Once you start learning kanji, reading becomes easier. Even if you can’t remember how to say it, a lot of times you’ll know the word thanks to the kanji.
Certain words are almost never in kanji while others are always, so it breaks up sentences and your eyes can skim much quicker. And then going back to “hiragana only” makes me “stutter” through sentences. It’s painful.
I mean there’s just not really anyway without context or Kanji. It’s the same as me saying they’re, their, or there in English. Without ot being written or context impossible to know which. Some Japanese words like はし and はし, the intonation is slightly different but context and kanji are important.
I mean, yeah? You’re not really meant to learn words in hiragana. What would even be the point?
There’s no way to really “overcome” this problem (nor do you really need to) because native speakers would have just as much trouble with it was you do. It’s the equivalent of writing everything in phonetic symbols in English. Not impossible to read if you know phonetic symbols, but extremely hard to process.
This is precisely why kanji exists. Without it, Japanese would be extremely difficult to read and extrapolate meaning, because words could form in places you don’t want them to. At least when reading.
Kanji is very difficult, but once you learn a kanji and memorize it completely, your brain will read it faster than your eyes can register it. This is why native Japanese speakers are capable of reading so quickly. This is the same effect in English where you can see words that’re jumbled up and can read them with extreme accuracy, despite them being incorrect, because your brain immediately extrapolates meaning from 1-2 key points in the word, and doesn’t need the word to be completely correct in order to do this. In Japanese, all your brain needs to do is see the most important kanji, and it will instantly know the relation and you will know what’s being said before you even finish the word.
When I read 行きます in a sentence, my brain immediately knows we’re talking about going somewhere before I finish reading.
If you ever notice, Japanese people read Katakana slower in general because they need to actively extrapolate the meaning and this takes time for your brain to do. With Hiragana and Kanji- so you can kind of guess we’re not mentioning many foreign concepts in this example- they read it quicker than you can read an English sentence of the same meaning.
Here’s a really cool example.
今日はスーパーに行って肉を買ってきました。
I went to the supermarket today and bought some meat.
Native Japanese speakers are apparently able to read that faster than I can read the English. I can kind of see it because I can read some of the verbs fairly fast.
かいじょう で きしゃ が おしょくじけん
How about this?
I have this problem studying vocabulary. So many words *just sound the same*. I speak Spanish also and never ran into this issue, of wondering why I have so much trouble remembering vocabulary.
You don’t need to get good at it- that’s what the kanji is for
I remember when Final Fantasy IV came out for GBA I was pleased as punch because they finally updated the script to have Kanji in it. Similarly, Famicom RPGs are actually a huge pain in the butt to read.
Oh we have a delicious „I read kanji“ humblebrag. Gross
You really gotta learn them in Kanji form first. There’s no other way that _I_ know of. Once you know them in Kanji form, it will be clearer from context.
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You mean hiragana?
Once you start learning kanji, reading becomes easier. Even if you can’t remember how to say it, a lot of times you’ll know the word thanks to the kanji.
Certain words are almost never in kanji while others are always, so it breaks up sentences and your eyes can skim much quicker. And then going back to “hiragana only” makes me “stutter” through sentences. It’s painful.
I mean there’s just not really anyway without context or Kanji. It’s the same as me saying they’re, their, or there in English. Without ot being written or context impossible to know which. Some Japanese words like はし and はし, the intonation is slightly different but context and kanji are important.
I mean, yeah? You’re not really meant to learn words in hiragana. What would even be the point?
There’s no way to really “overcome” this problem (nor do you really need to) because native speakers would have just as much trouble with it was you do. It’s the equivalent of writing everything in phonetic symbols in English. Not impossible to read if you know phonetic symbols, but extremely hard to process.
This is precisely why kanji exists. Without it, Japanese would be extremely difficult to read and extrapolate meaning, because words could form in places you don’t want them to. At least when reading.
Kanji is very difficult, but once you learn a kanji and memorize it completely, your brain will read it faster than your eyes can register it. This is why native Japanese speakers are capable of reading so quickly. This is the same effect in English where you can see words that’re jumbled up and can read them with extreme accuracy, despite them being incorrect, because your brain immediately extrapolates meaning from 1-2 key points in the word, and doesn’t need the word to be completely correct in order to do this. In Japanese, all your brain needs to do is see the most important kanji, and it will instantly know the relation and you will know what’s being said before you even finish the word.
When I read 行きます in a sentence, my brain immediately knows we’re talking about going somewhere before I finish reading.
If you ever notice, Japanese people read Katakana slower in general because they need to actively extrapolate the meaning and this takes time for your brain to do. With Hiragana and Kanji- so you can kind of guess we’re not mentioning many foreign concepts in this example- they read it quicker than you can read an English sentence of the same meaning.
Here’s a really cool example.
今日はスーパーに行って肉を買ってきました。
I went to the supermarket today and bought some meat.
Native Japanese speakers are apparently able to read that faster than I can read the English. I can kind of see it because I can read some of the verbs fairly fast.
かいじょう で きしゃ が おしょくじけん
How about this?
I have this problem studying vocabulary. So many words *just sound the same*. I speak Spanish also and never ran into this issue, of wondering why I have so much trouble remembering vocabulary.
You don’t need to get good at it- that’s what the kanji is for
I remember when Final Fantasy IV came out for GBA I was pleased as punch because they finally updated the script to have Kanji in it. Similarly, Famicom RPGs are actually a huge pain in the butt to read.
Oh we have a delicious „I read kanji“ humblebrag. Gross
You really gotta learn them in Kanji form first. There’s no other way that _I_ know of. Once you know them in Kanji form, it will be clearer from context.