I know kanji can be intimidating if you want to learn Japanese. But don't be discouraged! Spoken Japanse isn't as difficult as many people may think. In fact, basic Japanese grammar can be pretty easy because Japanse verbs are pretty regular, unlike English. (If you are a native English speaker, consider this: see, saw seen, do did done, speak spoke spoken, give gave given, sit sat sat, hit hit hit--English verbs are pretty irregular!) In fact, you can start making Japanese sentences TODAY and I offer some free Japanese lessons. Interested? Subscribe here bit.ly/2MZRlzS
I think kanji is an important part of culture. If Japanese abandon kanji Japan will lost tons of culture and a big gap between young and old generation. Korea and Vietnam are both a good example, even the modern generation can't be able to read or understand what the writing of their ancestors. For the 'racist honor' to abandon kanji, which is an important part of culture, it's not worthy.
That Japanese Man Yuta As a Chinese people, I think English is very easy to learn and its grammar is much easier than that of Japanese. Emm...Kanji is of course the easiest part to learn for me.
+Protagonist The lack of spaces is what really slows me down when reading Japanese. I know hiragana, katakana, and some kanji, but when I see it all in one block, it really screws with my eyes and i start to have difficulty recognising the differences
Protagonist It's a wierd situation to be in. My native language is English, and my strongest way of understanding is visual, so I pick up written information really quickly - in Japanese it gets reversed, visually I slow down due to trying to work out where the word breaks are, but I recognise a lot better when hearing it...
***** ditto. a lot of the time I will incorrectly assume where a word breaks then be left with a very confusing sentence. In english it would probably look something like this.... Actual sentence: "Can you please pass the salt?. My interpretation: "Canyo uplea sepass thesalt?
Pretty much rest of the world: "lets put space in between words as a divider" Japanese people: "you know what imma use 3 different alphabets as a word divider" Chinese: "word divider? what's that?"
People occasionally criticise my English, but they are never specific. So, can you guys help me out a little bit? Is there any word I pronounce that sounds weird to you? Is there any consistent mistake I make?
Even if you have a bit of a japanese accent what you say is still fully understandable. I think it's the rhythm or the tempo of your speaking that's strange. You tend to add these short pauses between phrases of a sentence as if you needed time to build up one. I wouldn't consider it annoying, let's say it's buffer time. Maybe it comes from japanese but since I don't speak the language, I can't tell
+That Japanese Man Yuta In general, I think your English is very good. I've never had any trouble understanding anything you say. The most common pronunciation slip-ups happen with "d", "r", and "l" sounds at the end of a word: 5:14, 5:18 "words" -- the 'd' isn't hard enough, which makes it sound like "whirs" 5:44 "couple" -- the 'l' is glossed over, making it sound a bit like "a cup of" There's a few other things, though, like: 5:11 "large" -- sounds a bit more like "lurge." Occasionally there's an extra "s" thrown in at the end of a word, making it plural when it should be singular: 5:45 "a couple hundreds" instead of "a couple hundred" -- the word "hundred" is being used as an adjective here. This is more apparent if you take the implied "of kanji" into consideration: "a couple hundred (of kanji)" vs "a couple hundreds (of kanji)" 8:08 "meanings of new words" -- implies that each new word has multiple meanings Words in which there are 3 consecutive consonants: 8:17 "scripts" -- the "t" was dropped entirely here, which makes it sound like "scrips." I would imagine that this is not an easy one. It has a beatbox hi hat quality to it.
+That Japanese Man Yuta The rhythm when you speak sounds off. I can't quite describe it, but if you listen to recordings of your own voice against those of native speakers, you'll notice something just isn't quite right. You tend to drop vowels and consonants in places that sound odd. On occasion you're adding vowels or dropping consonants at the ends of words which is fairly common for native Japanese speakers. You're also slurring letters together where an English speaker wouldn't. Honestly you don't have to worry about it, it comes off as an accent and nothing more. It's not as though you're incomprehensible or hard to understand.
@@테무진-s4d China has a history of five thousand years How many years of history does South Korea have The whole world knows that Chinese characters originate from China
Actually the real reason was because only men were allowed to read kanji. Women just needed to stay in the house, that's why they're called okusan\kanai or "house person" while men are shuujin "master"
I know that some Japanese see France as cultural center of Roman Culture but adopting this god damn language is a really bad bad idea. After max 5 years there would be protests "give back kanji" written in... Kanji.
As a French person it caught me by surprise too... why tf would Japan give up its entire language for French ? It might be closer on a grammatical / phonetical pov to Japanese than English or any other, still giving up an entire language seems pretty insane to me.
A guy: How do we make Japanese more readable? Another guy: Let's just add spaces between words! Third guy: I have better idea! Lets use 3 different scripts instead! All: GREAT IDEA!
I think they don't use spaces so the text looks more beautiful, especially that their letters are big and complicated it will also make the sentence so much longer... that's what i think
@@cueiyo6906 but it's not like you got 50 readings for every kanji. I got no problem with memorizing characters, but unless you already know the word, every time I meet kanji in a text I'm like.. ee.. how do I read it?
7:078:10 As a Japanese, I want to add No.4. The fourth reason is our kanji names. Kanjis are used for quite a lot of Japanese names. Let's suppose if I have a son and decide to name him "Yuta". There are a lot of possible ways/combinations for spelling "Yuta" in Japanese since there are so many kanjis that can be read "Yu" or "Ta". For example, ・Yuta 優太 ... 優(Yu = "gentle", "excellent", "Superior" etc.) ＋ 太(ta = "thick", "grand" etc.) ・Yuta 勇大 ... 勇(Yu = "courage", "bravery" etc. ) ＋ 大(ta = "large","big", "great" etc. ) ・Yuta 雄多 ... 雄(Yu = "male", "masculine" etc. ) ＋ 多(ta = "many", "much" etc. ) ・Yuta 結詩 ... 結(Yu= "tie", "bind", '"join' etc.) ＋詩(uta ="poem", "poetry") (By the way, "-ta" is a typical pattern for boy's names. e.g. Yuta, Kenta, Ryota, Shota, etc.) So, which kanji should I give him for "Yu" and "Ta"? If I wanted him to be a gentle child, I might name his "Yu" part as "優"(Yu ="gentle"), not the others. If I want him to be braver, I might choose "勇"(Yu = "courage") instead of other "Yu"s. Parents often name their children with their own special hope, and the kanji(s) they chose is(are) like the symbol of it. In that sense, when there are two men named "Yuta", their names are different even though the pronunciation is the same. If we abandon Kanji, that means we throw away this culture, too.
@@azirmandias4191 I don't think very often, because the use of kanji itself makes it obvious at first glance. A kanji can often be part of a common phrase, for instance 勇 brings to mind naturally 「勇気」(courage). Just like how English speakers might think of a phrase with a certain word in it when they hear that word alone devoid of any context.
Actually, I have been studying Chinese, and when I went to Japan the first time, I was able to recognize and understand kanji even when I never studied Japanese
Yeah, if you have learned Chinese Characters, it is so convenient when you travelling in Japan. Because it's very easy for you to read and remember place names.
Imagine why English (or any other language) uses numbers - also just to make it more readable: I was born in nineteen ninety-nine, and I have learned one thousand, two hundred and fifty-six kanjis since twenty seventeen. I was born in 1998, and I have learned 1,256 kanjis since 2017. Sometimes kanji is like numbers to me, easier to read.
As a Chinese learner of Japanese, I really think kanji is the best part in the reading test. Even though I have no idea what pronunciation of these kanji I can guess the meaning of them which helped me a lot in the reading test.
This is me with my limited Kanji while studying beginner Chinese. 😂 Although, remembering the Chinese readings for every day Chinese is so much easier than Japanese for me. I started learning Mandarin Chinese last year and the teacher was so impressed that I'd handwritten the first homework assignment (a self-introduction) we were given, all in Chinese characters. And by the second week, I had memorised the readings for the next dialogue on the worksheet. I felt so powerful. I finally knew how Chinese people felt when they encounter kanji in Japan. 😂
I feel this but in the opposite direction, bc I'm learning Japanese I can vaguely guess the meaning when I see Chinese but have no idea how to actually say it lol
The only people who pronounce を different are singers though. Other than that it's always always o. は stays pretty annoying though. へ is kinda uncommon to see outside of it's particle usage, but for は it's sometimes it's hard to parse when it's a particle or a hiragana part of another word
As a chinese, i'm sure it's true! we have more than 6000 commonly used chinese characters. But there are more then 11200 in our dictionary which is used in primary school. In totally, maybe a number bigger than 120000.
@@jbgra2566 Which goes nicely with this little friend: 凹 Together they make 凸凹 (dekoboko) which really means uneven/jagged/bumpy, but looks like it could mean Tetris.
I'm a Chinese, recently learning Japanese, I'm really happy to see our culture relationship based on Kanji, I love the structure of Japanese, hiragana for creation, katakana for western, Kanji for our common ancestor. Love your Channel!
I'm curious about this, so I don't speak Japanese or Chinese, but i do know that Kanji is basically chinese characters. So in a way you can speak some japanese right?
That's not the only problem. And kanji are easy to understand once you memorize them, there is almost any ambiguity that a only hiraga/katakana text would have when reading
@@domino6490 Sorry lol I don't want to be rude, but could you please explain what you meant? Haha sorry, I'm not a native english speaker. If there's a kanji I have never seen before, there's a way to kinda know the pronounce, but that's only for nouns. So, yeah, unless you already know the word, you can't know the pronounce.
@@Sycokay Thanks a lot! Not that I personally had anything to do with it, of course ;-) But trying to learn Japanese and spending some time in Asia made me appreciate what we have in Europe so much more than before. I'll keep trying though! Japan was really cool.
@@firefly618 what are the odds of seeing another unOrdinary fan? Though we differ when it comes to other interests haha, if I had to pick from learning either Korean or Japanese, I'd probably pick Korean since I have a knack for different pronunciations and hate the idea of memorizing so many characters.
If you ever master Japanese or Chinese, I guarantee you'll end up finding the Latin alphabet lacking. It's easy to learn and easy to write, but Japanese and Chinese are on a whole other level. They're so informative, deep and colorful, it's quite difficult to describe in words. Simple letters seem dry and boring by comparison.
Using kanji can make the japanese characters looks beautiful and cultural, which is conforrmed with japanese culture and tradition. In fact, katakana and hiragana are also inspired from kanji. Another reason I considered kanji using by japanese is to keep in touch with and connect with Chinese helping japanese easier to access Chinese and traditional Japan. Korea waived kanji in 70s around. This policy resulted in Korean almost cannot read and write kanji today even though in 1970 the kanji was still essential and normally , widely used by korean people. Vietnam is also quite incredible, where you can see culture is very similar to China but characters in spelling. Vietnam also cannot read and identify kanji written in their historic books and carved on the pillars of temples they visits and pray every day.
china also attempted a phonetic script but it never really caught on for the same reason outline in the video (too many word has same sound). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo#History
i'm deeply touched by the last part. we shared such a long memory for thousands of years, once we loved each other, once we fought each other, once we tried to help each other, once we walked away with each other. But still there's something deeply in our mind, that we can't help to think, hey is that guy ok now?
This sounds like if English speakers were to randomly switch back and forth between Latin and Greek script and occasionally throw in some old runes just for the fuck of it.
Oh, no, upper (capital) and lower case is only one system. The upper and lower case both represent the same letter, and most often they are very much alike in form: it's a lot a font issue, for example hand written is often very different from printed letters. Capitals are used for stylish reasons, to emphasize. The lower case obviously developped for faster writing and better readability. You can even have fonts where there is only one case, or you could use another font for capitals to make the writing appear more stylish: for example old handwritten books used decorated capital letters in the start of a page or a paragraph.
yeah, its not a font issue, they have rules in it, bue still, they have the same meaning/pronunciation, as you showed, "c is the same as C", example "I'm going to buy a case","Buy a case!", the meaning of "buy" is the same, the "b-B" is just for formal reason, if you mispell the word in informal cases no one would remark that
Yuta, before I give the opinion you requested on the quality of your spoken English, I must first say that your kanji video is excellent, in my opinion (you could clearly be a university instructor, if you wished). As for the matter of your English language diction and vocabulary, I think that both are equally good (indeed, based on this fact alone, I'd hire you to work alongside me as a researcher and policy analyst in Canada without hesitation--seriously!). Yes, you do have a Japanese accent, but this does not impair your clarity or linguistic competence. Indeed, as is often the case, you--as a foreigner who has clearly made great effort to study the English language--speak it much better than many native English speakers do (unfortunately, the internet gives idiots with stupid or misinformed opinions the ability to unnecessarily criticize your English when there is, in fact, no real basis for doing so). Furthermore, one of the nice things about the English language is that, as a global language, it affords people from all around the world an opportunity to diversely express themselves in their own, slightly unique ways; something that actually promotes better understanding between persons from different countries. So, please, Yuta: by all means, continue to speak English in your preferred, natural way! :)
+That Japanese Man Yuta i agree, my personal opinion is well your English is perfectly fine i understand every word its only the accent that morphs certain words but nothing that makes your hard to hear, that being said there's not much wrong with that and even if it was there's not much to do about it, its the same with me learning japanese i can learn every word in the book and yet my british accent would make words sound different but there's no fixing how you grow up to speak is there. thanks for video by the way it was very insightful :) Brandon
No, ill will like yours is embarrassing, and before you think about criticizing or 'improving' Yuta's English, you may want to improve the caveman-like quality of your own English first: you should have used the word 'wants' in your first sentence. By the way, buddy, newsflash: English is, indeed, a very fluid and widely spoken language, meaning that there really is no universally correct way to speak it--my encouragement of Yuta was based on genuine admiration and respect and therefore in no way 'toadying' in nature.
漢字 is so useful to learn new words. If you see a new word written in kanji you know, you can guess the language better than with only the reading. It's amazing and I love it although I only know around 300 kanji Also, I've noticed that for some Japanese streamers I know it takes longer to read a hiragana only phrase than a kanji one. I didn't understand until I started learning myself
Japanese use a LOT less kanji now than they did 50 or 60 years ago. Look at a Japanese movie poster from the 1950's and it almost looks like Chinese, with Kanji for everything. Nowadays, many of those words would be in kana. Unless someone is trying to be "old-fashioned", you would never write coffee as 珈琲, you just use コーヒー. There are many similar examples. But Japanese will probably never give up Kanji. I remember how much time we spent choosing the right Kanji for our daughter's name and what a big deal it was. And, if you know the kanji, it's a lot easier to read 東京 than とうきょう (Tokyo), even with spaces.
I was talking about spaces between words. For example: 私は東京に住んでいます。 わたしはとうきょうにすんでいます。 If you can read kanji, the first one is much easier to read. If Japanese wrote like this: わたし は とうきょう に すんで います。 than maybe the kana-only sentence would be easier to read. But, except in children's books, they don't do that.
The space issue is actually not the main factor why Japanese has to use Kanji. The second reason mentioned in the video, which is the homophones issue is the main reason why Japanese has to use Kanji
jion Je then japanese is a problematic language if they could not think of concepts like: spaces between words and not calling 20 different things with the same sound. Modern day Japanese people seem to waste a lot of time of their education learning this complicated system that carries loads of problems just for tradition purposes.
@@jion3795 actually, many languages have homophones or words with slightly different pronunciations. "Perfect" homophones are generally not a problem because they can be guessed from the context (or a careful writer can clarify), for words that are written using the same letters there are generally special notations like umlaut in many germanic languages or accents in many roman languages. (by the way, English is an exception, if native English speakers are confused about why Japanese still use kanji I am personally also confused about how uselessly complex are vowels in English -e.g. some "a" pronunciations "overlapping" with "e" and "o"-. In the end the answer is that written languages are usually highly conservative, there is no solid reason to avoid a gradual shift to a simplified system but it won't happen easily.
@@mehegama Yeah exactly. I have heard that they spend quite a lot of time learning kanji in cram schools and during their vacations. That is a lot of effort to put in when you can just learn the concept of spaces instead.
Actually, in terms of "creating", the answer is NO. This video analyze the usage of Kanji in modern Japanese writing system, and see that it's great without Kanji if there's a space character. However, historically, Kanji is first added (I'm not using the word "created" cause they're from Chinese) to the Japanese writing system. Hiragana and Katakana are created after that.
Kanjij is the oldest of theese three languages and it is also called Chinese. Maybe you have heard of this language before 😜. The other two languages were created of a long time.
English is a bit of an exception because of its spelling shenanigans but in most language if you remember how it sounds you can write it, Japanese doesn't have this feature so even if I knew how something sounded and wanted to transmit this idea to other people you'd have to know an almost arbitrary symbol. this is hugely ineffective and basically cements the idea that form should follow function, which the japanese language does not, it follows idiotic tradition.
While we probably should move to a universal measuring system, you can't even compare it to Kanji. Our measurements are easily understood by the 300 million people here, and at a rate far higher than 78% I'd wager. And nobody on a daily basis even measures that often. People do read and write/type on a daily basis however. It's extremely important to have a writing system that is functional and easy to grasp. I can't remember the last time someone said waah the imperial measurements are hard waaa.
@@Halo3ninja28 It's not hard, it's inconsistent. You're using a measure system that relies purely on guess. You can never get accurate results because you don't have submultiples and multiples like the metric system. If you don't want to use feet on a smaller number, you use inches. But what if the number is smaller than inches? You can't do it. But with metric, if you don't want to use metres, you can render it down to centimetres. If it's still too high, millimetres and so on. Metric is arguably better and I don't see an instance where imperial would be useful apart from exaggeration.
I'll give you 1776 guesses as to why the US didn't adopt the Imperial System (standards) that England adopted around 1824. The US customary system got its start based on the older Winchester Standards not the Imperial System. It's OK to say the US customary system uses many English units, it is incorrect to say the US uses the Imperial System. That is why an Imperial gallon is about 4.546 liters while a US customary gallon is about 3.785 liters. We are attached to that system just like the Japanese are attached to kanji. We are slowly changing to SI (metric).
@@Jalae nah, you would get use quite fast. Just take any text in your native language, delete all the spaces in Word or LibreOffice or any text editor and try. After few lines you will get use and your brain will just ignore the lack f spaces most of the times
@@SyrianSoaper for the people who for some reason are oblivious to the reason why this is exausting is apparent in this example. It is called PATTERN MATCHING. it's how you read. when all the letters are jumbled you need to add an extra process to find and split up the words for comprehension. You can't skip to symbolic chunking of the word data directly. The results in extra work on your brain, for instance to see it's not "regetting into" but "re getting into" over the course of a sentance, who cares. a page or 2 no big deal. over the course of a book however? not so insignificant anymore. i expect a 7% decrease, maybe more.
I started learned Korean and Japanese at the same time. I dropped Korean and continued Japanese mainly because I love kanji. I even started to learn shodo (Japanese calligraphy). Kana shodo is fun too and has its own appeal, but writing kanji is my favorite.
The abolition of kanji in Vietnam for roman letters were actually due to evangelical motives by various missionaries from European nations to Indochina. Roman characters were originally only used by Vietnamese Catholics, but the French colonial government were sucessful killing off kanji by mandating it in the early 20th century. They had the upper-hand however since Vietnam's writing system lacked standarisation at the time
When you start to write in Japanese you realise how time-saving kanji is. It would be a tremendous pain to write everything in hiragana. As you said Yuta, it also makes reading much, much quicker.
It's crazy, but if you think about it, they are just progressively speaking english, so at the end of this century the results will be the same. (Not that is different in any other country though)
Vital Mendoza not really. More people speak English in India than in America but still they prefer to speak Hindi or their mother tongue rather than English. English is mostly spoken as formality and in businesses
@@arnavbibra4958 Of course they don't speak english as their fist language yet, but we all speak english all around the world. Even in Spain people is forgetting about their own words and just saying "timing" instead of "sincronización". It's the same everywhere.
I’m learning Japanese and I’ve not started kanji but I’d been dreading it a little bit because of what everybody has been saying but hearing about everything in this I’m actually a little excited 😊 edit: I’ve started learning kanji and am actually enjoying it a lot :))
They are one but for learning common Japanese you just need to remember 2136 Kanjis whereas learning Chinese you need to memorize around 5000 hanzi to become fluent in Conversation.
The example of kanji as an old partner was quite beautiful, after all kanji is a big part of the reason why written japanese is so fascinating. The beauty of drawn words
Whether or not to keep kanji in Japanese writing reminds me of the debate about whether or not to do spelling reform in English to make written English more phonetic and thus easier to learn how to read and write English.
That's called Ebonics, cuz (cousin). Jokes aside, you do not know history. English started out AS Ebonics. Then later, the spellings were corrected to their etymological roots. I have the 2nd printed book in English: The Game and Play of Chess.
Hi. Thanks for the video. I'm a French girl currently falling in love with Japanese language and culture. Because it is so different from mine. I'm happy they kept a strong unique identity and language. That's what makes it so interesting. The difficulty attracts me too, I think it's such a great challenge to learn Japanese. Intellectually highly stimulating.
Korean: easier to write hard to pronounce and hard grammar Japanese: hard to write easier to pronounce hard grammar Chinese: hard to write hard to pronounce easier grammar
@@windlike3270 Yes, you suggest it to Japanese government, I believe they will do it. After all, they dare not to not obey their US masters, aren't they?
@@iXallace I do not know Korean at all, but I have seem their Kanjis(not sure if they have a different name for it), and it is even worse, at least for me😂
One thing I noticed when I studied Japanese in high school was that when we did review games before tests, writing words and phrases using kanji was faster than using all hiragana (for example, you’d be writing 1-2 individual characters instead of 5-6). I also see it as a way of abbreviating words and especially names, which can be useful if you don’t have much space in which to write.
this was actually very accurate. I just recently got addicted to everything japanese (from anime ofcourse) and your channel actually explains everything very well. keep up the good work!!!
4:38 I like how descriptive the word for inertia is: two kanji, 慣 (get used to) + 性 (nature of, quality of), so it means 'the quality of getting used to', which inertia actually is In my experience, the more you learn kanji, the more you notice how it sometimes becomes easier to understand the meaning of technical terms in Japanese as compared to English The latest example I have is 糖尿病, which is 'diabetes'; now, it is not easy to understand just from the word 'diabetes' what it means, but the kanji give the meaning of "sugary urine disease", so you immediately get the idea of this disease being related to sugar, and then to how sugar is ineffectively processed by the body
Interestingly enough it used to work the same way in English back when people learned Greek and Latin. The full term "diabetes mellitus," diabetes coming from greek "to pass through" and mellitus coming from latin "sweet" so combining it to mean along the lines of "[something] sweet to pass through" as in a "sugary urine" which would've made sense to educated people of the past but now are just fancy words to us that makes scientific concepts hard to understand for everyday English speakers.
I don't think it's recommendable to learn Chinese just to learn japanese. Chinese and Japanese don't share a lot beyond the characters and some minor cognates. If u really want to learn Japanese, I think you should just go for it.
@@erickblaw6708 To put it directly, no. Chinese and Japanese do share the usage of Kanji characters and slight similarities in certain pronunciations of them, but that's about it. It really is an advantage only for native Chinese speakers (or readers in this context), because only native readers would have association of meanings seeing the characters rapid enough to be helpful. On top of this, the grammar is actually quite different between the two languages, so nah don't learn Chinese as a bridge to learn Japanese. Wish you luck though!
@@yukisuzu7496 And I might add, the Chinese pronounciation is really hard. Japanese pronounciation is ... okay. Pitch accent is definitely hard, so it's really really difficult to sound native or near native, but overall it's a lot easier.
The spacebar is used by the IME (input tool) to switch between romaji => japanese conversion, IE switching between different versions of those homophones
If everything is in Hiragara or Katakana, then you need space. But the Japanese language is a combination of Hiragara, Katakana and Kanji. It's easy enough to read. Space is not needed. It would look very weird if space is added between every single vocabulary.
is 1 kanji character many other characters combined? Because it looks packed. I am learning kana now but even before starting that I could always see how much more packed Kanji was in comparison.
X Watson I'm a Chinese and that have always been a problem for me when I'm reading English... U can never just glance the text block and know what it's mainly talking about... I thought it's because my English level isn't high enough, but now it seems like there's no such thing in English? 😂😂 I always thought my English was lame because I glanced and saw literally nothing... Now I'm more proud of Chinese lol
@安荣 glance and know is possible in Russian, But you must be trained for this, need to be highly concentrated. In English it called skim or quick skim but you should abandon a lot of contents during quick skim.
Man, I remember when I was first learning Japanese and thought learning kanji was going to make Japanese much harder. Now I can't read Japanese without the kanji.
Use Anki, add sentences containing words in kanji you don't know and review them regularly. Immerse a lot in Japanese through tv shows, movies, anime, manga, podcasts, books... That's pretty much what you need to do.
Chose JAPN100 last term, and now I know why all my western classmates dropped the course after two weeks And why my Chinese classmates said it was a GPA booster
Alex Young yeah that’s why it’s 100 level. but I would say for us generally the kanji part wouldn’t be a problem even in upper level JAPN courses, at least compared with people with non-kanji background.
as a Japanese learner, The first time i studied the writing system, i said "why japanese made their writing system so complicated with kanji?!" i was really annoyed that i have to remember thousands of kanji in order to completely understand written japanese. Then over time i enjoyed writing and remembering Kanji, to the point that when our 先生 writes a japanese sentence in Hiragana only, i can't understand the context or the individual words because most words are completely the same and has the same spellings but has different meaning. it's true, Kanji makes it more easier to read and it acts as spaces. Now i just have to deal with thousands of them haha im still stuck at 150-200+ kanji i think
Well, I started learning kanji with "remembering the kanji" and it's not that hard for me. But I think the hardest part is the pronunciation of kanji, cause they have different ones. well, I'm trying to learn them separately(I'm learning pronunciations when I'm learning word). I hope I'll manage to learn kanji completely. also, I don't think Japanese people should stop using it because it is really big part of the culture and without kanji japan(and Japanese) will lose half of its identity.
@@jessicasmith7521 Um... To make sense of the shit they say? Like... There's at least around 30 Kanji with the same pronunciation. Having it in Kana, with no context, forces you to guess which of the 30 words they mean. That's the opposite of helpful.
Japanese: *don't have a writing system* Japanese: *start trading with the Chinese* Japanese: "oh crap we need a writing system" *shoehorn in a writing system designed for a completely different language*
I don't see any effective way of abolishing kanji. Ignoring the fact that it's part of the cultural heritage, it simply wouldn't be practical. We'd have to redesign significant parts of the Japanese language itself in order to pull that off, at which point I'm not sure we could call it Japanese any more.
Baka Oppai I disagree. Humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future. What you've suggested will probably never happen, even if something like a solar flare which would disrupt our electronics or some other natural disaster such as a meteor strike don't occur, there's no reason to believe that in the future we will all speak one language. Even if that was the aim of the majority of humans on the planet, which it definitely is not, it would be almost impossible to implement. There have even been (unsuccesful) attempts to make such languages in the past.
As a Chinese guy I must say that Chinese Character (kanji) is amazing. Might be hard to learn at the first sight, but once you master it... welcome to a whole new world😂. Believe me. We all love it
@@x-creator4460 Chinese characters are easy to read. less span to show the message. Take advantage of permutations and combinations . the English words increase are the explosion now.
@@x-creator4460 Chinese characteristics are more like symbols or drawings. It can be read much much faster than English, which is especially important in some emergencies.
@@Morjoey But there are so many characters to remember and I always wonder how it can be an efficient language in this internet age. There is no basic alphabet letters to make up a word so would it not be difficult to learn Chinese ? BTW, I am actually planning to learn Chinese when I retire and travel China.
Hey just to point out. As a Chinese I used to be very proud of the Chinese writing system. But ask yourself, if you are task to create a writing system right now, will you choose to use a very systematic way to do it? I will, because it is easier to create and pickup by others. Like Korean it is so systematic, you can learnt it in a day if you know how to speak the language. This is why young writing systems always prefer phonetics, and follows a very straight pattern. Then why Chinese don’t just Romanise? Because too many Chinese words sounds the same. And also ancient writing system has the ability to present hidden meanings, history, subtle feelings in just one or two characters, due to its rich history. So both types of writing systems has pros and cons. We should not feel superior of our writing system as compare to others.
Language isn't math. It evolves and breathe. With the exception of Hangul, which was systematically created (recommended watch: How Korea crafted a better alphabet - History of Writing Systems #11) and had the good fortune of it been accepted by the masses (with some modifications), writing systems usually evolve slowly over a long time. In the beginning, everything was written as symbols because people sought to recreate the world they've experienced. It took time before alphabets evolved from these symbols. China, on the other hand, continued using the symbols to represent their world (albeit with great modifications). It is what it is. Attempts to modify languages rarely stick (see: movements to simplify English spelling). Such is life.
Lol im japanese living in us and my son has asked me this very question before, because he struggled learn kanji! It is hard to learn kanji even for japanese ( oh all the tests for kanji as we had while growing up .. agh) ,
As someon who is learning japanese for 1-2 years now I have to say: the more you learn the more you appreciate Kanjis, because you can see what the sentences is about without reading it. and honestly learning new Kanjis is fun, at least for me. It is very rewarding to be able to read a japanese sentence without help :3
The only difficult things of Japanese kanji for chinese is japanese kanji multiple pronounciations and some "false friend" words meaning, example 手紙 in Japan is post paper but in China is toilet paper XD~
We don't call it, "post paper," though, we call it a "letter." (Virtually no English speakers will understand what you mean when you call it post paper.) It's implied and understood that it is sent through the postal system. Maybe this word helps us understand the mindset of Japanese and Chinese people and what's important to them though. If paper you carry in your hand means a letter to Japanese people, they must care a great deal about conveying thoughts and ideas to others no matter the distance. If paper you carry in your hand means toilet paper to Chinese people, they must care a great deal about dealing with shit. :p
@@Nyonics... dude what's ur problem. the Chinese just have a different set of characters for 'letter'. and despite the kanji Japanese and Chinese are two very different languages. idk where your theory comes from but it's nonsensical.
@@kushastea3961I try not to waste my time responding to stuff like this because I think my time is more valuable than that, but no, I was not, in fact, attempting to make a serious analysis. If you didn't understand that, now you do. If you did understand that...then what's YOUR problem? Because my problems don't include you projecting your own issues into whatever I've written somewhere on the internet. 分からないことならば黙ったら方がよろしい。
Nice one, Yuta. Love how you ended emotionally😊😊😍😍. Kanji is the major reason why I'm interested in learning Japanese. I like the fact that it is a drastically different concept of writing than what I have always known as a native English speaker. If Japanese people stopped using Kanji, I would loose interest in the Japanese language because neither Hiragana, Katakana, or Romaji gives me the kind of joy that Kanji gives me. 漢字がすきいです。
Exactly. Thanks to Kanji, it's much easier to learn new vocabulary because there's tons of words that you can make out of each Kanji. But Billy who still goes to Elementary School in Miami wants the Japanese to write in Romaji and use spaces because he isn't used to the fact that another country has an entirely different culture.
@@nakajimasara People who complain about japanese use of kanji usually don't demand they start using romaji, but hiragana or katakana (with spaces). Like, people are more comfortable using only one alphabet, so it's more convinient if everyone used the roman alphabet, but I understand some languages works better with other systems, it's not the end of the world to learn Cyrillic or Hiragana. Most people have trouble with kanji because it requires a much higher commitment and memorization. I can concede it has advantages, since it makes the text more compact, it allows for communication from nations with different languages to understand each other (if they both use kanji/hanzi). In this technological era though, I think logograms are a pain, but I think the japanese and the chinese have important cultural reasons not to ditch them, because that would create a huge disconnect between now and the past. But this makes it very unappealing for foreigners to learn those languages, but honestly, their languages would still be very hard even using an alphabet (see the case of Korean), and I don't think they mind if foreigners don't learn their languages very much, maybe they even prefer it that way.
So seeing as you guys know quite q bit of Kanji, and this seems like the best comment to ask on, can you give me a place where I can learn some Kanji? I'm having a lot of trouble with that part.
Chinese is becoming more popular so Kanji will be very useful. Vietnam completely removed Chinese characters, or Hán Tự (Kanji in Japanese or Hanja in Korean) so now we can't read old books or signs. It's not a big problem though, all ancient books are available in Vietnamese Alphabet, but the original form is very beautiful and easier to understand (if you can read Chinese).
As an English-speaker (technically bilingual, with Spanish), I must say that Vietnamese looks so daunting. Is it difficult to keep up with good orthography?
I don't know since I speak the language and i think it's simple. Our Alphabet system is actually very good, you can spell every single word easily. I guess it's the little rules that you need to remember which make Vietnamese seem difficult.
We were invaded by France, they introduced the Alphabet system in schools and forced the government to remove Chinese writing system. The teaching of Chinese characters was strongly discouraged or simply banned in schools and students were taught French and Latin based writing system instead. Basically, young generations back then couldn't read Chinese characters at all. Emperor Khải Định (啓定帝) eventually had to declare that classical Chinese no longer held official status. However, we have very few French words and most are not used anymore. I personally can't name more than 10 -15 words. Half of the vocabulary still have Chinese root and are used often.
Thang Nguyen I see. But do the Vietnam people nowadays mostly think they should keep using Latin alphabet? Or do any Vietnam people or scholars think they should reintroduce Chinese character?
I tell you why. Ancient Japanese have no own language. Because they close to China, Japanese wanted to learn and copy Chinese characteristics (or Kanji) for using. However it was difficult to write and pronounce. Fortunately, Chinese writing has a range of writing styles or fonts. One of them, called Cao Shu ( or Cursive script), which is fast writing style. Then Japanese simplified the Cao Shu into Hiragana and with their pronunciation system into Japanese language. Chinese characters are meaningful. One can be read into different pronunciations and different meanings by different situations, even different tones. Some people said it is hard to learn and use, but Chinese can easily read and understand the Japanese meaning.
While Chinese can’t read Japanese words verbally, they can still read them when written because the meaning of kanji is practically the same in either Chinese or Japanese. Ex. 昨夜(sakuya) and 昨夜 (zuo ye) are pronounced differently, but they both mean “last night.” Phonetics and different reading wouldn’t change anything.
Sakuya Westerias well, dont forget china have so many different dialects, mandarin pronunciations are just one of the Chinese. Many japanese pronunciations are from different Chinese dialects
language? Ancient Japanese have no character, letter, writing. So they passed down information to next generation by speaking, not by character. After they leaned Kanji from old china, they use it. They understood each Kanji meaning, but pronunciation was offcourse different from old china. So old china's pronunciation was called On-yomi and traditional japanese pronunciation of same Kanji was called Kun-yomi now.
This video is one of greatest videos in any categories I've seen in TH-cam. Thanks very much. I was also quite surprised that you mentioned Korea and Vietnam's cases.
JJAB91 in the way of expandability.as a chinese native speaker ,there are thousands of chinese characters,which is where kanji derived from.seemingly complicated but as long as you master a small part of it,you can be capable of recognizing countless of new words,like scientific words and newly-invented words that you might haven't seen it before.it is better to take kanji as prefix and suffix .yet I still take english as the most human-friendly language.easy to learn,easy to spread and accurate
In mandarin it has one reading, in Min it has multiple depending on use. Japanese has multiple reading for Chinese characters because they assign an On (音) reading and a Kun (訓) reading. Basically On readings are based off of Chinese readings, and Kun are readings according to its meaning in Japanese, which means most Kanji has at least 2 readings in Japanese (there are exceptions). However, that's only the tip of the iceberg. Because On readings are based off of Chinese readings, and the Chinese pronounciation changes according to location and time, the specific reading will be based off of when and where the term was adopted from China. There are generally four classification of On readings (Go 吳, Kan 漢, To 唐, Kanyo 慣用). Kun readings are based off the Japanese terminology according to the meaning of the word. However, because Japanese may have different terms to mean the same thing, and a character can have different meanings, and words may be pronounced differently in different situations, well, you see where this is all going.
kanji is fluid, flexible and accurate. it can make new words by combining sound and visual and meaning to arrive at the closest accuracy. the visual part gives depth in meaning.
There is a myth about Japanese saying they were originally Chinese people. The emperor of China sent a few people to find an elixir of eternity to live forever without dying. But the people sent by the emperor never return to China because they were all fearing the emperor's decision to kill them. So they find an island where they can live safely and changed their language to live safely.
Dav Chting I don’t know anything about the origin of Japanese people, but the idea of people breaking off from a group of people and creating their own language and culture has happened many times in history.
I agree 😂 I just realized a few weeks ago that I can pretty much get by on the contextual Chinese readings of characters without knowing the Japanese words to the kanji in question. Secret Chinese survival technique 🤣
understood also by Korean. The name Tokyo is written in Kanji, but pronounced different, still with the same meaning as original Kanji. To-kyo pronounced Dong Jing in Chinese, means beautiful scenery/landscape from East. How about North scenery and South scenery ? These are: Beijing and Nanjing
I have noticed that one single extra Kanji can often allow me to understand whole dialogues, since I understand all the sentences without any "obstacles" anywhere.
@@BygoneT Some words are written in Kana even when there exist commonly used Kanji characters for them, just to easen up the sentences a bit. It's very similar to how most people would prefer to write "two 100-dollar bills" instead of "2 $100 bills".
I find it cool that people can understand Latin even though we were never taught Latin, its just because English is close its latin descriptor. i.e: Solaris = Solis = Sol = Sun Stella = stellar = steorra = star In a way, English has it's own "hidden kanji"
As a Chinese that currently learning Japanese, I find it very confusing to learn kanji. As Yuta mentioned, kanji have many different pronunciation, but that is not the case in Chinese, Chinese words rarely have more than 2 ways of reading. What make me confuse more is the even though both languages have the same character, their pronunciation are different.
technically a kanji's 音読み is pure chinese but reduced to japanese pronounciation capabilities in 14th century. i think most kunyomi are consistent at least for each different meaning, like 生きる 生まれる, live = い（きる）, being born = う（まれる). But with onyomi all the japanese meanings are condensed into fewer (often just 1) chinese reading(s).
Idon'tthinkthosewhoinventwritingsystemscareaboutpeoplewithdyslexia Niewydajemisiężebycicowymyślająsystemypismamyślelioludziachzdysleksją IchglaubenichtdassdieMenschedieSchriftsystemeerfindendenkenanLegastheniker Actually, German does the best job at being redable without spaces
This video is absolutely amazing. Last part with the comparison of an unperfect marriage to the usage of kanji really impressed me and...it just makes sense! Thanks Yuta for the contribution you are giving with your videos to the worldwide netizens community!!!
がんばってね! I love kanji! Keep up the motivation! if you already know kana, maybe you could find useful the short kanji animations with mnemonics I'm making
As a Chinese, when I learn Japanese I am also struggling with Kanji because of its pronunciation. In China, we say interesting is 有趣，but in Japanese is 面白 which pronounce miàn bái in Chinese. I always get stuck. I have to restrain myself to stop thinking its Chinese pronunciation at that time.
As a Japanese, I face the same problem as you got when I learn Hanzi-related languages such as Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese and so on.. However while struggling with it, I'm gradually getting some algorithms. When I was focus on learning Mandarin, I mistakenly and unconsciously pronounced Chinese Hanzi sounds as the imported Sounds of Kanji（音読み） , which made my friend whom I talked to confused.. like he said "What do you mean?".
@@r9740 as a Cantonese, i would say it's quite easy to guess the kanji with its 音読み. but 訓読み is just hard to memorize, because there is no other language related to japanese except ryukyuan...unlike german, i could associate german words with english words
+That Japanese Man Yuta Wish I could help you out with the dating in Japan part, never been to Japan unfortunately nor have the financial means to do so. Would love to be there at some point though. For the video, think I understand what you are trying to say, thank you for explaining. So far i did not receive any lessons from you, but i'm sure you either are too busy or have to much on your mind for the moment. Ill be waiting for when they do arrive :)
+That Japanese Man Yuta What a pity, my brazilian friend just returned from Japan after living there with his girlfriend for some months, and I know he has been seeing other girls in Japan (slept with another 3 or so?) aside from his girlfriend. >_< (He's pretty tall, medium blonde hair, and looks very fashionable). If I manage to contact him, I'll try to send him to that link!
+That Japanese Man Yuta I do, had a date yesterday and one coming up this evening. However that doesn't happen when it's not the holidays...sleeping happens...precious sleep...
Another good point of using Kanji as a writing system is inter-readability between different languages. Think of them as emojis or drawings. My guess is that a vietnamese, chinese or korean guy (that know han zi) would be able to orientate their way around in Tokyo and read street signs for example. Even without actually knowing a word of the language. That wouldn't be possible with the latin alphabet that we use or any other phonetic writing system.
Also, I'm curious about the bit of Korea abolishing Kanji/Hanzi. How did they manage to overcome the problems you mentioned? All those ancient documents with Hanzi. What did they do?
+Fade Away important ones are translated and the rest are kept for Hanja literate people~~ in the old days King Sejong invented I guess, a new way of writing in Korean called Hangeul and introduced it so that people will be more literate... and now in the modern days most Korean don't use Hanja anymore, although most knows how to write Hanja for their own name and that's the limit of their Hanja knowledge as in daily life u don't actually need them and Hanja is only reserved for people who actually interested in them and wanted to learn it~~
Fade Away i am currently studying in South Korea and been here for 3 years, don't need any Hanja at all~~ I don't get what u mean by South Korea is still not discontinued???
Kyle Hudsons I mean. North Korea has officially discontinued Hanja completely. Not to be used on signs or newspapers and the like, while in South Korea, the language is Hangul, yes .....but Hanja is not "discontinued", you can still see it in some newspapers.
+Fade Away ah~~ okok... got what u mean~~ its true that a couple newspaper still using it~~ problem here is that apart from the elders no youngsters are gonna pick that up as everyone is on their smartphones~~ and also of course u can see some simple Hanja but in dauly life its kinda non existent... its like if u know it then its good for u when u see it u can read it but even if u dont know it doesnt harm no one not even urself~~ and been studying Chemical Engineering for 2 years they dont use the Hanja word in the text but they do use the Hanja phonetic sound in Hangeul as most scientific terms for Koreans are borrowed from Japanese languages~~ i dont really knos how to explain that more clearly~~
I still don't know more than a few hundred kanji, but I remember the first time I saw an all-kana sentence after I started studying kanji. I was immediately grateful for the existence of kanji.
@@mariothrowsfireballsuntitl1841 uhhhhh...we have some hundreds of simploer kanji and the remaining contain other,are junctions (like 青空(aozora))or are just for semantic porpouses...uhhhh they're a lot of things to distingue word from word,kinda confusing (and a bit too much) to foreign study
All have some reasoning behind them, though some have more logic than others. E.g. some are essentially pictures: 口 = mouth, 木 = tree. Some represent ideas, e.g.: 林 (2 trees) = grove, 森 (3 trees) = forest. 女 = woman, 姦 (3 women) = noisy. 車 = car, 轟 (3 cars) = loud rumbling sound, roar. The kanji for "blind" (盲) is composed of the kanji for "lose" (亡) and "eye" (目). Most kanji are composed of 'radicals', which are just smaller kanji. Generally, a radical on the left side indicates something about the meaning, a radical on the right side something about the pronunciation. For example, kanji that have something to do with the eyes generally have 目 (eye) on their left, such as 瞑 (to close the eyes), 眼 (eyeball), 瞳 (iris), 瞼 (eyelid). Kanji with 口 (mouth) include 噛 (chew), 吠 (bark), 唸 (groan); ones with the 'speech' radical 言 include 語 (language), 話 (speak) and 議 (debate); ones with the water radical ⺡ include 流 (to flow), 海 (sea, ocean), 浜 (beach); heart radical ⺖ is generally related to feelings / thoughts: 快 (pleasure), 怖 (fear), 悩 (worry), 悔 (regret); hand radical ⺘ is used for physical actions: 打 (to hit), 扱 (to handle), 抑 (restrain), 抜 (pull), 押 (push). Etc. All of these characters have another radical on the right, which makes it relatively easy to guess the pronunciation if you've seen it in another character. E.g. 海 (sea, ocean) is read as "kai"; 悔 (regret) is read as... you guessed it, "kai". In both, the pronunciation is based on the 毎 radical (which itself is, puzzlingly enough, pronounced "mai"). Of course, in Japanese, kanji also have irregular pronunciations, e.g. 海 = umi (ocean), 悔 = kui(ru) (regret). Generally, the more characters you know, the easier it becomes to learn more and to retain what you've learned.
I know kanji can be intimidating if you want to learn Japanese. But don't be discouraged! Spoken Japanse isn't as difficult as many people may think. In fact, basic Japanese grammar can be pretty easy because Japanse verbs are pretty regular, unlike English. (If you are a native English speaker, consider this: see, saw seen, do did done, speak spoke spoken, give gave given, sit sat sat, hit hit hit--English verbs are pretty irregular!)
In fact, you can start making Japanese sentences TODAY and I offer some free Japanese lessons. Interested? Subscribe here bit.ly/2MZRlzS
#yutaisawesome
No, Japanese people must never abandoned Pictograms and Logograms... Languages like these are more logical than pure phonetics-semantics languages..
I think kanji is an important part of culture. If Japanese abandon kanji Japan will lost tons of culture and a big gap between young and old generation. Korea and Vietnam are both a good example, even the modern generation can't be able to read or understand what the writing of their ancestors.
For the 'racist honor' to abandon kanji, which is an important part of culture, it's not worthy.
Kanji is the best part for Chinese people who learn Japanese...
That Japanese Man Yuta As a Chinese people, I think English is very easy to learn and its grammar is much easier than that of Japanese. Emm...Kanji is of course the easiest part to learn for me.
Now imagine a language that is completely kanji... Welcome to Chinese.
请来一碗味增汤，一份牛丼，生鱼片三拼，炸豆腐，抹茶大福，再来杯乌龙茶
@@王谷歌-g7p 我想我不是餐厅 😂😂😂
이거 뭐?
In"sone'mnia STAN DREAMCATCHER AND SNSD!
Wrong language, bud
@@aarynfrfr LOL SORRY 😂
Japanese makes me appreciate the fact that English has spaces.
+Protagonist The lack of spaces is what really slows me down when reading Japanese. I know hiragana, katakana, and some kanji, but when I see it all in one block, it really screws with my eyes and i start to have difficulty recognising the differences
***** Ya I am pretty much on that same boat, lol.
Protagonist It's a wierd situation to be in. My native language is English, and my strongest way of understanding is visual, so I pick up written information really quickly - in Japanese it gets reversed, visually I slow down due to trying to work out where the word breaks are, but I recognise a lot better when hearing it...
***** ditto. a lot of the time I will incorrectly assume where a word breaks then be left with a very confusing sentence. In english it would probably look something like this....
Actual sentence: "Can you please pass the salt?.
My interpretation: "Canyo uplea sepass thesalt?
+Protagonist With kanji or not, we need SPACE! Time to protest! :p lol
Korean: easy to write, hard to pronounce
Japanese: easy to pronounce, hard to write
Chinese: hard to write, hard to pronounce
Yiting Zhao hahaha
Bananarama hahaha agree!!
@@yitingzhao3997 so true haha!
@@yitingzhao3997 chinese, easy to distinguish words, hard to pronounce medium to remember
Pretty much rest of the world: "lets put space in between words as a divider"
Japanese people: "you know what imma use 3 different alphabets as a word divider"
Chinese: "word divider? what's that?"
所以“现代汉语”也将标点符号引入了进来，以此弥补readability。
@@packy_v 是，但readability还是不如西方语言。没有字母本身就是最大的问题。没有空间还是习惯了，但读汉字，写字，学了这么多年以后还是觉得很吓人。
@@emresirmen28 我觉得”偏旁“和”部首“就是汉字的字母， 或者说morpheme。作为一个母语者，我们也经常通过”偏旁“和”部首“来”猜“生僻字的读音和含义。但对于非母语者还是多读多看才能提高自己的阅读水平。
@@packy_v 没错。我也是靠偏旁猜不认识的字的意思和读法，%70-80能猜出来大概的意思和读音。但习惯读汉字是对外国人来说还是很不容易。读是可以读，但取得这个习惯需要很长时间。
@@emresirmen28 给你大大的赞👍
People occasionally criticise my English, but they are never specific. So, can you guys help me out a little bit? Is there any word I pronounce that sounds weird to you? Is there any consistent mistake I make?
Even if you have a bit of a japanese accent what you say is still fully understandable. I think it's the rhythm or the tempo of your speaking that's strange. You tend to add these short pauses between phrases of a sentence as if you needed time to build up one. I wouldn't consider it annoying, let's say it's buffer time.
Maybe it comes from japanese but since I don't speak the language, I can't tell
+That Japanese Man Yuta In general, I think your English is very good. I've never had any trouble understanding anything you say.
The most common pronunciation slip-ups happen with "d", "r", and "l" sounds at the end of a word:
5:14, 5:18 "words" -- the 'd' isn't hard enough, which makes it sound like "whirs"
5:44 "couple" -- the 'l' is glossed over, making it sound a bit like "a cup of"
There's a few other things, though, like:
5:11 "large" -- sounds a bit more like "lurge."
Occasionally there's an extra "s" thrown in at the end of a word, making it plural when it should be singular:
5:45 "a couple hundreds" instead of "a couple hundred" -- the word "hundred" is being used as an adjective here. This is more apparent if you take the implied "of kanji" into consideration: "a couple hundred (of kanji)" vs "a couple hundreds (of kanji)"
8:08 "meanings of new words" -- implies that each new word has multiple meanings
Words in which there are 3 consecutive consonants:
8:17 "scripts" -- the "t" was dropped entirely here, which makes it sound like "scrips." I would imagine that this is not an easy one. It has a beatbox hi hat quality to it.
+CorrosiveSubstances Thanks a lot! That's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for!
+That Japanese Man Yuta Your English is fine.Don't worry about it.
+That Japanese Man Yuta
The rhythm when you speak sounds off. I can't quite describe it, but if you listen to recordings of your own voice against those of native speakers, you'll notice something just isn't quite right.
You tend to drop vowels and consonants in places that sound odd. On occasion you're adding vowels or dropping consonants at the ends of words which is fairly common for native Japanese speakers. You're also slurring letters together where an English speaker wouldn't.
Honestly you don't have to worry about it, it comes off as an accent and nothing more. It's not as though you're incomprehensible or hard to understand.
Me: Yes! I just finished learning Hiragana and Katakana!
kanji: imma bout to end this mans whole carreer
do you really need to study kanji to learn to speak and write in Japanese?
Jake Staines, no but good luck staying in japan
kanji: 今 bout end this mans whole carrier
Anon ????,dang this is pretty funny man... sadly I don’t have a metal to give you...
Haha, sorry seems you also need to learn English. :P
As a Chinese, walking on the streets of Japan can read almost all road signs and guide signs, because they are almost all kanji
确实 不过还是有许多部分和我们所理解的不同
@@테무진-s4d fake news
@@테무진-s4d you know what, people all over the world except Korean know that 汉字(kanji) was derived from ancient China.
@@테무진-s4d yea yea yea.... you Korean invent the earth, kimchi simida.,
@@테무진-s4d China has a history of five thousand years How many years of history does South Korea have The whole world knows that Chinese characters originate from China
Japan: Creates hiragana and katakana from simplifying kanjis so they can spell.
Also Japan: Continues to use kanji anyway.
Actually the real reason was because only men were allowed to read kanji. Women just needed to stay in the house, that's why they're called okusan\kanai or "house person" while men are shuujin "master"
@@farfetchleek9821 I thought it was because of homophones? Never heard of your story but ok.
@@raandomplayer8589 yeah check it out. Katakana was actually invented first
This is like people nowadays speak in ye old english after making modern english
@FichDich InDemArsch no not before kanji, before hiragana
“1946 - Naoya Shiga, a famous Japanese novelist, suggested that Japan should adopt French as the official language.”
I laughed way too hard at that...
Same, that caught me off guard lol
I know that some Japanese see France as cultural center of Roman Culture but adopting this god damn language is a really bad bad idea. After max 5 years there would be protests "give back kanji" written in... Kanji.
Because nothing says "efficient language" like French -__-
As a French person it caught me by surprise too... why tf would Japan give up its entire language for French ? It might be closer on a grammatical / phonetical pov to Japanese than English or any other, still giving up an entire language seems pretty insane to me.
@@KyoMidori ur welcome. I try educate those.
A guy: How do we make Japanese more readable?
Another guy: Let's just add spaces between words!
Third guy: I have better idea! Lets use 3 different scripts instead!
All: GREAT IDEA!
I think they don't use spaces so the text looks more beautiful, especially that their letters are big and complicated it will also make the sentence so much longer... that's what i think
@@hallaf3140 Beaty is pretty subjetive
@@javierslytherin9898 but spelling aint
@@hallaf3140 の
@@hallaf3140 I think this too💜
Me: haha l’m Chinese I don’t need to learn Kanji.
Him: Saying a thousand different pronunciations of 生
I’m also Chinese :O, ppl in the comments are saying japanese is hard with 2,000+ kanji’s
_Shed tears in Chinese_
至少看得懂大概意思吧😂
@@cueiyo6906 50,000+
@@david_ga8490 Japanese doesn't have 50K, its Chinese 😂 Infact we have 80K lol
@@cueiyo6906 but it's not like you got 50 readings for every kanji. I got no problem with memorizing characters, but unless you already know the word, every time I meet kanji in a text I'm like.. ee.. how do I read it?
7:07 8:10 As a Japanese, I want to add No.4. The fourth reason is our kanji names.
Kanjis are used for quite a lot of Japanese names.
Let's suppose if I have a son and decide to name him "Yuta".
There are a lot of possible ways/combinations for spelling "Yuta" in Japanese since there are so many kanjis that can be read "Yu" or "Ta".
For example,
・Yuta 優太 ... 優(Yu = "gentle", "excellent", "Superior" etc.) ＋ 太(ta = "thick", "grand" etc.)
・Yuta 勇大 ... 勇(Yu = "courage", "bravery" etc. ) ＋ 大(ta = "large","big", "great" etc. )
・Yuta 雄多 ... 雄(Yu = "male", "masculine" etc. ) ＋ 多(ta = "many", "much" etc. )
・Yuta 結詩 ... 結(Yu= "tie", "bind", '"join' etc.) ＋詩(uta ="poem", "poetry")
(By the way, "-ta" is a typical pattern for boy's names. e.g. Yuta, Kenta, Ryota, Shota, etc.)
So, which kanji should I give him for "Yu" and "Ta"? If I wanted him to be a gentle child, I might name his "Yu" part as "優"(Yu ="gentle"), not the others. If I want him to be braver, I might choose "勇"(Yu = "courage") instead of other "Yu"s. Parents often name their children with their own special hope, and the kanji(s) they chose is(are) like the symbol of it.
In that sense, when there are two men named "Yuta", their names are different even though the pronunciation is the same.
If we abandon Kanji, that means we throw away this culture, too.
Thick gentle.... Gotcha
@@azirmandias4191 I don't think very often, because the use of kanji itself makes it obvious at first glance. A kanji can often be part of a common phrase, for instance 勇 brings to mind naturally 「勇気」(courage). Just like how English speakers might think of a phrase with a certain word in it when they hear that word alone devoid of any context.
I like your answer best
@@19divide53 勇氣
@@ADeeSHUPA 「氣」is not a common Japanese kanji.
Actually, I have been studying Chinese, and when I went to Japan the first time, I was able to recognize and understand kanji even when I never studied Japanese
kanji it means 汉字 Chinese
@@haoranhuang283 yes
In ancient times, the elites of East Asia used Chinese characters to communicate, even though they spoke different languages
Yeah, if you have learned Chinese Characters, it is so convenient when you travelling in Japan. Because it's very easy for you to read and remember place names.
@@voyzorneeden4453 Better than the other way around.
Imagine why English (or any other language) uses numbers - also just to make it more readable:
I was born in nineteen ninety-nine, and I have learned one thousand, two hundred and fifty-six kanjis since twenty seventeen.
I was born in 1998, and I have learned 1,256 kanjis since 2017.
Sometimes kanji is like numbers to me, easier to read.
Interesting way to look at it
Yeah, that’s actually a pretty interesting perspective
@@時雨-z8mor nineteen ninety-eight
Good point. That’s what I also thought!
Japanese also does this with numbers and uses the same system in writing.
As a Chinese learner of Japanese, I really think kanji is the best part in the reading test. Even though I have no idea what pronunciation of these kanji I can guess the meaning of them which helped me a lot in the reading test.
This is me with my limited Kanji while studying beginner Chinese. 😂 Although, remembering the Chinese readings for every day Chinese is so much easier than Japanese for me. I started learning Mandarin Chinese last year and the teacher was so impressed that I'd handwritten the first homework assignment (a self-introduction) we were given, all in Chinese characters. And by the second week, I had memorised the readings for the next dialogue on the worksheet. I felt so powerful. I finally knew how Chinese people felt when they encounter kanji in Japan. 😂
I feel this but in the opposite direction, bc I'm learning Japanese I can vaguely guess the meaning when I see Chinese but have no idea how to actually say it lol
@@leonardcohenfan69 Please learn some Chinese when you have time. I think you would enjoy it and pick it up so easily.
@@larryjane06 Honestly I've been considering it lately, I know very little about it rn but from what I do know it seems like a beautiful language!! :D
I find it more annoying because sometimes the kanji have completely different meanings in Chinese and Japanese which is confusing
"Hiragana characters always sound the same"
は、を、and へ laugh in disorder
Cries in konnichiha
Liam Young konnitiha
noob me: "watashi ha"
@@liiyouu konbanha
The only people who pronounce を different are singers though. Other than that it's always always o.
は stays pretty annoying though. へ is kinda uncommon to see outside of it's particle usage, but for は it's sometimes it's hard to parse when it's a particle or a hiragana part of another word
When you click on a video to improve language skills but end up reflecting on the importance of tradition and commitment.
Exactly my realisation
You deserve respect for speaking what usually would not be spoken.
"Cool, I'm learning Japanese and it's going well"
*sees list of kanji*
"Oh God, what have I done"
literally my life right now lol
Same!
Wanikani, my dude
Learned hiragana and katakana, also a lot of words and grammer is starting to sink in.
Because of kanji i'm giving up learning japanese.
@@dor00012 don't give up just because its hard mate. You got this
"A limited number of kanji"
(Screen is flooded with countless tiny kanji)
(Pauses video for laugh break)
As a chinese, i'm sure it's true! we have more than 6000 commonly used chinese characters. But there are more then 11200 in our dictionary which is used in primary school. In totally, maybe a number bigger than 120000.
@@japaneserequired6314 agree, good work!
These chinese characters are not isolated. Many of them are composed of other characters.So actually the project is much smaller
How the fuck do Chinese write on keyboards ffs
@@gregoryspersonalbodyguard easy, just have 5000 keys
The most important reason for Kanji: they look freaking cool.
Some of them do, I must agree
Even though I’m planning to use Hiragana in all my sentences, I cannot prefer “わたし” over “私”, or “かみ” over “神”
then you might as well learn chinese lmao
They were first invented/adopted from China by aristocratic men in Japan for that exact reason lol
And then you have this little friend: 凸
@@jbgra2566 Which goes nicely with this little friend: 凹 Together they make 凸凹 (dekoboko) which really means uneven/jagged/bumpy, but looks like it could mean Tetris.
I'm a Chinese, recently learning Japanese, I'm really happy to see our culture relationship based on Kanji, I love the structure of Japanese, hiragana for creation, katakana for western, Kanji for our common ancestor. Love your Channel!
That cool haha
How many kanji characters did you know ?
I'm curious about this, so I don't speak Japanese or Chinese, but i do know that Kanji is basically chinese characters. So in a way you can speak some japanese right?
Yeah
Damn that is cool.
+Kinshira,
to some extent, people from the two countries can "talk" by writing.
"One reason: readability. Japanese don't use spaces."
Introducing spaces would've been too simple a solution, right? ;-)
my thought too, would make it a lot easier
Thank you.
That's not the only problem. And kanji are easy to understand once you memorize them, there is almost any ambiguity that a only hiraga/katakana text would have when reading
@@dontshootmedic You'd still understand the sounds as their spoken though, right? Never quite got this lol
@@domino6490 Sorry lol I don't want to be rude, but could you please explain what you meant? Haha sorry, I'm not a native english speaker. If there's a kanji I have never seen before, there's a way to kinda know the pronounce, but that's only for nouns. So, yeah, unless you already know the word, you can't know the pronounce.
I just realized how awesome the latin alphabet and script is...
You're welcome.
(Cheers from Italy.)
@@firefly618 You guys rock! Greets from Germany.
@@Sycokay Thanks a lot! Not that I personally had anything to do with it, of course ;-)
But trying to learn Japanese and spending some time in Asia made me appreciate what we have in Europe so much more than before.
I'll keep trying though! Japan was really cool.
@@firefly618 what are the odds of seeing another unOrdinary fan? Though we differ when it comes to other interests haha, if I had to pick from learning either Korean or Japanese, I'd probably pick Korean since I have a knack for different pronunciations and hate the idea of memorizing so many characters.
If you ever master Japanese or Chinese, I guarantee you'll end up finding the Latin alphabet lacking. It's easy to learn and easy to write, but Japanese and Chinese are on a whole other level. They're so informative, deep and colorful, it's quite difficult to describe in words. Simple letters seem dry and boring by comparison.
Using kanji can make the japanese characters looks beautiful and cultural, which is conforrmed with japanese culture and tradition. In fact, katakana and hiragana are also inspired from kanji.
Another reason I considered kanji using by japanese is to keep in touch with and connect with Chinese helping japanese easier to access Chinese and traditional Japan. Korea waived kanji in 70s around. This policy resulted in Korean almost cannot read and write kanji today even though in 1970 the kanji was still essential and normally , widely used by korean people. Vietnam is also quite incredible, where you can see culture is very similar to China but characters in spelling. Vietnam also cannot read and identify kanji written in their historic books and carved on the pillars of temples they visits and pray every day.
korean about to introduced hanja xD again. but the vietnamese king in the north are somewhat sputhern chinese.
china also attempted a phonetic script but it never really caught on for the same reason outline in the video (too many word has same sound). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo#History
I think vietnamese written in alphabet is a bad idea, their words looks weird and soo complicated, and it looks like they lost their culture
Haha, thanks god Vietnamese leaders chose the alphabet!!! Good lords!!!
@Abū ʿUnwān al-Mahdawī That is an adaptation of Chinese.
"there are 2, 136 kanji in Japanese."
me:* starts silently sobbing in corner because I am trying to learn Japanese*
Eclypsa Queen You’ll survive lol. XD
Actually there are much more, but they're not used frequently
You are lucky you are not learning Chinese.
Same here, sadly. On the other hand, it's obvious that I can't possibly fly to Japan in the foreseeable future. So, I'm not in a rush.
I have learned thousands of words in the English language. I think learning Kanji would be worth the perseverance given the chance
i'm deeply touched by the last part. we shared such a long memory for thousands of years, once we loved each other, once we fought each other, once we tried to help each other, once we walked away with each other. But still there's something deeply in our mind, that we can't help to think, hey is that guy ok now?
This sounds like if English speakers were to randomly switch back and forth between Latin and Greek script and occasionally throw in some old runes just for the fuck of it.
jh099 FYI turkish also changed from arabic script to alphabet around 200 years ago
Oh, no, upper (capital) and lower case is only one system. The upper and lower case both represent the same letter, and most often they are very much alike in form: it's a lot a font issue, for example hand written is often very different from printed letters. Capitals are used for stylish reasons, to emphasize. The lower case obviously developped for faster writing and better readability. You can even have fonts where there is only one case, or you could use another font for capitals to make the writing appear more stylish: for example old handwritten books used decorated capital letters in the start of a page or a paragraph.
Don't forget to omit all spaces!
yeah, its not a font issue, they have rules in it, bue still, they have the same meaning/pronunciation, as you showed, "c is the same as C", example "I'm going to buy a case","Buy a case!", the meaning of "buy" is the same, the "b-B" is just for formal reason, if you mispell the word in informal cases no one would remark that
Ifyouomitallspaces,thenyouwouldhavethisissue.It'salsoapaintotypeoutorwritesentenceslikethis.
Foreign otaku: I learned how to speak Japanese!! Now it's time to move on to reading and writing!!
Kanji: Omae wa mou shindeiru
*NANI !*
Sorry, couldn't resist.
お前はもう死んでる
@@oliviuskehzawokaso 何？
Me:
Kanji no baka
Haha nani
Yuta, before I give the opinion you requested on the quality of your spoken English, I must first say that your kanji video is excellent, in my opinion (you could clearly be a university instructor, if you wished). As for the matter of your English language diction and vocabulary, I think that both are equally good (indeed, based on this fact alone, I'd hire you to work alongside me as a researcher and policy analyst in Canada without hesitation--seriously!). Yes, you do have a Japanese accent, but this does not impair your clarity or linguistic competence. Indeed, as is often the case, you--as a foreigner who has clearly made great effort to study the English language--speak it much better than many native English speakers do (unfortunately, the internet gives idiots with stupid or misinformed opinions the ability to unnecessarily criticize your English when there is, in fact, no real basis for doing so). Furthermore, one of the nice things about the English language is that, as a global language, it affords people from all around the world an opportunity to diversely express themselves in their own, slightly unique ways; something that actually promotes better understanding between persons from different countries. So, please, Yuta: by all means, continue to speak English in your preferred, natural way! :)
+Robert Ryan Thanks for your encouraging comment!
+That Japanese Man Yuta i agree, my personal opinion is well your English is perfectly fine i understand every word its only the accent that morphs certain words but nothing that makes your hard to hear, that being said there's not much wrong with that and even if it was there's not much to do about it, its the same with me learning japanese i can learn every word in the book and yet my british accent would make words sound different but there's no fixing how you grow up to speak is there.
thanks for video by the way it was very insightful :)
Brandon
Thanks, LaHannita96! :)
+Robert Ryan ,
This man want to improve his English speaking ability. Why can't anyone try to help him? Your toadying helps no one. It's embarassing.
No, ill will like yours is embarrassing, and before you think about criticizing or 'improving' Yuta's English, you may want to improve the caveman-like quality of your own English first: you should have used the word 'wants' in your first sentence. By the way, buddy, newsflash: English is, indeed, a very fluid and widely spoken language, meaning that there really is no universally correct way to speak it--my encouragement of Yuta was based on genuine admiration and respect and therefore in no way 'toadying' in nature.
漢字 is so useful to learn new words. If you see a new word written in kanji you know, you can guess the language better than with only the reading. It's amazing and I love it although I only know around 300 kanji
Also, I've noticed that for some Japanese streamers I know it takes longer to read a hiragana only phrase than a kanji one. I didn't understand until I started learning myself
Have you ever thought of being able to recognize a word instead of gussing it's meaning?!!
@@MLVY2023 ｙｏｕ ｌｏｇｉｃ ｉｓ ｔｈａｔ ｐｅｏｐｌｅ ｏｎｌｙ ｇｕｅｓｓ ｂｕｔ ｄｏｎ＇ｔ ｈａｖｅ ａｂｉｌｉｔｙ ｔｏ ｒｅｃｏｇｎｉｚｅ ｔｈｅ ｗｏｒｄ？
300 is a big deal for me, i cant even remember 10
@@rizkiramadhan1197
Gua suka kanji setelah ngefans sama JKT48 😂😂😂😂
@@rizkiramadhan1197, How is it going? I'm sure, it's not actually a problem for you. You can do it!
Japanese use a LOT less kanji now than they did 50 or 60 years ago. Look at a Japanese movie poster from the 1950's and it almost looks like Chinese, with Kanji for everything. Nowadays, many of those words would be in kana. Unless someone is trying to be "old-fashioned", you would never write coffee as 珈琲, you just use コーヒー. There are many similar examples.
But Japanese will probably never give up Kanji. I remember how much time we spent choosing the right Kanji for our daughter's name and what a big deal it was. And, if you know the kanji, it's a lot easier to read 東京 than とうきょう (Tokyo), even with spaces.
lol mate tokyo is one word, why would you add spaces there. no shit it doesnt make reading easier if you dont know where to put the spaces.
I was talking about spaces between words. For example:
私は東京に住んでいます。
わたしはとうきょうにすんでいます。
If you can read kanji, the first one is much easier to read. If Japanese wrote like this:
わたし は とうきょう に すんで います。
than maybe the kana-only sentence would be easier to read. But, except in children's books, they don't do that.
MidnightZ7 well 東京 東 is eastern and 京 is capital , so they are technically two separated words
come on , learn Chinese. 中国欢迎你！
geoffk777 hahah. I can guess the meaning from the “私” “东京” “住” in this sentence
The question instead should be:
Why the heck doesn't Japanese have spaces.
The space issue is actually not the main factor why Japanese has to use Kanji. The second reason mentioned in the video, which is the homophones issue is the main reason why Japanese has to use Kanji
jion Je then japanese is a problematic language if they could not think of concepts like: spaces between words and not calling 20 different things with the same sound. Modern day Japanese people seem to waste a lot of time of their education learning this complicated system that carries loads of problems just for tradition purposes.
@@jion3795 actually, many languages have homophones or words with slightly different pronunciations. "Perfect" homophones are generally not a problem because they can be guessed from the context (or a careful writer can clarify), for words that are written using the same letters there are generally special notations like umlaut in many germanic languages or accents in many roman languages.
(by the way, English is an exception, if native English speakers are confused about why Japanese still use kanji I am personally also confused about how uselessly complex are vowels in English -e.g. some "a" pronunciations "overlapping" with "e" and "o"-. In the end the answer is that written languages are usually highly conservative, there is no solid reason to avoid a gradual shift to a simplified system but it won't happen easily.
@@mehegama
Yeah exactly.
I have heard that they spend quite a lot of time learning kanji in cram schools and during their vacations. That is a lot of effort to put in when you can just learn the concept of spaces instead.
@@jion3795 say that to Koreans who have the same problems with homophones
So you're telling us, basically, that japanese has created three different scripts instead of just invent a space character? 😜😜
If only they knew how to put a space between words... or a dash
Actually, in terms of "creating", the answer is NO.
This video analyze the usage of Kanji in modern Japanese writing system, and see that it's great without Kanji if there's a space character.
However, historically, Kanji is first added (I'm not using the word "created" cause they're from Chinese) to the Japanese writing system. Hiragana and Katakana are created after that.
Kanjij is the oldest of theese three languages and it is also called Chinese. Maybe you have heard of this language before 😜.
The other two languages were created of a long time.
Kanji wasnt created by japanese at best today its modified.
@B3ro1080 simplifying characters started 1000 years ago. IIRC made it official.
"Wow, it must be hard to remember all those kanji words."
*Realizes I don't know most english words*
Good point!
Im 39 and still learn new words each week. Probably forget a few as well
Yeah word but not letters
Yeah same here🤣🤣
English is a bit of an exception because of its spelling shenanigans but in most language if you remember how it sounds you can write it, Japanese doesn't have this feature so even if I knew how something sounded and wanted to transmit this idea to other people you'd have to know an almost arbitrary symbol. this is hugely ineffective and basically cements the idea that form should follow function, which the japanese language does not, it follows idiotic tradition.
@@alpacamale2909 damn boi u rite
Internet: *Talks about use of antiquated systems*
USA: *Still uses Imperial system of measurements*
Japan: Hold my sake
While we probably should move to a universal measuring system, you can't even compare it to Kanji. Our measurements are easily understood by the 300 million people here, and at a rate far higher than 78% I'd wager. And nobody on a daily basis even measures that often. People do read and write/type on a daily basis however. It's extremely important to have a writing system that is functional and easy to grasp.
I can't remember the last time someone said waah the imperial measurements are hard waaa.
@@Halo3ninja28 meters are waaay better (and grams, celsius, liters, etc.)
@@Halo3ninja28 It's not hard, it's inconsistent. You're using a measure system that relies purely on guess. You can never get accurate results because you don't have submultiples and multiples like the metric system.
If you don't want to use feet on a smaller number, you use inches. But what if the number is smaller than inches? You can't do it.
But with metric, if you don't want to use metres, you can render it down to centimetres. If it's still too high, millimetres and so on. Metric is arguably better and I don't see an instance where imperial would be useful apart from exaggeration.
@@Xgil2Play I'm not saying our measurement system is better. It's not.
I'll give you 1776 guesses as to why the US didn't adopt the Imperial System (standards) that England adopted around 1824. The US customary system got its start based on the older Winchester Standards not the Imperial System. It's OK to say the US customary system uses many English units, it is incorrect to say the US uses the Imperial System. That is why an Imperial gallon is about 4.546 liters while a US customary gallon is about 3.785 liters. We are attached to that system just like the Japanese are attached to kanji. We are slowly changing to SI (metric).
""There are so many Kanji!"
Me: *Laughs in spaced out English*
Youhavenoideawhatyou'regettinginto
Kanji would be more like camelcasing which is easier to read.
@Debasish Nandi now imagine a whole damn book like that. It'd get so exausting.
@@Jalae nah, you would get use quite fast. Just take any text in your native language, delete all the spaces in Word or LibreOffice or any text editor and try. After few lines you will get use and your brain will just ignore the lack f spaces most of the times
Is it bc I am native English or because I study Japanese that this is as readable as if it were spaced?
@@SyrianSoaper for the people who for some reason are oblivious to the reason why this is exausting is apparent in this example.
It is called PATTERN MATCHING.
it's how you read. when all the letters are jumbled you need to add an extra process to find and split up the words for comprehension. You can't skip to symbolic chunking of the word data directly. The results in extra work on your brain, for instance to see it's not "regetting into" but "re getting into"
over the course of a sentance, who cares. a page or 2 no big deal. over the course of a book however? not so insignificant anymore.
i expect a 7% decrease, maybe more.
I started learned Korean and Japanese at the same time. I dropped Korean and continued Japanese mainly because I love kanji. I even started to learn shodo (Japanese calligraphy). Kana shodo is fun too and has its own appeal, but writing kanji is my favorite.
NEVER learn two languages at the same time XD Both are beautiful, but I prefer Korean a little more
+걸왜 에반 I'm learning 2 languages at the same time I know korean and Japanese and it was so much easier to learn korean
+Kenneth Harvey After all, Korean is just reinvent the alphabet.
+子強 I guess you must like Chinese very much, because it's full of kanji, 100%.
Well learn Chinese if you prefer kanji and only kanji.
The abolition of kanji in Vietnam for roman letters were actually due to evangelical motives by various missionaries from European nations to Indochina. Roman characters were originally only used by Vietnamese Catholics, but the French colonial government were sucessful killing off kanji by mandating it in the early 20th century. They had the upper-hand however since Vietnam's writing system lacked standarisation at the time
"2000+ is still quite alot"
Me: *laughs in being chinese*
F
F
F
F
F
When you start to write in Japanese you realise how time-saving kanji is. It would be a tremendous pain to write everything in hiragana. As you said Yuta, it also makes reading much, much quicker.
Just wondering how kanji save your time in terms of writing .. I am about to learn Japanese and want to know why.
@@jiechen1374 it doesn't lol, romaji is better, you actually don't need kanji if you have context and spaces, but the japanese are knuckleheaded.
Marcel FR Lecturing Japanese of their own language? Lol you’re funny.
@@RR-uc1wb not just Japanese, any language that uses ideagrams.
When you start writing in Chinese, you realize how time-saving katakana and hiragana are
6:28 Someone straight up thought Japan should just speak French? That seems odd.
It's crazy, but if you think about it, they are just progressively speaking english, so at the end of this century the results will be the same. (Not that is different in any other country though)
Vital Mendoza not really. More people speak English in India than in America but still they prefer to speak Hindi or their mother tongue rather than English.
English is mostly spoken as formality and in businesses
that was so random lmao
@@arnavbibra4958 Of course they don't speak english as their fist language yet, but we all speak english all around the world. Even in Spain people is forgetting about their own words and just saying "timing" instead of "sincronización". It's the same everywhere.
Francophiles think the whole world should speak French, even when it doesn't make sense to. lol
I’m learning Japanese and I’ve not started kanji but I’d been dreading it a little bit because of what everybody has been saying but hearing about everything in this I’m actually a little excited 😊 edit: I’ve started learning kanji and am actually enjoying it a lot :))
You should get a brush and try calligraphy. These Kanji will look beautiful. You will love them as an art.
@@electricdreamerI know! Kanji is a huge part of japanese culture and it's calligraphy is one of its specialities
"ugh japanese kanji so hard let's learn Chinese instead."
Hanzi: So you've chosen death.
😂 Lol
Kanji & Hanzi are one...
They are one but for learning common Japanese you just need to remember 2136 Kanjis whereas learning Chinese you need to memorize around 5000 hanzi to become fluent in Conversation.
no, 3000 hanzi is enough for reading Chinese books. Most Chinese only know 3000 hanzi .
well, at least you only need to learn one written system 😂
The example of kanji as an old partner was quite beautiful, after all kanji is a big part of the reason why written japanese is so fascinating. The beauty of drawn words
eeexactly .｡.:*♡✧*。
I love chinese script/kanji. the characters are so beautiful, diverse, and have interesting etymologies. It's also very efficient.
然也
How is it efficient? LMAO
Kradrice 你看不懂所以不觉得efficient
@@Herald_of_Perfection 你会说英语吗
@@jimmych6131 呵呵
Whether or not to keep kanji in Japanese writing reminds me of the debate about whether or not to do spelling reform in English to make written English more phonetic and thus easier to learn how to read and write English.
That's called Ebonics, cuz (cousin).
Jokes aside, you do not know history. English started out AS Ebonics. Then later, the spellings were corrected to their etymological roots. I have the 2nd printed book in English: The Game and Play of Chess.
Hi. Thanks for the video. I'm a French girl currently falling in love with Japanese language and culture. Because it is so different from mine. I'm happy they kept a strong unique identity and language. That's what makes it so interesting. The difficulty attracts me too, I think it's such a great challenge to learn Japanese. Intellectually highly stimulating.
Korean: easier to write hard to pronounce and hard grammar
Japanese: hard to write easier to pronounce hard grammar
Chinese: hard to write hard to pronounce easier grammar
i thought i would find to easy's in one language..but no...fok
Japanese doesn't have a hard grammar though
@@Alex23087 Trust me, Chinese grammar is way easier
Vietnamese: easy to write hard to pronounce and hard grammar
English word order is similar to Chinese 😀
😂 Everyone wants to learn Japanese until they realize that Kanjis exist.
so it is necessary to ban it
@@windlike3270 Yes, you suggest it to Japanese government, I believe they will do it. After all, they dare not to not obey their US masters, aren't they?
@@kangzhilou4207 US masters? Lol
Wind Like 啥b，你在TH-cam搜索”废除汉字”，看看日本人怎么想的。日本韩国越南就是中华附属国，所谓‘蛮夷之邦，文化不昌’，只好借用大国的文字。
@@iXallace I do not know Korean at all, but I have seem their Kanjis(not sure if they have a different name for it), and it is even worse, at least for me😂
One thing I noticed when I studied Japanese in high school was that when we did review games before tests, writing words and phrases using kanji was faster than using all hiragana (for example, you’d be writing 1-2 individual characters instead of 5-6). I also see it as a way of abbreviating words and especially names, which can be useful if you don’t have much space in which to write.
With Kanji it shouldn’t be frowned at, but rather respected for its complexity and beauty.
I'm happy that he called the symbol a "hash" and not a "hash tag", I can see that Yuta is in fact educated and smart.
Oh why not hash tag?
the tag part of "hashtag" is whatever comes after #. # is tagging/linking to a group of similar things in the internet.
this was actually very accurate. I just recently got addicted to everything japanese (from anime ofcourse) and your channel actually explains everything very well. keep up the good work!!!
4:38 I like how descriptive the word for inertia is: two kanji, 慣 (get used to) + 性 (nature of, quality of), so it means 'the quality of getting used to', which inertia actually is
In my experience, the more you learn kanji, the more you notice how it sometimes becomes easier to understand the meaning of technical terms in Japanese as compared to English
The latest example I have is 糖尿病, which is 'diabetes'; now, it is not easy to understand just from the word 'diabetes' what it means, but the kanji give the meaning of "sugary urine disease", so you immediately get the idea of this disease being related to sugar, and then to how sugar is ineffectively processed by the body
Exactly! 👏
oh yea to add on to the fact about diabetes is that it made urine taste sweet (dont ask what the ancient people were doing with dried urine)
Interestingly enough it used to work the same way in English back when people learned Greek and Latin. The full term "diabetes mellitus," diabetes coming from greek "to pass through" and mellitus coming from latin "sweet" so combining it to mean along the lines of "[something] sweet to pass through" as in a "sugary urine" which would've made sense to educated people of the past but now are just fancy words to us that makes scientific concepts hard to understand for everyday English speakers.
你理解不够，惯是一个形容词，也是一个动词，你要好好理解，贯彻，贯穿，这个动作感
No, as a Chinese person who can read signs and newspapers in anime without needing to learn Japanese, this is fine you guys. Don't change a thing. :)
So, it´s recomendable to learn Chinese before Japanese?
I also like Chinese culture but It´s too much to manage both of them
I don't think it's recommendable to learn Chinese just to learn japanese. Chinese and Japanese don't share a lot beyond the characters and some minor cognates. If u really want to learn Japanese, I think you should just go for it.
@@erickblaw6708 😂
@@erickblaw6708 To put it directly, no. Chinese and Japanese do share the usage of Kanji characters and slight similarities in certain pronunciations of them, but that's about it. It really is an advantage only for native Chinese speakers (or readers in this context), because only native readers would have association of meanings seeing the characters rapid enough to be helpful. On top of this, the grammar is actually quite different between the two languages, so nah don't learn Chinese as a bridge to learn Japanese. Wish you luck though!
@@yukisuzu7496 And I might add, the Chinese pronounciation is really hard. Japanese pronounciation is ... okay. Pitch accent is definitely hard, so it's really really difficult to sound native or near native, but overall it's a lot easier.
I appreciate the beauty of Kanji so much, its hard to learn at the beginning but afterall its the best.
对，跟西方语言相反。
Its hard to read, because there is no spaces between words...
Space bar: I feel ignored.
The spacebar is used by the IME (input tool) to switch between romaji => japanese conversion, IE switching between different versions of those homophones
If everything is in Hiragara or Katakana, then you need space. But the Japanese language is a combination of Hiragara, Katakana and Kanji. It's easy enough to read. Space is not needed. It would look very weird if space is added between every single vocabulary.
In Japanese language keyboard space if for converting hiragana into kanji...
kanji to space bar: Ashi o hirogete
China : No space please
@@taknaknak4957 luckily there are all sorts of pausing marks in chinese, otherwise everyone is done.
Discover this youtube channel is one of the best things I ever find on the internet. I'm a Spanish speaker, and I am learning Japanese. Thank you:3
The kanji analogy at the end was truly adorable. Thank you, Yuta!
3:57 汉字混书现代日本语特征--Yeah as a Chinese I think I definitely get the meaning
This is the advantage of hieroglyphs
カコン
With Kanji，you can know the meaning of sentences at a glance.
is 1 kanji character many other characters combined? Because it looks packed. I am learning kana now but even before starting that I could always see how much more packed Kanji was in comparison.
X Watson
I'm a Chinese and that have always been a problem for me when I'm reading English... U can never just glance the text block and know what it's mainly talking about... I thought it's because my English level isn't high enough, but now it seems like there's no such thing in English? 😂😂 I always thought my English was lame because I glanced and saw literally nothing... Now I'm more proud of Chinese lol
Yeah! I have the same feeling!
I think KANJI is like English.
@安荣 glance and know is possible in Russian, But you must be trained for this, need to be highly concentrated. In English it called skim or quick skim but you should abandon a lot of contents during quick skim.
Man, I remember when I was first learning Japanese and thought learning kanji was going to make Japanese much harder.
Now I can't read Japanese without the kanji.
Any tips? It’s so hard I’ve lost sm motivation recently
Use Anki, add sentences containing words in kanji you don't know and review them regularly. Immerse a lot in Japanese through tv shows, movies, anime, manga, podcasts, books... That's pretty much what you need to do.
Chose JAPN100 last term, and now I know why all my western classmates dropped the course after two weeks
And why my Chinese classmates said it was a GPA booster
most schools don't go super deep into Kanji in a 100 level class I would think?
Alex Young yeah that’s why it’s 100 level. but I would say for us generally the kanji part wouldn’t be a problem even in upper level JAPN courses, at least compared with people with non-kanji background.
as a Japanese learner,
The first time i studied the writing system, i said "why japanese made their writing system so complicated with kanji?!" i was really annoyed that i have to remember thousands of kanji in order to completely understand written japanese. Then over time i enjoyed writing and remembering Kanji, to the point that when our 先生 writes a japanese sentence in Hiragana only, i can't understand the context or the individual words because most words are completely the same and has the same spellings but has different meaning. it's true, Kanji makes it more easier to read and it acts as spaces. Now i just have to deal with thousands of them haha im still stuck at 150-200+ kanji i think
recommend this digicol.dpm.org.cn/list?page=1&category=16 lot of beautiful calligraphy
Well, I started learning kanji with "remembering the kanji" and it's not that hard for me. But I think the hardest part is the pronunciation of kanji, cause they have different ones. well, I'm trying to learn them separately(I'm learning pronunciations when I'm learning word). I hope I'll manage to learn kanji completely. also, I don't think Japanese people should stop using it because it is really big part of the culture and without kanji japan(and Japanese) will lose half of its identity.
Can you please tell why is kanji used??
@@jessicasmith7521 Um... To make sense of the shit they say? Like... There's at least around 30 Kanji with the same pronunciation. Having it in Kana, with no context, forces you to guess which of the 30 words they mean. That's the opposite of helpful.
Japanese: *don't have a writing system*
Japanese: *start trading with the Chinese*
Japanese: "oh crap we need a writing system"
*shoehorn in a writing system designed for a completely different language*
There is no need to abolish Kanji, they're both functional and beautiful.
+Heath2171 There are lots of reasons to abolish kanji, but there are also lots of reasons to keep kanji.
I don't see any effective way of abolishing kanji. Ignoring the fact that it's part of the cultural heritage, it simply wouldn't be practical. We'd have to redesign significant parts of the Japanese language itself in order to pull that off, at which point I'm not sure we could call it Japanese any more.
+Dojan5 at some point world Lang will all be the same, may as well start now.
Baka Oppai I disagree. Humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future. What you've suggested will probably never happen, even if something like a solar flare which would disrupt our electronics or some other natural disaster such as a meteor strike don't occur, there's no reason to believe that in the future we will all speak one language. Even if that was the aim of the majority of humans on the planet, which it definitely is not, it would be almost impossible to implement. There have even been (unsuccesful) attempts to make such languages in the past.
+Heath2171 almost every first world country has added English even Japan and there is more pressure everyday. it will happen.
As a Chinese guy I must say that Chinese Character (kanji) is amazing. Might be hard to learn at the first sight, but once you master it... welcome to a whole new world😂. Believe me. We all love it
Can you elaborate/explain some of the advantages of Kanji over other languages then ?
@@x-creator4460 Chinese characters are easy to read. less span to show the message. Take advantage of permutations and combinations
. the English words increase are the explosion now.
@@x-creator4460 words contains culture and history
@@x-creator4460 Chinese characteristics are more like symbols or drawings. It can be read much much faster than English, which is especially important in some emergencies.
@@Morjoey But there are so many characters to remember and I always wonder how it can be an efficient language in this internet age. There is no basic alphabet letters to make up a word so would it not be difficult to learn Chinese ? BTW, I am actually planning to learn Chinese when I retire and travel China.
Hey just to point out. As a Chinese I used to be very proud of the Chinese writing system. But ask yourself, if you are task to create a writing system right now, will you choose to use a very systematic way to do it? I will, because it is easier to create and pickup by others. Like Korean it is so systematic, you can learnt it in a day if you know how to speak the language. This is why young writing systems always prefer phonetics, and follows a very straight pattern. Then why Chinese don’t just Romanise? Because too many Chinese words sounds the same.
And also ancient writing system has the ability to present hidden meanings, history, subtle feelings in just one or two characters, due to its rich history. So both types of writing systems has pros and cons. We should not feel superior of our writing system as compare to others.
@@gpodjoe9179 总体无论是注音还是拼音都是一个辅助工具，为了让人好念。也没见 生活中吃饱了撑着用注音或者拼音做书面写作，其实也就无所谓了。如果没有拼音我都不知道自己该怎么在电脑键盘上敲字了。能问一下你们不学拼音，那用注音输入要怎么在26字母键盘上敲字啊？
Language isn't math. It evolves and breathe. With the exception of Hangul, which was systematically created (recommended watch: How Korea crafted a better alphabet - History of Writing Systems #11) and had the good fortune of it been accepted by the masses (with some modifications), writing systems usually evolve slowly over a long time. In the beginning, everything was written as symbols because people sought to recreate the world they've experienced. It took time before alphabets evolved from these symbols.
China, on the other hand, continued using the symbols to represent their world (albeit with great modifications). It is what it is. Attempts to modify languages rarely stick (see: movements to simplify English spelling). Such is life.
對大陸人說的話︰
知道殘體字怎樣誕生嗎？共產黨最初定立簡體字的目的就是漢字羅馬化，如果不是當時的領導人死了，你們現在連我這段字都看不懂。
支持殘體字的人，對殘體有優越感，甚至想強迫其他地區使用殘體字的人，真他媽不知道你們有沒有羞恥之心。
我承認簡化文字的確有用，的確會寫得更快，但這些都只是微小的優點，正體/傳統字同樣都有很多優點，楷書甚至是老祖宗在過去千年都保存下來的字體。
如果要將越南文韓文日文等完全改造，我表示無任歡迎，就和內外蒙古都用不同字母一樣，起碼還叫有特色、有改變。
但共產黨推行的簡體字，很大程度上違背了傳統六書的造字規則，其優點在訊息化的時代也變得可有可無，我真搞不懂你們的優越感從那裏來。
中文打字有幾十種方法，中文「方言」(姑且先叫作方言) 也有很多種，我作為倉頡打字法的使用者，是極度反對學習和使用所謂「國語拼音」打字的。
漢字的原意就不是用來代表語音，而是一個概念，只用一種的拼音方法，分明就是歧視和矮化其他方言。
書面語中文，改自文言文，原意是「我手寫我口」。但這種只優待官話語系的文字，又何嘗不是令其他地區的人不能傳神逹意？
我雖然自豪於一個中文母語者，但對於這類強加於人的文字卻之不恭。
一個以廣東語為母語的香港人上
三观超正！！！！
@@heywingliu9085 您好，亲爱的香港同胞，可以看出您也是中国至少是中华文化的热爱者，我对我能与您拥有相同的热爱感到十分荣幸。我觉得您的观点非常棒，但是有部分观点不是十分认同，鉴于我是理科生，可能了解并不是非常全面到位，也欢迎您指正共同探讨，将中华文化进一步发扬光大。
首先，残体字是明显带有侮辱性的词汇，还是希望您可以尽量少使用，虽然我明白您是因为一些激进的声音才会这么说，但您应该理解，因为中国大陆庞大的人口基数才导致了大量的不理性人群。我相信恶劣的人始终是少数，而您这么说会伤到更多使用简体字的友好同胞的。
第二，根据我浅薄的历史知识，简体字的推动最早源于太平天国，在新文化运动时达到高潮，最早的政府正式文件是1935年8月21日中华民国国民政府的《推行简体字办法》，虽然当时并没有全面采纳，但是依旧执行了多地的试点。推行简体字本质意义上是为了推翻封建主义文化，初衷并没有您说的那么狭隘。
第三，简体字其实最大的好处是便于学习与传播。不得不承认，中国大陆的人民平均文化素养相比中国香港是有一定差距的。相信您也有所了解，新中国成立初期国民文盲率达到80%，有四亿多人一字不识。如果国人都看不懂文字，谈什么国家建设与发展？为了降低文盲率，降低中文的学习门槛，才不得以有了简体字的推行。事实证明简体字确实相对繁体字更容易学习，中国的文盲率也在简体字的大规模推广后大幅度下降。拼音一定程度上同理，也是为了普及与便利所作出的妥协，但事实上我认为拼音在设计上也有很多闪光点。
第四，繁体字是中华文化的瑰宝，确实包含部分简体字没有的含义与美感，这一点在中国大陆是被普遍承认的，也是在大陆义务制教育中被多次提及的。在中国大陆也有很多场合保留使用繁体字，甚至从09年的人大起断断续续都有恢复繁体字的提议，虽然以目前大陆普遍的教育水平来说确实仍不适宜恢复，但是未来有可能形成简繁体进一步混杂的局面。您说的“优越感”“歧视”“矮化”等现象，相信您也应该理解只是少部分大陆网民对于部分“分裂人士”的“激进”的措辞，希望您不要误会。文化本没有也不应该有高低贵贱之分。
最后，我本人也非常自豪能够作为中文母语者，热爱包括广东语在内的所有汉语与各种字体的书法。也正是中华文化博大的包容性让我最为喜欢，简体字可以极大地加快我们理科生之间的思想交流，而繁体字生动形象的构成与背后精彩的故事也让我心旷神怡。希望两岸三地乃至所有华语文化圈的同胞们可以进一步交流合作，让中华文化更上一层楼。而不要被可笑的政治谎言迷惑了双眼，反而将最锐利的矛头指向自己的同胞。
Lol im japanese living in us and my son has asked me this very question before, because he struggled learn kanji! It is hard to learn kanji even for japanese ( oh all the tests for kanji as we had while growing up .. agh) ,
As someon who is learning japanese for 1-2 years now I have to say: the more you learn the more you appreciate Kanjis, because you can see what the sentences is about without reading it. and honestly learning new Kanjis is fun, at least for me. It is very rewarding to be able to read a japanese sentence without help :3
@Jx Y Excuse me, is this word "fart"? 'Cause in Japanese it really does look like "fart".
The only difficult things of Japanese kanji for chinese is japanese kanji multiple pronounciations and some "false friend" words meaning, example 手紙 in Japan is post paper but in China is toilet paper XD~
We don't call it, "post paper," though, we call it a "letter." (Virtually no English speakers will understand what you mean when you call it post paper.) It's implied and understood that it is sent through the postal system. Maybe this word helps us understand the mindset of Japanese and Chinese people and what's important to them though. If paper you carry in your hand means a letter to Japanese people, they must care a great deal about conveying thoughts and ideas to others no matter the distance. If paper you carry in your hand means toilet paper to Chinese people, they must care a great deal about dealing with shit. :p
@@Nyonics... dude what's ur problem. the Chinese just have a different set of characters for 'letter'. and despite the kanji Japanese and Chinese are two very different languages. idk where your theory comes from but it's nonsensical.
@@kushastea3961I try not to waste my time responding to stuff like this because I think my time is more valuable than that, but no, I was not, in fact, attempting to make a serious analysis. If you didn't understand that, now you do. If you did understand that...then what's YOUR problem? Because my problems don't include you projecting your own issues into whatever I've written somewhere on the internet.
分からないことならば黙ったら方がよろしい。
@@Nyonics hhhhhhhhh侬窥各边有呃宁太好白相了wwwwww各样啊再会∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿
MrProfGenius because Chinese people use Japanese post paper as ass wipe
one other reason for kanji use,... beauty of calligraphy
Nice one, Yuta. Love how you ended emotionally😊😊😍😍. Kanji is the major reason why I'm interested in learning Japanese. I like the fact that it is a drastically different concept of writing than what I have always known as a native English speaker. If Japanese people stopped using Kanji, I would loose interest in the Japanese language because neither Hiragana, Katakana, or Romaji gives me the kind of joy that Kanji gives me. 漢字がすきいです。
If Kanji is the aspect you most like then you should learn Chinese, the Chinese were the ones who created them. Lol
Japanese use kanji bec one can grasp the meaning of the word immediately !
So many people complaining about Kanji. And I'm just sat here like "Kanji is my favourite part of learning Japanese."
Exactly. Thanks to Kanji, it's much easier to learn new vocabulary because there's tons of words that you can make out of each Kanji. But Billy who still goes to Elementary School in Miami wants the Japanese to write in Romaji and use spaces because he isn't used to the fact that another country has an entirely different culture.
@@nakajimasara People who complain about japanese use of kanji usually don't demand they start using romaji, but hiragana or katakana (with spaces).
Like, people are more comfortable using only one alphabet, so it's more convinient if everyone used the roman alphabet, but I understand some languages works better with other systems, it's not the end of the world to learn Cyrillic or Hiragana. Most people have trouble with kanji because it requires a much higher commitment and memorization. I can concede it has advantages, since it makes the text more compact, it allows for communication from nations with different languages to understand each other (if they both use kanji/hanzi). In this technological era though, I think logograms are a pain, but I think the japanese and the chinese have important cultural reasons not to ditch them, because that would create a huge disconnect between now and the past. But this makes it very unappealing for foreigners to learn those languages, but honestly, their languages would still be very hard even using an alphabet (see the case of Korean), and I don't think they mind if foreigners don't learn their languages very much, maybe they even prefer it that way.
So seeing as you guys know quite q bit of Kanji, and this seems like the best comment to ask on, can you give me a place where I can learn some Kanji?
I'm having a lot of trouble with that part.
There are people who enjoy getting whipped in a dark basement... to each his own I guess. ;P
@@nakajimasara and Billy is tooo lazy. Because of that he lives like "a frog in a well";)
Chinese is becoming more popular so Kanji will be very useful. Vietnam completely removed Chinese characters, or Hán Tự (Kanji in Japanese or Hanja in Korean) so now we can't read old books or signs.
It's not a big problem though, all ancient books are available in Vietnamese Alphabet, but the original form is very beautiful and easier to understand (if you can read Chinese).
As an English-speaker (technically bilingual, with Spanish), I must say that Vietnamese looks so daunting. Is it difficult to keep up with good orthography?
I don't know since I speak the language and i think it's simple. Our Alphabet system is actually very good, you can spell every single word easily. I guess it's the little rules that you need to remember which make Vietnamese seem difficult.
+Thang Nguyen What's the historical reason of Vietnam removing Chinese Characters (aka Kanji/ Hanzi)?
We were invaded by France, they introduced the Alphabet system in schools and forced the government to remove Chinese writing system.
The teaching of Chinese characters was strongly discouraged or simply banned in schools and students were taught French and Latin based writing system instead. Basically, young generations back then couldn't read Chinese characters at all. Emperor Khải Định (啓定帝) eventually had to declare that classical Chinese no longer held official status.
However, we have very few French words and most are not used anymore. I personally can't name more than 10 -15 words. Half of the vocabulary still have Chinese root and are used often.
Thang Nguyen I see. But do the Vietnam people nowadays mostly think they should keep using Latin alphabet? Or do any Vietnam people or scholars think they should reintroduce Chinese character?
I tell you why. Ancient Japanese have no own language.
Because they close to China, Japanese wanted to learn and copy Chinese characteristics (or Kanji) for using. However it was difficult to write and pronounce.
Fortunately, Chinese writing has a range of writing styles or fonts. One of them, called Cao Shu ( or Cursive script), which is fast writing style.
Then Japanese simplified the Cao Shu into Hiragana and with their pronunciation system into Japanese language.
Chinese characters are meaningful. One can be read into different pronunciations and different meanings by different situations, even different tones. Some people said it is hard to learn and use, but Chinese can easily read and understand the Japanese meaning.
While Chinese can’t read Japanese words verbally, they can still read them when written because the meaning of kanji is practically the same in either Chinese or Japanese. Ex. 昨夜(sakuya) and 昨夜 (zuo ye) are pronounced differently, but they both mean “last night.” Phonetics and different reading wouldn’t change anything.
Sakuya Westerias well, dont forget china have so many different dialects, mandarin pronunciations are just one of the Chinese. Many japanese pronunciations are from different Chinese dialects
Sakuya Westerias that’s how ancient Asian people communicate. Now we speak English tho.
language? Ancient Japanese have no character, letter, writing.
So they passed down information to next generation by speaking, not by character.
After they leaned Kanji from old china, they use it. They understood each Kanji meaning, but pronunciation was offcourse different from old china.
So old china's pronunciation was called On-yomi and traditional japanese pronunciation of same Kanji was called Kun-yomi now.
Ancient Japanese had their own language. They just didn't have a writing system.
This video is one of greatest videos in any categories I've seen in TH-cam. Thanks very much. I was also quite surprised that you mentioned Korea and Vietnam's cases.
Traditions are more than just rules, loved the ending
me too
Nailed it!
Burdens
The5GIO5 Agreed. Traditions nowadays tend to be more of a hindrance than not.
@@Madhattersinjeans you were brainwashed into hateful, divisive language.
Kanji is my primary motivator for learning Japanese. I think it's efficient... and aesthetic... and intimidating! 素晴らしいです！
Yes! And the importance of aesthetics cannot be overestimated!
Aesthetic yes but how the hell is it in any way efficient?
JJAB91 in the way of expandability.as a chinese native speaker ,there are thousands of chinese characters,which is where kanji derived from.seemingly complicated but as long as you master a small part of it,you can be capable of recognizing countless of new words,like scientific words and newly-invented words that you might haven't seen it before.it is better to take kanji as prefix and suffix .yet I still take english as the most human-friendly language.easy to learn,easy to spread and accurate
@@lurevenant6776 it's no use explaining it to them, they can't understand
@@lurevenant6776 not to be rude, but please place spaces after your punctuation.
damn, “生” in Chinese has like one pronunciation and they have 14 and more. They really take it to another level.
Yes, i am laughing on ur comment...i starting to learn japanese...i am already intermediate level in chinese...wondering how it will be
In mandarin it has one reading, in Min it has multiple depending on use.
Japanese has multiple reading for Chinese characters because they assign an On (音) reading and a Kun (訓) reading. Basically On readings are based off of Chinese readings, and Kun are readings according to its meaning in Japanese, which means most Kanji has at least 2 readings in Japanese (there are exceptions). However, that's only the tip of the iceberg.
Because On readings are based off of Chinese readings, and the Chinese pronounciation changes according to location and time, the specific reading will be based off of when and where the term was adopted from China. There are generally four classification of On readings (Go 吳, Kan 漢, To 唐, Kanyo 慣用).
Kun readings are based off the Japanese terminology according to the meaning of the word. However, because Japanese may have different terms to mean the same thing, and a character can have different meanings, and words may be pronounced differently in different situations, well, you see where this is all going.
well it can also read as "xing" same pronounced as "性" from the old saying "君子生（reads xing)非异也，善假于物也。” btw
*cries in Cantonese*
@@cueiyo6906 I feel your pain
kanji is fluid, flexible and accurate. it can make new words by combining sound and visual and meaning to arrive at the closest accuracy. the visual part gives depth in meaning.
Why do we need kanji?
so Chinese people like me can get around Japan without dying
I'm just joking
LittleWhole Gaming True, it also helps for japanese nintendo directs 😂
There is a myth about Japanese saying they were originally Chinese people. The emperor of China sent a few people to find an elixir of eternity to live forever without dying. But the people sent by the emperor never return to China because they were all fearing the emperor's decision to kill them. So they find an island where they can live safely and changed their language to live safely.
You're speaking the truth. If Japan stops using Kanji, it'll hurt the majority of their revenue from tourism (mostly Chinese tourists).
Dav Chting I don’t know anything about the origin of Japanese people, but the idea of people breaking off from a group of people and creating their own language and culture has happened many times in history.
I agree 😂 I just realized a few weeks ago that I can pretty much get by on the contextual Chinese readings of characters without knowing the Japanese words to the kanji in question. Secret Chinese survival technique 🤣
In fact, Chinese characters are not only a culture, but also an art that both Chinese and Japanese understand.
understood also by Korean.
The name Tokyo is written in Kanji, but pronounced different, still with the same meaning as original Kanji.
To-kyo pronounced Dong Jing in Chinese, means beautiful scenery/landscape from East.
How about North scenery and South scenery ?
These are: Beijing and Nanjing
东京是洛阳
@@等腰正方形 开封啦
@@vr-gv2ks 西京在那？
@@aaronseet2738 烽火照西京，心中自不平。
Kanji makes Japanese super exciting! Knowing more kanji is like leveling up in a videogame.
I have noticed that one single extra Kanji can often allow me to understand whole dialogues, since I understand all the sentences without any "obstacles" anywhere.
Yeah except after you learn a certain number, not enough people use those Kanji to make the effort worth it. Still fun tho.
@@BygoneT
Some words are written in Kana even when there exist commonly used Kanji characters for them, just to easen up the sentences a bit.
It's very similar to how most people would prefer to write "two 100-dollar bills" instead of "2 $100 bills".
那你还不如学讲华语
does this mean Chinese players start off with very high levels in the beginning?
I find it cool that people can understand Latin even though we were never taught Latin, its just because English is close its latin descriptor.
i.e: Solaris = Solis = Sol = Sun
Stella = stellar = steorra = star
In a way, English has it's own "hidden kanji"
you are onto something here. We still use latin words but think its "english" like "solar"system
Which makes English an appealing language !
Chinese characters are highly developed hieroglyphs, and they can be used in combination.
but English words grow like explosions increase.
As a Chinese that currently learning Japanese, I find it very confusing to learn kanji. As Yuta mentioned, kanji have many different pronunciation, but that is not the case in Chinese, Chinese words rarely have more than 2 ways of reading. What make me confuse more is the even though both languages have the same character, their pronunciation are different.
Because they use both readings (kunyoumi and onyoumi) for kanji
@@huntersenpai, in conclusion, it was a misjudgement of old Japanese people. 訓読み､ 音読み made Japanese language complex. | Пусть наш Бог хранит Україну.
technically a kanji's 音読み is pure chinese but reduced to japanese pronounciation capabilities in 14th century. i think most kunyomi are consistent at least for each different meaning, like 生きる 生まれる, live = い（きる）, being born = う（まれる). But with onyomi all the japanese meanings are condensed into fewer (often just 1) chinese reading(s).
wait, does it mean the Japanese looks like "somethingWITHOUTspacesBUTstillSOMEHOWreadble"?
wellitisntimpossibletoreadenglishwithoutspaces
Tariq,whataboutpeoplewithdyslexia?
camelCaseIsAlsoNiceItDoesntUseSpacesAndItsStillReadablePrettyEasily
Idon'tthinkthosewhoinventwritingsystemscareaboutpeoplewithdyslexia
Niewydajemisiężebycicowymyślająsystemypismamyślelioludziachzdysleksją
IchglaubenichtdassdieMenschedieSchriftsystemeerfindendenkenanLegastheniker
Actually, German does the best job at being redable without spaces
apenaslesentiendoloqueestandiciendoperoaunasiselograentender
nowtrywithspanishguysifanyofyoucanuderstand
This video is absolutely amazing. Last part with the comparison of an unperfect marriage to the usage of kanji really impressed me and...it just makes sense! Thanks Yuta for the contribution you are giving with your videos to the worldwide netizens community!!!
Great reasons for keeping Kanji. Great explanation. I'm learning Japanese, already know Kana, moving to Kanji. Thanks!
がんばってね! I love kanji! Keep up the motivation!
if you already know kana, maybe you could find useful the short kanji animations with mnemonics I'm making
As a Chinese, when I learn Japanese I am also struggling with Kanji because of its pronunciation. In China, we say interesting is 有趣，but in Japanese is 面白 which pronounce miàn bái in Chinese. I always get stuck. I have to restrain myself to stop thinking its Chinese pronunciation at that time.
As a Japanese, I face the same problem as you got when I learn Hanzi-related languages such as Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese and so on.. However while struggling with it, I'm gradually getting some algorithms. When I was focus on learning Mandarin, I mistakenly and unconsciously pronounced Chinese Hanzi sounds as the imported Sounds of Kanji（音読み） , which made my friend whom I talked to confused.. like he said "What do you mean?".
@@r9740 as a Cantonese, i would say it's quite easy to guess the kanji with its 音読み. but 訓読み is just hard to memorize, because there is no other language related to japanese except ryukyuan...unlike german, i could associate german words with english words
No kanji is difficult to learn but once you start learning some everything becomes so much easier. Trying to read a bunch of hiragana is horrible
I'm Chinese, Yuta's last explanation of why not abolish kanji...makes me deeply touched... I love Japanese.
stupid question , but do you still live in china?
@@ShubhamSharma-py1hu how do you know he lives in china? there are chinese people everywhere, he said he’s chinese and not that he lives in china
@@ShubhamSharma-py1hu … people can be Chinese and live somewhere else
Do you live in Japan? Can I interview you about your dating experience in Japan? Let me know by using this form: goo.gl/j13bj3
Unfortunately I don't.
+That Japanese Man Yuta Wish I could help you out with the dating in Japan part, never been to Japan unfortunately nor have the financial means to do so. Would love to be there at some point though.
For the video, think I understand what you are trying to say, thank you for explaining.
So far i did not receive any lessons from you, but i'm sure you either are too busy or have to much on your mind for the moment. Ill be waiting for when they do arrive :)
+That Japanese Man Yuta
What a pity, my brazilian friend just returned from Japan after living there with his girlfriend for some months, and I know he has been seeing other girls in Japan (slept with another 3 or so?) aside from his girlfriend. >_< (He's pretty tall, medium blonde hair, and looks very fashionable). If I manage to contact him, I'll try to send him to that link!
I live in Japan! But my dating life is nonexistent XD
+That Japanese Man Yuta
I do, had a date yesterday and one coming up this evening.
However that doesn't happen when it's not the holidays...sleeping happens...precious sleep...
Another good point of using Kanji as a writing system is inter-readability between different languages. Think of them as emojis or drawings. My guess is that a vietnamese, chinese or korean guy (that know han zi) would be able to orientate their way around in Tokyo and read street signs for example. Even without actually knowing a word of the language. That wouldn't be possible with the latin alphabet that we use or any other phonetic writing system.
Also, I'm curious about the bit of Korea abolishing Kanji/Hanzi. How did they manage to overcome the problems you mentioned? All those ancient documents with Hanzi. What did they do?
+Fade Away important ones are translated and the rest are kept for Hanja literate people~~
in the old days King Sejong invented I guess, a new way of writing in Korean called Hangeul and introduced it so that people will be more literate... and now in the modern days most Korean don't use Hanja anymore, although most knows how to write Hanja for their own name and that's the limit of their Hanja knowledge as in daily life u don't actually need them and Hanja is only reserved for people who actually interested in them and wanted to learn it~~
Kyle Hudsons Interesting but from what I can gather, it's still not discontinued in S Korea. Only in the North.
Fade Away i am currently studying in South Korea and been here for 3 years, don't need any Hanja at all~~
I don't get what u mean by South Korea is still not discontinued???
Kyle Hudsons I mean. North Korea has officially discontinued Hanja completely. Not to be used on signs or newspapers and the like, while in South Korea, the language is Hangul, yes .....but Hanja is not "discontinued", you can still see it in some newspapers.
+Fade Away ah~~ okok... got what u mean~~
its true that a couple newspaper still using it~~
problem here is that apart from the elders no youngsters are gonna pick that up as everyone is on their smartphones~~ and also of course u can see some simple Hanja but in dauly life its kinda non existent... its like if u know it then its good for u when u see it u can read it but even if u dont know it doesnt harm no one not even urself~~ and been studying Chemical Engineering for 2 years they dont use the Hanja word in the text but they do use the Hanja phonetic sound in Hangeul as most scientific terms for Koreans are borrowed from Japanese languages~~ i dont really knos how to explain that more clearly~~
I still don't know more than a few hundred kanji, but I remember the first time I saw an all-kana sentence after I started studying kanji.
I was immediately grateful for the existence of kanji.
*Question:* Is there any logic to kanji that helps you 'figure out' them and their meaning, or is it all just one big and brutal game of memory?
yes, a lot of kanji contain other kanji
@@mariothrowsfireballsuntitl1841 uhhhhh...we have some hundreds of simploer kanji and the remaining contain other,are junctions (like 青空(aozora))or are just for semantic porpouses...uhhhh they're a lot of things to distingue word from word,kinda confusing (and a bit too much) to foreign study
@@stardust9470 That's what I said.
All have some reasoning behind them, though some have more logic than others.
E.g. some are essentially pictures: 口 = mouth, 木 = tree. Some represent ideas, e.g.: 林 (2 trees) = grove, 森 (3 trees) = forest. 女 = woman, 姦 (3 women) = noisy. 車 = car, 轟 (3 cars) = loud rumbling sound, roar. The kanji for "blind" (盲) is composed of the kanji for "lose" (亡) and "eye" (目).
Most kanji are composed of 'radicals', which are just smaller kanji. Generally, a radical on the left side indicates something about the meaning, a radical on the right side something about the pronunciation. For example, kanji that have something to do with the eyes generally have 目 (eye) on their left, such as 瞑 (to close the eyes), 眼 (eyeball), 瞳 (iris), 瞼 (eyelid). Kanji with 口 (mouth) include 噛 (chew), 吠 (bark), 唸 (groan); ones with the 'speech' radical 言 include 語 (language), 話 (speak) and 議 (debate); ones with the water radical ⺡ include 流 (to flow), 海 (sea, ocean), 浜 (beach); heart radical ⺖ is generally related to feelings / thoughts: 快 (pleasure), 怖 (fear), 悩 (worry), 悔 (regret); hand radical ⺘ is used for physical actions: 打 (to hit), 扱 (to handle), 抑 (restrain), 抜 (pull), 押 (push). Etc. All of these characters have another radical on the right, which makes it relatively easy to guess the pronunciation if you've seen it in another character. E.g. 海 (sea, ocean) is read as "kai"; 悔 (regret) is read as... you guessed it, "kai". In both, the pronunciation is based on the 毎 radical (which itself is, puzzlingly enough, pronounced "mai"). Of course, in Japanese, kanji also have irregular pronunciations, e.g. 海 = umi (ocean), 悔 = kui(ru) (regret).
Generally, the more characters you know, the easier it becomes to learn more and to retain what you've learned.
@@VVayVVard Wow, thanks a lot, this is great!