In English, there are reading books just for children with adequate vocabulary for them to learn. If they don't know what the words mean they can use a dictionary.
But in Japanese, what are children's books like? Is there kanji? How do children look up kanji in a dictionary if they don't know the meaning or how it's pronounced (pre-digital era)? In English a dictionary is alphabetical, so I'm trying to figure out how they (and of course I) would use a Japanese dictionary.
by Old-Rush9575
12 comments
One really common thing is that above less common Kanji, if kids are supposed to be reading it (e.g. it’s at a park, school, kid’s books, etc), it’ll be written out phonetically as well in Hiragana (or sometimes Katakana)
Kanji gets slowly introduced in more and more advanced books, but usually if a book is aimed at children it will always have Furigana if there is any kanji. However they start out with hiragana and katakana.
First through books with just hiragana, then adding kanji with furigana included. Somewhere in the mix katakana is added as well.
Source: my son is half Japanese and can read age appropriate books in Japanese that includes both hiragana, katakana and kanji.
Picture books are in just hiragana. Gradually common kanji are introduced, normally with furigana (pronunciation guides) added above the kanji. Normally these are for words the child already knows, they just don’t know the kanji, so it’s easy for the to read it. Furigana is often used in publications for adults as well if the kanji is unusual
There are kids dictionaries and encyclopedias, with words given in aiueo order. Then they’ll eventually learn how to use a regular kanji dictionary as they learn kanji and radicals.
Hiragana. Textbooks are also in hiragana. In the old FC games, kanji could not be used due to overcapacity, so everything was in hiragana.
Children start by learning hiragana. Each hiragana character has only one pronunciation, so there are no cases where symbols have a variety of sounds, as opposed to English where there are sometimes silent letters or a number of pronunciations. A child who can remember hiragana can typically read a higher level (and probably more interesting) text than a beginning English reader. Kanji is then introduced gradually, with the most commonly used characters first.
Generally, a beginning Japanese reader is less likely to fail at reading than a beginning English reader. On the other hand, as more and more kanji are introduced, reading becomes more difficult and more time must be devoted to it. Ultimately, Japanese students spend more time dealing with kanji and vocabulary and less time discussing or evaluating content.
I leaned reading shonen jump. I was raised by Japanese parents and am Japanese but our family was shipped abroad when I was 3. Early on it was my mom reading me children’s books to learn hiragana and katakana. The kanji I picked up reading jump, they have furigana over the kanji.
I think utada hikaru also mentioned that’s how she learned growing up in the US
There is an order that the kids learn their kana. They start with books strictly in hiragana. In first grade everything, even the kids’ names are written in hiragana. 2/3 way through the year they start learning kanji and pick up simple kanji in first grade. By the end of elementary they should have learned 1,000 kanji. Books frequently have kanji with little hiragana markings next to them to help kids with pronunciation.
As a Japanese language learner, I can tell you this. Kanji is very hard to learn, most of the japanese only learn around 2,000, but hiragana and katakana are not hard to learn, you can absolutely learn both in a month if you’re determined. The kids starts learning hiragana and katakana, but the kanji’s learning took many years of their lives.
They learn hiragana and katakana first (which is as difficult as learning a-z A-Z) then every year they learn a set number of kanji.
### Elementary School Kanji
1. **First Grade**: 80 kanji
2. **Second Grade**: 160 kanji (cumulative total: 240 kanji)
3. **Third Grade**: 200 kanji (cumulative total: 440 kanji)
4. **Fourth Grade**: 202 kanji (cumulative total: 642 kanji)
5. **Fifth Grade**: 193 kanji (cumulative total: 835 kanji)
6. **Sixth Grade**: 191 kanji (cumulative total: 1,026 kanji)
### Junior High School Kanji
1. **Seventh Grade (Year 1 of Junior High School)**: Approximately 300-400 additional kanji
2. **Eighth Grade (Year 2 of Junior High School)**: Approximately 350-450 additional kanji
3. **Ninth Grade (Year 3 of Junior High School)**: Approximately 350-450 additional kanji
You can look up words phonetically in Japanese.
You can look up kanji in a dictionary, categorized by kanji radical (the individual components that make up kanji), # of strokes etc.
Children’s books are often only in hiragana, or will have furigana (small-print hiragana / katakana) next to any kanji. Books for very young children will even have spaces between words.
Otherwise the basic components of learning to read is no different from learning any other language. Always baffles me that people think learning Japanese must somehow be completely different from learning literally any other language on the planet.
Japanese dictionaries are in あいうえお alphabetical order, so they can look up words in that order.
Books for children have furigana, just like books for Japanese language learners. The kanji taught at school are set for each grade, so the proportion of furigana varies for each grade.
There are around 2,000 kanji taught at school. If they remember this many, they won’t have any trouble in their daily life.
However, a typical kanji dictionary contains around 10,000 characters.
They will have to learn these on their own as needed.