Japanese Students/Fluents, Give me Your Advice!
 

How did you go about learning essential Kanji? I have books and stuff (And I'm studying grammatical structure and the Kana at the moment), but it looks quite daunting.

Is there anything that's going to ease me in a bit more and help me actually learn it effectively?


Thank you much!

Supposedly, don't learn Kanji until you have a good grasp of vocabulary in general, because it'll only confuse you more.

I never learned much Japanese, but I've always had a knack for languages and I can't really figure out what everyone's hang up is about kanji. I mean, sure it's a picture when you're used to letters, but when you think about it, you don't read letters, you read words. And how are words any less complicated than kanji? Just think of kanji as words that are smushed together into one character.

Yea, and see, there are THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of kanji. Or pictures. Whereas all words are made up of the same symbols.

Even katakana and hiragana are pretty comparable to our alphabet. Same symbols over and over, you know? Pieced together to form a word.

But ONE WORD is formed by ONE PICTURE. And there are THOUSANDS of them. With nothing to really aide in deciphering what it means, unlike in most other languages.

Kanji is a bitch. ;_;

I'll have to agree with nabhan - you should be at a certain point before you start dealing with kanji. I'd think that you should have kana mastered before you move on to kanji.

Anywho, I found using books/comics/etc. with furigana (the kana found above kanji) infinitely helpful. The first time you read through something, you know what the word is, so it doesn't inhibit you. But you can always go back and look things up for yourself. And please look things up! I always go in a cycle of reading, looking up, recording, then reviewing new kanji. It might not seem like it at first, but review enough and they'll stick.

This is how I've been going about learning: Firstly, this program helped me a ton with kanji recognition... but any sort of flashcard thing will do. But simple repetition (writing them over and over again) helps me with actively recall them. Giving myself exposure to them (reading Japanese texts, etc.) helps me to get a feel with how they're used. Textbooks help with with technical things like stroke order and meaning, but seeing them in real-world context makes a world of difference.

So... there are no shortcuts, but you can do it if you work hard enough.

That being said, good luck with your studies!

But you don't read the symbols, you read the entire word at once as if it were one long streched out character. That's why you can rearrange the letters of words and still read them.

Actually, continuing with my analogy, kanji are actually made up of "radicals" which are sort of like characters and they appear in many different kanji and have their own separate meaning.

Yeah, but English words are easier to recognize because there are only twenty-six possible characters that they can be composed of. Add a few thousand and you can see where the difficulty comes in.

But theres a LOT MORE TO REMEMBER, dude.

Like, when you read any sentence, there are repeat characters which you quickly identify and piece together mentally. 26 letters in English which are all rearranged to form different meanings.

Imagine if every word in the English language no longer used the same repeat set of characters, but instead, used ONE PICTURE.

That would not be easy for most people to fathom, let alone learn.

I don't think you guys are getting what I'm saying.

Look, if any retarded Japanese boy can learn kanji, so can you. It's just a question of getting over that mental block of dealing with a languge that is completely unlike the one you're used to. I took to it pretty quickly, even though I didn't learn many. Probably because I didn't convince myself that it was hard.

Look, man. Some of us - including yourself - are pretty avid language learners.

If you're not a kid, and you're not learning the language to survive, its NOT THAT EASY.

How about you go learn all of the kanji, come back, speak fluent Japanese and then tell us how easy and simple it was, yea? <3

I wish I had, honestly. My college totally screwed me by not offering any language courses at all. Ever.

But did you read what I said about radicals? Kanji are made up of a smaller number of characters (sort of) that are repeated. So what's the difference?

While that's true, there are still are over two hundred radicals with even more variants that occur in different positions, and apply for different things (sound, meaning). There's always that sheer number thing you've gotta deal with. You don't have that in English.

FUCK college, dude. If its so easy, learn it on your own!

Have fun!

deadally, I woul suggest learning the simpler ones first....I actually have just started...learning it wont be easy but it will take practice. What I do is I read (believe it or not) manga with furigana...or i look for the kanji in a dictionary. When you read often it is easier to remember....Also I took Chinese lessons first....so it gave me a bit of a head start..I also recommend not to take emotions for kanji...they are made up of a number of kanjis squished into a very..teeny tiny space

try to use imagery, ie imagine what the kanji is trying to mean, that should help you to read and recognise them but it can take forever. parts of the radicals that make up the word should also help you understand their meaning; one radical tends to be associated with plants, another with metals, another with water etc.

for memorisation, you're just going to have to do lines of the same kanji while saying out loud the meaning or pronounciation, that's how us orientals learn our kanji in school and even my parents learnt them that way 50 years ago. when you feel confident about a set of say 5-10, test yourself and go over the ones still giving you problems.

that is also how my teacher taught me my hiragana....he also said that the minds memorization time is only about 15 min so...after 15 take a break..about an hour i think then again

I bought Flash Cards and taped them to every household item I had one for. That's a good place to start for conversational purposes. Kanji is a trip.

It are not just words Minion, you have to look at the other characters accompanying the kanji, you have to know how to read it (some have more than one reading), you have to look at the context, you have to know the words that the kanji can represent. It can be very stressfull, because even knowing the kanji and it's readings, there are always exceptions.

The same is true for words, though. There are words that look the same and have different meaning, there is context to be considered in English, and I can say for certain that there are way more exceptions to the "rules" of English than there are to the rules of Japanese.

I have to agree on the grammar aspect, but when it comes to kanji, I think you'd be surprised. In Japanese, there are a lot of meanings for rather simple verbs like 'deru/dasu', or 'hanasu'. They all have different kanji readings and there are even more exceptions than I know of. Aside from that, the 'on'-readings are even worse, since I can think of at least 40 or 50 kanji that have the same on-reading, making it a pain in the ass to learn them, especially when they don't have a defined meaning.

I guess the thing that bugs me is that people go into languages like Japanese with a defeatist attitude. Anyone can learn it, really. Anyone can learn any language. The only thing you need to know is that you have to use it or you lose it.

Well, without experience there's very little way of knowing how to read a certain Kanji, even if you know the readings. As Enkidu pointed out, there are multiple readings for each Kanji, and most sites don't exactly give you lists of circumstances in which x reading is used.

Doesn't really affect me though, I'm trying to learn Korean >_>

It's normal for people to be scared of a totally different language, that has nothing in common with your mother tongue. I know I was. And it's not something for everyone to learn, I've seen people studying day and night, and still not being able to learn it, even after doing the year again.

The difference is that if you see an English word, you know how it's pronounced (or at least it gives you a clue), and from there you can remember the meaning. Not so with Kanji...the radicals may occasionally give an indication as to its meaning, but are largely useless in regards to pronunciation, which is how a lot of people remember words.

True, but on the other hand, the look of English words doesn't suggest anything about their meaning, whereas the way a Kanji looks might give a clue as to what it means.

You rarely have a clue. Even if the signs where based on real things, they have evolved so much that you have to be really imaginative if you want to find it's meaning. Can you recognize a fish in 魚?

Somewhat.
The problem is that with many kanji, to be able to understand what it means through the symbols necessitates that you know the history OF that kanji, because many times it makes no sense in modern understanding.
For example, the word for "cool" (as in temperature) is comprised of the symbol for water and part of the symbol combination for Kyoto.
Unfortunately, that makes no sense unless you understand that at the time of the kanji's conception, Kyoto was known to very hot and humid in the summers. Thus, splashing water in Kyoto makes sense. But only after you already knew the background.

Sorry Minion, but your analogy to the reading of only parts of words is somewhat inaccurate. The reason why we skim over words instead of reading them letter for letter is BECAUSE we have become very familiar and already have an understanding of the symbol combinations.

I guess I'm just more of a visual learner. I couldn't tell you how that kanji looks like a fish, but I can tell you that I'll never forget it now. I can't write all the kanji I've learned, but I've never forgotten any.

I recall reading that there is a fundamental difference in learning an Asian language vs. learning a Western one, primarily how learning to read and write an Asian language involves much more of the right hemisphere of the brain, than a european language does. I don't have a source, though. Assuming that it's true, it hints at a valid scientific reason why some Westerners might have difficulties with Kanji, while tackling the remaining elements of learning (grammar, pronunciation, listening comprehension) with relative ease.

Given that several people who have studied kanji in this thread, have already given testimony of how they've perceived it to be different, and in some ways more difficult than learning a Western language, and given that you don't like to let an argument drop, you might want to give learning them a try, even if your incentive is to prove everyone else wrong.

Set a goal to learn the 2 most common readings for the first 5 grades of Kanji. (Japanese schoolchildren learn a certain set of kanji in each grade.) Give yourself a couple months to do it, and then let us know the results.

From what many expats living in Japan say, it's not even the Kanji that proves to be the biggest problem, it's the grammar. Kanji seems to be the biggest hump at first, but really, it's not.

I mean, in just over a week of studying, I had over 100 Kanji memorized, which I retained for a couple of months. I lost interest though, and my sources were somewhat limited or even inaccurate. It's as simple as memorizing 10 a day. BUT. That doesn't mean you can read them in context, understand their jukogu, use them properly in a sentence, or understand the meaning as quickly as you would in English.

Basically, it's both easy and hard. That's just Kanji, not to mention the grammar, and vocabulary. If someone says they're fluent in Japanese, or almost any language for that matter after doing 3 years of independent study, I call BS. Even for the most adept person, it takes years of dedication, practice, experience, and boredom (because no matter how interested you are, it will be boring at points) to become fluent, if even that. There are tons of people who do a degree in Japanese, go to Japan, and find they have no actual grasp of the language.

More power to whoever can stick through with it, though.

How many kanji will you be able to retain though, if you are putting a concerted effort into it?
You have probably been exposed to about 50, at the most, kanji symbols, and probably over an expanse of years.
One has to learn at least 500 to get by in common Japan, and about 1500 to be really involved in it.
And I am referring to a thorough understanding of the symbols in all of their possible contexts, included added to other kanji, other hiragana, etc. Not just a vague familiarity.

You give me far too much credit, Squirrel. I'm way too lazy to accomplish that.

But yeah, I guess I should drop it. I don't really have anything more to say anyway.

hi ya Deadally, I agree with others said. Dont study kanji before you advance youself, I mean understanding the grammar and such on. Studying kanji without dictionary or the furigana will frustate you extremely. I think you should start after have good amount vocabulary. Reading children books especially helps because they have furigana in it, and you will eventually familiarize with it.

Well I'm studying japanese too. If this thread gonna be japanese-language help center then I will join in the discussion to improve my lame skill.^_^