as I know that taking a course would likely help me quite a bit, I really like the challenge of learning a language by yourself - immersing yourself in the language, taking a personal approach to it, one that is slightly more natural I guess. Whether or not you want to learn, being surrounded by a language constantly forces you to absorb it. If you’re actually willing, the process can be even more enjoyable and at times incredibly more rewarding than through standard studying.

Six months or so after we first arrived, I was starting to lose that feeling of illiteracy - deciphering written Japanese became easier and more fun, especially after properly mastering the 2 phonetic alphabets, while conversation and listening was also becoming a lot more fun and interesting. At times it was too much though, and my brain just wanted to switch off. I spent quite a while focusing mainly on reading - through my book, mangas, video games and just trying to read anything I laid my eyes on. Conversation has proved to be the trickiest bit so far. You can learn the grammar and vocabulary, but putting it into practice is always a lot more tricky in real life than on paper. Which is I guess where a course would come in handy, to at least provide me with a controlled environment in which to practice speaking. Trying it on the fly in the streets, in a shop or when striking some random conversation with a stranger can yeld some disturbing and embarrassing results. By the way I seem to have forgotten how to spell tonight, so apologies in advance.

I can speak three languages: French, English and Italian, pretty much fluently, and I can get by in Spanish and decypher bits of Portuguese here and there. All of which are languages with latin roots. And I always wanted to learn Japanese, since my early years’ fascination with anime and manga. I remember watching anime as a kid and thinking that the language oddly sounded like Italian - mainly due to a lot of the words ending in a/o sounds. But no amount of willingness and interest can prepare you for the reality of learning Japanese. It’s bloody hard. Like hard. Not only is the grammar widely different to that of most latin languages, but there’s a few other tricky obstacles to surmount too: a huge amount of homophones, 2 phonetic alphabets, and the icing on the cake… the Kanji alphabet.

Kanji is the Japanese logographic writing system, borrowed from Chinese originally and mutated over the centuries. While the two phonetic alphabets, hiragana and katakana, are fairly easy to master with a bit of practice, Kanji is an entirely different beast. For a start there is no phonetic logic to it - so there’s goes all my experience in learning a language gone out of the window. After that the kicker is the amount of Kanji characters - in excess of 5 or 6,000 common used Kanji I believe, or anyways that’s what the test from the government for Kanji aptitude covers (information on the exact number isn’t so easy with a simple google search, so any Kanji specialists out there feel free to correct me). The average Japanese person comes out of school knowing over a thousand or two characters I believe and continues to learn new ones throughout their lives should they choose to. In addition there are new characters created regularly apparently - so it’s kind of a constant work in progress, though I think a lot of the newly created Kanji are for specific purposes rather than everyday use (again any specific info on this is much appreciated). Lastly the hammer in the coffin is that Kanji can have multiple meanings, or readings, depending on position and context. Being a non-phonetic writing system, it’s not a simple case of remember what Kanji means what, but more what Kanji means what in what situation/context/etc… which only adds to the task of learning, or the desperation facing you when contemplating said task.

One thing you soon learn living here, is that the average Japanese Joe doesn’t know every Kanji. Which is fair considering the task that actually represents. Most people know all the Kanji they need to get by in everyday life. But it’s the implied meaning of this that always gets me - a Japanese newspaper is written in a mix of Kanji and the two kana alphabets, and some people can’t actually read the entirety of the paper, if they don’t know the Kanji. One of my students retold me the story of how her husband regularly gets her to read bits of the paper for him, as he gave up on learning new Kanji a while back. Which is a pretty bugged out thing really.

I mean imagine the equivalent in a European country - it’s basically a form of illiteracy. You can’t read, or can only partially read. Of course the parallel isn’t quite so easy to make, I realise that, but still as a concept it really makes me go  :shock: a little. This is a language which to all extents is impossible to fully master in its written form, unless you’re some kind of freak. Or happen to have a cool super power, like remembering things easily. I’m not quite sure if there are any other equivalent writing systems in use today - I’m not so versed in modern Chinese, but being that Japanese Kanji comes from Chinese, it’s fair to assume that it’s similar.

A while back I was chatting to a friend, who has a bit of a grudge against Japan. I guess he’s one of those life moaners of sorts. Anyways he was making the point that Japanese as a language is pretty barbaric, or to be a bit nicer set in old ways and not very modern, or modern friendly. Which is partially true - for a start the writing system, and phonetic alphabets (which are actually derived from the Japanese’s assimilation of Chinese characters), are old. They’ve been modernised, but by and large they haven’t changed much for centuries and centuries. But I think barbaric is a bit harsh - archaic is more on point I reckon. Then again thinking about it, our roman alphabet hasn’t changed much either for a long time. The difference being that the roman alphabet has been taken in by a majority of the modern world, whereas asian or arabic alphabets have stayed confined to their original locations (more or less). Imperialism ftw.

Whether or not you agree about Kanji being an archaic system, the fact remains that it’s pretty impractical. Not only is it incredibly difficult for non Japanese to learn, it’s also pretty difficult for Japanese as well. The impracticality of it becomes more and more obvious, in subtle ways generally, the more you deal with it. It might be a bit of a simplistic way of looking at it, granted, but it’s really hard to not see the impracticality and limitations of the system. Especially when you consider that so many native Japanese speakers aren’t even able to read all the Kanji characters in common use. Why not do away with it and put into practice something which will actually allow everyone to fully read and write, without any major limitations like there are now?

I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this actually. I’m a little tired and got the idea for writing this earlier today. Why? Because I decided today that I was done with it and I was going to learn Kanji properly. I actually like the challenge of it, in my mind I look at it a little like decyphering code. Not that I’ve ever been good at that in all honesty, but the more I think about it, and encounter Kanji daily and try to understand it, the more I think of it as some sort of code breaking game more than actual language learning.

So I went out today, having come to the end of the first volume of my self study book, which by the way is ‘Japanese for Busy People’  which I recommend for those like me with little time and attention span but a knack for practical use, and bought a set of Kanji flashcards. 284 of them, the first basic set of Kanji required to pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test levels 4 and 3. I figured if anything is going to work for me, it’s going to be something practical which I can actually use while travelling etc… I like hands on things, and I’ve looked at various ways of learning Kanji so far and this is the one that appeals to me most. Visual memorising as well as the ability to just learn as you want without rigid boundaries works for me I reckon.

We’ll see how it goes I guess. I’m motivated right now, but it might prove to be too much  :lol: . Thing is I really want to get my Japanese up, and be able to chat a bit more than I can now. At the moment it’s really really basic, I can get by and manage broken Japanese/English conversations but I’d like to be able to do a bit more. I’d also like to be able to read basic Kanji a bit more as well. I actually really enjoy the reading bit, and I’m sure that my master plan of soaking the language will eventually pay off, like it did when I learnt Italian (which I did pretty much solely by watching TV and listening to people). Ok I was younger and it only gets harder the older you become, but still I do believe that full immersion is the best way to go when it comes to learning a language, which is one of the things that winds me up the most about the hobbyist approach to English learning in Japan. But that’s an entirely different subject.

If you fancy learning Kanji too, for whatever reason, I can recommend the flashcards as they are really well thought out and put together. They’re published by White Rabbit Press and pretty cheap too. Got mine for less than a tenner.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, kanji, learning, reading