can someone explain to me the difference between kanji and vacabulary. What is the difference and… - Feed Post by Zanolon
can someone explain to me the difference between kanji and vacabulary. What is the difference and which should I do first
posted by Zanolon
Comments 21
Vocabulary items are words. When you study a vocabulary item, you study what the word means, how it is pronounced, and how it is spelled.
Kanji are single characters, mostly borrowed long ago from Chinese. They have meanings, but they are not usually complete words by themselves. They are used in spelling longer words. Most kanji have at least two readings (two ways they are pronounced). When you study a kanji, you study its meaning(s), its readings, and how it is used in words.
You should probably go back and forth between studying vocabulary and studying kanji. Generally speaking, you should at any time have completed approximately the same number of vocabulary lessons and kanji lessons.
So if I were to make a notebook of the words I needed to know, I would wright the vocabulary and not the kanji?
- Most words are written using a combination of kanji and hiragana. For instance, the word "muzukashii", meaning difficult, is written 難しい. The same kanji, 難, is read "nan" in the word 難解 ("nankai", difficult to understand). Eventually, you need to know kanji as well as vocabulary words to read and write Japanese. You can focus mainly on the meanings and pronunciations of the words if you are more interested in speaking Japanese and understanding spoken Japanese; but if you are interested at all in reading and writing, kanji and vocabulary are equally important.
- sorry to bother you, but last question, how come some kanji can be pronounced more than
one way
- Most kanji have at least one pronunciation which comes from a native Japanese word, and at least one pronunciation which comes from an imitation of how a Chinese word is pronounced. Some have more than one of each, however.
Why does the combination of letters "ei" have different pronunciations in the following words: either, height, eight, weird, deign?
Why is the same vowel sound spelled differently in the following words: meet, meat, mete, piece, peace, he, weird?
Some languages (Spanish, for example) have more consistent spelling rules than others. I don't know whether English is your first language, but English spelling is a nightmare for most people who learn it as a second language.
Despite some disadvantages, the great advantage of kanji spellings of words in Japanese is that if you know the kanji, it is fairly easy to guess the meaning of a word you have never seen before. This is not usually the case in English. - ok, thanks. English is my first language so this explanation makes a lot of sense. Kanji pronunciations are based on context, while english is based off of the fact that english is english
... what? English pronunciations are based off the fact that English is English? Sigh...- BETTER NERF GRENINJA. That was a joke. Sorry if you didn't get it
- Ah. Ha. Ha ha ha.
- *gasp* you understood it!!
- Sure.
English is not my first language, but I don't have much trouble about that. I am mostly reading and listening English, so my speaking and typing are shite. I think that the most tricky thing about English was the "th" sound, as it doesn't exist in Portuguese (my native language). But now I am used to English, it is hard to remember troubles I had, perhaps because another one shows off.- Ah, I forgot to type my main subject. ––
Brazilian Portuguese has a lot of words that aren't pronounced as it written form, and it also depends on the people, because of the accents. - That's the same for Japanese people trying to learn English, the "th" does not exist, neither does "wo" as in woman (so their "woman" often ends up sounding like oooman), their ら is between what we would use for r and l... the issues go on. If they learn English early on it's easy enough to overcome, but the later in life they study it the more difficult those pronunciation issues are.
- English spelling is especially hard for Chinese and Japanese speakers. For Chinese speakers, it is hard because they have to get used to the idea of alphabetic writing at the same time as dealing with the inconsistencies in spelling. Alphabetic writing is also a challenge for Japanese speakers-- kana are phonetic, but they represent complete syllables, not individual consonants and vowels-- but the main challenge is that English has so many more vowel sounds than Japanese has, and many of them are hard for Japanese speakers to distinguish. Imagine trying to memorize how various sounds which you find hard to distinguish are spelled, and then discovering that they are spelled inconsistently.^^
- Spelling, for the most part, is taken care of for Japanese youngsters by the schooling system which will drill the words repeatedly forever. On the other hand, the average Japanese student, even at most, will have at BEST ten minutes a week of practical spoken English use.
- I was wondering, when a foreigner speaks English, does he speak weirdly? I noticed that when English and Japanese speakers (and others as well) speak Portuguese (fluently), they speak different, they are understandable, but don't sound natural. Is it the same to any other language?
- Of course. This is true of any language after a person has become a certain age. I know people who can speak very well, but you still know that English is not their first language, and nothing would ever convince you otherwise. Not that it matters, really.
I think except for the fact that it is hard for Japanese to pronounce the English at all, it is also because, although you have letters that are supposed to be spoken the same, every word is different. It is close to impossible to know how an English word is actually spoken just by reading it, you need someone to tell you how exactly to pronounce it.
Which (now that I think about it) makes it actually kind of similar to kanji.
@Arachkid: What do you mean by "practical spoken English use"?
In my school, you have about 2 or 3 hours of trying to imitate a CD or a teacher (already with a strong Japanese accent) , and if the "International course" I am in wouldn't force them to, I don't think anyone would ever freely speak any English at all.
Students from other classes are struggeling a lot only trying to tell me that they "dount... speek Ingrish". It is kind of cute, but makes you doubt the teaching system a lot.
@Zanolon: Sorry for going so far off topic :-)- I mean conversation with a (hopefully native speaking) foreigner. But instead, they get foreigners (generally not native speakers, but hey, Brazilians who learned English at school are the same thing, right?) into their school, generally have them doing as close to nothing much of the time, and instead do what they have always done. Not teaching English, teaching students to pass entrance examinations based on English as a subject. I end up teaching more English in my own school, which is just an eikaiwa juku, than I do in actual school. They speak natural English, learn to "roll with the punches" (what do you do when you haven't practiced a particular speech pattern 5,000 times?!), etc. Instead, the Japanese government is focusing on teaching Japanese students English test taking earlier. Ah well.
- English teaching in Brazil also sucks. And students hate it because of this "test thing" you mentioned.
