I'm pretty much a beginner. Currently, I know Hiragana and Katakana well. As in, I can recognize any of the characters if I see them. Kanji though, I've learned around 120 of them. I'm doing my best to avoid using Romaji. As I write Kanji characters down, I write the name of them in Hiragana or Katakana. Depending on which one is needed. So, I'm technically learning all of the Kanji characters in both Kanji and Hiragana/Katakana. However, once I learn all the Joyo Kanji eventually...How do I learn words purely in Hiragana and Katakana from there? Do I need a dictionary or what? Will the Hiragana/Katakana forms of the Kanji I learned be sufficient enough to start off with in terms of vocab? If anyone can offer me advice this it would be great. Sorry if this question is rather confusing.

First off, it sounds like you may not fully understand the difference between a kanji and a word -- learning the "name" of the kanji will not necessarily let you read a word that uses that kanji. So long before you finish the Joyo Kanji you need to have some method for learning vocab -- most of the time you learn them through context, by reading or doing textbooks or the like. In that sense it doesn't really matter what script they're written in.

Unless you are using RTK, don't attempt to learn all the Joyo Kanji before you do anything else. It's not going to work.

Thanks for the response. Will any of these books that I have work for learning vocab through context or other means?

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar Written by:Seichi Makino
Kodansha's Communicative English-Japanese Dictionary written byeter Sharpe
Random House English-Japanese/Japanese-English Dictionary written by:Seigo Nakao
Japanese Kanji and Kana written by:Mark Spahn and Wolfgang Hadamitzky
Kodansha's Kanji Learner Dictionary Written by:Jack Halpern
Barron's Japanese Grammar Second Edition Written by:Carol and Nobuo Akiyama.

No, but there are sites like ReadTheKanji.com and Renshuu.org that will.

Edit: ReadTheKanji isn't free, but Renshuu.org is.

Thank you.

The problem with all those books is that they are reference works (The S&H book pretends to be a learning book but it's really just a pared-down dictionary). Reference works are good to refer to when you are learning from other sources, but they can never be primary sources for your learning.

The above posters are correct, you are taking a somewhat wrong approach to learning vocabulary.

May I recommend Assimil? It's a coursebook that uses parallel texts to teach vocabulary. Textbooks are nice, but being able to learn vocabulary and phrases in a context is extremely beneficial. After having a sentence structure background, purer vocabulary methods can be used rather than just memorized.

By the way, do you have a grammar background. Assimil teaches grammar, and I woldn't start learning Kanji and vocabulary without any grammar background at all.

Dragonsheep Wrote:Textbooks are nice, but being able to learn vocabulary and phrases in a context is extremely beneficial. After having a sentence structure background, purer vocabulary methods can be used rather than just memorized.

I would have said that one of the things that marks a good textbook is that it presents vocabulary and phrases and sentence structures in a context; what does Assimil do that's different/better?

pm215 Wrote:

Dragonsheep Wrote:Textbooks are nice, but being able to learn vocabulary and phrases in a context is extremely beneficial. After having a sentence structure background, purer vocabulary methods can be used rather than just memorized.

I would have said that one of the things that marks a good textbook is that it presents vocabulary and phrases and sentence structures in a context; what does Assimil do that's different/better?

Well, Assimil does exactly that. It gives all vocabulary in a context, and, it uses scenes rather than isolated sentences, so one can feel the usage of expressions and phrases.

Rather than say, defining "soo desu" as "so, it is" in some long list of Useful Expresions, you hear speakers use it in an everyday setting (such as shopping). You don't need to mentally sift through memorized vocabulary lists to maintain a real life coversation.

Takai desu yo.

Soo desu ne.

It also comes with an audio CD.

I'm sure other textbooks use this method of teaching, but I've yet to find one that does it to the extent and degree of Assimil.

Assimil also teaches grammar and culture through annotations. There's also word for word translation to accompany every sentece, too, and that is an essential part of using parallel texts at this level.

(Note that this would be in kanji/kana with furigana and accompanying roomanji. )

Takai desu yo.
Expensive - it is - (confirmation request)
It's expensive, yes?

Dragonsheep Wrote:Takai desu yo.
Expensive - it is - (confirmation request)
It's expensive, yes?

Err... since when is よ a confirmation request? It's been a while since i've actually thought of what those sentence final particles correspond to in english (always something stupid sounding) but that sounds more like "高いですね" to me?

zigmonty Wrote:

Dragonsheep Wrote:Takai desu yo.
Expensive - it is - (confirmation request)
It's expensive, yes?

Err... since when is よ a confirmation request? It's been a while since i've actually thought of what those sentence final particles correspond to in english (always something stupid sounding) but that sounds more like "高いですね" to me?

This reminds me of a friend who knows just one Japanese phrase - "そうですね". He learned it from a book that facetiously said that this is the only phrase you need to make conversation in Japanese.

Regarding the original phrase, I usually say it as "高けーじゃねぇか", but maybe that's just me.

Be careful with your learning method, it sounds like your just building vocab and kanji knowledge but not studying grammar. Also simply tagging a word to a kanji won't help, because you're forgetting words that are made up of more than one kanji i.e. by the sounds of it, you are learning the meaning of a kanji and linking it to a word.

An example

You learn the word for convenient : べんり
The kanji for　べんり　＝　便利

The meaning of the first Kanji （べん）is "advantage"
The meaning of the second Kanji (り） is "convenient"

If you were to see that the 2nd kanji had the meaning of convenient you might think that the reading of it is "べんり"

I mean I may be wrong this is just what I picked up on from your first post, but if this is your method of learning then it's flawed as you are ignoring Kanji compounds and not learning the proper reading.

You also need to consider that not all of the hiragana in a word written in Kanji is contained in the Kanji. For example, い　adjectives.

安い　（やすい） cheap
重い　（おもい） heavy
高い　（たかい） tall/expensive

I recommend stopping what you're doing and picking up a copy of Genki or Minna no nihongo. Work through the grammar, vocab and excercises. Any good textbook worth it's weight in paper will also introduce Kanji to you regularly and consistently. You'll progress much further this way than by what you're trying to do at the moment.