How to Learn Japanese: Intuition

If you want to learn a language as different from English as Japanese is, you’ll need a few things. First, you’ll need to get past the brain’s natural resistance to trying to “read” a language comprised of little snakes wriggling on a page, as Japanese looks to be at first, and the best way to accomplish this is to practice hiragana, katakana and kanji until your brain starts recognizing the characterswithout conscious throught. (It takes less time than you’d think.) You’ll need a lot of perseverance, and as wide a range of areas related to the language you can feel passionate about as possible — this is usually not a problem when it comes to Japan, since there are so many fascinating aspects of the country. Another thing that really helps with foreign languages is what the Japanese call kan, meaning “sense” or “intuition,” and if you are kan ga ii (kahn ga EE, having a good sense about things) you’ll be able to intuit the meaning someone is trying to communicate even though you might not know the word per se. My son and daughter are both preparing for the Eiken English test in a few weeks, but they’re going about studying in different ways. My son, who is very methodical and likes to understand everything about what he’s studying, gets hung up on difficult vocabulary, made all the worse by the fact that he’s taking a test intended for college-level students yet is only 13. But we’re constantly amazed at how often my daughter, a year younger, is able to pull the correct answer out of her head without actually understanding the material she’s studying on a conscious level. She’s got kan, which helps her sense the meaning most of the time.

I’ve no idea what this picture is but it rules. Hence I will include it here.