Learning to read Japanese or Chinese

Ah, lol, it seems that every beginner quickly learned a few curse words...

Guess it's true, in many places there are those "linguistic islands" or communities where you can get around and live perfectly without even speaking the language of the country. But what I meant was, for someone who really wants to make part of the society and live independently, sooner or later they'll need the ability of reading.

For the natives, when you guys were in school, around how many characters did you learn per week?

國情 (any equivalents? It means country-specific issues/affairs...) is different across many countries. In China, it isn't actually possible to get by like this. Most folks from rural areas may understand all those lingos around their home without knowing a single non-Chinese word. But at my place, there are linguistic islands for 1) foreign workers/managers/CEOs who earn an average salary/buckets of money AND 2) South Asian second/third-generation permanent residents who can rarely get a decently paid job, despite knowing my native language perfectly. (and so on)

From around the sixth grade, people are learning more about classical language, so... that would be the time for learning ancient characters, and picking up loads of idioms, slang, formal words, literary words... thru daily exposure. Maybe around a dozen of chunks per week? People might end up with +10000 characters by the time they graduate @_@

国情=a country's basic condition or state,national conditions.

To "gaijin"

If you are a complete beginner in Japanese, you'll need to stick to your textbook and basic books for children with limited Kanji (chinese characters) at first.

Chibi Maruko-Chan comics are easy to read (although they are, uh, more geared to girls.)

Ask your teacher if there are graded readers for elementary school children. There used to be.

There is the Hiragana Times, a magazine (around for several years, but often has errors in English, so I can't vouch for the Japanese. It's bilingual.)

There are many bilingual books out there at places like Borders and Barnes and Noble bookstores in the US. In Japan, try Kinokuniya.
Some half-price bookstores in the US get some Japanese texts and some Japanese groceries sell new or used books-sometimes even books for children. In the Chicago area, there is a good bookstore in the Arlington Heights? area. In SF, and Southern California, there are well-supplied Japanese bookstores if you like to browse.

The first things I could read were in this order:
a. a children's book
b. comic books
c. famous books by Japanese authors. Usually I bought the book in Japanese and in English translation.
d. ordinary books. I took suggestions from different teachers I had and headed to the bookstores.

Books:
Janet Ashby: Read Real Japanese. (a book of essays and a book of stories). At least one of these has a CD.
Giles Murray: Breaking in Japanese Literature (MP3 files of stories on the internet.)

If you are deeply interested in Japan, Japanese culture, the Japanese, or you must live in Japan for some reason, then by all means, learn to read it. It isn't so difficult as it is time-consuming to learn.

"For the natives, when you guys were in school, around how many characters did you learn per week?" Zatsu

I'm not a native, but these are the numbers by the grades in Japan. This is a little old, but not terribly old.

grade one: 80 kanji
grade two: 160 kanji
grade three: 200 kanji
grade four: 200 kanji
grade five: 185 kanji
grade six: 181 kanji

per week?

let me think, when I was in my primary school, I learned new characters in class. Maybe 10 characters per week. But after I entered high school, I began to learn new characters through many ways. For example, news paper, magzines, TVs, text books. so learning new characters is just a daily practice, and I took it as a piece of cake.

Those are the number of kanji that are taught in each school year for each grade.

Are there materials in Mandarin available, similar to the ones K. T. mentioned for Japanese?

There are short stories "Selected Short Stories of Shen Congwen" (Bilingual Series in Modern Chinese Literature) on Amazon. You can "look" inside the book. I haven't read this book. I seem to have seen books for children in Chinese groceries or gift stories. If you have a Chinese school/Asian cultural center in your town, you could call and ask if they have books to borrow if you become a student or a member.

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The books I mentioned (Breaking INTO Japanese Literature, etc.) are published by Kodansha. These are not the only titles. There are several bilingual books.

Reminder: I think people like KT know perfectly that people like me know at least +10 more characters than the Japanese.

Xie,

I think anyone who knows Chinese well probably knows thousands of characters (far more than any average Japanese). I am familiar with about 2,000 characters. That's enough for me to read in Japanese and occasionally understand some of the things written in Chinese characters here.

國情 I see these two characters and think "Chinese" character for "country"
国情 In this example the character for country is the one that Japanese use. It's the state of affairs in a country or the political and economic condition. I note that this was indicated above as well. In Japanese it is pronounced "Kokujou"

It might be used when someone is describing a person well-versed in the situation in China or in Chinese affairs, I think, but I'll let a native Japanese comment on that.

It's "country" and "feeling" to me.

That's surprising! I don't think the Chinese have borrowed this from Japanese, but they are perfect equivalents!

I want to underline that it simply means "country" and "feeling", though. One would have to specify 中国の国情. That means "Chinese affairs" or the situation in China. The hiragana character (no) の is like an apostrophe plus "s".

I don't really know Japanese. It seems like people tend to misuse this possessive, as in 之, without knowing its real pronunciation ("no") and its grammatical function.

I don't know how appropriate it is for me to write in this thread, but there was something I was wondering about earlier today, and it is somewhat related to this topic (althought the subject matter is somewhat different).

Historically, Classical Chinese in Japan (漢文 [かんぶん]) is comparable to Classical Latin among Ancient Romans - it was a literary language understood by the educated upperclassmen. Many important documents in Japan were once written in Classical Chinese. Therefore, Classical Chinese was, though strictly literary, a sort of prestige language in east Asia.

However, despite this fact, the Japanese people have always looked at the Chinese with disdain. Regardless of the fact that Japan owes much of its sophisticated culture to Chinese influence, the Chinese are still considered uncouth. Even in the present day, people who use words of Chinese origin (熟語) are considered more educated. Yet, the Japanese have a sense of superiority over the Chinese.

How can this paradox be explained?