Can Japanese Actually Read Kanji? (Interview) 

Can we learn with you yuta? ☺️

No it's not, 3 years every day and I still have no clue whatsoever those kanjis are.

@@KarunaMurti lool it's normal! Those aren't in the jlptN1 list. You need to read books in japanese to find those

日本人だけど、僕も日本語勉強したいな

That Japanese Man Yuta ... I recommend you to ask more uncommon and more challenging Kanji to Japanese people :D Trust me bro, it will be fun :D You can ask them the following: 1. 火遁 (かとん) - Fire Release 2. 風遁 (ふうとん) - Wind Release 3. 雷遁 (らいとん) - Lightning Release 4. 水遁 (すいとん) - Water Release 5. 土遁 (どとん) - Earth Release 6. 炎遁 (えんとん) - Blaze Release 7. 影分身の術 (かげ ぶんしん の じゅつ) - Shadow Clone Technique 8. 螺旋丸 (らせんがん) - Spiralling Sphere 9. 螺旋手裏剣 (らせんしゅりけん) - Spiralling Shuriken 10. 千鳥 (ちどり) - One Thousand Birds 11. 千鳥流し (ちどり ながし) - One Thousand Birds Current 12. 豪火球の術 (ごうかきゅう の じゅつ) - Blazing Fireball Technique 13. 天照­ (あまてらす) - Heavenly Illumination 14. 須佐能 (すさのお) - God of Sea and Storm (Shinto Religion) 15. 加具土 (かぐつち) - Added Tool Earth Lord 16. 紫電 (しでん) - Purple Lightning 17. 水陣壁 (すいじんへき) - Water Wall Formation 18. 土流壁­ (どりゅうへき) - Earth Wall Formation 19. 蝦蟇口縛り (がまぐち しばり) - Toad (Frog) Mouth Trap 20. 蝦蟇油炎弾 (がまゆ えんだん) - Toad (Frog) Oil Flame Bullet

which bewilders the fuck out of me, i have no idea how they memorize 2000 characters and the different versions of them.

@@Endrance88 The same way you memorised the spelling and pronunciation of thousands of English words. 💁

@@Phoenixe1986 but english words have rules you can go by, sure they're not all perfect, nobody can pronounce bologna at first. but for the most part there are rules to follow in which you can pronounce a word out. with kanji it seems like there are random condensed lines with no rhyme or reason as to why they are together in that position. Sure if square box next to 3 lines made some inkling of sense to me to say "oh, that means it's going to make a 'yo' sound as part of it" then i wouldn't be as impressed. But it seems like random long box with line in the middle followed by 3 squigglies adorning a hand stand tiger could mean over 5000 different things, ranging from simply "yo" to "kyoubi."

Unbelievable

Well reading is way easier than writing. Like asking for a word is harder than telling the word and asking what it means

May i ask why they have different meaning ??when japanese used the kanji did they make the kanji meaning by their own?? Lol sorry for bad english but i really wanna the difference

​@@Ivone58 Because every 汉字 character has its own meaning in Chinese from the beginning. But Kanji were only used by educated people and upper class in ancient Japan. Regular people(the majority) didn't adopt Kanji into their language very much later. So all the words in Japanese already existed in Hiragana/Katakana for a long time. They are only wearing Kanji "as a coat" for mostly appearance reasons. If you look at old Japanese documents or government letters they all appear in 100% Kanji, it's like a code readable only to educated people. As time goes Japanese people will put more Kanji coats on words when they need to call attention to it or whatever. In Europe, back in the day, French was used by the elite and upper class, English was the language of common people, even the British Royal family spoke French better than English. That's why now whenever people occasionally throws a French word into English they sound a little pretentious.

@@huaijiutv omg thank you so much for your time i really appreciate 🥺🥺❤️

@@huaijiutv That's wrong. Not all the words existed in Japanese before Kanji, quite the opposite. More than half of Japanese words these days are in fact what we call in English "Sino-Japanese vocabulary". In fact, if not for all the borrowings from Chinese, the very phonology of the language would be different, with closed syllables and vowel lengths being missing. And your bit about English is French is literally just as wrong. English has almost 30% of it's vocabulary derived from French, the words that people "throw in to sound pretentious" are just the ones that have preserved their "Frenchness" better, or the ones that have been adopted later on.

@@Ivone58 their explanation is wrong

He's my spirit animal

黄色い人、性格いいだろ多分w I love the man in yellow.😆

he seems fun and humble, and like he'd make a fun, cheerful friend!

At least he has a sense of humor.

Lmao

😂😂Lol

I immediately thought the same thing. I can’t unsee it. Haha.

A reminder that you can't escape from a nuclear blast

@@BiigiieCheeese you can. If you have a fighter jet in your garden

I mean...kinda? Though that would be a good way of remembering that kanji.

He will need a Chinese assistant then.

myheartandi999 I can !

I went to a japanese language school in japan and there were many chinese people there. They cant read the sentence in japanese, but they know the meaning of the word just by looking at the kanji. Even if they don’t know how it is pronounced in japanese.

@@KK-fu9vf Japanese sentence = 明日は友達と新幹線で東京に行きます = 明日 = 明天； 友達 = 朋友；新幹線 = 新幹綫；東京 =東京； 行 = 去 = Tomorrow friend Shinkansen Tokyo go = Tomorrow, I'm going to Tokyo by Shinkansen with my friend(s).

@@KK-fu9vf 是的哦.如果句子中有汉字就能猜到一些意思因为汉字往往是关键的几个字来自中国四川hello

"movie" isn't quite right. Movie is typically used in regards to high budget fictional stories that are over an hour long such as Avengers or 声の形. Typically "video" is more appropriate for content on RU-vid. Think of it like this: Studios produce films / movies. I know it sounds arbitrary but the nuance exists. I figured you'd prefer if you were corrected. It shouldn't matter if Hollywood or a man in his basement made it but English speakers distinguish them.

TheGreatBackUp Thank you for your correction！！You'd definitely improve my English comprehension

@@user-dh6pn4ju4jさん，いいえ。 ٩(◕‿◕)۶ がんばりましょう！

same

I'm a Chinese and I can read Kanji as well XD

What is flashcard?

@@vergilw7009 it's a system to help memorize words. You literally write the word on one side and the meaning/pronounciation and try to see if you can guess them correctly

@@fuzzyc It seems a bit old school to study, I prefer to study by combine those word with a simple story , to make it easier to remember it .

I highly suspect he was joking.

Sameee :((

It's just memorization. If you practice writing the word down, you will remember the word easily in the future.

@まさか啊 I think he's talking about the irregular spellings of words, though sometimes there are patterns like how words are spelled based on their origins or common spelling rules.

I'm learning english by watching movies

yeah, but at least those have rules you can figure out and follow, with kanji it's like "okay, i guess this random line is here and there's a box over there... nothing to really indicate how it sounds, i just have to use my perfect memory to remembe that that means "ba"... but so does this other kanji for some reason."

I'm a non-native English speaker, but I'm pretty much native level now. I never had problems with them. There's less than 30 letters in the English alphabet and letters go from left to right. Kanji on the other hand, there are way more radicals which are like the "letters" that form a kanji. In addition, they don't just go "left to right" like in English. For instance, the kanji for 'tree' is 木. You want some more trees? The kanji for 'grove' is 林. Not enough trees and want a lot more? The kanji for 'forest' is 森. How about a 'wooden desk', like the one you see at school? The kanji for that is 机. How about the kanji for 'rest'? It's 休 which pretty much depicts the action of going to a tree to rest/take a break. And these kanji have their own pronunciation, not to mention there's an onyomi or kunyomi reading. In English? There's usually a pattern to how you pronounce most words by their spelling unless they're loan words. For instance, the word 'rendezvous' is loaned from French. Hence, the pronunciation pattern is just as in French. English is simply more systematic as a whole, although there are a lot of exceptional grammatical cases that don't make sense.

Yet he said he's dumb, my ass 😂😂

My foot

@@adiabd1 Intelligent people tend to realize how much they don't know and become humble because of it.

but these kanji can be read by even students in junior high school in japan. Those people aren't intelligent i suppose, because now young Japanese read books for less time than before.

Everyone can do stuff well when they are studying it, these people haven't studied in a while. I used to be able to name most bones in the human body but I haven't touched biology (except mathematical biology) in several years so of course my memory of those terms is hazy.

yeah, right side is 其 though, not 基. The problem with this approach sometimes is, at least for me, that you can "read" the kanji compound, but have no idea what it actually means... it feels weird.

@@DaftMANIA Oh yeah, I typed that part out quickly and wasn't paying too close of attention. I'll edit that. It's the same phonetic component though, which is the point I was trying to get at. Kind of the same with 隣, there's not a kanji with just the right half, but almost every kanji with that component on the right is pronounced "rin".

Yeah so are most of in the video can pronounce but it doesn't necessary mean they know the meaning?

@Captain Patch Ha, I went through the same exact through process.

Phonetic component is mostly onyomi only. This is definitely an onyomi reading as in Chinese, the word is 麒麟, qí lín. Though the meaning in Chinese is different, here in China we use it to refer to an ancient mythological creature.

Augustus Au but from what I remember the animal on the can of the beer is not a giraffe, but a fictional animal!

Maybe they should have a beer for every kanji. Many people would become fluent in no time.

@@hkrelax i remember monster hunter

I knew it because it's the same in Chinese. It's also what Huawei calls their line of chipsets.

LittleWhole In Chinese it’s pronounced chilin

叶川ヒロ the first time Chinese saw Kirin was during Ming dynasty when the famous explorer ZhengHe brought back giraffes from overseas, people all thought that was the Kirin they imagine

叶川ヒロ does 麒麟 have two meanings in Japanese? Because on the can of a Kirin beer, there’s a mythical creature instead of a giraffe.

@@hkrelax Yeah, in japanese 麒麟 can be giraffe or mythical creature since they both written in the same way.

Since giraffe was an animal native to Africa, so Asian people in the past have never seen the animal before. When they first learn of this animal, they saw it to be resembling the mythological beast. Thus, people started to call this creature as 麒麟。The Minnan language spoken in Southern China also call giraffe as 麒麟鹿 (means kirin-deer literally).

Simon Low that’s interesting. But the looks of the two animals aren’t really close lol

準2～2級くらいかな

Nigga what?

I was gonna read that but then I saw Kanji so didn't bother

When you can read it but not understand bc of grammar

Is it "You can guess it pretty fast at this level, right?" Sorry lol i'm still studying.

It sounds more likely asking ''do u want to sleep?''😂😂

Indonesian Chinese here

I was looking for this comment haha

睡魔 sounds like dream demon in chinese

@@leezhieng I understand only the 睡 part as in 睡觉(sleep),but I know that in the second character,I saw the word 鬼 which means ghost

書けなくても、読めないと恥をかくレベルの感じばかりですよね。

まあこればっかりは学の差

あれくらいは読めて当然ですよね。読めないことにびっくりです。丸の内あたりでこの企画をやったら結果は全く違うものになっていたと思います。

書けないのは分かるが、読めないのはうーーん、、、

この動画のやつは見る頻度多いやつだよね笑 もう一つの動画の方は読めないの地味にあった笑

I'm not Japanese but I've been to Japan and it appears they just write the word use hiragana and the computer produces the kanji. In Chinese, where they only have the symbols for words, people just don't really know how to write, generally. It just isn't worth the time unless it is your job or crucial

i think they write them in hiragana (and katakana).

@@sand0decker so chinese people can't write their own characters anymore without phones and computers?

@アルフィー thanks!

@@sand0decker thanks!

LOL!! Same 😂

Same, especially when it's in this form 悪魔

@@DacLMK 悪魔 악마

its print on king piccolo shirt

魔法少女

The right shape is usually strong for the がく sound. Some other characters that share the same 音読み are 顎 and 鰐.

Yeah, and the lower part of this Kanji is 路 (road, route) which is a phonetic for RO in this Kanji.

個人的には驚嘆って日常的に使う機会があまりないから読めなくてもいいと思う。 結露は使うけど。

読めるけど書けないね It is easy for us to read them, but difficult to write them.

@@error-ug6mo Do you can write 夜露死苦？

@@vigilyoung3732 夜露死苦とか久々に見たwww

The problem in writing is not mainly the number of strokes in a character but how uncommon the kanji and its radicals are

Yuta actually has a video where he asks people to write kanji from memory ^^ "Can Japanese Actually Write Japanese Kanji?" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sJNxPRBvRQg.html

i have a colleague who passed the JLPT N1 last year but can't even write even a simple kanji like watashi. He memorized all the kanjis using Anki flashcards, never even once he attempted to learn to write them down at all lol.

@@muhammadnabildanialmohdhan2570 ok thats kind of ridiculous but also not really a problem if he doesn't have to write japanese in his daily life anyway...

@@babygorl9541 we both work in a workplace where we have to translate japanese videos/transcripts into english. we dont have to converse or write in japanese, so it kinda works for us i guess.

Hello! Late response, but I can try to answer your questions. I’ve studied the Japanese language for a very long time. As for what you should learn first, learn kana (hiragana and katakana) first. Then you can move into kanji. If you want to be truly fluent in Japanese, then yes, learning kanji is a necessity. Also, kanji helps a lot later on in your studies as you’ll be able to pick up the meaning of a word right away by knowing kanji. The Japanese language uses many homonyms (words that sound exactly the same). For example, the words, 神、髪、紙 can all be read as “kami,” but they have different meanings. The first kanji character means “god.” The second means “hair.” The third means “paper.” It’s the kanji character that helps give the meaning to the word, otherwise without kanji, it would be like, かみ、かみ、かみ (kami, kami, kami) which you wouldn’t know right away if you didn’t know the kanji. Of course, in conversational Japanese, writing isn’t used, so the listener needs to pay attention to context clues, intonation, and pitch accent to get the idea of what the speaker is talking about. As for using Google translate, I don’t recommend it. Google translate is okay for some words and simple phrases, but not for more advanced Japanese as it is not accurate. A Japanese dictionary is definitely useful to have if you plan to study Japanese. Watching anime can help you learn and listen to how Japanese sounds and is pronounced, as well as picking up new vocabulary and phrases, but the Japanese spoken in anime is often times very informal Japanese and sometimes even rude. You wouldn’t use “anime Japanese” in real life, so just keep that in mind when watching anime. I find Japanese dramas a better thing to watch if you want to learn conversational Japanese. The Japanese used in dramas is usually a bit more formal than in anime, so it may be more useful to you. Anyhow, I wish you luck in learning Japanese! 頑張ってください！

Thank u for responding! It really helped

確かに中学生程度の漢字だからね

@イディオット・アミン 意味の分からん返信はいらん

@@user-rw8zb3kc3v 草

In most cases, these kanji would either be written in hiragana or katakana. As yes, it’s difficult for Japanese people to write traditional characters like these.

B1GG1N She should really dump this guy lol. She deserves a better educated man.

I was just realizing that 👀👀👀👀

I felt really sorry for him!

@@hkrelax Must feel good to judge people on 3 minutes of footage on a single topic...

She looks like she's getting disappointed with him a bit at the beginning, but it wasn't that bad.

それはまじで、すごい！！

I’m Japanese. I think most Japanese can’t write kanji on this video.

Hey Anna, google translate is a useful tool, but for your learning I'd recommend more resources besides that. Here's a few, aside from Yuta's channel, which is great for listening to natural Japanese. Another channle which also interviews Japanese people in the street, and therefore is good for listening, is Ask Japanese. For tutorials I'd also recommend Japanese Ammo with Misa, and Yuko Sensei. Yuko Sensei is genuniely funny, she has some great comic timing. Also, for practicing kanji, there's a great app called Kanji Garden. I've experimented with a lot of apps and learning methods and I think that's quite a nice one. Aside from that, some great websites are tofugu.com, kanjidamage.com, maggiesensei.com, and guidetojapanese.org. The last one is a fantastic grammar guide that complements Yuta's style of teaching real Japanese, and I like it so much I bought the textbook version (gotta support the creator :) ). Also, kawakawalearningstudio.com. Good dictionaries are jisho.org and the apps Mazii and Takoboto.

@@benredfield6643 These should help me immensely! Thanks a lot! I can't wait to see how much they do help. Additionally, a RU-vidr I'm subscribed to did one video recently on learning Japanese (and hasn't done a follow-up video since) but in the video she used two Japanese-learning apps called Learn Japanese, and the other called Duolingo. Mind you you will need to pay to get access to more lessons on Learn Japanese (the first 2 are free) but Duolingo offers a variety of free lessons. You should try them if you haven't already!

lmao

Circle glasses dude was pretty hot ngl. Was shook when I saw his face clearly at around 6:00

Omg ❤😍

u wet

@Kraze well it depend on guys) l

@@Sarah-sk4fm Might wanna develop a taste for actual men.

But then I opened the list and saw 石鹸（せっけん）(soap) is also in level 1 as well, so I don't know what they are based on lol

@@warmpianist It took me more than 5 sec to realize what "石鹸" is.. (Im from taiwan I would use 肥皂 instead ; /

読めるけど、書けない笑 It is easy for us to read them , but difficult to write them.

@@error-ug6mo 痙攣て何も見ずに書けたら神ですよねw

I mean, you should think about the word itself rather than the kanji. It means convulsion, do you know anyone in the West who wouldn't know that word? You've probably read it an or wrote it more than a few times. Well, same for Japanese people. It's a common enough word

Since January and you already know 結婚 and 結論。Those are N3 vocabulary... Impossible if you just started this January.

​@@ManFinest I'm not studying courses, I'm doing immersion style MIA/AJATT so I'm not learning vocabulary by some arbitrary "levels", I'm learning word from real japanese usage and therefore pickup the common words in my immersion. My study is 30 min-1 hour anki and then immersion split into reading and anime/drama/movies without subtitles for a few hours. I also work as a software engineer and when I work I also listen to japanese podcasts or anime/youtube audio to get some passive immersion. Went with RRTK to study 1000 most common kanji doing 20-30 per day depending on how much I felt I could do so it took slightly more than a month. The three kanji in 結, 婚 and 論 are all part of the 1000 most common kanji, you hear and read the word 結婚 constantly in romance manga/anime and I think it was in the anime "Science fell in love so I tried to prove it" was when I learned 結論 I also have a lot of time and not much to do because of current ongoing world crisis

Here is actually the exact sentence I mined to my Anki for 結論 「理科」その結論はまだ早い。 It is definitely from the anime I mentioned since I also added the 理科 It is definitely not impossible

@@sadade32 Oh this is Matt vs Japan, Do you also use his Dictionary as well? Also I been looking for reading material, any suggestions. I'm N3 currently.

​@@ManFinest ​ I recently started using the dictionary for anki if that is what you mean, it is quite neat, but I use jisho a lot as well and www.sanseido.biz/ sometimes. If I can understand japanese definition I try to make monolingual cards but I'm not forcing it at this stage so it is mostly english definitions. Also very recently started using morphman and downloading subs2srs decks of things I'm currently watching and doing deep dives (check out OhTalkWho for this), I usually did everything manually before and still do sometimes but not as often. To be honest I found it sticks better doing it manually but I've grown slightly lazy last couple of weeks. I don't really know how much you know on the different levels so can't really give a solid suggestion. I found Neko to ojisama kind of nice in the start, was one of my first manga. I read some yotsuba as well at the start but didn't find it enjoyable so haven't read much of it. Also NHK easy news is always good and they have japanese definitions for some words as well embedded in the actual site. I recently read tomodachi no musume (kind of weird manga tbh) and I'm currently reading tenkuu shinpan.