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!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Minion

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. ;_;

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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!

I was speaking idiomatically.

Quote:

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

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.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Minion

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.

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.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Minion

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.

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

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Originally Posted by Minion

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

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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?

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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.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Minion

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

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

Quote:

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?

Quote:

The Japanese writing system depends heavily on Kanji, although the total number of Kanji is controversial. Dai-kanwa-jiten (the great Kanji-Japanese dictionary), which is considered to be the biggest Kanji-Japanese dictionary, contains approximately 50,300 Kanji (1). According to research (2), the ratio of Kanji content to the whole script in one text varies from about 20% to 30%, depending on the type of the text. Although the Kanji content tends to be reduced these days (3), Kanji is still an essential part of the language which learners should face.

Have fun!

I was speaking idiomatically.

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

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

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

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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 am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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 >_>

How ya doing, buddy?

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.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Minion

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.

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.