What are the pros and cons to learning the onyomi/kunyomi readings for individual kanji versus just solely learning vocabulary without learning on/kun readings?

Is the pay off to learning the individual readings for kanji actually worth the time investment?

I'm debating about whether or not I should actually take that route or if it would just be better to start vocabulary after something like RTK.

Based on my personal SRSing experience, I'd say one of the basic principle is to keep your cards as simple as possible, i.e don't test yourself on too many elements at once.

Learning the readings of a kanji while going through RTK poses numerous problems :

*What reading are you going to learn ? Most kanjis have several readings, and you'll have a hard time figuring out which is the most commonly used at this point in your studies.
*The reading of a kanji can change drastically depending on whether it is used in a compound or not.
*Your cards will end up being very (too?) complex. Not only will you have to remember a keyword, which might be fairly disconnected from the actual kanji meaning, but you'll have to learn at least two readings per kanji, most of which will end up being useless.
*Learning readings without context is hard. While many kanjis stand as their own as standalone words, others do not, and many might just be too abstract to be of any use as a "mental anchor".
*Homophones will be the bane of your existence.

As you might have guessed already, I'd advise going through RTK first, and then learning some vocabulary. Divide and conquer. Don't clutter your brain with useless declarative knowledge.

Learning vocabulary will make you learn the readings as you advance, but not the other way around (and that's without taking into account special readings or combinations, not everything is on + on)

There's no reason to study kun'yomi separately from vocabulary; they're words themselves.

For on'yomi, there are phonetic primitives. https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3283034296

This is the approach I'm taking: I'm learning Japanese vocabulary the same way you learn Spanish or French--phonetically. When I finish the textbooks I have, and have amassed a large enough vocabulary, I'll start mapping the words to the kanji.

So for instance, I learned that "kisei" is regulation and "kikai" is machine. I don't give two hoots about whether or not the "ki" in "kisei" is written with the same kanji as the "ki" in kikai. Knowing ahead of time that kisei is regulation and kikai is machine will make learning the readings of the relevant kanji a snap.

I did finish RTK1 and I was going to do RTK2 but realized that learning the readings of individual kanji without knowing the compounds first is (at this stage) a waste of time for me.

For those of you who say "that's ridiculous! you'll hinder your ability to learn vocabulary if you treat Japanese like French or Spanish" I say, relax. I'm only doing this while I finish the textbooks/readers that I have (in romaji). After I'm done with these I'll "go live".

john555 Wrote:"that's ridiculous! you'll hinder your ability to learn vocabulary if you treat Japanese like French or Spanish"

What is really ridiculous is people who can read Japanese text but are deep in the woods when it comes to speaking or listening. This usually happens when they focus on kanji reading and neglect phonetics of the language (where arguably, ability of reading kanji is not particularly useful).

I've been and probably am like this. I've read almost 25k pages, can read more than 3000 kanji without having tried to speak Japanese more than a couple times. My listening also sucks.

But... I've been in Japan now for 3 weeks and seen rapid improvement, I can talk somewhat fluently now, still making a lot of mistakes though, but mistakes I notice myself making.

But more importantly, I can read everything, every sign, every menu, everything that's not a name or some food I've never seen before basically (or a fish, who knew they had so many different kinds of fish here). I'm functioning pretty perfectly in a Japanese environment, except for speaking a bit broken and sometimes taking a few tries to understand something spoken. Would do it again exactly this way.

Learning most of the on/kun yomi readings would make learning new vocabulary pretty simple.
But the main advantage would be that you would be able to read most of the names and city names etc. after seeing them one time.

I started to make pronunciation flashcards. When I got to the kanji 後, I suddenly realized how naive and misguided this approach is. How many pronunciations does that kanji have? 5? 6? Which ones are important? When is which one used?

If you were able to perfectly remember every single pronunciation with 100% accuracy each time you saw the kanji, what have you really gained in terms of language ability? Something greater than zero, of course, but I believe that learning to recognize actual words and perfectly memorizing the pronunciation of THAT WORD will take you farther in terms of understanding the language than just memorizing context free abstract phonemes.

After you learn enough words, you will find that your brain "automatically" begins to recognize common pronunciations of certain high value kanji. Learn some more words and you start to realize things like how it is pronounced in a compound, how it is pronounced as a verb, how it is pronounced all by itself when it is suffixed with certain kana.

Learn enough words and you'll know all the pronunciations *and* a bunch of vocabulary. Boom.

Personally, I believe my attempt to study pronunciations in isolation was rooted in a desire to stay cocooned in the safe and comfortable cocoon of flashcards and anki stats, rather than venturing into the scary, wild and wooly world of the actual language. But maybe that's just me.

mpericks Wrote:I started to make pronunciation flashcards. When I got to the kanji 後, I suddenly realized how naive and misguided this approach is. How many pronunciations does that kanji have? 5? 6? Which ones are important? When is which one used?

One kanji per card is the wrong way to go. How about 付? How many on'yomi does it have? 1. Might other kanji that contain 付 have the same on'yomi? They sure do! 付 府 符 腐 附 are all read フ, and that's the only on'yomi any of them have. http://namakajiri.net/nikki/testing-the-...ese-kanji/

付 also has the kun'yomi つ.く and つ.ける, which it shares with a lot of other kanji that don't have any obvious similarities to it, so there's nothing to be gained there.

Instead of making the hardest card ever with 6 readings though you could just pick a single one you came across. That way it stops being a bunch of random strokes and even if you see it used with a different reading next time you'll have a much easier time remembering the new reading for a kanji you already know.

Learn the readings along with words, in Yomi order.

例文で学ぶ漢字と言葉N2 Contents example.

Let me just chime in, it's just my experience and opinion.

I have been living in Japan for over 5 years, but never really did long periods of proper study, my knowledge is all over the place. I can hold daily conversations and read signs and simple texts, but not newspapers, nor long lectures or entire movies.

I did RTK1, then stopped and forgot loads.

I am doing RTK1 again, but this time I look up every kanji, and check which reading and consequently which word is most useful to learn. I then replace the English keyword with the Japanese word, which ideally consists of multiple kanji. I change the kanji learning order, depending on what other kanji are in those words I look up, and also on the readings.

The more connections you can make to remember something, the better.
I connect kanji, words, and readings. I can do this now because I already know a bunch of words, and can at least vaguely remember over half the kanji.

Take the word 冷凍庫
I was confusing the first 2 kanji, couldn't remember which one was which. I already knew the word 冷凍庫 though, I mean, I would understand it if I heard or read it..
I then realised that 冷　shares れい　with 令, and 凍　shared とう　with 東.

After realising this, the word, the 2 kanji, AND the readings have been easy for me. They were all connected. Now I kept discovering that this applies to many kanji, and it helped me greatly.
I told some of my Japanese friends, and they told by looking at the primitives even they often simply guess the readings of difficult kanji. They also mentioned they learned many kanji by the words they are in.

Indeed, many kanji have several readings, but most of them have only one or two main readings, which if learned, can be very beneficial. I don't think you should focus on mastering kanji completely, but rather try to get the part that is most useful.

So don't obsess about what you are NOT learning, instead focus on what you ARE learning.

Look up the kanji, and look at the words, which examples are most representative? I usually think about the kanji in a what can be articulated to: "This kanji tends to describe an X aspect/feeling/characteristic of the words it's in".

Which examples make use of the primitive reading? Sometimes, even if the primitive reading of that particular kanji is rare, it can reinforce remembering the readings of other kanji with that primitive.

Then make a decision on which word(s) to pick, and don't worry too much about the words and readings you leave out. Those other readings or words can come later as you pick them up while reading/listening.

Perhaps most importantly, all this makes the kanji, and the language, more interesting to me.

So in short:
"I'm debating about whether or not I should actually take that route or if it would just be better to start vocabulary after something like RTK."
Take that route by learning vocabulary, keep an eye on the primitives and readings, base the order on connections, and use as many connections as possible, but focus mainly on the most important readings and words.

RTK2 is actually quite a useful reference for this, but I understand that he probably wrote it after learning it all. Will all this be as easy for someone who doesn't have any vocabulary knowledge. Likely not, but you can try.

Please see these points as observations, not from someone knows better and and succeeded, but from someone who failed over and over, and do with it what you like.

mpericks Wrote:...I believe that learning to recognize actual words and perfectly memorizing the pronunciation of THAT WORD will take you farther in terms of understanding the language than just memorizing context free abstract phonemes.

That's exactly what I'm doing. I'm focusing on learning whole words phonetically for the moment without regard to whether individual syllables share common kanji. After I build up a basic vocabulary phonetically, I'll be in a better position to map these words to the different kanji.

I really don't see the point in learning readings separately from words because
1) Words are easier to remember than arbitrary sounds and
2) If you learn the word you also incidentally learn the reading of the kanji that make up the word.

Inny Jan Wrote:

john555 Wrote:"that's ridiculous! you'll hinder your ability to learn vocabulary if you treat Japanese like French or Spanish"

What is really ridiculous is people who can read Japanese text but are deep in the woods when it comes to speaking or listening. This usually happens when they focus on kanji reading and neglect phonetics of the language (where arguably, ability of reading kanji is not particularly useful).

This is a big problem and affects your reading as well. Sometimes learners think that you're supposed to have a lot of kanji compounds where you know the meaning but not the reading -- this is partially based on misconceptions of how native speakers read, but also a certain level of pride in how many kanji they've learned. But I found that when my spoken ability increased, my reading speed increased too because I wasn't mentally switching back and forth between English and Japanese as I read.

Aikynaro Wrote:I really don't see the point in learning readings separately from words because
1) Words are easier to remember than arbitrary sounds and
2) If you learn the word you also incidentally learn the reading of the kanji that make up the word.

Exactly! That's why I've put my kanji studies on the back burner for now...I'll return to kanji later after I've built up a decent basic vocabulary (phonetically) first.

Thank you for your replies. After reading the posts, I think I'm going to initially just stick with going through RTK and then follow that up with vocabulary.

Then maybe at a later, more advanced point in my Japanese learning I'll go back and learn individual readings if it comes to that.

Odin89 Wrote:Learning vocabulary will make you learn the readings as you advance, but not the other way around (and that's without taking into account special readings or combinations, not everything is on + on)

I want to kindly disagree here because you do in fact learn vocabulary when you are using most kanji books that teach the readings -- RTK 2 included. Each reading is given a sample word where it's used. Of course we can argue that many of these words are not very useful (take 殉死, "martyr's death" for example), but many of them are useful, at least based on my experiences with RTK 2.

I find that learning Kanji in context has been more beneficial for me. I've been using SRS learning system by Cooori and have found that it has helped improved my Vocabulary. I found a blog that they wrote on learning Kanji. this might be helpful for you. http://cooori.com/weblog/enjp/2012/10/29...?ref=hbdrm