>>16
The other was how the hell can you use 屈する to decode 窮屈 and 理屈. Very easily. The meaning of these kanji compounds are in the the very first character. Heisig's word for 窮 is tight (which my English can easily expand to constraint) and 理 is logic (I can also expand it to theory and reason). That extra character is just for differing the sound from other words (Which reading you learned from 屈する) Now there are some exceptions to this, but still gives you a step ahead rather then diving right in.
Way to miss the point. The thread in question is not about "how to use 屈する to decode 窮屈 and 理屈", it's about how unreliable it is to guess the meanings of words with only the knowledge of the meanings of the individual characters that make up the word. You're also conveniently ignoring the hard-to-dodge arguments made in the thread by looking at the big picture instead.
But I want to test this further. Let's take the word 原子力発電所. Using the Heisig kanji index (
http://ziggr.com/heisig/), I got this:
原 - meadow
子 - child
力 - power
発 - discharge
電 - electricity
所 - place
So, without looking it up from a dictionary, what word do you think this is? Do you honestly think you can deduct the correct meaning of the word from these individual characters? Sure, there are some good clues in it, but I don't believe you can guess the
100% correct meaning of this word.
Or how about 所以? Heisig gives 所 the meaning "place" and 以 the meaning "by means of". In fact, 所以 (ゆえん) means "reason; way of doing; cause; grounds". By using your awesome deducting skills, how can you ever work out the correct meaning of this word? In this case, it's clearly impossible.
>Some and very much don't really help your argument.
And a personal attack, like in
>>14 ("in case you couldn't parse the title" (implying I'm slow on the uptake)), helps yours?
Anyhow, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Local_developments and
http://homepage2.nifty.com/TAB01645/ohara/ and
http://www.geocities.co.jp/Hollywood/9752/kokuji.html
As you can see, there are many 和製漢字, or kanji native to Japan.
With only a few exceptions such as 駅 (station) which is homegrown Jap, to hold the Chinese back, they have an obvious advantage. Instead of learning a brand new 3000+ characters writing, meaning, AND readings, they only learn maybe 50 at best; the rest of the time is focused on readings. Most if not all of the 50+ are made up of the same primitives that are used in their Hanzi. As a westerner, all those characters looked the same to me a year ago, now they all are distinctly different. These are the advantages I was talking about.
You're still spending the exact same amount of time learning the kanji as a normal learner would. The only difference is that you first learn the English meanings and the kanji themselves, and after that the readings.
And I really don't believe Chinese people learn "50 new characters at best". You're also forgetting
kokkun, or "characters that have been given meanings in Japanese different from their original Chinese meanings," as Wikipedia states.