Re: does a blind person need to learn kanji while learning Japanese?
Some thoughts as both a native Chinese speaker and someone who's learned to speak fluent Japanese as well as writing in it.
If you want to communicate with people especially on the web, kanji is essential. While most people will understand you if you write purely with hiragana, it will make your Japanese look simplistic and like you aren't serious in wanting to learn it.
@2, those are some very interesting viewpoints, and I respect them. But I don't entirely agree that Japanese is a horribly constructed language simply because it uses three alphabets, nor that both Chinese and Japanese use words that have similar pronunciations but different meanings. That isn't necessarily bad, just the way the language was developed. And you'll actually note that in modern written chinese, the character for the third person is the same regardless of gender. Japanese also doesn't have words that are the same pronunciations but different meanings. Some are close, but not the same. I'd be curious for examples of words you find in Japanese that you think have the same pronunciation? Also, what do you mean by Hiragana and Katakana being read in strange ways?
A note about synthesizers: it's not correct to say that we have less need to learn kanji because of synthesizers reading them to us. Synthesizers, especially in Japanese, make mistakes when reading kanji characters. So while we don't necessarily have to learn the shape, though that can be helpful, you do have to at least know the most common basic reading for each kanji in both pronunciations; the onyomi reading, which is the reading that sounds closer to its original chinese reading, or the kunyomi, which is the japonified pronunciation. Names are especially problematic, so it's important to learn Kanji so you can figure out another possible reading if your synthesizer gets it wrong. For example, the name shindo Tatsuya, written as:
進藤龍也
is read incorrectly by most synthesizers. Code factory's vocalizer for example reads it as Shinfuji Ryuya, which is completely wrong. Other examples are characters that are usually pronounced one way but are read incorrectly, such as the word for time which can be read as toki or ji. Some synthesizers read this incorrectly as well at certain times, which is bad for learning. Chinese has similar issues, but I can't give any examples of the top of my head at the moment.
So in conclusion, for both Chinese and Japanese, if you are serious about learning the language, learning characters is important. You may not need to learn what they physically look like, but learning at least the possible pronunciations and menings is not only crucial for writing, it'll also help learning and understanding new vocabulary easier. Also, without knowing the meaning and possible pronunciations of kanji in Japanese, the small descriptions in the candidate selection box while typing won't make any sense.
Should you learn speaking or writing first? Well, as post 2 said, speech is the basis of most languages.. and so from that angle, it definitely doesn't hurt to start with speaking. But to minimize work, it's best to do both in tandom if you can. Japanese, despite its three alphabets, is actually a very simple and well structured languages. There aren't a tone of exceptions to rules, and most things follow a set pattern. But it's so different from English and western languages that it definitely takes time to get used to, which is the hardest part. Hope this helps... happy to answer any questions if you have any if I can!
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