Compose post - Kanji for us

Jimbo (Guest) 2007-09-23, 07:55

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Nothing to debate here. It is harder in Japanese.

The core 3000 characters will take you 99% of the way in any of the languages. I know them in Chinese (and a lot in Korean) but the Japanese usage is just, ahem, a pain. Either that or there is no more space in my pea sized brain.

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(Administrator) 2007-07-07, 20:47

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Subject: In which language are Chinese characters harder to master?

Those who study Chinese believe that because there are more characters to learn, that Chinese is the harder language to master in terms of reading.

But isn't it easier once you've learned a certain number of them? The hardest time while learning is the first 500 for sure. Since at that point, you've just begun getting used to looking at them.

After that, you've got components which you can recognize and use to remember them a little better.
Unless of course you are using a component-building approach. Then you start off learning them more efficiently.

But when it comes to reading, surely Japanese is much harder to master for two reasons. One is that Japanese Kanji have inherently mutiple readings. There is usually a Japanese-based reading, sometimes more than one of those, and there are one or more Chinese-based readings. I think the less frequently the character is used, the fewer readings there are. The problem here is that when you come across the word, you must do more processing to come up with the reading. Of course, the more you read, the quicker you get at it.

The other problem with mastering Japanese Kanji is that they aren't used as often. You might at first think that is great, however that means that the characters aren't being reinforced as often either. If you look at a typical page in a Japanese book, you will find only maybe 30% of the characters on the page are Kanji. Whereas Chinese is 100% Hanzi. Chinese can be written in nothing but Hanzi. But Japanese can pick and choose when they would like to use Kanji.

There are quite a few words too where more than one Kanji is available to choose from. Take the word meaning 'to understand.' It can be written in one of four ways:
わかります。
分かります。
解ります。
判ります。

There are words also that are almost always written only in kana. I remember being surprised to find some of those words actually have Kanji. And then I wonder, why did this person decide to use the Kanji instead of the kana like everybody else? It's kind of like, how long is it going to take for me to remember this Kanji when not many people are using it for this word? You see, there's no good reinforcement.

The argument that Chinese has characters with multiple readings too is pretty lame. Most of them are merely a change in tone. How hard is it to remember that compared to completely different readings? Plus, they are in far far fewer numbers.

Of course, I think nobody can objectively compare the two systems. Once you know one system, the other one is quicker to master than for a person starting out for the first time.

Another point to consider on the road to mastery of Chinese characters is the availability of graded readers and learning material. It used to be that there were a lot more materials for Japanese than Chinese. But now that learning Chinese as a second language has come into full swing, the tides have reversed. Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that the population of China is 10 times bigger than that of Japan, so there are more talented Chinese to write these resources.

Well, that is all I'll say for now. Anybody is free to reply to this post. You don't have to register to reply. So please join in!

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