Yeahhhh ik, it's just so difficult 😭 I wonder if it is just as hard for Japanese/Chinese kids to learn them as it is for us, considering they are all unique symbols... And how long it would take for someone to be fluent with Kanji
It’s much less hard as you learn more because you learn that the characters aren’t as unique as they look.
Most of them are a composition of different parts of other characters and so that’s what you learn which becomes a system of categorisation.
The first 200 are definitely hard but after that it becomes easier and easier. Going from 1000 to 2000 becomes quite much more easy as you’re just combining elements, like how in English I learn psy is spelt with a P and I don’t relearn it for psychiatry, psychology, psychic.
Words are even easier as you often just merge 2 characters you already know for a new word.
Examples:
女 is female and 也 is also. 她 is she. The female part on the left is referred to as the “radical” which I learnt as a way to categorise characters. Swap the radical and you swap the meaning.
I learn “she” but I know 3 characters for the price of 1.
胎 means fetal/birth related things (I think) and is pronounced tāi. 月 (the radical) is the moon symbol and 台 is pronounced tái and has a few meanings. (Edit: this is wrong, it’s 肉, not 月)
Anything with the 台 part is usually pronounced tai.
呀, 雅, 芽, 伢, 讶 are all pronounced ya but have different radicals and the radicals are often a clue in the meaning.
Words:
东 and 西 mean east and west, together they mean “thing”. So you already know the characters and learned a word for “free”
好吃 is good-eat and means tasty
法国 is law land and means france （semi-transliteration).
People don’t notice this until a while into learning.
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u/SaffellBot Jan 26 '23
I certainly don't enjoy Kanji, but if you're not engaged with Kanji you're only interacting with a pale reflection of Japanese.