I HATE reading stuff without kanji 💀

26 comments

1. Same, I encounter this problem on manga whose name is in full katakana and is a wordplay so I can’t even type it out on the keyboard

2. I wanted to play the JP version of Patapon but the lack of kanji made me drop it really fast lol

3. It’s funny how that progression works:

   Can’t Read Kanji -> Can’t Read Without Kanji -> Either Is Fine

4. Probably unpopular opinion of mine but if reading stuff without kanji (assuming it’s properly spaced and it is for younger audiences) is causing you problems, you need to work on your listening skills.

   I never understood why people struggle with kana-only text when all you have to do is just read it out loud “in your head” (= subvocalize) and at that point it’s literally the same as if you were listening to some youtube video or watching some anime without subs. If you can do that, you can read kana-only text too.

5. Me too, when I encounter something in kana then look it up only to find it’s a word I know, I feel cheated.

   But would you trade kanji for spaces?

   I know I would, 40% for the advantage of spaces, 60% to get rid of kanji.

6. It sucks but likely existed during to technical limitations at the time. They likely didn’t have enough space to add all the kanji characters

   I’m trying to Nuzlocke Emerald and all the hiragana have definitely left me kinda confused

7. A lot of learning japanese guides say you might aswell get learning kanji via rtk out of the way early on.

   So I did. Im not even very far in but I start grasping texts thanks to recognizing kanji.

   I usually also learn the readings but very often I read the kanji in my mind as the associated english words.

   So yeah… very relatable. If they aren’t there, and I just read the sounds the word makes I often don’t recognize it despite likely knowing it.

   Due to starting to learn kanji I also noticed I’m definitely more of a visual learner. I usually recognize the meaning of Kanji I learned instantly but struggle with the readings much more often.

   And with listening I struggle even more. As in often not understanding sentences that I know all words in.

8. I’m sure it’s easier for natives who grow up reading everything in hiragana first. Reading kanji is a skill that they build on top of their kana foundations.

9. I struggled at first playing Mother 3, a game with very minimal kanji, for this reason, but honestly I think it was a helpful learning experience as it forced me to parse the sentences and learn words more robustly without heavily relying on Kanji for both meaning and sentence structure.

10. Try Katamari Damashii. The king speaks in a combo of Kanji and katakana.

11. Without kanji means you really have to know the spoken language well

12. I’m trying to get into immersion now.

    I’m still quite a beginner but I have focused on kanji with my vocab so I have a decent grasp of the most common kanji.

    I found the Yotsubato manga to be a highly recommended first native material, but it annoys me that they use kana for a lot of dialogue rather than kanji so I am thinking of dropping it…

13. Yep! I wanted to play the original Phantasy Star in Japanese but had to give up because it’s entirely in katakana and that’s so damn distracting

14. I started reading my first novel in Japanese, which is aimed for 12 year olds, and on one hand there’s not too much kanji so I can’t read it in my level, but on the other hand some sentences lack kanji that I can’t figure out what they’re trying to say

15. katakana is so annoying

16. Japanese and Chinese are orthographic languages, and so speakers tend to process the written word visually. Non-orthographic language speakers (e.g. English) process them phonetically. Processing visually feels unnatural at first, but then you get used to it and being forced to do it phonetically when your brain is looking for the kanji feels unnatural.

    I read a study about the visual/phonetic processing thing and they measured how much longer it took Japanese speakers to recognize words that were written in a different kana than they’re usually written in. I didn’t quite buy it until I saw てれび (テレビ) in their examples and it felt like my brain short circuited.

17. Actually any text written only in Kana (i.e. children’s books) make use of spaces between words. Otherwise it would be really, really hard to read.

    So if Japan in 100 years ever does away with Kanji, they’ll most certainly introduce the half-width space between words along with it.

18. What annoys me most about Pokémon, since XY you can choose either kanji or without and then it’s still not many. What’s the point?
    Also I wish games had a furigana option these days. A toggle option would be great lol

19. The funny thing is Hiragana and Katakana basically originated from Kanji so…

    I don’t know what my point is but yall know what I’m tryna say

20. It’s not just you. I’m currently playing through Detective Tantei Club in the GBA and seeing everything in ひらがな is a nightmare. I never pulled the dictionary so much in my entire life.

21. Me too. It makes homophones so much more confusing.

22. Don’t worry, even natives struggle.
    And it doesn’t matter which way. If you write a common hiragana only word in Kanji, there is a decent chance almost nobody will recognize it.

    The brain gets used to a common spelling for a word. It’s becomes even more problematic because of all the overlap of words that are the same in hiragana only.

23. I took Mandarin in high school and switched to Japanese in college and not being allowed to use kanji until 201 KILLED me, but it really helped me with pronunciation and learning the proper terminology for each context because then also learning that each kanji doesnt always have the same sound also fucked with my brain after taking Chinese for so long 😆🙏

24. #PeakStealthBrag

25. im at a point where i can’t read without kanji but can’t read it out loud because i forgot what the kanji’s spellings are and only rely on the meaning of the kanji to understand it. Kanji giveth Kanji taketh

26. First semester learning Japanese in uni -> man I hate this kanji text
    Second semester -> man I hate this hiragana text