I can remember some hiragana and katakana characters. If the two languages are similar enough, maybe I could learn Chinese easier…

  • @tisamantis@lemmygrad.ml
    2•2 years ago

    Here is a random text from an online mock JPLT N1 test. It’s a reading comprehension task with some nuance and it’s about corvid intelligence. Even if I if were to check every Kanji don’t I know with a dictionary, I wouldn’t fully understand the text because grammar is hard. I’d have to take a really long time to slowly decipher it and get the answer right. A Chinese student would face similar difficulties. Here are answers, btw. The real test should be way harder.

    There are also listening tasks, where knowing Hanzi literally doesn’t mean anything.

    I think Suwako is correct here, their response to my comment below is informative.

    Knowing Kanji/Hanzi probably only helps with writing them or recognizing rough meaning of words.

    • @Samubai@lemmygrad.ml
      2•2 years ago

      I’m surprised there is so much kana in that sample.

      Also, there is this book with the premise that there is a stem vocabulary, similar to Italian and Spanish that learners can use to gain at least a basic understanding of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean through kanji. I wonder what your opinion is about it. I’m learning Japanese. I’m low level though, probably between N4-N5, but I can understand context cues relatively well. My vocab is low.

      • @tisamantis@lemmygrad.ml
        3•2 years ago

        Doesn’t look like this I can find this book online. Guessing it’s aimed more at learners of Korean tho.

        Wiktionary entries tend to list pronunciations of Chinese characters across multiple languages. (example page https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/丘), but using it is a pain, even if it’s informative.

        I’ve not studied Japanese in a while, but last time I did, I’ve almost completely given up leaning Kanji and went back to learning words instead. Pronunciation in Japanese is a mess. (湯桶読み and 重箱読み words make me want to commit sudoku. also, wtf are words like 白髪 even called?)

        itazuraneko is a good resource btw

      • 洩矢（もりや） 諏訪子（すわこ）
        2•2 years ago

        because this word is from China. But don’t forget that Japan is a independent nation, japanese needed to talk before they touched China, so they had created thousands of words before they could learn from China.凄（sugo,qi1）强（tsuyo,qiang2）人（hito,ren2）夜（yoru,ye4）最(motto,zui4）they are completely different right?and you must learn this words at startup. when you finally find out the original words and grammars, you can learn many advanced words from China.