Hello,

I recently starting learning Japanese and am fully prepared for the worst, meaning that I know it won't be easy. I am trying to learn Kanji first because I believe it will help me with vocabulary and allow me to be literate in Japanese so that I will have an easier time learning grammar and all that. So when I first began (and I'm not very far along with Kanji yet anyway), I heard of the On and Kun readings and assumed that I would have to memorize each one, and that seems to be the thing that everyone advises doing. However, I have also seen someone saying that memorizing all On and Kun readings would take far too long, and in the long run, not be very helpful anyway. He said to simply know the words and how they sound (including compound kanji) and not try to deduce the pronunciation from the readings as it would take too long and be troublesome to remember. So, I ask for your advice.

Shall I memorize all the On and Kun readings for each Kanji, or should I simply memorize the full words themselves?

*EDIT* If I should memorize the On and Kun readings, I know there are a lot, so anyone have any advice on how to approach them?

Thank you,
Socky.

amtrack, recently created a thread which may provide you with some information and/or advice in this matter, Socky. Below:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10814

You do memorize on and kun readings, just passively. When you encounter a new word, you need to remember the reading and kanji, so once you see one kanji in one or two words with a certain reading, it will stick. Then eventually you'll see the same kanji with a different reading.. gradually you'll internalize that one too. And then repeat as many times as necessary. You'll start to see that there is some method to the madness, but that's just lost on you if you study ONLY readings. Learning just the on-readings works for the cases where you just have one reading, or at least one that is much much more common than the rest, but otherwise, it is almost useless (and trust me, the multiple readings thing occurs A LOT).
Learning on-readings may seem like a good idea, but for a new student, the idea is a bit misguided to say the least. Just dive right into some more practical stuff and you'll thank me later.

I understand there is no set way to learn something, or even easiest way to learn something. So I suppose learning the readings can be different for everybody. The suggestions in the post you linked me to, uisukii, seem pretty useful. The only problem for me, personally, is that I may find it hard to take in all the information at once (the kanji, english meaning, readings). Regardless I will try it all out and tweak it a bit to make it easier for myself as an individual.

Haych, I agree that it makes sense to learn the reading at the same time I learn the Kanji itself. Unfortunately I have studied a bunch of kanji but not their readings, so I'll have to start off with the readings alone for those (but it was only 70 or so, I'm not very far along). I am truly hoping the readings will come passively, that is what I was hoping for originally. Should I do any active studying, or should I simply learn the way the words sound and associate the kanji with their meaning fully passively? Also, how is your personal experience with taking this approach?

Arigato gozaimasu, to both of you,
Socky.

In case you decide to focus on readings, you definitely shouldn't just take all the Heisig Kanji in order, and study the readings.

Find learning material that's designed to be used that way. There are plenty of books that offer to teach you the most basic 100 Kanji or so in the first volume (including readings and at least an example word they're used in), then the next 100 in the second volume, and so on. If you get through two volumes and are still up to it, fine. If not, you've already learned the most useful (frequent) readings anyway. Meanwhile, if you did the first 200 Kanji in Heisig, you would've achieved almost nothing.

P.S. I'm beginning to think that spending at least a little time focusing on learning readings for common Kanji isn't a bad idea. Not 2000 Kanji, of course, but enough to give you a feel for how these readings work.

Before you get more confused, take at look at Nukemarine's Guide for Beginners thread which is stickied under the Japanese Language section. I would suggest going through RTK 1 without paying attention to ON/KUN readings. After you finish that, go directly to a Core deck. I don't like the RTK2 method or Movie Method for onyomi memorization. What I did was go through the Core deck and for each new kanji I come across whose ON's I didn't know, I created a story consisting of a few words. Look up the kanji on the kanjidamage.com site for an example of an ON story. There is also an appendix on the site which relates onyomi to a phrese, which is extremely useful. I finished Core 10000 in this manner. While doing RTK1, to keep you from getting bored, also go through a beginning textbook like Genki or Tae Kim's grammar guide.

Anyway, that was my method but if yu ask a dozen people, you'll probably get many different techniques.

I don't even have the RTK books, unfortunately. I'm super new to this and don't know much about all those resources, and all my learning comes from the Reviewing the Kanji website, so readings aren't even included in it.

Now I feel like a fool, I don't even have the books as I'm sure most, if not all, of you do. Regardless I'll get them as soon as possible as well as a Core deck. I have a lot to learn still, not only with Japanese but with the things I'll be using to learn it. I hope you continue to take my question seriously even now that you know I don't even have the books, haha.

I'm sorry I didn't point out this fact earlier, I just didn't think it would all apply to the On and Kun readings. Once again, I am very new to this and may seem very naive, and am unaware of most resources that you guys reference, so I apologize for my ignorance and hope I'll be on the same page as all of you soon. The post you suggested seems to clear most of that up now, though. Hopefully I'll be able to utilize all those decks and programs now that I know of their existence, hahaha.

Thank you for that website, by the way, it makes it a lot easier to learn On readings. I never thought to use mnemonic devices for the readings as well.

Like you suggested, I'll go through RTK (or at least the website) without the readings for now, and try my best to get the Core Deck and see how it works out.

Thanks a lot,
Socky.

Socky Wrote:Like you suggested, I'll go through RTK (or at least the website) without the readings for now, and try my best to get the Core Deck and see how it works out.

Thanks a lot,
Socky.

The book is basically used as a reference. It's good because it explains the primitives that make up the kanji. I used it in concert with this website and its flash card feature to memorize the kanji.

I suggest not to deal that much with this on and kun of kanjis...　I suggest to deal more on the meaning of each character and character combinations, other than memorizing its on and kun....

Socky Wrote:Haych, I agree that it makes sense to learn the reading at the same time I learn the Kanji itself.

Ok hoooold on a minute. I said words--as in vocab, not kanji. What I was saying was basically "don't study on-yomi separately". Just go through RTK without readings, then vocab or sentences like core6k. Essentially what potbellypig said.

Socky Wrote:Should I do any active studying, or should I simply learn the way the words sound and associate the kanji with their meaning fully passively? Also, how is your personal experience with taking this approach?

You're still going to have to 'actively' memorize on-yomi. You need to remember the reading of a word and the kanji. Vocab will typically be 2 kanji, and the reading will thus be 2 on-yomi added together. Figuring out the on-yomi will just mean finding where one stops and the other starts. And yeah, finding that dividing line is something you should probably do, if that's what you mean by 'active'. As for my own method, when I study a word, it means being able to take a definition in english and recall the keywords of all kanji in the word, their reading, and their order. From that, you can construct, write down, and pronounce the word.

It sounds a little like you're new and having trouble seeing the big picture. I say don't worry about it for now. Just focus on finishing RTK. The more time you spend around the language the more sense it'll make

Agree with Haych. In short, there's no need to study readings in isolation. Just learn them as you learn words, which you can do after RTK. I wrote this in another post:

headphone_child Wrote:It's not that you shouldn't learn 音 and 訓 at all, but rather that you pick them up automatically as you learn vocabulary. Therefore, drilling them in isolation before you learn vocabulary can be seen as a waste of time (also, have fun with the readings for 生). And readings are more abstract than concrete words, so they'd be more difficult for me at least, if I did readings in isolation. The only benefit that you might gain from drilling the readings before learning vocab is that you can guess the reading of some words, but again, you're able to do that automatically while drilling vocab, since you pick up reading from other vocab words. And of course some words have irregular readings that don't use the readings you would've drilled anyway (芝生).

Maybe you know this already, but I'll mention it just in case: the general guideline is that 音 / Chinese reading is used in words that are kanji compounds, while 訓 / Japanese reading is used for words with that are a single kanji + okurigana. There are exceptions to the rule of course, but they're rare. Example: say you learn 感情／かんじょう／Emotion. Based on the above rule, you can guess from the reading that カン is the Chinese reading for 感 and ジョウ the Chinese reading for 情. Now look at the word 情熱／じょうねつ／Passion. Again you get ジョウ for 情 and ネツ for 熱. You've seen ジョウ for 情 twice now, which just reinforces it that much more. This is without drilling any readings in isolation, and you've learned two vocab words at the same time. Also, you can now guess the readings for 熱感 and 情感 and 熱情 based on this information alone.

The benefit of this approach is that it's self-reinforcing. Learn vocab and you'll learn readings whether you like it or not. And the more vocab you learn, the better you'll get at reading too.

Haych Wrote:You're still going to have to 'actively' memorize on-yomi. You need to remember the reading of a word and the kanji. Vocab will typically be 2 kanji, and the reading will thus be 2 on-yomi added together. Figuring out the on-yomi will just mean finding where one stops and the other starts. And yeah, finding that dividing line is something you should probably do, if that's what you mean by 'active'. As for my own method, when I study a word, it means being able to take a definition in english and recall the keywords of all kanji in the word, their reading, and their order. From that, you can construct, write down, and pronounce the word.

It sounds a little like you're new and having trouble seeing the big picture. I say don't worry about it for now. Just focus on finishing RTK. The more time you spend around the language the more sense it'll make

The benefit of this approach is that it's self-reinforcing. Learn vocab and you'll learn readings whether you like it or not. And the more vocab you learn, the better you'll get at reading too.

Got it. Sorry I misunderstood before.

By the way (this is not pertaining to your quote, but just a statement for anyone reading) I downloaded Anki but I keep getting some super long error message when I try to upload a shared deck. I also got an annoying toolbar which took a while to get rid of, haha. I understand that this is not an I.T. forum or something like that, but has anyone else had that problem? I feel like I'm missing out on a lot without all those Anki decks. I uninstalled it temporarily until I find out exactly what's happening, maybe it's with my computer because my friend did it and it worked fine, but either way it sucks.

This thread has been useful for me. I wasn't sure whether I ought to pay attention to where one reading ends and another begins in compound words. Now I'm convinved that learning vocab readings as a whole is better than explicitly trying to remember individual on-yomi, which happens naturally anyway.

As for installing Anki decks, it's a pretty simple process but it does take a while to become farmiliar with its interface and get an idea of the scope of its functions. If you still have problems after playing around with it for a bit, you can go here for support: https://anki.tenderapp.com/

Animosophy Wrote:This thread has been useful for me. I wasn't sure whether I ought to pay attention to where one reading ends and another begins in compound words.

You probably should, although that will become clear enough when you study some basic vocab.

yudantaiteki Wrote:You probably should, although that will become clear enough when you study some basic vocab.

Thanks, although how/when do you propose I do consider kanji readings? For instance, if I were to study compound readings as a whole throughout core2k, would the fuzzier knowledge of on-yomi and kun-yomi hinder me down the road despite the odds of picking them up through continued exposure? For example, my recognition cards are designed like this:

Front
仕事

Back
しごと
{{Audio}}
Meaning

You can see that the reading alone doesn't tell me if it's し・ごと or しご・と. However, eventually I would get to 仕方 and, 仕舞う, and 仕上げ... etc. Surely I'd learn very soon that 仕 is frequently read as し.

Do you think passive recognition of kanji readings is insuffient when learning vocab in this way? This question is preventing me from diving into vocab without hesitation. I've tried placing {{furigana:Reading}} on the Answer side, but doing so means I'll have to edit each and every card as I go, to properly display the furigana.

I'm still fairly confident that straight kana is adequate, because I trust myself to become farmiliar with on-yomi and kun-yomi as my vocabulary increases. If your experience or expectations differ though, I'd very much like to hear a second opinion, or alternative suggestion in any case, if I'm curious I probably couldn't resist looking them up anyway, and take a mental note or something.

Edit: I study the core sentences seperately (on paper), using them to get some L-R done soon after practicing their corresponding vocabulary cards.

Animosophy Wrote:As for installing Anki decks, it's a pretty simple process but it does take a while to become farmiliar with its interface and get an idea of the scope of its functions. If you still have problems after playing around with it for a bit, you can go here for support: https://anki.tenderapp.com/

Well I didn't do too much studying of the interface and stuff like that but downloading the decks in the first place was a problem for me. When I click "Shared Deck" I got this really long error message, and when I downloaded a deck from the site and tried to open with Anki the same thing happened. I saw people complaining of the same problem on some forums, but it doesn't seem like there's any permanent fix.

Socky Wrote:I don't even have the RTK books, unfortunately. I'm super new to this and don't know much about all those resources, and all my learning comes from the Reviewing the Kanji website, so readings aren't even included in it.

Somewhere, there should be an official sample PDF of the book that covers the entire first part. It's useful for Heisig's introduction and other pre-lesson articles.

Another way you can learn a readings while doing RTK is to just add one any vocab word that uses the kanji your reviewing. The point isn't to really learn that specific word, but to expose yourself to an actual example word that uses that Kanji. It also helps if you easily confuse English keyword synonyms like I do.

It's talked about in more detail here:
http://japaneselevelup.com/how-to-use-an...t-1-kanji/

There are just too many readings to learn when your starting out, you can always pick them up later when you get to actual vocab.

Personal anecdote: I went over all the kun and on readings of RTK1 last summer. I created a "primitive" for every on-reading possibility and a primitive for single kana and some double kana. (e.g. かた=katana, しゅう=gundam that shOOts, な=naan bread, なん=NaN computer error, しゃ=château(castle)), etc. I also grouped together components with on-readings together (e.g.召) so that I wouldn't make a bunch of unnecessary stories.

Now, months later, I can say from personal experience that learning the kun-readings out of context is useless and forgotten by now. The on-readings however, were very useful. I don't necessarily remember all the on-readings of the less common kanji, but when I learn a new word, I re-remember the on-reading as I learn the new word and I almost never forget the reading of words that us on-readings.

I can't say if learning the on-readings is time-efficient. Basically I learned the first 1000(?) heisig kanji, then the on/kun-readings of these 1000 kanji, then I learnt the kanji+reading together for the last 1000. Personally I feel like it was time efficient. But then my stories were extremely lame and quick and they worked for me so I didn't use much extra time (e.g. off the top of my head: 終： it's the end for spiderman, gundam captures him; 周:gundam flies around in a circumfrence <-週; 集: gundam flies down and gathers the turkeys on the tree; たん胆: Danny's gallbladder hurts, 段: Danny has military grade equipment, 誕: Danny announces the birth of his son!; ほ穂: the hobgoblin has an ear of corn, 甫補哺:The hobgoblin is identified by his dogtag)