G’day all just 2 questions as I’m a complete beginner trying to self teach.
First, is it pheasable to learn Japanese with little to no other speakers to talk to? Im fairly introverted and reclusive and I do see alot recommend talking to other speakers of the language in order to stick what you have learnt.
And second, where is kanji used instead of hiragana if the same pronunciation is used. Someone I know went to Japan and told me that kanji is at an all time low usage wise and I thought it was interesting
6 comments
You can certainly learn to read and listen to Japanese media through self-study but if you want to speak at all you’re going to be very unprepared if you don’t practice it as well.
Kanji isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Some words are written primarily in Hiragana but still have kanji, a lot of grammar structures are largely written in hiragana but also have their own Kanji, if you read for any length of time eventually, you’ll come across these. It’s worth learning the Kanji for most things in my opinion. I got away without knowing the kanji for ぜひ (是非）for a long time until someone decided to use it in a post I read, and then I learned it. Most of the time ぜひ is written in hiragana because it’s quicker than writing its Kanji, but since a lot of ‘writing’ is done on a keyboard now, this isn’t as much of a problem, so some people will use the Kanji anyway. But there’s really no avoiding Kanji, and once you make some progress, you’ll most likely begin to dread coming across text written entirely in Hiragana, I certainly do.
It’s definitely doable. Some people successfully speedrun to N1 and since at no point is speaking ever tested on the JLPT, the best use of their time in the so-called speedrun is to not worry about speaking at all until they’ve spent countless hours reading and listening instead (after they pass the test, because again, speaking is technically worthless in that specific case).
And then there’s also the crowd whose goal is just to understand media. They don’t inherently need to speak either.
Your second question can be answered with a bit of research, but I’ll at least tell you that your friend almost certainly doesn’t know what they’re talking about. One thing to know about Japan is that everything is tightly packed. If kanji were to disappear, all signs would take up more space. Compare the character count of [紀伊國屋書店](https://images.app.goo.gl/AmHUBsMXkst48raw5) to きのくにやしょてん. Now imagine that for any long form of written communication. Hell, since people don’t need to handwrite kanji anymore, they’d actually be prone to using *more* kanji they wouldn’t otherwise use.
You technically don’t need to speak to anyone to learn Japanese but I’d recommend it if your goal is going to japan at some point since you might draw blanks if you have worked out that speaking bone
>is it pheasable to learn Japanese with little to no other speakers to talk to?
Yes – entirely feasible. You can learn to listen to and read Japanese on your own quite easily (I mean finding the resources to do so is easy) – See [here for some resources & guidance](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/s5mtva/comment/ht1lo0x/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
If you want to learn to write, then that can be done partly alone, but is a bit more difficult. Basically you need feedback from somewhere as to the accuracy of your writing attempts. Having a native speaker review your attempts can be very useful.
If you want to learn to speak Japanese then you can make some progress alone, but inevitably you’ll need someone to speak to.
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>where is kanji used instead of hiragana if the same pronunciation is used.
Kanji is used all over the place. In fact Japanese uses 3 different scripts for writing – see [https://youtu.be/r7a8OjvViwE](https://youtu.be/r7a8OjvViwE) for details. You need to learn at least a couple of thousand kanji to read fluently. The good news is that you don’t have to learn them on their own. They are found in words – so just learn words and you’ll get to know the important kanji and their pronunciations in the context of those words. If you really want to study kanji in depth, it’s better (in my opinion) to do that later and not as a beginner.
It is feasible, depending on your goals.
Part learning is being able to muster up the skills and information you’ve memorized. In language learning, that’s through speaking or writing. Having a native speaker or more advanced learner to help is going to boost your own learning by challenging you.
Secondly, kanji are used in Japanese a lot. There are many words with the same pronunciation/hiragana but different kanji. “Hashi” can mean bridge, edge or chopsticks, as an example. Kanji help make it unambiguous – 橋, 端, 箸.
VRChat has a world called “EN-JP Language Exchange” that is relatively popular, you can maybe practice speaking there.