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Dear Yuta, thank you so much for your wonderful videos and for introducing people from around the world into Japanese culture. I have one request, though: In videos like this one (where people write Kanji), could you insert the correct Kanji not only before they write them down but also while they write them down? I think it would be interesting and easier to see how close they are. All the best to you from Germany! ❤️
Great video as always Yuta Sensei BTW i want to request a review on the type of japanese used in ジョゼと虎と魚たち (Josee, the tiger and the fish) Also i love your email lessons too Thank you
Hey Yuta, I was wondering if you could make a video about very old Japanese? Like a video showing to what extent modern Japanese people can understand Japanese Heian period writing from over a thousand years ago, or the Man’yoshu, or writing from the Asuka Period, as they were originally written.
There's a Japanese game show called ネプリーグ aired since 2005. One part is they read/write hard as hell Kanji, even the ones they aren't normally used or they're mostly written in simple Hiragana.
handwriting really is not an issue, if you just keep writing. Memorizing the radicals and how they work together in a kanji is the challenge, but it's doable, too. Onyomi are actually the worst part, it's so random and there can be so many for just one single character
They’re 5th and 6th grade kanji, so they’re not complex for native Japanese speakers. These are the basics; it’s just that these particular elders have not maintained their written practice of kanji, as is also true of many (perhaps most) Japanese people.
To be fair, elders are probably worse at this than high school or college kids, since they're constantly writing and taking notes. Not to mention they just learned these characters much more recently.
Actually, videos like this are making a strong case for switching to a phonetic system. If everybody is relying on phonetic input methods anyway, why bother converting it into kanji that most people wouldn’t be able to write by hand nowadays?
@@zaphodbeeblebrox6795 It helps certain sentences to make more sense, from what I've seen. Some combinations of kana have more than one meaning, but each meaning has different kanji, so it helps to use the kanji of the meaning you're trying to convey. It's similar to the English "bow" (made of ribbon), "bow" (of a ship), "bow" (to an audience) situation, but in that case it's very obvious from context which is meant. It might be less obvious in Japanese examples. It also helps with readability --- though, having spaces in sentences could solve that.
Japanese and Chinese writing is so difficult to master because everyone progresses their writing, reading, and speaking skill at a different pace while learning due to their kanji system. Back when I was learning French, the moment I can write a word, I can read it and say it. That doesn't happen while I'm learning Japanese, which makes learning new vocabularies substantially more difficult. :/
@@aman-hl9re the silent letters are pretty easy to guess once you understand the pattern. English pronunciation is much more difficult bcs it has no rules what so ever.
i am one of the few foreigners (i.e. non-native kanji learners and non-native Japanese language speakers) who have passed the first level of the Kanji Kentei - i usually take it every time (three times a year) at one place in a prefecture where i live, and most other Kanken level 1 takers are as this video puts it "elders": for many of them studying kanji is a valuable hobby after retirement, and a sort of a mental gymnastics, a way to maintain intellectual capacities at old age
@@darkmattergamesofficial "What do you do to study?" - i do very simple things: open a dictionary, and study material there... well, being a on a sort of hiatus i currently don't really study that much (at all for that matter). on a general note i would say that most things are done BY THINKING: i'd advise to read an autobiography of Richard Feynman called "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" where he described how he literally fixed radios by "thinking"
At 4:10 探険 is actually correct too. 探検＝探索、検索。探険＝危ない、未知の場を探索。Even the Chinese version is “探险”。It means to explore the unknown as well as dangerous area.
Well done to all the おじさん for playing along in the first place! What they are saying in the end is the truth, being able to read Kanji often doesn´t translate into being able to write it down, and like all things, the less you practice the more you forget. For us foreigners, being able to write kanji, actually helps memorize words and helps reading, so they are quite important. Of course you wouldn´t start with these complicated ones like in this video.
@@Quint_69 they arent hard to remember if youre always reading stuff since the 2000 kanji you need to know are the most common ones, the literal bare minimum
Kyujitai is just Japanese traditional characters and shinjitai is just Japanese simplified characters, like how mainland China uses simplified and taiwan and hk still uses traditional
@@oldladyhater it's the other way around. handwritten is the most correct form because they had to change the shape of some handwritten kanji in order for them to be the same size on the computer screen. some fonts actually merge certain kanji. for example 冷 has 2 forms that switch depending on the font.
Watching this video is comforting to me because after learning Japanese for a few years, I can read many words but still not write them from memory.. now I know that I'm not alone If I can get to native level on anything, that is what I would call language fluency
the word "探検" says a lot of history... actually the word elder wrote "探険" is "correct" old way to write the kanji, word "探険" means "exploration", and character "探" means "to explore", and character ”険" means "danger", on the other, character "検" means "to check", it's nonsense to combine the meaning "to explore" and "to check". It's all because GHQ fucked up Japanese kanji, twisted a lot of words to "reduce the character to learn" to eventually "eradicate the using of kanji", which is luckily aborted due to the takedown of McArthur, who was the leader of GHQ. Actually the elder remembered "the old correct way" to write the word "探険", touched me a lot.
the shinjitai -- "new" kanji became official with the Joyo kanji list in about 1980. what people(students) learned at school before that should be the original kanji. after that, correct one become "incorrect"
@@害羞的龙宝宝 wow !! But I think Chinese writing is more difficult even. Japanese one is kind of easier because of Hiragana and Katakana letters. 中国&日本 cultures are so beautiful. Greetings from Peru :)
@@TakittyLove Not really depends on how you look at it. If you are a masochist like me and learn both simplified and traditional chinese then yes it gets crazy
@@doggypi1532 so you see under the non-radical part is a gem/jade radical for peki and soil/earth for kabe. that gem radical associates peki(artifact) with jade and kabe(wall) with earth which makes sense
Many of them are actually good at kanji. They write 探険 in stead of 検，which is similar to 探險 in Chinese. I suspect it's just shinjitai (kanji simplification) switched character. Just like 栄養 is 營養 in chinese. But Japanese do have 営
探検 and 探険 should both be valid, 探険 implies the mission is potentially dangerous while 探検 is exploratory and informational 辞書によると 探検＝探り調べる 探険＝険しい所を探る one thing to note is that 冒険 can only be 冒険 as it always implies risks so 冒検 is not correct
Yuta: With New Zealand's announcement that they will be reopening to tourism on May 2, Japan willl become the last major country in the world still closed to tourists, besides China. I would love if you could address this (and perhaps the broader issue of 令和鎖国) in a video.
....but i enjoy learning kanji more than grammar :'c i know it's so inefficient but there's so much beauty, intricacy and history to Chinese characters.
I love practicing writing kanji!! It’s probably my favorite thing about studying Japanese. My diary looks so beautiful with lines of kanji streaming down the pages in vertical lines. But I also love calligraphy in my native language (English), so that is likely why I also love writing kanji.
Loved this video! For a Chinese language learner such as myself for over 20 years, kanji (or hanzi) is normal in the everyday Chinese writing language. Everything is kanji! Also, it’s interesting to see the shared kanji characters between the Japanese and Chinese language from a historical sense. Great video!
the nuances in japanese language are just so interesting. japanese works like no other language and its amazing. the difficulty of writing the correct kanji is so extrordinary while compared to ortography in other languages. i really wish to learn japanese so much that i can actually understand all these nuances
But how can they remember all those characters for so long? English is damn easy. Sanskrit and Kannada (I'm Indian) characters are also easy because they form a very logical pattern. But I'm not sure if Japanese characters follow a pattern like that from the information I know.
It helps that many of the kanji are made up of the same parts. you can use them to make "mnemonic devices", stories to help you remember them. For example here's some common kanji that all use the ⺅(person) part on the left: 化任仮伝他休 in that last one 木 (tree) is on the right side, this is also a common part.
When I came to Japan, I tried making an effort by writing down notes on paper to practice my kanji. 1 and a half years later, I gave up and just let my electronic devices draw the correct characters for me. At least this makes me feel less bad about it, hahaha
This makes me wonder how technological advancement will influence the Japanese written language in the long run. When people are forgetting how to write Kanji due to the availability of auto suggestion, one might ask the question if kanji will very slowly be phased out entirely.
Kanji will probably never get phased out entirely because there are way too many homonyms and that’d become extremely difficult to read. Hiragana and katakana would probably need to be revamped to include pitch changes somehow to differentiate words. It would also probably have to be changed to be like Korean and include spaces. Even Korean still uses Chinese characters to a more limited degree in technical written contexts. Overall, Japanese would have to drastically change to remove kanji entirely, which is unlikely.
Dont be too sure. Japanese without kanji just sucks because of all the homophones. Even as a learner I often find it easier to read texts that have kanji rather than those that don't.
on the contrary, i've read that the use of kanji is actually INCREASING because of auto suggestion. i guess there's a difference between remembering how to write something and simply recognizing it
Can't be done. There are a lot of words that are too long or annoying to write in Hiragana that are just one kanji. 祭り = Matsuri まつり = Matsuri but also in Hiragana.
Kanji looks really difficult to memorize because of how many strokes comprise a lot of words. English thankfully has words comprised of letters which each only take 1-3 strokes to write.
@@エルフェンリート-l3i I agree, however, I have stumbled upon many less than optimal radical names. There's a site called koohii kanji which is based on Heisigs books with other people creating stories for each kanji, using the same or reformed radical meanings.
探険 is the etymologically correct one. In traditional Chinese it is also 險 with the ‘ear’ radical. As many have pointed out, etymologically 探険 means to search the danger, hence to explore, compare 危険. With the wood/tree radical 検 means to exam and check cf 検定 (to examine, approve)，検疫(to check for disease, quarantine)。 With the 新字体 some characters with similar meaning were mixed up. Still, we should not say 探険 is wrong. You can say it is obsolete or out-dated. Many writers write the Kanji they think are correct/suitable for the meaning anyway. That’s the beauty of Kanji.
I actually am able to find 探檢 as a rare word in some Chinese and Korean dictionaries. For example, the 重編國語辭典修訂本 defines 探檢 as 探索尋檢. In both Korean and Chinese, the two words are pronounced differently (探險/탐험 = tanxian/tamheom; 探檢/탐검 = tanjian/tamgeom). In Japanese, they are pronunced the same and Japanese dictionaries now list both versions but with perhaps different nuances. My guess is that they blended into the same word since they sound the same in Japanese. For some reason, 探検 has become standard in the Japanese media but 探険 is in the dictionary and should not be considered wrong.
In my experience, when I learn kanji, I write them but in order to be able to read them if that makes sense. Actually trying to write them makes you memorize them a lot better than just learning by reading. Learning by doing is just more efficient, just like you'll understand a maths problem better if you try to solve it yourself instead of just reading the solution.
well if i was old japanese and had a lot of time i would learn kanji because what else would i have to do all day it helps you with memory and eyes so its pretty good
@@musthaf9 yea, but the question is: if it's necessary to write them in order to be able to read them. And I'm not convinced about that one. It's a conservative approach straight from the Japanese education system, kept from times when they had to write stuff by hand. It takes a lot of time to learn to write them and you forget the next day basically. I'd rather spend this time reading.
I'm still a beginner in Japanese, but from what I understand, they default to hiragana. I think katakana is only used for words that are borrowed from other languages, and from what I've observed, there aren't any kanji equivalents for katakana words.
I have been thinking about the same thing those to old men said, a while back. Because everything has become so computerised in our current day, it has become easy to write, Hiragana, Katakana and kanji.. But here is the problem with it! If technology ever fails, and we go back to writing things by hand again Japan will have a massive part of the population that cannot write in their on language unless they see the character they want to use. Korea had kanji but they simplified their language to Hangul and removed many Kanji to make people more literate. Have 3 writing systems is a heavy burden for the mind to remember, but with technology it has become easier. When or if that fails, all hell will break lose. Tho the Chinese don't have it better, where they don't have an alphabet, remembering over thousands of Kanji must be a a nightmare if technology is ever to fail for them.
Languages that only have 1 alphabet and can just spell out the specific letter to form a word, would not be impacted that hard if technology is ever to fail. Because 95.% is highly literate because they only have 1 writing system where they can simplify their words with letters to form whatever they need to say.
In such a fantasy doomsday scenario, the worst that would happen is everybody would write everything in kana (which I'm sure all Japanese can do) until people get comfortable writing kanji again -- and there are plenty of hardcopy books in Japan. So it's not like kanji can be "lost," nor are they absolutely necessary for writing Japanese, just cultural tradition. As for the Chinese, who only use characters and have the same problem with writing by hand now, they would have a harder time, but I guess at least the younger ones could write words in pinyin (Latin script) as that is how they type on their phones to get the character.
Well yes they can write everything in Kana or hiragana or even romanji because they understand roman letters. The problem would still be that many words in Japanese are "said" the same thing or written exactly the same. The only thing that would set the words apart would be the sentence structure. If i remember it right. So it would still pose a problem, but not world breaking problem.. The chinese could use Pinyin to write in chinese if they dont remember their kanjis but that would also be a hasle without techology. In the case of chinese or japanese i think the jaoanese will have an easier time. @@ExVeritateLibertas
@@WuHeDo The Chinese have written the characters for over three thousand years and have not forgotten the characters, so the Japanese that started to write the Chinese characters not too long ago will not forget either. Chinese characters are more like art and are not meant to be easy.
鬱病 (utsubyō/depression)、飆 (tsumujikaze/whirlwind)、鬮 (kuji/lottery)and other complex kanji are killing me. At least I was able to memorize the first one.
they seem to be highly composite, maybe lookin its radicals help to get a mnemonic of them. 飆 in particular is three dogs and wind. maybe its a wind as loud as three dogs or is a wind that spins like three dogs chasing their tails.
if you searching depression in japanese at RU-vid、it's very rare to find the word 鬱病 at youtube, you'll just find うつ病。the word うつ just came with hiragana
interesting to learn that 約束 means promise in Japanese. In Chinese it means constrain or constraint. It makes sense: we should not make a promise lightly, or it would become a constraint.
I believe Japanese see the 2 words individually ie 约 = promise and 束 just means it's bounded on the person, on the other hand Chinese sees it in a broader context ie restrain.
Korean also uses 約束 (약속/yaksok) to mean "promise." It's interesting that a lot of Korean hanja and Japanese kanji have similar meanings but are different from Chinese. Like "airport" being 空港/공항 in Japanese and Korean, but 機場/机场 in Chinese.
a chinese guy I know can read kanji and understand a lot without knowing any Japanese. Apparently a lot of characters have been changed slightly or a lot; so a lot is guess work, but if he knows the context of the characters ,he can make educated guesses of the changed Kanji and still know basically what is being said. he explain he can understand like an english speaker would understand a sentance like, "hier je suis rentré chez moi et j'ai mangé du chocolat"
A lot of nuance will be lost. 見る - to see, 見せる - to show, 見える - to be visible, and that's before you add tense or negatives. The hiragana part will be where whether something happened or didn't happen is indicated. Just knowing the kanji is likely to result in getting hold of the wrong end of the stick. As for the changes, Mandarin has simplified the characters a lot more than Japanese has. If your friend is Cantonese, he may know traditional Chinese characters which are a lot closer to Japanese characters.
I’m not sure if an English speaker would understand anything in "hier je suis rentré chez moi et j'ai mangé du chocolat", other than "chocolat" though.
@@brendanmurphy8727 LMAO, please do some research next time, don't be so ignorant. Simplified Chinese can date back to Qin dynasty and the simplification initiative was first proposed by KMT before CCP, CCP simply adopted this plan later after 1949
@@ray295 No. In its current form Simplified Chinese is entirely a product of the CCP. The simplifications used in the Qin dynasty were more akin to handwriting idiosyncrasies and were neither widespread nor well regarded at the time. The proposals under the KMT to simplify Chinese characters were rejected by the party and not implemented.
My goal is to learn 900 or 1200 Kanji. I want to learn the most used and some that I find intresting. And also, the only reason I am learing Japanese is bc I want to get a diary thart is completly in Japanese so I can finally have some privacy at home and have no worries about my mother reading my diary bc its all in Japanese and she will never understand it. *ITS BIG BRAIN TIME*
I was wondering when this video was coming back, I saw the first half of it yesterday before it suddenly disappeared! What was wrong with it if you don't mind me asking?
I saw something about how words are read and apparently the brain looks at part of the words and fills in the rest . It is like how I try to remember a song that I've heard and yet cannot recall the words and yet if a different version is played on the radio then I can recognise it immediately as not being the version that I know . So a fairer test might be to show the people the Hanzi ( Kanji ) and then ask them what it means . The brain is doing lots of processing simultaneously and the skill required to write the word is probably being routed through lots of areas inside the brain . Maybe making a video showing people the character and asking them what it means would be interesting and a comparison could then be made . Plus it would give you an entire new project .
4:05 He was not wrong to write 険 instead of 検. Aside from that, I can definitely see that more Japanese people are about abolishing kanji from Japanese like their neighbors (South Korea and Vietnam). Some Japanese websites which claim to teach real keigo (敬語) even claim that the use of kanji in text gives a "harsh, patronizing" impression, but when reality, many Japanese people are totally cool with switching between kana and kanji, e.g. いたす/致す.
it's interesting that some of these elderly people are probably among the first of a generation that an even older generation complained about not writing kanji. Some of these guys were probably in their 30s-40s in the 1980s and 1990s when computers, electronic dictionaries, and phones were becoming big, and I would imagine the people in the 60s+ at that time were bothered about the digitization of kanji.
Same thing with latin characters, honestly. And I doubt the average Japanese can read doctors' writing either. Don't try to deny it. Kanji is outdated, doing like the rest of the world except China and switching to a phonetic system (hiragana and katakana) with extra strokes to indicate pitch and tone like Vietnamese does with latin characters for example, would make the most sense.
Of course they can, Yuta! What a silly question. But we still appreciate that you show how kanji are different from other writing scripts because they are not phonetic. It really is proof that logographic writing systems are harder to learn and probably not as good for literacy as phonetic writing systems. King Sejoun in Korea realized this when he created Hangul. He was right. At least Japan has Hiragana and Katakana, unlike China.
I'd say that the lack of a basic character system allows us Chinese to get more used to our characters, but phones mean that even we forget how to write them.
China has pin yin which is taught to every 5 or 6 year old child. It is phonetic. Chinese characters are also taught each year of school and by age 9 pin yin isn't used much. Pin yin looks like English letters but a few of the sounds they make are different.
@@happycook6737 Japan also have romaji, it's like pinyin, but these are only used to type on cellphone and computer. Nobody uses pinyin or romaji in real life.
The closest thing in my nation would propably be to ask people who to write names that need to be capitalized, but here again there are only 3 rules and everything else is 100% phonetic we write like we speak (but writing prefuxes roots sufexes and endings seperatly) For example "Latvijas Republika" bough are capitalized, while (at this point I whent looking up examples as I dont like the standart capitalization so use my own and dont want to give you my own by accident) "Baltijas jūra" only first is capitalized (this does line up with my personal capitalization rules, bough examples).
I feel a bit better abt myself when I look at those people in your kanji videos lmao, kanji are the bane of my existence as a Japanese studies student 😭
Nice interviews, Yuta! What do you think the trajectory of kanji in Japan is going to be? How long will it last, at least in terms of everyday use? Is there a move to romanji or something else, like hiragana and katakana, which are more directly syllabic?
I think this is mainly a technology thing. all the words I'm spoiled to google the spelling that I had to know confidently before. all the phone numbers I used to know by heart.....
can someone explain to me how they dont remember? is it not common to write in kanji? forgive me I know nothing about the japanese language, just curious. I assumed that they used the alphabetical japanese (there might be a word for this) and kanji semi interchangeably. Is it that on their keyboards te=hey type it out semi phonetically and it changes it?
