How much does it bother you when you read a kanji wrong by mistake?

For example I have sometimes read 波 (なみ) as 皮(かわ) by mistake and had to go back and reread it when the sentence made no sense that way lol. Same thing has happened for 待つ and 持つ.

On a scale of one to ten much does it bother you when it happens to you? (for me it’s around an 8 honestly, I get pretty pissed when I notice it happen). And do you do anything special about it like put the misread kanji/word into anki for correction? Or do you just correct yourself then and move on?

17 comments
  1. it bothers me about 1/10, it’s just a stupid mistake and I make a lot of them

    I found a way to help it though. I sometimes make a special card in anki. For your example I would make a card like this:

    (FRONT OF CARD): 待 vs 持

    (BACK OF CARD): WAIT vs HOLD

    It seems to help! Because it trains my eye to extra-scrutinize (in this case) the left part of the kanji. But I inevitably find something new to mess up on 🙂

  2. >On a scale of one to ten much does it bother you when it happens to you?

    Not very much. 波 has 氵(さんずい, the water radical on the left). Think of waves in the ocean. 皮 means skin. Think of a banana peel (バナナの皮). The real problem for me starts upon finding out there are multiple words related to skin (肌, 皮膚, 素肌, etc.) and have trouble remembering which is used when.

    >And do you do anything special about it?

    Use a pop-up dictionary, or look it up in a dictionary program (paste or type it, handwriting input if the former 2 aren’t an option). And try to come up with something to distinguish them, like the examples I gave above.

  3. Stick with Japanese long enough and use it often enough and not only will the instances decrease drastically, so will the amount it bothers you.

    It bugs me about 1/100th the amount of discovering the television remote is an inch beyond my grasp.

  4. The longer I study Japanese, the more I realize that learning in linear fashion is impossible. I can’t actively choose what gets internalized and what doesn’t. Don’t worry about making mistakes with material you’re studied a lot. It’s inevitable and unimportant in the bigger picture.

  5. If it bothers you when you make a mistake in Japanese (any mistake, not just with kanji), then that’s a good thing.

    It’s a good thing because it means (1) you recognize you made a mistake, (2) you can correct yourself, and (3) you’ll be motivated not to make the same mistake in the future.

    I learned back in the days before Anki (or any SRS app) existed, so I’d basically just try to drill it into my mind so I wouldn’t forget. Sometimes I’d write things down in a notebook. Do whatever you think you need to do so you don’t forget it.

  6. Japanese natives fuck up readings all the time, frequently in astonishing ways, so it doesn’t bother me when I do it on my own. When I do it in front of someone, it bothers me because they immediately attribute it to my being a foreigner. But it’s no worse than when someone makes a big deal out of me being able to read something they weren’t expecting I’d know. Like, just stop putting all these expectations on foreigners and commenting on it unnecessarily.

  7. It only bothers me when it’s a really rare/obscure one that I barely failed to remember correctly 😂 but there’s a word for this in Japanese! You can say you are 負けず嫌い 🙂

  8. It doesn’t bother me, even native speakers do it occasionally.

    I’m not saying kanji is super hard to read. It isn’t. People just don’t pay full attention sometimes, and that’s fine and normal.

  9. I mostly only get annoyed if it’s recurring mistake. As others have said, look closely at the kanji, identify the parts that are different and their relation to the meaning or pronunciation (eg 待つ to wait has the Loiter radical, 持つ to hold/have has the Fingers radical), and then reinforce with Anki, flash cards, vocab, w/e. It will stick eventually

  10. I forget readings/read things wrong all the time so it doesn’t bother me that much. If it’s a common enough word I’ll check the dictionary

  11. You don’t learn without making mistakes and embarrassing yourself, whether in front of someone else or by yourself. Eventually you’ll have messed up so many times in various situations that it doesnt bother you anymore.

  12. Doesn’t bother me in the least. I’m learning, and you make mistakes when you’re learning something. If you aren’t making mistakes there’s a good chance you’re not challenging yourself to get better. Over time and with enough exposure the meanings and readings of different words will stick, you just have to keep at it every day.

  13. 2/10, it rarely happens to me and I only get annoyed if it takes me time to notice I read it wrong (like I look at it but still see the wrong kanji).

  14. It only bothers me when it happens over and over again with the same bunch of words. 揚げる/掲げる/提げる are good examples.

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