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"
@@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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
@@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
....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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
探險 is actually the correct one in Chinese. If you consider the context: 探=find, discover 險=uncharted, danger, unknown 檢 is inspect, examine (something physical) so it does not make sense in this context. I guess in Japanese, 探検 was misused so many times over 探険, it eventually became the "correct" one... So, the old person was actually right when he wrote 探険. It's Japanese that is wrong.
@@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.
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
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.
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.
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 RUclips、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
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.
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.
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*
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.
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).
4:29 In Vietnamese we use the word 探険 (tanken, literally means detect the danger) for the meaning of exploration; never heard of 探検 (detect and check??! sounds quite weird)
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?
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.
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 😭
Yes yes yes yes. I hate that I focused so much writing each radical and stroke of thousands of Kanji in school, I wish I would have focused that effort on reading, listening, speaking and writing (typing). Yes I like to be able to hand write a note to someone but it's too hard to remember every stroke, every kanji, I would rather type it anyways.
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 .
I'm writting complex kanjis that i encounter in my books, but not cuz i'm trying to memorize them but....to "get use to the stroke orders in case i see some similar kanji"
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.
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.
Learn Japanese with Yuta: bit.ly/3iuYtkn
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! ❤️
Yuta, can you invite Mr. Saeed Sato サイード佐藤 and interview him?
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.
When I look at them I think "Ah, so easy" and then when I want to write them from memory Im like "How was that part again...."
Yes, they're common words, almost all of them. But I still can't remember, similar to you
And I’m like, there is another lifetime, right? 🤣 (JLPT N4 studying for N3)
Yeah, I can relate. I know about 200 kanji but writing a few of them from zero sometimes is difficult.
Memorizing the radicals will help a lot
あああ、かんじはむずかじい。
We need a "are you smarter than a 5th grader" Kanji edition!!
Lol looks like we just got one. 😄
@@LoveMyUnusual haha, we need a TV show!
exactly!
elementary school goes till 6th grade in Japan. Teaching 1026 Kanji
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.
reading and writing is a complete different thing altogether lol, i can read quite a few kanjis but if you asked me to write them...no chance xD
Mmmmm write Japan with kanji
Keyboard cause all of this😂
@@22chyke I can't
well if I use keyboard, I might have slightly better chances
@@cahallo5964 oh
It's so impressive how fast some of them can write such complex kanji!
The speed is not impressive
@@JHuatuco Okay Simon Cowell
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
@@エルフェンリート-l3i thank you! good to know!
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.
I like this type of videos because It's encouraging for people learning japanese that not even japanese elders can write every single kanji.
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 because theres no need to write it anymore
@@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. :/
The advantage is that you can understand the context of a sentence by just a glance.
@@theTHwa3tes11 I absolutely agree especially if you're taking JLPT.
Hmm the French do have silent letters tho
cuz yall use the same writing system with some minor differences in vowels, if youre born chinese youd say kanji is ez and german is hard
@@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
Wait a minute! I recognize you! You're the guy whose name is on the Wikipedia image for a Kanken Level 1 pass certificate! ウスコフ エフゲニ!
@@LittleWhole it's a small world. cheers
After I’m done with N1 (I just got N2), Kanji Kentei will be my next challenge.
That’s awesome and inspiring. I really like kanji too. What do you do to study?
@@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"
wonderful video, but it would be cool if we could see the typed kanji next to what everyone wrote on the whiteboard, so we could compare the two :)
Just rewind a couple seconds. Also, handwritten is usually different than typed anyway bc we suck
yeah but i think even that in itself is interesting. how handwritten japanese differs from what the kanji "should" look like. i dunno just a thought
@@oldladyhater well hand written is less robotic, less rigid.
@@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.
@@Pashmimi REALLY? That's actually crazy interesting. I'd love to see a video about it, any recommendations?
I always thought it'd be neat if he did a video like this with reading or writing unsimplified kyuujitai characters. 圓, 體, etc.
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
I agree. I'm also curious to see how many kyujitai are legible to Japanese people
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.
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
Aw, I would've loved if this video was longer. I really enjoy these kind of videos
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.
Guy at 3:20 actually didn't get it correct. He's missing the diagonal stroke through the right side of the character.
I was looking for this comment. I thought I was the only one who noticed that
also his 糸 radical is weird/wrong? it's supposed to be 6 strokes (his is 7)
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
营养 is the simplified version of 營養
榮養
For me, 検 is checking, as in 検査. 険 is danger, as in 危険.
So 探険 seems to make more sense.
探險 would be 探险 in simplified Chinese
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.
I can't believe you tried to correct that woman's "jun". She was clearly a wizard.
Your email lessons are going great! I've subscribed around two weeks ago.
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"
哈哈哈，中国也是这样。很多人批评简体汉字曲解了很多字的原本意义
Ah interesting, I was just wondering why did he say that man was wrong, as it’s also 探险 in Chinese. 检 is wrong.
@@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
when japanese students test my english knowledge I always test their japanese and ask them to write "kanpeki" ......and "peki" is always incorrect.
I just typed it... And for a bit I thought (peki)璧 was the kanji for (kabe)壁 lol~ these differences are a pain~
@@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
Doesn't matter how old/young you are or how smart/dumb you are, Japanese kanji is difficult. Period.
it isnt
@@bm1259 It is.
@@Quint_69 they arent people just tend to learn them in very stupid ways like RTK or whatever
@@bm1259 Bro it's 2000 characters. They aren't easy to remember.
@@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
....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.
Me too. Those ancient Chinese scribes had a sense of humour.
Who says Chinese is not efficient, the same text, Chinese is often much shorter than English. This is your problem, not Chinese.
@@cowholy3031 inefficient to learn in that order, he meant
@@chri-k if you learn Chinese you will find out how difficult Japanese had made kanji to learn and use
@@王磊-y5j and?
This was fun to watch
Déjà vu! Then i realized this was briefly posted yesterday and as soon as I clicked it was gone!
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
"It's the flow of time"
That one really hit me
Grandma was killing it.
that grandma still writes her letters
This makes me feel better for not being able to remember how to write basic kanji, despite being able to read quite a bit lol
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
That granny with the black coat is great!
As always an amazing video. Greetings from Brazil.
This is so reassuring & makes me hopeful 🥲
1:54 you can see his excitement and is raring to go. What a fun and educational video, great work!
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.
Yeah the speed that natives write kanji is amazing. But Yuta ad for his lesson are getting smoother it's impeccable.
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.
What a great video to watch 11 hours before my Japanese final. Nice to see I’m not alone in not knowing the kanji.
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.
They mostly don't, you just have to learn them by heart, and each kanji has several pronunciations, unlike Chinese or Korean for instance
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.
@@goshinbi44 Japanese is indeed a difficult language.
Eii cibai, mereka tak suka inggeris saya pun tak suka inggeris, saya lebih rela belajar jepun dari inggeris 🥴sampai macam tu sekali
@@harishpatil5055 sukar manapun yang penting gaji dia Best seimbanglah dengan kos sara hidup jepun yang mahal
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!
I still gonna learn how to write most of the kanji. It's like art.
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.
Remembering full radicals makes it substantially easier though
@@四方八方 Exactly, "Remembering the Kanji" by Heisig is gold in this regard🥇
@@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.
But for English you still have to learn all the spellings. I imagine it's not as hard for adult learners as Kanji, though.
@@vuuvovuuv the point was strokes per character
探險 is actually the correct one in Chinese. If you consider the context:
探=find, discover
險=uncharted, danger, unknown
檢 is inspect, examine (something physical) so it does not make sense in this context.
I guess in Japanese, 探検 was misused so many times over 探険, it eventually became the "correct" one...
So, the old person was actually right when he wrote 探険. It's Japanese that is wrong.
imagine have a picture based language where the pictures are based on odd translations of an ancient version of a foreign language, couldn't be me
Yuta… For some reason your videos have not been showing in my feeds for about a month now. Just thought I would let you know. Big❤️
my Japanese teacher insists on doing a 10 kanji hand writing test every two weeks :/
It's great, hold on !
That's good. Writing Kanji is a great way to remember it
It depends if it's easy kanji I don't see an issue.
If you can write it, you can read it. I’d say, continue on. I also practice writing them, because it helps me memorize them
@@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.
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
🤣
The usefulness of knowing to write kanji is debatable but learning to write is really fun and it ultimately helps in other areas such as reading
Yuta never fails to promote his classes 😂
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.
You should totally do a video seeing if foreigners who know Japanese can remember Kanji
Japanese people: kanji is difficult
me: same
If you don't have a computer and the appropriate word is kanji, but you don't remember it, do you fall back to the Hiragana or Katakana version?
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.
Hmm... If I don't know the exact word I'd probably use another term or just describe it lol...and yes in Hira/kata form~
Another phenomenal video. Your idea generation is first class. This really inspires me to study harder for some strange reason as well.
that was fun. i might actually try learning some kanji just to mess around lol
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.
i think people will just go for katakana/hiragana for these words rather than these kanjis they look like headache lol
if you searching depression in japanese at RUclips、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
@@as2s3hf7gff yep, I've noticed that. More useful than the gruelling 鬱.
@@raphaelmanarpz721 yeah, what about Taiwanese that still use traditional Chinese, they never have (or just a bit) simplification of their writing
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.
You should make more videos of the elderly doing kanji but reward them after they solve the kanji right.
it would be nice to see people learning Japanese vs elderly Japanese in writing kanji at that grade level
This is a Japanese video that I as a Chinese can enjoy
are you Yuta Okkotsu
theyre so cute and did a great job 😊
I'd fail if he asked me how to write いち from memory
That's pretty insightful. You don't really have to learn writing the obscure kanji. Just be able to read them and speak them.
3:20 the shiki is missing one stroke
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.
Once you learn to read some kanji you start to appreciate it. Reading a text with only kana is difficult, especially complex sentences.
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.
たんけん(exploration)は｢探検｣でも｢探険｣でも正解です。
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*
Mom can use an online translator app that instantly translates a written page like the one I use to read labels. Beware.
3:25 "shiki" is incorrect, he missed a stroke on the right side.
Ha ha this is reassuring in my very slow quest to learn Kanji...
This feels like the same level as "have you seen this movie?" versus "list all the movies you've seen", type of scenario.
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.
@@andrewli9024 Cheers. I should have realised that as the move away from traditional in mainland China was due to the CCP.
@@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.
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).
4:29 In Vietnamese we use the word 探険 (tanken, literally means detect the danger) for the meaning of exploration; never heard of 探検 (detect and check??! sounds quite weird)
Imma only use the handwriting function on all devices I own and I'll never forget my kanji
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?
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.
"tanken" actually means "to fill up gas/petrol" in german
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.
Me writing a kanji : ---> 5 minutes
the japanese : ---> YEET!
I love seniors! Respect your elders and open your ears. You can learn a thing or two!
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 😭
imagine learning how to draw over 2200 pictures, you're bound to get alot of it wrong
Typing and the lack of handwriting things outside of your profession once out of school is my best guess
I love them so much. ❤
Yes yes yes yes. I hate that I focused so much writing each radical and stroke of thousands of Kanji in school, I wish I would have focused that effort on reading, listening, speaking and writing (typing). Yes I like to be able to hand write a note to someone but it's too hard to remember every stroke, every kanji, I would rather type it anyways.
探険 is actaully marked as a variation of 探検 in dictionaries
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?
im learning japanese, and even if i mastered kanji, i think i couldnt read the handwritings of others
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 .
I'm writting complex kanjis that i encounter in my books, but not cuz i'm trying to memorize them but....to "get use to the stroke orders in case i see some similar kanji"
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.
@@Shichitenhakki78could it be because japanese and korean wanted to preserve whilst chinese diverged on its own?
could u do a video of verb conjugation? would be very helpful :)
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 question is why adopt such a difficult writing system omg I love it thou
When ever I forget how to right a character correctly, i just scrible something that looks like it in cursive form :)
Interesting results
このようなコンテンツでもっと多くのビデオを作ってください。お願いします
"Too damn easy", haha.
3:53 you know he boutta do harakiri