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Kanji and Human Memory

by Jeremiah BourqueKanji are images. Kanji are accessed by visual memory.In the course of Japanese education, Western learners continuallylabor under the mistaken perception that kanji are words as theWestern mind perceives them. More to the point, they labor under theperception that kanji are words as the Western mind

remembers

them; it is here that the problem resides.A system like Rosetta Stone will present an image of a dog andassociate a written word with it: dog, chien, inu. As far as that goes,that is fine. However, a kanji is

already

an image; how to proceed?A system like Remembering the Kanji decides that no one can beexpected to associate a dog with the kanji for dog. Therefore, thissystem works to create a story in your mind to associate the Englishword "dog" with the Japanese kanji for "dog" (or "inu," rather); a cutepuppy and the kanji for "dog" are never directly associated with eachother. Besides, a puppy is not "inu" in Japanese; it is "koinu".At this point, your brain is trying to process "koinu." Why "koinu"?What does the "ko" mean? It's obviously a prefix, but there must besome written meaning, some word in English, that can adequatelyexplain, yes? Actually,

. I can only explain this by

showing

you.What I can

say

to you, via writing or spoken words, is that the "ko"can actually be read in three different ways, using three different kanjipairs, all meaning "puppy." Does that help? I doubt very much that ithelps. But, fear not! My explanation lies below:

And so we see that the "ko" in "koinu" can mean "offspring," "child,"or "small." All mean "puppy," but in distinctly different ways that canonly be explained by

showing

you the difference. This is why kanjimust be learned in such a way that trains the visual memory.Once kanji are understood in terms of visual memory, a person canread the kanji for "dog" above and think "inu"; he can read any of thethree pairs shown and think "koinu." This being done, he may writeeither in hiragana, katakana, or romaji (Roman alphabet i.e. what youare reading right now), or simply use the English word, "dog." Thekanji becomes a visual signpost leading to not only these things, butto the mental concept of "dog," man's proverbial best friend. Thus, even though kanji may be difficult to learn, he who has learnedthem can read the Japanese language with far greater ease. Indeed, if Japanese natives had to read Japanese without the ability to use kanji,they would react with undiluted horror and promptly adopt a different

language system before losing their collective sanity. Kanji exist tomake reading easier, not harder.However, if the student is learning kanji using the wrong kind of memory, he puts himself at perpetual risk of having the humanequivalent of a 404 error: this data has been moved or deleted.Actually, the data was never there to begin with; the "written word"memory is trying to bypass normal methods of memorization to forcea shortcut to the "visual" memory because

that is where the datafor kanji is stored

. When the human mind searches the "writtenword" memory to find kanji, human mind 404 errors erupt.Certainly, it is true that a person can create a large number of shortcuts to move from the written word memory to the visualmemory. However, what if you're not accessing "dog" exactly? What if you're accessing "puppy"? The shortcut only corresponds to one kanji.Will you be able to access the other kanji from the shortcut? No, youwill not. Instead, you will have to a) pray that you have created adifferent shortcut to "puppy" specifically, b) have some sort of shortcut in mind for the "ko" part and select the kanji pair that youbelieve your teacher expects to see in class, thus getting by on aquiz, never thinking of the two other kanji pairs.What do I see in that image? I see the kanji for dog; I know it is notthe kanji for cat, nor the kanji for "big," which is superficially similarexcept for the little "dog ear" on the top right. I separately know thekanji for "small" and "child"; I can associate the images with "dog",and I know that both can be spelled "ko," so the compound being"koinu" makes perfect sense to me. I actually didn't recall that therewas that kanji for "offspring" until checking the dictionary for thisarticle, but the "offspring" kanji has the "child" kanji as one of itscomponents; therefore, it's easy to understand that offspring isrelated to child, and vice versa. I'll probably remember the "offspring"kanji pair from now on.

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uploaded a new revision for this document (#2)

12 / 08 / 2009

uploaded a new revision for this document (#1)

12 / 08 / 2009

Kanji and Human Memory

An article written and uploaded by Jeremiah Bourque for The Modern Strategist (http://modernstrategis... on the relationship between Japanese kanji and the human m... (More)

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Category:	Magazines/Newspapers
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Upload Date:	12/09/2009
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Tags:	Education Japanese Kanji rosetta stone jeremiah bourque the modern strategist (more tags) Education Japanese Kanji rosetta stone jeremiah bourque the modern strategist helsig remembering the kanji (fewer)