Curious

furrykef   Mon Oct 29, 2007 3:13 am GMT
<< I'm sure your vocabulary is far over 1000 words in Spanish. There are plenty of cognates. >>

True. However, there are also false cognates, not to mention that I don't know which words will be cognates and which words will not, so cognates are not helpful for on-the-fly speech production, only memorization and a semi-reliable aid for reading or listening. For instance, it's a well-known formula that almost *any* English verb ending with -ate has a Spanish equivalent ending in -ar. There are very few exceptions, but sometimes the word doesn't mean what you think it means. "Trasladar" means "translate" in the sense of geometry, not of language: moving something from one place to another, or transferring. The word for that is "traducir"... which looks like the English word "traduce", which means something different! So I prefer to just look at every cognate as a new word unless I'm certain it's used the same way as in English, or if it's very improbable that the meaning is different (it would be a bit silly to assume an "aeroplano" might not be an airplane -- though of course the assumption that it is one must be questioned if it wouldn't make sense in the context!). It's just a new word that's generally easy to memorize or work out on context.

<< How do you learn the character but not know how to read them?
To be honest, it sounds like you are studying the wrong way or wasting your time. If you just want to learn how to write some character, well that's cool but not very practical if don't go any deeper than that. >>

I'm using Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. At http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/, Khatzumoto claims to have achieved fluency in Japanese in only 18 months -- though not quite native-level fluency -- and he used this "kanji first" method. I believe him, but, as the name of his site suggests, his method also involves extreme immersion. Nonetheless, I'm convinced that his method works without such immersion; it'll just take longer.

There are two reasons I use this method. One, if you actually use kanji as you learn them, then for them to be useful you must learn them in order of frequency or by grade level. I believe that is a mistake, because the individual components of kanji are much harder to recognize that way. It also often happens that you learn a complex shape in one kanji, and it gives you a difficult time, and then that complex shape turns out to be a kanji of its own that comes later. No, no, no! It's much easier to learn the complex shape first, and THEN learn it in the combined character. I learned that the hard way.

The other reason is that I treat kanji as a really big alphabet. Just as we learn our ABCs before we learn how to spell "cat", it makes sense to me to learn all the common kanji before learning to write Japanese. It eases the strain on the memory, because there is so much involved in remembering a word written in kanji. For instance, take a compound word such as 安全 anzen ("safety"). The first step is to remember that it's written with "relax" and "whole" (or whatever you want to call them). Then you have to recall the individual components of the kanji: "House, woman, umbrella, king." ("Umbrella" is an arbitrary name from Heisig to make it easier to remember. Easy recollection is more important than where the shape etymologically comes from.) Then you have to make sure you put the components in the right places -- usually easy, but sometimes it's unintuitive. Then finally you have to recall the strokes, and in the proper order. And on top of all that we have to concern ourselves with both the reading and meaning of this word. That's a lot of work! The more of that work you have to do at once when memorizing, the harder it is and the easier it is for something to slip out of your memory.

- Kef
Guest   Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:21 am GMT
I think you should learn the radicals (or 部首) by their Japanese names.

house = ウ冠 うかんむり
woman = 女 おんな
umbrella = 人屋根 ひとやね
king = 王 おう

I also think it's a stupid idea to learn all the kanji before learning vocabulary, and it's especially stupid not associate the kanji you learn with their readings, but anyway...
Guest   Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:48 am GMT
<olaszinho Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:11 am GMT

Italian my mother tongue
I can read and speak at a decent level Spanish, French, Portuguese and English
I learnt latin at school
I've been learning for a few years German and Russian
I even learnt a basic hungarian (grammar and about 1000 words) but unfortunately I've forgotten most of it. I ought to brush it up.
I'm going to study (Arabic, catalan, modern greek and romanian). :-)>

==============================================


I'm envious of your ability and courage on learning foreign languages.
L'italofilo   Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:52 am GMT
Would it be still important to learn "Russian" for those people who're not sure whether "Russian" can be of some help in the future?
mac   Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:09 am GMT
Kef, I don't think you should treat it as a just a big alphabet because in reality it is not, not matter how you try to compare it. Improving your ability to read, write and speak at the same time is important. Sorry, but if you are learning only how to write and not read or speak, well that doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know anyone who has used a "kanji first" method and I'm living in Japan right now. You should start working on vocab and grammar just like with any other foreign language.
furrykef   Mon Oct 29, 2007 1:21 pm GMT
<< I think you should learn the radicals (or 部首) by their Japanese names. >>

Then how will I construct mnemonics from them? The purpose of using names like "umbrella" is so you can actually use them in a story. The purpose of an element in Heisig's method is a bit different from the purpose of the radical, and some of his elements are probably not true radicals at all.

<< I also think it's a stupid idea to learn all the kanji before learning vocabulary, and it's especially stupid not associate the kanji you learn with their readings, but anyway... >>

Why? I already explained why I'm doing it this way and you have addressed none of my points.

<< I don't know anyone who has used a "kanji first" method and I'm living in Japan right now. >>

That's probably because the thought never occurred to them, or because they thought it was too silly to try, not because they actually tried it and found out for themselves that it doesn't work. How do you know it won't work unless you try it or know somebody who has?

Moreover, Heisig's research has shown that it *is* more efficient to learn the kanji first. Sometimes the best way to do something is indirectly. I've heard of studies where one group studied four years of French, and another group studied one year of Esperanto and three years of French, and the second group actually spoke better French at the end even though they studied it one year less. I believe most similar studies have gotten similar results. I consider that harder to believe than the "kanji first" theory, yet it's what research has consistently shown. There needs to be rigorous research on the "kanji first" method, which we admittedly don't have yet, but without such research, it cannot be proven that it doesn't work well, either. The point is that it should not be dismissed out of hand as "obviously" wrong, just as one might readily dismiss learning a year of Esperanto out of hand as "obviously" wrong until the research shows otherwise.

Finally, since I'm over 60% of the way through the book, and it would only take a few weeks to make it to the end, I really see no sense in stopping now. Besides, I've stopped and restarted from scratch with Japanese too many times as it is. It's time for me to stick with a method, even if it is somewhat wrongheaded.

- Kef
Darren   Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:13 pm GMT
K.T

Just out of interest, without being rude, how old are you? I just find it amazing that you are a multi-linguist, must have taken you years, would I be right in saying this?
K. T.   Tue Oct 30, 2007 12:16 am GMT
Darren,

Don't worry, I'm legal, but I won't buy you alcohol.

The more languages you learn, the easier they get. Stuart Ray Raj (he's a little younger than I am) knows twenty languages or more and Ziad Fazah (in his fifties or so, I think) knows more than 50.
K. T.   Tue Oct 30, 2007 12:27 am GMT
About Kef and Heisig:

If Kef were in Japan, I think he'd change his tune, but since he isn't and he has the time to do this, let's see how it works out for him.

I've given my opinion at least twice about this. I also tried Heisig and had to stop because I needed the readings, not just the Kanji. That was in the 1990s and there were fewer books to help people learn Kanji then.

I suggest "Kanji and Kana" the book and the workbooks and I suggest getting Jean-Claude Martin's "Memento des Kanji" because it has primitive pictures of ALL the 1,945 Kanji and these can be used as a memory aid. It's in French, but it doesn't matter; pictures don't have a language.
gaeian   Tue Oct 30, 2007 1:59 am GMT
Native: English (GAE)

Use regularly: English, C, Assembler

Speak/Know, but don't use regularly:

Read/Understand: English

Notions, know some words (less than 1000, maybe, but more than "thank-you"):

Learning: English, C, Assembler

Dabbling: Spanish (input only)

Forgettiing: French (written input only), C++, PL/I, COBOL, APL, BASIC, FORTRAN

In the works to learn (already have the material, native friend ready to exchange language) :
furrykef   Tue Oct 30, 2007 8:00 am GMT
This isn't a thread about Japanese or Kanji, so I hope I'm not getting too much in the way with this discussion, but I just found a simple but illustrative example of a kanji that's broken down well by Heisig, but can be difficult to break down without it or a similar system: 得

The left part is easy enough, as it's a common radical. The right part is, or at least can be interpreted as, a combination of 旦 and 寸. However, that's not what it looked like to me at first glance. First off, when I first learned this character, I didn't know the 旦 kanji... there's that problem with learning characters by frequency again. I also saw the bottom stroke of 旦 instead as 日 and an extra top stroke on 寸, which means I didn't even recognize the 旦 shape -- so I couldn't make use of it later -- and the whole thing also became harder to memorize because I saw a special case (having to add an extra stroke) when a simpler general case existed. Now imagine this sort of thing happening with more complex shapes, and you see why it can be a problem. Thus, kanji are easier to memorize when learned out of order. But if you learn the readings of obscure characters like 旦 when you haven't even studied characters like 人 yet, you can see that learning readings this way is not particularly valuable because you won't get to make much use of them for a while anyway.

- Kef
K. T.   Thu Nov 01, 2007 1:13 am GMT
旦 is a cowry (cowrie) shell. 寸 can be thought of as a hand grasping for the shell (for example, as currency), then you have the left side "to go", it's easy enough to imagine the meaning (toku, e(ru) u(ru)), isn't it?

It's meaning is profit, gain and words like that. One goes to collect shells and makes a profit. It's easy to memorize little stories and the readings at the same time.

Heisig's story is column...nightbreak...gain.
K. T.   Thu Nov 01, 2007 1:15 am GMT
旦 Think of the "sun" part as the shell and the line below as the body of this little animal which resembles a snail.
K. T.   Thu Nov 01, 2007 1:16 am GMT
旦 Think of the "sun" part as the shell and the line below as the body of this little animal which resembles a snail.

An oops!: Its, not it's, lol.
Rodrigo   Fri Nov 02, 2007 8:46 pm GMT
Native: Spanish

Use regularly: English, everyday at school in 70% of my classes

Speak/Know, but don't use regularly:

Read/Understand: French, I'm not very good at producing texts but my spelling is generally very good.

Notions, know some words (less than 1000, maybe, but more than "thank-you": Italian

Learning:

Dabbling: I may dare to say Portuguese because of Spanish, but my only imput are subtitles when tv channels get mixed up and show us an ad in Portuguese.

In the works to learn (already have the material, native friend ready to exchange language).


________________________________
I once read one of Kef's posts in Spanish and it was very good, clear, smooth and with a spelling I wish every night my friends had. El post fue cuando él dijo que era inútil que Greg le hablara en francés porque Kef no lo habla y que por eso intentaría escribir en español.