Why does everyone here say that you can’t learn to speak Japanese easily without learning Kanji?

22 comments

1. By skipping kanji you skip 99.9% of the native/advanced material for learning. Subtitles are going to be useless on many occasions, presumably.
   This means that if the sole goal is to just say arigato and stuff, it’s fine to skip (I guess).

   It’s essentially not that different from trying to speak English (or whatever else) but skipping the Latin alphabet altogether. It’s possible and babies do it, sure, but unless the learner is actually a baby who is completely unable to distinguish written letters and characters, it’s just inefficient to avoid the writing system.

2. It obviously depends on your goals.

   Do you want to learn japanese just to speak and understand when people are talking ?

   Or do you want to learn japanese to be able to read japanese newspapers and books ?

3. >Knowing how to read might also be helpful if you want to use books for immersion.

   Might be helpful to know how to read, in order to read books?

4. I think there are a lot of very similar sounds that you could read in hiragana which would make you go ?????? without knowledge of kanji.

   Similarly when you hear people speak you need to envision in your mind which word they are saying. When they say きます what are they talking about? Going? Wearing? Etc.

   I also initially thought maybe I can just do without kanji, but despite how difficult or scary it seems to sound, it just makes sense to know kanji.

5. Because kanji is needed for age appropriate spoken language for anyone over the age of five. It’s actually an issue for people who were raised abroad by Japanese parents. Many of them speak at the level of a child and find themselves offending others for a reason that’s obvious except to themselves once they move to Japan.

6. Skipping Kanji to learn Japanese is more or less accepting total illiteracy, like skipping the alphabet to learn English. Sure, there’s some people who can make that work, but it’s a handicap at the very least. Good luck understanding an entire language when you can’t look up what you don’t know

7. I don’t think it’s that important to **rush** kanji immediately as a beginner and there’s **a lot** of other options to learn the language (including learning how to read) without having to learn kanji (yomichan, furigana, etc), however eventually if you want to get to a decent level in the language (even if all you care about is just the spoken language) you **need** to learn kanji.

   A lot of onyomi words rely on kanji to define their pronunciation, there’s a lot of こう, しょう, せい, etc “bits” of words that are built like that because of how they appear in kanji (and they come from old chinese). In normal spoken language you don’t really **need** to know the kanji of those, but as you dive into more complicated conversations or topics, you will need some knowledge of kanji to sometimes guess what the other person is referring to, or to differentiate one word with another that sounds exactly the same (including pitch) by just associating the kanji with the right context, mentally.

   On top of this, the **vast majority** of JP learning resources (textbooks, etc) still require you to deal with basic kanji and words in the written form as you go along with your studies, and it is much much much harder to find resources that will teach you Japanese and skip learning kanji (or words written in kanji) just because you want to avoid them. You’re effectively making your life harder by avoiding kanji than it would be if you just bit the bullet and started learning kanji (with words, not just in isolation) like everyone else.

8. I didn’t touch kanji for 25 years other than the bits you see and get to know naturally. It seemed like a total waste of time if your goal is to converse. Before I moved back to Japan 2 years ago I made a conscious effort to learn kanji and it made a lot more sense, I felt, knowing a fair bit of vocab already. I definitely don’t recommend hiragana, katana and then kanji for beginners. There are far more important things to know and time can be utilised better.

9. Why has this sub just become questions about the usefulness of Kanji every other post? Can’t we do something about this low quality content?

10. For a better grasp of the vocabulary and grammar you learn, youd figure youd have to read some example sentences right? doing something as simple as that is going to be a hassle because you cant read anything. And valid example sentences are not going to be written in romaji just for those that dont wanna bother with kanji.

    Then you could just translate examples on say, google translator to see the romaji reading?. Also a bad idea, translators sometimes make mistakes with kanji readings. The translation may be fine, but the transcription to romaji messes up sometimes, and good luck finding out when theyre wrong.

    Im sure a bunch of people out there have managed to do it, but personally, just imagining the hassle of learning everything ive learned so far without being able to read feels like an absolute nightmare.

11. Once a week or so I see posts like these

    Japanese is written in kanji, just learn the damn characters, they’re a crucial part of the language, i.e. society, communication, culture, life

12. I don’t think it would be impossible to learn to understand spoken Japanese and be able to speak Japanese to a certain degree without learning to read kanji, but it surely is extremely inefficient.

    Sure with the right app’s and technology you can hover over subtiles and get the English translation of a word even without knowing the kanji, but you still cut yourself off from so many resources. On top of that reading is just an efficient way of improving your understanding of the language. Even given the fact that you have to invest a bit of time into learning to read kanji, I’d assume that in the end you would still make faster progress than someone that never learned to read kanji.

    But if you…

    – don’t care about how long it takes to get to a certain level (understanding of spoken Japanese and speaking),

    – don’t care to be literate,

    – don’t care about being cut off from a ton of excellent resources,

    then sure go for it.

13. Since kanji are so useful to remember words, I think that while it’s not absolutely impossible, it might take longer to reach the same level of oral proficiency without them.

14. I get where OP is coming from and maybe this is just the wrong sub to be on but I can’t find r/kindofLearnJapanese lol. I am looking to travel to Japan in about two years, I would love to be able to converse very basically with people when needed i.e. rural towns where English is not well know. I know I can’t/won’t grind hours upon hours leaning hundreds/thousands of kanji just to ask where is the bathroom, or how much is this? I have no interest in being fluent I just want to avoid being ignorant.

15. Well, from my experience (including years as language teacher & translator):

    Reading is paramount for likely 99% of all learners to succeed. However, we need to define “success” here: In my opinion, you do succeed in learning a language once you arrive at a intermediary level that allows native level conversation and content consumption without much effort.

    Other ways to measure some form of success: Passing the JLPT, attaining a language related university degree, obtaining well paying job opportunities.

    One thing I can tell you for sure: I know of no one that managed to skip Kanji and still managed to learn Japanese. We can talk about some fringe cases that likely do exist, but to me, those are not representative.

    I give you one thing: If your personal goal is being able to speak a few sentences during your holiday visit, you want to be able to say “hello”, “goodbye” and “thank you” – feel free to skip Kanji. But if you seriously want to learn the language, understand some of the subtle connotations that can come with specific Kanji and word-choices, there simply is no way around learning Kanji.

16. It comes down to how much focus to put on kanji and at what level of your study, ultimately. I’ve know folks who are pretty good at conversation with very little kanji knowledge, as well as folks who have learned 1000+ kanji and are good at reading, but struggle to hold an everyday conversation. There is a real risk in spending too much time learning kanji too early, when the focus should be first on natural speech patterns and grammar; you can always learn more kanji but you will have trouble correcting bad grammar or pronunciation years in.

17. Without kanji, forget about understanding subtitles

18. People here keep saying “more complicated” grammar
    When put into real perspective even very basic Japanese is way harder to learn without kanji

    It’s not absolutely necessary if you’re living and breathing Japanese for decades
    My coworkers can speak excellent Japanese but can’t read to save their lives (literally making critical errors at work because they can’t read basic kanji) but they’ve been in Japan 30 years each. It doesn’t have to take that long to learn how to speak to a decent level and not even know how to read.

    I learned kanji and I’m already infinitely better than them at reading and am better than them at speaking as well.

    Learning kanji speeds up the process at which you acquire the language because it creates context and much reference for your learning.

    Basic words (again, when put into perspective, these are actually easy and can be found in everyday locales when adulting in Japan) like 捕獲、補給、and 店舗 are all much MUCH more easy to remember if you know the sound clue radicals.

    Knowing kanji really well takes a gigantic load of your brain when trying to get anywhere with the language.

    Necessary? This is all sounding the same lol
    When is anything ever necessary? Lol
    Just learn kanji and find out why people say it

    It’s impossible to convince someone of certain things if they lack the knowledge to even begin to comprehend why

    Any person I know who’s fluent in Japanese knows kanji (can read) and can speak

19. You can learn to speak Japanese without learning kanji. That doesn’t make it the best way, or even a good way to learn. In fact, for almost every second language learner, it’s completely infeasible. But it’s **theoretically** possible. Beyond that, I think this discussion is kind of pointless.

20. This [entire thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/12xkebn/%E9%80%9F%E3%81%84_vs_%E6%97%A9%E3%81%84_what_are_other_examples_of_words_that/) sums up why not learning Kanji would be inefficient. Homophones, homographs, or the same word/pronounciation but different kanji to further specify meaning, is integral to language learning. Yeah, context will tell you the difference between “early” or “fast” when spoken. Some of these others, though? Japanese, while limited on the amount of sounds it makes orally, is sooooo fascinating when studying Kanji. This thread is essentially why I chose Japanese as my major.

21. Because no one is *really* asking “is it hypothetically possible?” when they ask questions like this.

    The motivation for the question is never academic; it’s fear of kanji or laziness or lack of time. People are looking for an *excuse* to avoid doing the thing they’re afraid of.

    And the answer is that avoiding kanji is creating a huge handicap for yourself for no reason. But the *idea* is very seductive to people who don’t know better.

    Is it *possible* to build a house without using any nails? Of course it is. And if you’re living in a civilization with no access to iron, you’re going to figure out how and your house will be fine. But if you go to a DIY carpentry subreddit and ask that, the answer is generally going to be “no” other than the one guy who wants to well-actually everyone about sashimono, ignoring how many more years that will take to learn, especially on your own, and ignoring the fact that you live across the street from a hardware store.

    And unlike the woodworking example, I can’t really imagine anyone with a passion for going out of their way and spending substantially more time (and money) for the beauty of being completely illiterate.

22. Its more possible if you are surrounded by spoken japanese, and can ask questions to people about things you don’t understand. (Edit: nowadays we also have access to online teachers through sites like italki, which could be used to learn to speak without knowing kanji. but this could get expensive) Because if you don’t have someone you can ask that, most of the questions you have can only be answered by an internet search. And after a certain level most answers will be written using kanji because eople who are studying highlevel japanese ask questions to native speakers in japanese and get responses in Japanese

    You’re right in saying that children learn spoken language without reading. But this is only to a certain point. They learn to read eventually, and their language ability increases with that because theres a lot more language learning resources at their disposal. I mean, try learning scientific language without either a textbook or easy access to someone who knows it. You aren’t just gonna pick it up.

    I get that with youtube we can pretty much have access to spoken language about any topic, and you can learn through this. But it’s limited to only what you hear. And unless you find a channel where the creator is willing to have coversations with you in the comment section in only kana, you’re not gonna be able to ask questions. You wont be able to get any feedback. (which is crucial for langauge learning. It’s not just input like some people think. you need input, output and feedback)

    TLDR: Is it possible? Yes. Is it conveinient? No.