I basically want to understand Japanese for watching anime or playing Japanese video games. There’s really no need for me to read it. I tried downloading an app (Lingodeer) but the lessons have reading and speaking integrated as far as I can see. Any other apps to recommend?
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You can learn to speak any language, technically, without having to learn how to write it, as long as it can be written out romanized, however it helps to learn how to write it… Katakana and hiragana are the basic writing forms and are pretty easy to learn.
Your question is a little vague. What do you mean by “comprehend” and what do you mean by “read”?
It’s probably doable, but would likely be more difficult (because there aren’t any resources designed that way)
Like I’m not saying it’s impossible, just probably difficult to get past basic tourist vocabulary. There’s pimsleur and mango languages which are most audio based programs. You’ll get some ultra basics from those. How to expand vocabulary and grammar from there, I don’t know. I have to read stuff at first to understand what I’m hearing later on.
But if you want to play video games you might want to learn some basic reading skills. Just considering things like menus, unspoken dialogue, chat functions if it’s multiplayer, etc.
Reeeeeeally pricey unless you can find it at a local library but Pimsleurs is what you’re looking for. Audio lessons at differing levels for speaking, no writing or reading involved.
While possible, most learning resources beyond the beginner stage require that you be able to use the entirety of the Japanese writing system. Romanized materials will run out pretty quick, and some that use only hiragana/katakana will likely only get you so far.
Although I will say, it is possible to focus more on listening than reading/writing. I’m definitely a better speaker/listener than I am a reader/writer.
This is a frequently asked question. Technically you *can*, but you will be making things enormously more difficult for yourself in the long run. After all, reading and writing exist partly as *tools* to ease the workload of mental tasks.
For one thing, many of the high-quality resources for self-study are written, and you’ll be unable to benefit from them if you can’t read at all.
But also, learning to read kanji is helpful *in and of itself*, even if you ignore the fact that it enables you to read Japanese text. This is because the written characters convey hints about a word’s meaning, and you can use those hints as mnemonics. So for instance, there are hundreds or thousands of different Japanese words that begin with “kan”. But if you know their kanji forms, you can broadly categorize them into groups:
* words written with 感, relating to “feelings”
* words written with 関, relating to “connections”
* words written with 乾, relating to “dryness”
* words written with 観, relating to “observation”
* words written with 簡, relating to “simplicity”
and so on, instead of just trying to memorize a big unstructured list.
And of course, most video games assume some degree of literacy. Can you really enjoy, say, the Legend of Zelda without being able to read characters’ dialogue, quest descriptions, or item effects?
It’s going to get harder as you get more advanced because most advanced resources will assume you can read Japanese.
yes, but you wouldn’t pass from an average 7yo skills to understand and make up sentences for yourself.
online courses and language schools will teach you like an adult and not like a child
That’s what people did before the invention of writing, but they had to go immerse in the place for years at a time, talking with many people. Reading and writing just make the process that much more accessible. Writing is debatable, but you’re not gonna win that much more time skipping on reading. Why are you in such a hurry in the first place? Why not take a step back and enjoy the journey?
Brains are not hard drives, and learning to read/write will not force you to forgive something to make room.
Yes but as other said, you won’t be able to progress with studies well.
Most grammar videos (JLPT N5) use romanji but hiragana. As someone mentioned, hiragana and katakana are quite easy. It is really fun knowing it though.
A lot of resources use kanji, hiragana, and katakana. Every textbook I have, has all three. I’ve studied Japanese for over 10 years. Some Japanese games have no voice actors so you’d need to read it.
I feel like to learn a language only for speaking you need to grow up in a household where it is spoken or basically hang around a group of speakers of that language a lot and have them teach you while forcing you to speak and communicate with them.
So it honestly might be very difficult if you don’t have a set up like that. Comprehension requires you to know how to use the language to a degree as well. So it will require active learning and finding a course to learn it without the writing portion is probably hard.
Not to mention the writing portion of Japanese will help you greatly understand the meaning of words. And Japanese grammar is much different that English, so seeing it written may help you wrap your head around it.
A language is for communication, so dissecting the parts gets messy.
I’m going to say that it’s probably not feasible. And if it were, it’s not recommended. Learning to read helps enormously in learning the rest of the language. If you can’t read then it will be harder to learn the language in my opinion, it won’t save you time.
You know video games usually have quite a lot of text to read?
If you want to make harder a language that it’s already hard, then yes.
if you’re planning on playing japanese games you’re almost certainly going to need to read a lot unless you really want to restrict the games you can play. Plus with anime, japanese text shows up all the time so you’ll be missing out on a lot. It’s definitely possible, but I don’t think it’s what you actually want nor is it worth the extra effort it would take to do so just to avoid kanji