Hanzi vs. Kanji
The idea of learning Chinese characters seems cruel, demanding, incredibly fun, and inevitable when you love both Mandarin and Japanese as much as I do. This is question is not only for speakers of either langauge, but mainly for students and speakers of both.
I know that Japanese has Kanji charts that even have grades to them... a good number for Grade 1, more for Grade 2, and they get more numerous and complex as you move up in grade. Is there something similar to this in Chinese? Obviously, knowledge of hanzi/kanji is a lot more necessary in Chinese than it is in Japanese since Japanese can get away with Kana (even though it doesn't for some reason). This, I think, makes learning Kanji in Japanese a little easier, if only because a student is given a list of the ones that they should know at a certain level and so on.
Because chracters are used completely in Chinese, I would understand why there wouldn't be a list like this... but it would still be incredibly helpful if there was one. Can someone point me towards it?
I know that while a lot of the characters are used in many of the same situations, they are not always the same as their counterparts in the other langauge. How much of a problem is this? Is it the exception that they aren't the same, or is that the general rule? I would imagine that the ones used most often would differ the most, and the more rare the character, the less it differs, but that's just a random theory with which I have nothing to back up.
Is there anything I should look out for if trying to learn the characters in both languages? Should I not do them both at the same time and try to focus on learning Hanzi readings first and just use Kana in Japanese and then learn some kanji counterparts, or would it be better to learn them both together?
I'm sure there are plenty of you reading this that have had this dilemma in the past... please let me know how it turned out and what you did about it!
xposted to several places
I know that Japanese has Kanji charts that even have grades to them... a good number for Grade 1, more for Grade 2, and they get more numerous and complex as you move up in grade. Is there something similar to this in Chinese? Obviously, knowledge of hanzi/kanji is a lot more necessary in Chinese than it is in Japanese since Japanese can get away with Kana (even though it doesn't for some reason). This, I think, makes learning Kanji in Japanese a little easier, if only because a student is given a list of the ones that they should know at a certain level and so on.
Because chracters are used completely in Chinese, I would understand why there wouldn't be a list like this... but it would still be incredibly helpful if there was one. Can someone point me towards it?
I know that while a lot of the characters are used in many of the same situations, they are not always the same as their counterparts in the other langauge. How much of a problem is this? Is it the exception that they aren't the same, or is that the general rule? I would imagine that the ones used most often would differ the most, and the more rare the character, the less it differs, but that's just a random theory with which I have nothing to back up.
Is there anything I should look out for if trying to learn the characters in both languages? Should I not do them both at the same time and try to focus on learning Hanzi readings first and just use Kana in Japanese and then learn some kanji counterparts, or would it be better to learn them both together?
I'm sure there are plenty of you reading this that have had this dilemma in the past... please let me know how it turned out and what you did about it!
xposted to several places