Okay, since no one wants to respond to that post then I'll ask it another way.

Hmm....

Okay, are there any interesting Kanji which have designs that are easy to memorize?  Or even...are there Kanji characters that you like the most and why?

-Arisu

By extension so is 日, being an evolved form of a circle with a dot in it, a pictograph of the sun. And the numbers, 一 二 三... Am I helping here?

AliceDraken wrote:

So what do they mean then?  LoL!  ^-^;

凹 = Concave
凸 = Convex
互 = Mutually
日 = Sun

AliceDraken wrote:

Does 一 二 三 really mean ichi, ni, and san?

Indoubetebly. Though beyond that get's a little funky, so to speak [四,五,六,七,八,九,十,十一,十二,十三,...十九,二十,二十一,...]

I'm not sure what a kanji chart is, and I should probably find out before writing this, but I'm lazy. I think what you're trying to achieve is just a subset of what James Heisig acheived in RTK1, i.e. deconstructing the kanji into units/radicals/primitives, and giving these semantic meaning by translating these into pictographs and ideographs (albeit not always etymologically accurate or even sensible). You'll be hard pressed to find many kanji like the 5 above of which the meanings are obvious, I believe.

I guess I'll just have to read. I have two books at home that teach me about Kanji, Katakana and hiragana.

-Arisu

I understand all this...  Though, I'm not as fast as the next person...  I do hope that with a bit of reading and a BUNCH of cramming will help me.

I do know that I probably wouldn't be having such a hard time if what I've been learning would have been showing me the Kanji version along the way.  Though, the way I've been doing it is know where near an actual educational version and it's understandable why I'm taking a little longer than the next person...

-Arisu

AliceDraken wrote:

I understand all this...  Though, I'm not as fast as the next person...  I do hope that with a bit of reading and a BUNCH of cramming will help me.

I do know that I probably wouldn't be having such a hard time if what I've been learning would have been showing me the Kanji version along the way.  Though, the way I've been doing it is know where near an actual educational version and it's understandable why I'm taking a little longer than the next person...

-Arisu

With regards to the kana, cramming and reading as a combination works fine, I did it myself and can read pretty fast now. Kanji-wise, as RawrPk says, even basic literacy (yes basic) involves knowing about 1900 kanji, so it's generally accepted here I think that cramming is a most inefficient way of going about it. For that to be effective, you'd have to have colossal determination and either combine it with SRS (google it, it's your new best friend) or intense reading which involves very regularly having to use every single kanji you've learnt so far. I don't mean to scaremonger, and I may be wrong (I've never tried it) but I wouldn't recommend it D:

Last edited by frony0 (2012 May 16, 3:32 am)

Remind me...how do I download Anki again.  LoL!  I almost wrote Aniki there for a second.  ~Smacks forehead~

Btw, I finally got my first manga and it's already hard to decipher.  I'm picking up the habit of reading only the tiny hiragana beside the kanji rather than memorizing the character itself.  Though, I've made a promise with myself...not to move to the next page until I can read what is there and understand what it means.  ^0^

-Arisu

Or, in a less patronizing link: http://ankisrs.net

Once you "rtk-know" the kanji, so to speak, you don't have to worry about memorization, because for the 2000 most common ones you'll already have a translation, which makes pseudo-reading easier, and learning to actually read far more possible

Plus, what recommendations do you have for pre-made decks on Anki?

-Arisu

AliceDraken wrote:

Remind me...how do I download Anki again.  LoL!  I almost wrote Aniki there for a second.  ~Smacks forehead~

Btw, I finally got my first manga and it's already hard to decipher.  I'm picking up the habit of reading only the tiny hiragana beside the kanji rather than memorizing the character itself.  Though, I've made a promise with myself...not to move to the next page until I can read what is there and understand what it means.  ^0^

This may not be the most efficient way to learn.  Spending huge amounts of time on a tiny amount of Japanese can be a waste of time and you may find yourself burning out rather quickly.  Generally it's better to use some sort of organized approach (like a textbook) and then work in native materials later.

yudantaiteki wrote:

This may not be the most efficient way to learn.  Spending huge amounts of time on a tiny amount of Japanese can be a waste of time and you may find yourself burning out rather quickly.  Generally it's better to use some sort of organized approach (like a textbook) and then work in native materials later.

It is hard, but with everytime I read the same sentence again...I'm learning new kanji.  I'm also learning new words with each one I translate.

I am having trouble with figuring out words sometimes, since I still can't tell where the word begins or ends.  So, I guess I'll keep trying to learn in various ways.

-Arisu