Goals: Japanese Reading, but Not Writing

[gmeyer]

I learned Japanese to an upper-intermediate level 25 years ago. Before moving to Japan, I had reached a basic conversational level. I lived in Japan for a few years and studied diligently while working in a professionally mixed Japanese/English bilingual environment.

After returning to the US, I let my Japanese skills sit unused for a long time. During this period, I often wished I had set my goal to be “fluent but illiterate.” I felt that most of the time spent learning kanji was a waste, especially when it involved writing a single kanji hundreds of times like a Japanese grade-school student.

Since the pandemic, I’ve become fluent in French. When I decided to take up German, I also felt a strong urge not to completely lose my Japanese ability. So, I started studying Japanese again. What I had lost over the years was mostly vocabulary. My memory of grammar remained strong, but I had forgotten many words, including their meanings and how to read them. Sometimes I had forgotten the kanji, sometimes the word, and sometimes both.

I’m now almost a year into relearning Japanese while also making good progress with German. I recently realized that in this past year, I haven’t written a single kanji by hand. Instead, I’ve been following a comprehensible input path, focusing on both reading and listening comprehension.

My reading ability has improved quite a bit, but it feels more subconscious and contextual. If you give me a kanji, I might not be able to guess its meaning or readings, or recall words that use it. However, if you give me a word, I’m much more likely to recognize it. And if that word is in a sentence, there’s an even higher chance that I’ll confidently know it with the help of context.

I don’t have any specific goals in Japanese beyond keeping my mind active, enjoying some Japanese media, and traveling. Now, I’d say my goal is to be “conversant and semi-literate,” with an ability to read, but no concern about writing.

I’m curious how all of this relates to others’ experiences. What does this make you think of in your life and your experiences with Japanese?

[adamleyland]

I’m really interested to know how quickly the relearning process has been after such a long break? How much did you retain? As for writing do you mean writing by hand or writing digitally? I’ve never really practiced writing by hand other than when trying to cement hiragana and katakana many years ago. Since then my focus has been on reading, listening and speaking. Other than some specific tasks like filling out official forms, i don’t think hand writing Japanese is that useful. I would however recommend getting comfortable with writing on a phone and computer as a way to practice output and structure your thoughts in japanese.

[gmeyer]

I felt like I lost about half of my vocabulary from active use, but I retained all of the grammar. I had reached a point in Japanese where the grammar just “felt right” intuitively.

When it comes to writing, it’s essential to consider the role of predictive AI capabilities in modern input software. I’ve seen research indicating that young Japanese and, even more so, Chinese students increasingly rely on software to write. However, I haven’t come across any research since the advent of generative AI like ChatGPT.

Everything I write in French for coursework gets a critique from ChatGPT-4. (“What’s a natively idiomatic way to express … in a … tone?”) Even much of my professional writing in English, my mother tongue, receives a ChatGPT review.

Personally, I’m not entirely sure what it means to “write” at this point, as disciplined writing has become an interactive process—a back-and-forth between the mind and media, mediated by software. In this context, I’m fully comfortable “writing” with a computer in Japanese, relying significantly on my passive vocabulary skills.

[D.lfzM]

My main target is reading. I do reading while listening on LingQ and noticed my listening skills progressed quicker and beyond reading. That might be due to the nature of Japanese script, or because of the passive listening I also engage in. Once I reach a certain number of read words I will transition to just reading on LingQ.

I will probably have little to no real-life interaction in Japanese, so I don’t care much for output. Sometimes I converse in Japanese with ChatGPT, and I wouldn’t say I do well, but not that terrible either. For writing, I noticed I can recall probably most kana to mind, and a few kanji as well. If I put them to paper they would look somewhat twisted, but probably recognizable. The Japanese themselves seem to be much more lenient in this aspect than the Japanese learning community.

About learning kanji, I agree with you, and studying kanji by themselves was probably my biggest mistake as a beginner. Now I only recommend learning them in words, and learning words in context. Maybe when I am little more advanced I may try to go for kanji the way the Japanese learn them. But that would probably not be part of acquiring the language itself, more of a side interest.

I learned English without trying, just by playing video games with a dictionary by my side, and later watching movies in English with English subtitles. I guess that was not too dissimilar to what LingQ offers. I never had much output practice, but I believe I can write reasonably well for a non-native. My speaking ability is definitely weaker, but I believe I would be able to talk about quite complex topics with a native.

Everything leads me to think that if I ended up in a situation such as living in another country, where I’d be required to speak in a different language, the passive knowledge acquired would allow me to do it without too much difficulty.

[hiptothehop]

I have a similar experience. In college, I learned all four modes (reading, writing, speaking. listening) simultaneously including how to hand write kanji on those darn genko yoshi. After graduating and moving to Japan in '00, I lived my daily life in Japanese for years but rarely had to write by hand outside of the occasional government or company forms, and mostly just with my name, address, etc.

I did write in Japanese daily but with the keyboard (mostly emails). If you know the pronunciation, and can read the kanji, it is not necessary to be able to recall how to hand write them. I could probably still hand write a few hundred kanji with confidence, but I never do.

Now, back when I was learning in the late 90s, there were no tools such as lingQ and reading was a much more laborious task. Getting audio input with cassettes and CDs was a pain. Perhaps in that time, learning kanji/words this way was the best we could do? If I were to learn in this era with full hindsight, I think I’d learn the kana and how to write enough basic kanji (300-400) to understand how they are put together. Other than that, I think learning the kanji in context like you’re doing is the way to go.

I’ve been back for 16 years now, and I have been using lingQ a little to refresh. I don’t bother studying kanji, or trying to write them. Reading in context seems to be enough, and what little I do write ends up being pretty straightforward with a keyboard.

[gmeyer]

Yep. I learned kanji filling out a whole sheet of genko yoshi with the same character over and over like a school kid.

My personal version of “comprehensible input” in the 90s writing code myself so I could click on a word and quickly see its translation so I could read Japanese Usenet content in the Internet’s baby stage.