A English guy was asked, ‘How’s the kanji study going?’ to which he replied, ‘Finished’!
Could that be true? Even assuming he was referring to the standardised list of kanji, it’s almost unimaginable to me. Photographic memory?
My kanji ability is decreasing rather than increasing…
Yes, mine too. Being out of Japan really doesn’t help one’s kanji-retaining ability. Hell, even my wife will admit that it affects her too, and she’s a native!
Yeah, a lot of the Japanese people I know here report similar experiences!
I must say that unless you write kanji on a regular basis, using some kind of story based memory system might be best for long-term retention. What do you think?
To be honest, I think that I’m happy just trying to keep my kanji-reading abilities up to scratch by reading stuff, and relying on my computer and mobile phone’s auto-complete facility for ‘writing’. I never have a need to actually physically write kanji on paper, so I can’t say I’m too fussed about losing that. And I really have lost that.
I just need to keep reading and typing. I’m finding Twitter is very handy for that, as it pushes 140-character mini stories at me (from Japanese people I may or may not actually know) throughout the day, and I can respond in similar short bursts if and when I feel like. It’s a good low-stress learning tool for me.
Same here. My kanji reading is still okay and inching forward, but my kanji writing is just slowly going down the drain. Probably will even forget how to write 私 soon. haha.
Mark, I’m not sure about your definition of writing! But yes, in this day and age writing by hand is almost a novelty. Still, there are times when being able to write kanji by hand would be useful, admittadly most of which would be in Japan.
I still haven’t really got into Twitter. 140 characters seems too short! But I suppose their size makes them more manageable to digest in a foreign language. Your kanji reading ability is inching forward? I think mine is probably heading backwards.
James,
I was scratching my head for a while wondering if I hadn’t seen ‘watashi’ in your comment whether I would have been able to write it or not. That is plain freaky!
I don’t have a problem with writing kanji per se, but more problem with how they sound in hiragani.
For example the kanji for Fish: when is it sakana and when is it gyo?
Well, normally in compound words you’d go for the on-yomi and otherwise use kun-yomi. Unfortunately there are so many exceptions to this rule. How frustrating!
Sorry if I’m stating the obvious but I’m not sure of your level.
What are Onyomi and kunyomi? These are new to me.
Onyomi refers to the Chinese reading(s) - gyo - and kunyomi refers to the Japanese reading(s) - sakana.
http://thejapanesepage.com/node/1291