Why can I read Japanese but not understand anyone?
Once you start learning Japanese you will notice that listening and reading are very different. There are a whole different set of skills you need to develop in order to understand what someone says from what you read. For that reason, it is possible that you can read something and understand it fairly well but be at a loss if you were to hear someone say the same things. Here are some reasons why that may be.
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Differences between Written and Spoken Japanese
The first thing to know is that written Japanese and spoken Japanese are different in a lot of ways. First, there are several words or word forms that are not used in speech. Again, there are ways to say things that you would not write.
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In writing, there are some grammar forms that are not used in spoken language. However, the majority of issues you will probably find with being able to read compared to speaking is with vocabulary.
Using Kanji as a Crutch to Understanding
Kanji is a convenient part of Japanese which helps you guess the meaning of words. If you learn Kanji and what those different characters can mean then you can look at a lot of words and know the meaning.
That is great if you are wanting to just understand what you read. This can cause issues when you try to listen though. The reason is that you can often read something in Japanese without needing to say it in your head. That means that if you spend all of your time reading this way then you may hear a word you know and not recognize it. Even worse, you may see words that you recognized from the Kanji which you never learned and then assume that you know it. That can lead to you hearing the same word in speech and not recognizing it.
To be fair though, there are words that you can get away with just reading and understanding. These are words that are only used in writing or are rarely used in speech. Most of them are Onyomi reading words and are used because they can shorten a text.
Japanese has lots of Words with the same Pronunciation
Another phenomenon in Japanese is that there are many homophones or words pronounced the same. The main reason for this is again related to Kanji. There are only so many different pronunciations used for the Onyomi reading of Kanji.
So, if I were to say きかん for example it could be 期間、機関、器官、気管、帰還、基幹、季刊. You would need to know the context to know which one I was referring to.
Learning to Listen
If you want to bring up your listening to the level of your reading then there are a few things you can do.
Read in your Head
This is a crucial thing to do. It will slow down what you read but will help you to internalize words you see often. If you hear yourself saying something in your head then it will become easier to hear it when someone else says it.
Try to Read Blogs, Tweets, Comments, or things from Everyday People
If you spend all of your time reading the news, Wikipedia, formal or academic websites which use more written styles then you will have less opportunity to get used to how people really speak. The best thing would be to listen to people but if you try to read things written by people for people then it should be closer to spoken Japanese.
