In the beginning of my journey I thought Kanji was the most difficult and important thing there was to learning japanese.

In the meantime, at 900 Kanji w/ RTK I know that while it's not necesssarily easy, it's piece of cake compared to aquiring vocabulary, which besides is the real key to fluency.

So what's the most effective way to go about it.

In the beginning what I did and what I am still doing to a large extent is adding new words I learn to a vocab deck in hiragana only with English on the backside and vice versa. Now I'm not sure if this is very efficient.
The problem with Kanji is, I still know less than half of RTK1, but I already want to study vocab before finshing the first 2000 Kanji.

I also do core2k, I skip sentences if they have even one Kanji in them that I don't recognize (I tried it differently before, but Kanji I haven't learned with RTK first just don't stick.)
On the other hand, for vocab with Kanji I already learned with RTK I find it quite effective, I guess that's mainly because of the context it gives you.

But what to do about new vocab you find while immersing, listening and reading? How do you set up your cards?

Do some of you just use hiragana, with english on the other side, like I still do?
Do you always include example sentences? (Again, the problem of unknown Kanji + it's time consuming)
Do you put both Kanji and Hiragana on one side with English on the other?

What works best for you?

Thanks a bunch.

I would always use Kanji --> Reading, Meaning cards, anything other won't be helpful.

Also, especially if you are a beginner, I would recommend using a premade vocab deck that is based on frequency lists and has audio, there are tons of good "core" decks floating around.

Also, I recommend completing RTK before really starting vocab, or reordering the cards so that you only learn vocabs with Kanji you already know.

Because 1. effective vocab learning is ALWAYS with Kanji on front
and 2. you have to know these Kanji


Ofc you can do it any other way but it's really unefficient.

For every new vocabulary, I have two cards, one that is kana on the front and one that is kanji. I have an example sentence on the front side. Everything is on the back - kana, definition of the word, translation of the sentence. I set Anki up to create two cards for each note so it's no extra work to make the extra card. When testing I pass a card if I get the definition right when looking at the kana. For the kanji cards, I have to type in the kana to spell the kanji, and if I get that right (and have at least roughly the idea on the definition) then I pass that card.
(Of course for words that have no kanji spelling, I don't have a kanji card.)

My way basically breaks up learning the word (sound -> meaning) as a separate step from learning the spelling (kanji) of the word. (Kind of following the principle of 'test one thing at a time').

It's pretty much impossible to learn Japanese with cards that are kana word on front, English word on back. There are simply too many words that will look the same when spelled in kanji. You can write a lot of disambiguation notes ... but even that gets tough (会う、合う、遭う、逢う ... noting the part of speech often helps, but not here, they are all verbs. Noting which meanings they aren't is going to be a long, confusing list for each of them.) I find a correctly chosen example sentence fixes this problem nicely. I like nice short illustrative example sentences... like you find in the dictionary, conveniently enough. Long sentences give -too much- context and often give away the meaning of the word completely even if you've never seen it before, and also make it easier to memorize the sentence instead of the word. Short sentences are more likely to be similar enough to each other that this doesn't happen.

Having recently started listening practice I often have difficulty recognising even common words made up of on-readings like しょう/じょう/きょう/こう/etc/etc. I sometimes wonder if hiragana-on-the-front reading cards might help with that (possibly with some context for disambiguation).

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:会う、合う、遭う、逢う ...

AFAIK there's only two words there, for which the Heisig keywords are a pretty good fit, modulo some contortions to make the keywords unique (though I don't disagree with the general point).

In general I don't think it's a reasonable expectation to get a feel for the 'true meaning' of any but the simplest words from a flashcard. Best policy seems to be to learn a broad, simple meaning that's just barely enough to get by in the wild without resorting to a dictionary, and pick up the nuances through exposure.

anotherjohn Wrote:

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:会う、合う、遭う、逢う ...

AFAIK there's only two words there

It's a little more complicated than that.
According to 大辞林 there are three 'words', which are
会う
合う
会う・遭う・逢う
Then in that third multiple-spellings-same-word entry there are usages that are 会う・逢う or 会う・遭う and ones that are unspecified (so can presumably be spelled with any of the three).

The line between what's a different 'word' and what's a different 'usage' gets kind of weird, especially when some kanji choices are only valid for some usages (if a certain meaning can only be spelled with certain kanji why isn't that a different word? hmm....)

Anyway, when doing flashcards I try to match up spellings with usage rather than worrying about how the dictionary breaks things up into different words. In this case I'm going to think of 会う as 'to meet (generally)', 逢う as 'to meet (a person specifically)' and 遭う as 'to have a chance encounter'. 合う is clearly a different word (join, unite) of course and doesn't have those fuzzy issues.

For words with several wildly different meanings I'll often have multiple cards anyway, whether those meanings use the same kanji or different kanji. (I also can enter 'alternate kanji' in my Anki layout when the same example can be spelled with multiple kanji, so that I could be quizzed with both 会う and 逢う in the same sentence, for example. I don't actually have such a card but that's the idea. Next time I sit down to add cards I'm going to do one for うるさい・煩い・五月蝿い actually, which will generate three cards, on kana->meaning and two kanji->kana; all with the same example sentence and same backside. I'll immediately suspend the kana->meaning card since I've known the word in kana for years, but for truly new words I would learn that one first.)

Quote:I sometimes wonder if hiragana-on-the-front reading cards might help with that (possibly with some context for disambiguation).

I've found that it does, that's why I study that way. Give it a try.
Saying the kana-only word out loud or reading it out loud also helps. Adding audio would help even more but I haven't bothered (most of my Anki time is at odd moments on my cell phone, and it would be awkward to use sound cards while, say, standing in line at the supermarket.)

No one here has a legit answer to your question. Particularly note how z1bbo is giving such absolute advice, while I'm sure plenty of people are about to start posting about their opposite experience. Advice from here is all anecdotal and not to be trusted - you'll have to work it out yourself.

That said:
I learnt with cards with kanji and audio on the front, furigana on the back. I think this way has a lot of examples - you pick up the kanji but don't get stumped by it. You're still only testing one thing (meaning), but you get extra kanji practice. I used subs2srs to generate cards, so sentence+audio is free. If the card had too many unknown words, I would delete it.

While reading, I usually read books with furigana. If a book has insufficient furigana for me to understand what's happening comfortably, I'll read something else. Slowly, I can read books with less and less furigana.

In any case, I don't think there's any advantage to full hiragana over kanji with furigana. In Anki you can have furigana added automatically using add-ons.

z1bbo, SomeCallMeChris, anotherjohn, Aikynaro,

thanks a lot for your replies. yeah it makes sense that learning cards with kana only might not be very effective, as I had feared.

I'm thus trying to go full speed through RTK1 right now, I'm at almost 1200.

And I guess I'll refrain from or reduce my self-entered kana / English cards and go with core sentences that feature Kanji I know.

Btw, those JLPT level 5-1 vocab seem pretty usfeul too, anyone worked with those?

thanks again

For me, the fastest and most enjoyable method involved Kanji sentences with audio in the question, nothing in the answer (with the translation of the sentence or any new words in it, in a hidden field). One or two unknown words/sentence, at most, so that you can get through some serious volume fast.

Didn't help me with reading much, but great for vocab learning. And the fastest way to review sentences, by quite a bit.

The least effective was doing vocab only cards (in pretty much any direction).

You could add furigana to the kanji sentences and possibly the vocab. What ends up happening is that some of the unknown kanji "rub off" from seeing them in context. You also get the benefit of learning pronunciation at the same time and learning the kanji word. And as stansfield said, adding audio to the from helps as well. This is the way I've been doing it for the past year and it's working out well.

The most effective method in my opinion is the Sentences method. It works wonders for your Vocabulary AND Comprehension skills.

Go here ->
http://japaneselevelup.com/how-to-use-an...ences-j-e/

Well for me personally I can say that I never learned more than the first 200 Kanji from RTK. Besides these 200 I never actually learned Kanji but I don't see a big disadvantage other than sometimes mixing up Kanji (but I mix them up less and less) and maybe my retention rate is a little bit lower than usual? But other than that there is really no disadvantage. Even without RTK you will learn many Kanji just from seeing (and even more if you know the Radicals) and you will also learn their readings too.

So if I would be you I would just go ahead and learn vocabulary in this format , Kanji on Front Side and Hiragana/Meaning/Maybe a sentence on the back side.
If you really just want to learn vocabulary of which you know the Kanji the JLPT N5/N4 words are a good start since they only use the easier Kanji which you will learn early.

I started with roumaji and kana.
My next step was to learn the kanji radicals, but that turned out to be near impossible!
After a while I started with kanji, in the combination: kanji symbol + meaning in English.
And, behold, that worked fantastic!
All at a sudden I started recognizing symbols in Japanese text, and seeing Japanese text become much more enjoyable.

The problem with the radicals is that some of them don't have a meaning on their own, which means you have to learn difficult names, like kunigamae, tougamae, kigamae (that's actually an easy one), kakushigamae, makigamae, tsutsumigamae and so on. And that turns out to be very difficult.

Therefore I still hold on to my old system:
start learning lots of vocabulary, using roumaji
learn the kanji with their meaning in English
afterwards, make the link kanji - Japanese word.

Of course, don't postpone learning kana. That's something you'ld better do as soon as possible.
Don't wait too long with kanji either, because the sooner, the better, but you don't have to jump on it immediately.

I don't see any merit to using Romaji (because Kana is so easy to learn), but yeah, if reading early is not important to you, you can (and probably should) learn Japanese with Kana/Furigana/audio, rather than relying on Kanji.

It's people who like reading, and learning a language through reading, that should focus on Kanji from the start (do RtK, learn vocab with the Kanji from the start, all that). For them, Kanji will help tremendously, with learning the whole language, not just reading.

My personal belief is that the more words you know phonetically (either using romaji or kana) the easier it will be to learn to read and write them with kanji.

Right now I'm doing reading practice, but strictly phonetically (I'll leave it to your imagination as to whether I'm using romaji or kana--as long as you're learning purely phonetically, it doesn't really matter, in my opinion).

I'm using this great textbook where each reading passage is one side of a page or less. There are 35 passages and each is packed with new vocabulary (for me). I read them over and over out loud until I nail them (understand/remember all the vocabulary and grammatical constructions). The book has very detailed grammatical notes for the learner, which is very helpful, because I don't have a teacher.

Each passage deals with a specific aspect of Japanese life/culture/geography etc.

Stansfield brings up a good point. There are different skills related to vocabulary and it's best to prioritize which skills you would like to strengthen before considering the study plan. For instance, are you more interested in passive vocabulary or active vocabulary? Your study method might be different depending on your answer. Are you more interested in spoken vocabulary, or written? Again, different methods are more effective for one skill than the other.

Learning vocab phonetically might be faster if you are most interested in conversation or listening, but you're going to need to study vocab with kanji if you primarily want to read.

The problem with learning kana from the start is, that after that you still can't read a normal Japanese text, because you have to be able to read kanji to do that.
As a matter of fact, after I had learned kana, it was quite disappointing to notice that it hadn't brought me an inch closer to reading Japanese. Ok, maybe almost an inch.

Edited. Not beneficial to the discussion.

PMotte Wrote:The problem with learning kana from the start is, that after that you still can't read a normal Japanese text, because you have to be able to read kanji to do that.

Not true with furigana. Not to mention Rikaichan.

True, yes, but if you know a bit of kanji, it's easier to understand the gist of a text, although you might not be able to actually know the words. That's way it was so rewarding for me when I started studying the meaning of the kanji, not the sounds themselves, and not even all meanings. But it gave me a pleasant start, contrary to studying radicals.
I think it's better to start studying kanji, and forget about the radicals. They will come eventually anyway, as lots of simple kanji are radicals themselves.

Anecdotal 2¢ time!

I studied a few hundred vocab before diving into RTK1. After resurfacing, I could fight my way through a novel and that's what quickly boosted me into higher levels of proficiency! I didn't necessarily know all the vocabulary but I could guess a LOT from Kanji and, knowing the Kanji, could quickly look up unknown words. I don't buy into the "start with RTK or else!" thing but I can't imagine coming this far this fast without having studied the Kanji in my beginning stages.

PMotte Wrote:The problem with learning kana from the start is, that after that you still can't read a normal Japanese text, because you have to be able to read kanji to do that.

That's like saying "the problem with buying a car is that I can't travel to Jupiter with it. Spending a week studying a language (any language), and expecting to read normal text in it at the end, is silly.

The purpose of learning Kana right away isn't to be able read normal Japanese text, it's:

1. to be able to read introductory textbook/online study materials which have no Kanji, or only a few common Kanji (which are explained) in them.

2. to be able to start reading basic native materials (like the manga people recommend to beginners, around here), which have furigana over whatever simple Kanji they may contain (or, in Yotsuba's case, she "speaks" in hiragana because she's five years old and doesn't know any Kanji either).

3. to be able to understand the basic concepts of Japanese grammar (which relies heavily on hiragana, and is confusing and counter-productive to try and learn using romaji).

4. to get a leg up on the thousands of foreign loan words in Japanese, which are written in Kana (trying to learn these using romaji would be even more confusing and counter-productive than grammar).

5. to make it easier to learn your first few Japanese words. Just the act of trying to memorize your first few words is far more difficult if you see them only in romaji, than if you are familiar enough with the Japanese syllabary to be able to understand why there are only 100 or so distinct syllables in Japanese, and what those syllables are.

6. to be able to easily understand Japanese pronunciation. Learning how to correctly pronounce Japanese written in romaji is harder than just learning the Kana, and starting to use it. (in fact, I would go as far as to say that knowing the Kana is a necessary condition of fully understanding how Romaji should be read).

Those are six excellent reasons to spend that week, right away, to learn the Kana and start using it, instead of trying to figure out Japanese using an ill fitting script. Any one of them, by itself, would be more than enough reason.

Stansfield123 Wrote:3. to be able to understand the basic concepts of Japanese grammar (which relies heavily on hiragana, and is confusing and counter-productive to try and learn using romaji).

???

Quote:6. to be able to easily understand Japanese pronunciation. Learning how to correctly pronounce Japanese written in romaji is harder than just learning the Kana, and starting to use it. (in fact, I would go as far as to say that knowing the Kana is a necessary condition of fully understanding how Romaji should be read).

This doesn't make any sense. Listening to Japanese people is the only way to know how Japanese is pronounced. Kana doesn't help you any more than romaji if you haven't listened to any Japanese to know what the pronunciations are. Many beginners learn kana by matching them with their romaji equivalents anyway.

I've been doing this several years so what I'm doing might work better because I know the more common kanji now thank god. However, there's a lot I don't know still. I'm not using anki at the moment, rather Japanese for iOS. If a word has a kanji I don't know I stick an RTK story on that card in the special notes so I can review it as I study. It seems to be working well for me. I have an app that has two stories from this site for all rtk 1/3 and just tab over to it to get a story as needed. If it's a non RTK kanji I just make up my own story. I know you're supposed to do that anyway but I like taking other people's stories. Not just because I'm lazy, which I am, but it makes studying kanji and Japanese feel more like a group effort. More fun.