I've recently decided to pick up Japanese to suit my hobbies and have learned Katakana and Hiragana and can read them easily now

However like every one every one who comes into Kanji gets spooked away from the language. I'm not overwhelmed by it (the radicals seem like they make it all the easier) its just that I don't particular understand how I'm supposed to learn it

Do I remember just what it means and how to pronounce it? Or just what it means? 

Sources I read tell me its a huge waste of time to learn how to pronounce every version of Kanji in On and Kun and so I wanted to ask which is it? 

Do I learn a single Kanji in and out or just what it means ?? Its just very confusing.

(2016-01-31, 12:23 pm)Bronx1875 Wrote: I've recently decided to pick up Japanese to suit my hobbies and have learned Katakana and Hiragana and can read them easily now

However like every one every one who comes into Kanji gets spooked away from the language. I'm not overwhelmed by it (the radicals seem like they make it all the easier) its just that I don't particular understand how I'm supposed to learn it

Do I remember just what it means and how to pronounce it? Or just what it means? 

Sources I read tell me its a huge waste of time to learn how to pronounce every version of Kanji in On and Kun and so I wanted to ask which is it? 

Do I learn a single Kanji in and out or just what it means ?? Its just very confusing.

Even native Japanese don't know every single reading for every single Kanji, so don't sweat it.


That being said, as many (but not all) on this forum would likely agree, a book called Remembering the Kanji provides an excellent way to get used to the characters and get on the right track to memorizing them.

Used in conjunction with Anki, this can make Kanji far less intimidating.  This won't teach you the readings for the Kanji, but you'll pick up those naturally as you learn vocab.

There are various approaches to learning kanji, so you will need to find the right one for you.

It is important to realize that, beyond the early, simple ones like 木, 土, 山 etc, kanji do not have "meanings" exactly. A kanji is not a word, although it can be used in a word or used to represent a word.

My approach was to learn words rather than kanji as part of learning Japanese organically. So after those early simple ones I would, say, learn the word 正しい (tadashii) which means correct or just. Through that word I learned the kanji. I then encountered other words that contain 正 and gradually became acquainted with its pronunciation and use in various common words.

As you see I did not really sit down to "learn kanji". I encountered them as an organic part of Japanese. This is probably a bit unusual, but I think there is a lot to be said for it. More on this approach here if you are interested.

Most kanji don't have "meanings" strictly, but they do have meaning, and the way they work in different words is something that takes time to become accustomed to.

Other approaches tackle kanji as a separate "subject". There are various approaches to this and a lot of people here are very expert in them. Which one suits you best of course depends on you.

Alright thank you for the replies I plan on just studying the kanji and learning it and let the words flow naturally as I study the grammar along with them.

Thanks for the replies

I did something along the lines of learn a couple hundred as I went through the lessons in Genki, go through RTK which in the end let me become "familiar" with the rest of the shapes. After that, although I still learned some new kanji through school lessons, most of the time when I was actually "learning new kanji" I basically took the same approach as CureDolly, just organically learning them as I read. Personally I preferred that somewhat twisty route because memorizing the first few hundred is a relatively easy way to jumpstart your kanji base, and then you can move from there to pick them up as you go along (at least from my viewpoint).

The thing that I didn't really like about the suggestion to do all of RTK first or some of the more rote memorization tactics is that they often took away that motivational carrot of actually learning words and shapes as they really appear, and instead would have me doing something that I found relatively boring without anything to keep me going (since I went through RTK rather slowly, and had lots of stops/starts)

This article will sum up the methods out there.

http://www.tofugu.com/2014/02/14/the-dif...8Tofugu%29

For me, I do the “Vocabulary & Experience” like Curedolly does and "Heisig's" (aka RTK) Camp. Some will argue one or the other but I say...



Working out for me so far.

I'l just add that there is an alternative to anki built into this site that I found to be great. I think you can import your cards from this site into anki as well if you find that you like anki better (although I'm not 100% that the interval data transfers as well).

I'll also add this link because it's so awesome: http://forum.koohii.com/thread-5110.html...nukemarine

And I'm not sure if it is still available but I've also heard good things about the Nayr's Core 5k anki deck for beginners (not that I've actually ever used it though).

(2016-01-31, 6:35 pm)RawrPk Wrote: This article will sum up the methods out there.

http://www.tofugu.com/2014/02/14/the-dif...8Tofugu%29

Thanks for that. and that's a great commercial. haha. I kind of know what this website is all about now. It's also cool hearing the breakdown on all the Kanji method's out there. Well done. 

By the article, it seems it wants you to learn readings, but how to know which readings are important.. That, I don't know. I am currently learning all the readings and meanings. I can tell you if it worked or not in under a year, assuming I don't give up or something beyond my control happens or whatever.

Another thing to say is that after the first 'n' kanji (I don't know the exact number) in term of frequency, the other ones will be used only in a relatively small number of words, so it does make little sense to study like 2000 and more kanji the RtK route from the beginning before even knowing a single japanese word.

覗, 睨, 僕, 俺, most of the flowers/plants and animal kanji, geographical related kanji like 崖, 洞, 滝, kanji where both meaning and reading are easy to grasp, like 胴, kanji in words like 挨拶, 颯爽, 咄嗟に, and many more (I don't know if all of those are in RtK1 though).

Also not all of us are interested in reading high literature from the beginning, and even if we are, this will be possible only after a lot of time. So what is the need to know from the beginning all those kanji where furigana are commonly used? I'm not saying we don't need to know them but to study them out of context from the beginning is useless.


So even if I find RtK a really good method, I think that big set of kanji is overwhelming... One can still add kanji as one goes, if he/she finds it the need to add it as a RtK card.

PS: I know many kanji are useful because they are building pieces of more complex kanji, but you can pick up them from the kanji which use them (in fact, if I remember right, even in RtK many elements are not "cards" by themselves but they are introduced together with a kanji wich uses them).

I think there is not a perfect set of kanji to study "out of context" but I like the "kanji damage" one. As I said before, one is free to add kanji as one encounter them. If we think we need all kanji before studying real japanese, it will be an endless task. Even after rtk1 and rtk3 we will still encounter kanji we don't know, so we must draw a line somewhere.

(2016-02-01, 6:17 am)cophnia61 Wrote: 覗, 睨, 僕, 俺, most of the flowers/plants and animal kanji, geographical related kanji like 崖, 洞, 滝, kanji where both meaning and reading are easy to grasp, like 胴, kanji in words like 挨拶, 颯爽, 咄嗟に, and many more (I don't know if all of those are in RtK1 though).

What did you want to say with that paragraph? Most of these are RTK3 and 睨 and 咄嗟 aren't even in Heisig.

But to come back to what you were saying, for me (learning kanji upfront) is not about making sense from a theoritical point of view (frequency, so called high literature...), it's about overcoming a mental block. When I started Japanese, every time I tried to read something, I got stumped on a kanji. Over, and over, and over, and over. It doesn't matter if it has furigana, the point is it's supposed to be read as a kanji and you can't read it. And every time you look up a kanji it interrupts your reading, scatters your energy and demotivates you. And let's not forget that feeling when your teacher tells you to buy MNN and you open it and you're like "is this alien writing?". So yes, in a "get rid of the kanji problem asap" perspective, RTK makes sense.

And the first half of RTK isn't that bad, it's after that it's gets hard. But once you've done it, you feel like keeping going because 常用 are 常用 and you just want it to be other with.

I tend to the opinion that you shouldn't worry too much about kanji to start with. Any beginning textbook is going to introduce them only gradually and with heavy furigana. So you might as well wait for the point where ad-hoc memorisation and reliance on furigana stops working for you, and then come back and look at RTK. You'll have a better idea of how kanji fit into the writing system then (and so what is worth learning and what is not) as well as a source of motivation for why you're doing it. (That point is clearly going to vary for different people.)

(2016-02-01, 6:38 am)EratiK Wrote:

(2016-02-01, 6:17 am)cophnia61 Wrote: 覗, 睨, 僕, 俺, most of the flowers/plants and animal kanji, geographical related kanji like 崖, 洞, 滝, kanji where both meaning and reading are easy to grasp, like 胴, kanji in words like 挨拶, 颯爽, 咄嗟に, and many more (I don't know if all of those are in RtK1 though).

What did you want to say with that paragraph? Most of these are RTK3 and 睨 and 咄嗟 aren't even in Heisig.

I wanted to say only that, if full RtK is too much for one person, it's ok to try other methods like learning kanji with words, because even if you do RtK1 you will still encounter new kanji, and many of them, both those in rtk1 and those which are not included, could be picked easily from context. I'm not saying "don't do RtK!", but it's ok to try the method CureDolly suggested. But this is not to say that Rtk is useless, I did it myself, but only the lite version, and without it I'd been lost! But if I could go back in time I would pick the kanjidamage set, and learn all the other kanji as I learn new words with them. But this is only IMHO

PS: sorry for the italic, it was unintentional and it doesn't remove it ._.

(2016-02-01, 11:23 am)cophnia61 Wrote: I wanted to say only that, if full RtK is too much for one person, it's ok to try other methods like learning kanji with words, because even if you do RtK1 you will still encounter new kanji, and many of them, both those in rtk1 and those which are not included, could be picked easily from context. I'm not saying "don't do RtK!", but it's ok to try the method CureDolly suggested. But this is not to say that Rtk is useless, I did it myself, but only the lite version, and without it I'd been lost! But if I could go back in time I would pick the kanjidamage set, and learn all the other kanji as I learn new words with them. But this is only IMHO

Ah right. Yeah I guess limiting factors to learning kanji in context would be complexity* and how frequently you re-encounter them after the initial learning. Which is why I was surprised by your choice of kanji ( 挨拶, 颯爽, 咄嗟に): 挨拶 is maybe not complex but (as one of my leeches) I find it counter-intuitive, anything with 爽 feels rare, and I think this is the first time I've seen 咄嗟に in kanji.

*for example even if I've seen 蜘蛛、蝙蝠、菠薐草、憂鬱　a few  times, I still can't produce them.

I would say that one important thing to bear in mind when deciding how to learn kanji is whether you want to be able to write them.

The concept of "production" has changed radically since the time Heisig-sensei wrote his book. At that time producing a kanji necessarily meant being able to write it. Now most of the time kanji are produced using a computer's or keitai's IME. Japanese people regularly both read and produce kanji that they can't now write accurately (even though they learned them in school).

I am not trying to make a case for or against being able to write all the kanji you know (I did discuss it here). Personally I do want to be able to write at least most of the kanji I know eventually, but it does not seem like a high priority in the overall strategy of learning the language. Other people may have personal or other reasons (eg school) for wanting/needing to be able write every kanji they know.

The point is that depending on which camp you fall into, it does make a difference to the strategy you adopt in learning them. The Heisig method, for example becomes a lot more relevant. If you want writing-level kanji acquisition since that is what it is designed around. Conversely it becomes a lot less relevant if you don't.

Well, it's true that writing isn't as important in itself nowadays, learning to write the jouyou kanji with RTK did help me tell the difference between similar kanji more easily. Even if I don't write them regularly anymore, if I type words out on my phone I can then handwrite them easily (I need to do this once in a while to write messages for birthday cards, etc in the Japanese group I'm attend), which is something I couldn't do well without practice. Also, anyone planning to live in Japan will probably need to be able to at least fill out forms and such.

I think knowing how to write the main radicals and understanding how kanji are "built" is important for the kind of writing you mention. It is relatively easy to write unknown kanji by copying from your keitai so long as you are aware that it's a kuchi, a mizu and a ki, or whatever. I've done that too when I've needed to hand-write something.

In fact I use kanji recognizer to find unknown kanji, which involves writing them on-screen, because it is quicker than other methods. If I can see a kanji, I can usually write it fairly easily because it is usually mostly a matter of putting together components I already know.

For telling similar kanji apart, usually once I identify two kanji I am sometimes confusing I look at them together and make a mnemonic for the difference. I'll sometimes pop this mnemonic on the back-notes of the Anki card of one or both of them.

As I said I am absolutely not trying to make a case against learning to write every kanji. That's a decision everyone can make for herself. But I would say that learning to write every kanji for the purpose of distinguishing the few confusable ones is overkill (not saying you were saying that). You just need to identify the particular areas of confusion and tackle them.

I think people underestimate written production in general, and literal written production in particular, because since the modern separation of language into 4 skills (written/oral - comprehension/production) it's hard to make a (quantified) case that written production has any influence on the others, though I'm convinced it affects the global language learning. The fastest J-learners I've ever met where all people majoring in Japanese, who (at least here) write things by hand all the time. I don't think it's a coincidence since my own learning of English involves early production too.

I absolutely agree that written production is very important. I have seen it argued that written production does not support the other skills and I think this is a very narrow view. In fact I am planning to write an article on this at some point.

Production is important on all kinds of levels that are not quantifiable, but no less important for that. Essentially, your mind won't take a language seriously as language unless it is an active means of communication. To the mind Language is what it communicates with. It holds a privileged position in the mind over other systems like algebra or chess. But only if it is used for real communication.

At a more mundane level than that though, writing brings you into contact with various problems of expression. You can hear something many times and you may pick up the correct way of saying it, or you may not. But once you have struggled with the problem for yourself in trying to express something, you become aware of it, and will notice it much more exactly next time you hear it. I would say that the interplay of input and output is crucial to learning language (rather than just learning about a language).

Of course none of this has any bearing on whether one writes kanji by hand or not.

(2016-02-01, 10:41 pm)CureDolly Wrote: Of course none of this has any bearing on whether one writes kanji by hand or not.

Actually writing and typing use different areas of the brain, so they have a different impact on learning. My previous (now edited) post should have been clearer, I apologize for the confusion. Basically I'm saying "yes written/typed production is good, but literal written production is even better".

I agree writing helps memory. I've been using the Word List method to study vocab lately, and after writing a word down once or twice, I can write it from memory (in that study session). If I was only looking at the word, it would be pretty hard to write it from memory without it right in front of my eyes. I also write lots of language notes on paper, so being able to write Japanese quickly is an important skill for me.