I use Genki pretty for my studies and every time I turned to it, until I advanced further into the book, I used it only for additional studying, because they provide very few kanji at the beginning and only use ひらがな. I have no idea why, but I genuinely have great trouble remembering words unless I’m shown a kanji of them. As soon as the ひらがな transcription is provided to a 漢字 – I memorise them almost immediately.
I was just wondering if anyone had a similar experience!
10 comments
Short answer: Yes.
There’s not really a long answer lol. I just find words with kanji much easier to remember.
Yea, it’s like they lose half the meaning without it, and blend with others.
Yeah. Probably also due to the fact that I speak Chinese. I’ll sometimes miss even the most basic phrases when they’re written in hiragana
Yes, I don’t know the simplest of words until I see the kanji
yeah, all the kanji-less のろのろ ふわふわ type giseigo and semi-onomonopoeic words like さっさと ぐっすり just go right in one ear and out the other for me. some of them do actually have kanji, so do look around, but there’s nothing for it but to bang it into the skull repeatedly, sadly. some words just take more time. for others it’s the kanji that are harder, so we should be grateful we have the less restrictive brain hiccup.
yeah, I have been studying Japanese for about a month and the only reason i can read some stuff is because of kanji, i have a really hard time breaking down the sentences that are fully written in hiragana.
Yes. I have a graphic memory so my understanding is I assign the Kanji for each word in my brain, and onomatopoeia is extremely difficult to remember. I will remember N2 & N1 level words about finance and politics although I have no particular interest in these subjects, but onomatopoeia start to sound all similar after studying for a while. I will forever speak like a news anchor I’m afraid.
I have this problem too! I think maybe it’s because the kanji kinda provides a visual to associate it with? Maybe it’s worth trying to sketch something small alongside kana words to see if that helps it stick.
Especially verbs! They all look the same to me without kanji.
Trying to learn another language when you’re used to kanji makes vocab feel very hard.