So whenever I read english or swedish it's quite easy to parse individual words, because obviously, we use spaces. This will in turn make me able to identify entire words even if I do not already know them. In japanese however spaces aren't used and thus when reading even if I know every single "word" I still have to identify them one by one which slows my reading down quite a lot. I assume it's just a volume issue but would like some input on the matter. Having to read every single character individually just sounds like it cant be the end game.
by StorKuk69
10 comments
It’s only like that in the beginning. Do this over and over again you would be able to unconsciously separate the words even if there are no spaces. The particles and the conjugations will be your markers.
I had the same mentality as you when i started reading. The more you read the more you will understand what word is a noun, adjektives and verbs. If you can distinguish these three reading will become easy.
The more kanji you know the faster you’ll be able to read and skim through text. At least that’s my experience. Once I made it past the “omg kanji are gonna be a dead end for me” phase I actually prefer text including them since I can just let them guide my eyes (instead of spaces I guess?).
This is definitely a big hurdle when you start trying to read Japanese. I recommend focusing on learning words that don’t have inflections at the start (adjectives and verbs). Nouns written in Kanji are the best here because you can always parse them in a sentence. Whereas verbs written in only Hiragana are typically the hardest, especially for common words since there might be multiple variations of one verb, and it might mean different things depending on the context.
Also definitely stay away from material that doesn’t use Kanji because it’s more difficult to parse the words. It’s ironic because a lot of Japanese content aimed at a younger audience omits Kanji, but it’s actually harder for foreign learners.
Practice makes perfect. Japanese is not a spaced language. The sooner you get yourself comfortable with that, the better off you will be.
Like others have said, knowing more kanji and vocab is the key. Your brain will do the rest.
The only problem with reading is we keep looking for hacks, but there are none : just read.
I’m a life hacker for all domains in my life, but to this day, I’ve found no other way than reading to improve in reading. Of course, Anki can help to pre-learn words and have an “okay initial speed”, but no tool or tips will get you from slow to fast other than reading.
“even if I know every single word I still have to identify them one by one which slows my reading down quite a lot”
-> you think you know those words, because you know the “units”, but you don’t really know the words. A common misconception in language learning is that a word is just a word.
As a matter of fact, a word exist by itself, but also thanks to its surroundings. You will never rarely (if ever) see the words 夢 and 憤る next to each other (random example). You need to train your brain to know which word x+1 comes after the word x. When I read with proper context, I don’t even have to get past the middle of the sentence to know how it will end.
Only experience in reading can improve your “preshots”. And that’s what we do in our native languages every day to get to speed.
Also, when you fall upon word strings like 急性リンパ性白血病, even if you know each individual word in the compound, if you don’t know the compound itself, you can’t say that you know the words.
It sometimes happens to me : I know a word by itself, and I can’t read it in a compound. That’s because I thought I knew the word, but I didn’t know it well enough, in fact.
You are on the cusp of discovering the function of hiragana and particles my friend
What makes you read fast is not the spaces but word recognition. Become faster at recognizing words (and parsing grammar) and you’ll be able to read faster. The only practical way to do that is to read more.
If you are reading at the level of individual characters, then you are not recognizing words, you are recognizing characters, which are not words in and of themselves. Are you familiar with the difference between words and characters? I assume so, but it’s a common misconception, so just asking just in case.
Recognizing words entails seeing the shape of the word as a whole and recognizing it. You should not have to split the word into parts in order to recognize it. You do not in fact need to know any of the kanji in a word to be able to read the word, if you learned the word.
Once you start learning to read kanji, it’ll get a lot easier. Even Japanese people have a difficult time reading things that are written all in kana (an easier time than a beginner for sure, but it will makes them read much slower than usual).
Once you start reading text with kanji, the remaining kana will help you separate words and figure out what role they’re playing in the sentence.
What the others said are true and all but I want to share my own personal experience (which might not be right for you, or somebody else for that matter).
I noticed the jumps in my reading speed tended to go along with my knowledge on grammar, in particular, particles & set phrases. Not Kanji, which helps my comprehension tremendously, but not speed. When I was a beginner, to read, I used to parse things from start to end of a sentence. And with how Japanese function words (particles, inflections …) come at the end of the phrase/sentence, that was slow and confusing as hell.
I used to struggle reading simple things like
トムさんにくれぐれもよろしくお伝え下さい
(A random mostly kana sentence from Takoboto)
But with better grammar, it allows me to parse in chunks. I take a look at the text, pick out some function words and then parse from that to the left to form a unit. Take the above sentence for example, the way I read now would be like
… に…
トムさんに….
トムさんに….も…
トムさんに くれぐれも…
トムさんに くれぐれも よろしく….
トムさんに くれぐれも よろしく お伝え下さい
Note how, sometimes, a word/phrase is so common (like よろしく) that I parse it almost instantly, but some not so much (like くれぐれも). Also, as I get further along the sentence, I have more context and can predict the next chunk better (the whole お伝え下さい). This whole thing, I thank my grammer study (love you Renshuu).