Hello RTK Forums! I've just become very serious about becoming fluent in this language and have studied Kana and such for over 2 months by self-teaching. Currently my usual session is:

Write both forms of Kana per day on two lines
Write one Lesson of RTK per day on two lines per Kanji
Do two Lessons of Rosetta stone in the Morning and two in the evening
Read from a Grammar book, An Introduction to Modern Japanese by Richard Bowring
Do Anki Flash cards for each lesson in RTK

Personally I'm getting very annoyed with Richard Bowing's grammar book because there's no Furigana for the Kanji so it just throws out these monstrosities expecting you to know them.

I was wondering, could anyone recommend me a good Grammar book. Richard Bowrings book seemed ideal at first. It gave the furigana and explanation of the Kanji for about 5 pages and just left it alone with romanization.


I'm also looking into ordering

Kodansha's Communicative English-Japanese Dictionary for reliable reference
Japanese DeMystified because it has some good reviews

Are these and my current study habit good choices? I know a lot are skeptical about Rosetta stone but it helps when I have no one to speak the language with as practice.
I know the kanas well now. I can recognize them and pronounce them correctly but I just review them so often because I want them to become second nature to me like the alphabet.

Also could I have a bit of insight on how Japanese school children study Kanji? Are there songs, pictographs, Hsiegs method, or do they just constantly write them in class in lines like American children?

Take a look at the this thread which details how to start out studying in detail: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5110

For grammar, instead of Tae Kim's guide that's recommended there, I would go with Genki I and II. I found it easier to grasp the grammar with those books.

Thanks. Sorry if the question was too obvious.

I have the book Japanese Demystified, it's pretty good for the price. The only problem I have with this book is that there's romaji on everything thats written in this book. If you have all the kana down I'd stay away from romaji, well forever. The book has great writing practice I'll give it that, but if I were to recommend some books I'd go with Genki 1 +2 while using Tae kim as a reference.

Japanese kids study the Jouyou in kanji from 1st grade to the end of high school. I actually bought one of the Kanji books when I was in Japan (小中学漢字) However it's a bit old (2008) so it only has 1945 of the Jouyou kanji. First year students learn 80 kanji *coming from a 2008 book so it's not that far away* by rote memorization. I was in a class before, teacher writes the kanji on the blackboard with the corresponding kun and on yomi. Then kids well, they just learn it by writing it over so many times. The teachers drill it into their brain showing them countless compounds with example sentences (I've experienced it).

I've made the mistake when I was first learning by actually going by the order of the grade lists. Studying BOTH all kun yomis and on yomis. However this was such a tedious task so I just studied the first or two, little did I know it does nothing.

For example
*Note the ー is the break where the Kanji ends. Example いーきる --> 生きる. Thats not how its actually done, I just can't find the little black dot that goes in the middle to separate them.

赤 (Red)
On Yomi - セキ　シャク
Kun yomi - あか　あかーい　 あかーらむ　あかーらめる
Stroke order
Example compounds
赤土(あかつち）　赤色（あかいろ）　赤道（あかどう）　赤十字（せきじゅうじ）

Now I used to study all of that except the compounds, which was on my part stupid really. Knowing all of these kun yomis and on yomis by itself is illogical. For example 正体 (しょうたい) <--- means identity. When I was at a early stage I knew both of these kanjis. 正 has the on yomi of せい　ショウ while 体 has an on yomi of セイ　テイ. How the heck are you going to know which on yomi to use with which, guess? Whats セイ and セイ put to together, or ショウ and テイ. Well it's certainly not going to give you 正体 (しょうたい). Heck there's even some kanjis that has a mix of kun yomi and on yomi which makes it very hard to guess. Once you get to a later stage in your kanji learning, guessing would be much easier as you encounter them more. However were all still bound to mistakes, and these mistakes could be fixed by well looking at a dictionary.

Instead just learn the compounds themselves. Pick up a core deck and start learning some compounds, the kanji will add on to each other giving up multiple different readings that you will use again for future compounds.

I just brute force compounds and then put them into anki. For hesig I actually do the story method as it helps a lot. And by brute force, I don't mean writing the compound down on one page 100 times. I write it down once, guess the reading, look at the reading, look at the vocab word, next. Finish a word list, then study on anki. If you really want to write kana so many times, split it up in the day. All kana in the morning, afternoon, then at night again. Kana isn't hard so you wouldn't need anki for it as long as your reading a lot of material for it to natural pour into your brain. Yep

Xanpakuto Wrote:I have the book Japanese Demystified, it's pretty good for the price. The only problem I have with this book is that there's romaji on everything thats written in this book. If you have all the kana down I'd stay away from romaji, well forever. The book has great writing practice I'll give it that, but if I were to recommend some books I'd go with Genki 1 +2 while using Tae kim as a reference.

Japanese kids study the Jouyou in kanji from 1st grade to the end of high school. I actually bought one of the Kanji books when I was in Japan (小中学漢字) However it's a bit old (2008) so it only has 1945 of the Jouyou kanji. First year students learn 80 kanji *coming from a 2008 book so it's not that far away* by rote memorization. I was in a class before, teacher writes the kanji on the blackboard with the corresponding kun and on yomi. Then kids well, they just learn it by writing it over so many times. The teachers drill it into their brain showing them countless compounds with example sentences (I've experienced it).

I've made the mistake when I was first learning by actually going by the order of the grade lists. Studying BOTH all kun yomis and on yomis. However this was such a tedious task so I just studied the first or two, little did I know it does nothing.

For example
*Note the ー is the break where the Kanji ends. Example いーきる --> 生きる. Thats not how its actually done, I just can't find the little black dot that goes in the middle to separate them.

赤 (Red)
On Yomi - セキ　シャク
Kun yomi - あか　あかーい　 あかーらむ　あかーらめる
Stroke order
Example compounds
赤土(あかつち）　赤色（あかいろ）　赤道（あかどう）　赤十字（せきじゅうじ）

I agree, learning on-yomi, kun-yomi is a complete waste of time.
Like half of those reading are rarely used.

Memorizing about 6000 words from Core 6k is enough to safely pass the N2 Japanese proficiency exam. Of course you would need to study grammar and listening as well.

For example in Core 6k there are only 7 words that use kanji 赤. Six of them use the reading あか：
赤い、赤、赤ちゃん、真っ赤、赤字,赤ん坊

Only one of them uses on-yomi reading セキ
赤道 (せきどう） - equator

From my experience most of those readings can simply be ignored as they are rarely used. Even the on-yomi セキ is just used once in a word that is useless to the beginner. Other word that use that use 赤 are relatively rarely used. I guess they may required for passing N1. Who uses 赤十字（せきじゅうじ） Red Cross word in casual conversation?

Check the stickies and the Wiki too!
If you feel a learning resource is annoying you and there's alternatives, try to change it.
がんばってください！

So, just study compounds instead of On and Kun? Or just look at the on and kun every now and then but not take it too serious. Btw, should I've been using kana with rosetta stone for a while now. I'm thinking of switching it to furigana/kanji. I should have done that from the start but I had no idea what most of it was until late.
I'll pass on Japanese demystified. A book of Romaji only seems like it could be detrimental.

Study compounds instead of On and Kun!

BlueBomberXTJ Wrote:So, just study compounds instead of On and Kun? Or just look at the on and kun every now and then but not take it too serious. Btw, should I've been using kana with rosetta stone for a while now. I'm thinking of switching it to furigana/kanji. I should have done that from the start but I had no idea what most of it was until late.
I'll pass on Japanese demystified. A book of Romaji only seems like it could be detrimental.

It's useful sometimes.
For example when I see the word
日帰り　ー a day trip - higaeri
I know that it's made from two parts:
日- hi
帰り- kaeri

Just by looking at possible kun-yomi/on-yomi readings I know that the second part was changed from kaeri to gaeri in this compound.

There are a lot of cases where the word is not equal to sum of their readings like:
学校 - school - gakkou
学 - gaku
校 - kou
I would expect the reading to be gakukou, but it's gakkou. If you try to do a bit deeper analysis you will see the rules as well.
So far I have seen this behavior only when the on-yomi on the first kanji had to letter and the second one was n, ku or tsu.

The second case when kun-yomi/on-yomi would be useful is when trying to read a word that I knew before, but I forgot one part of it.
For example if I tried to read the word that I knew before 問答無用, but I forgot reading of one of the characters like 答. I would only need to type 答 in my dictionary to figure out the whole meaning of the sentence.

As a general rule kanjis with on-yomi don't appear with other kanjis with kun-yomi reading in the same word. There are some exceptions though. However, they are quite rare. I can recall just one example from my memory. 場所-basho I don't remember seeing other exceptions.

Understanding the general rules how kanji form words just makes it easier for me to remember those words. It is not worth describing it as you will surely figure out it on your own.

EDIT:
If you want to recall on-yomi or kun-yomi reading then it's quite easy if you know a word that has it.

If you want to recall kun-yomi reading you think of a word that has hiragana at the end:
分かる - wa.karu - to understand
半分　- hannbun - half - on-yomi is bun

Most of kanjis have up to one on-yomi and kun-yomi reading, so this method works best for me.