So, how did YOU learn kanji?

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So how did YOU learn kanji?

Mnemoniks (RTK, Wanikani, your own,...)
8
38%
Rote writing
4
19%
I just absorbed them as I acquired vocabulary
5
24%
Something else (please elaborate in reply)
2
10%
Who is Kanji?
2
10%
 
Total votes: 21

Monty
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So, how did YOU learn kanji?

Postby Monty » Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:59 am

Poll for people who CAN recognise at least all the joyo kanjis.
You don't have to know every possible reading and you don't need to be able to write from memory.
But you MUST be able to recognise a joyo kanji when you see it.

If you clicked on "Something else", please elaborate.
Last edited by Monty on Sat Oct 30, 2021 12:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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gsbod
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Re: So how did YOU learn kanji?

Postby gsbod » Thu Oct 28, 2021 11:24 am

Not sure if I meet your success criteria or not. I couldn't claim to recognise all the jouyou kanji (whatever that means). I'd struggle to tell you much about 祭 際 or 察 looking at them on their own, but I have no problem reading words like 祭り, 国際, or 警察.

I used Basic Kanji Book 1&2 (strongly recommended especially if you're not into grand mnemonic systems) and then tried and failed a few times to get through Kanji in Context, and ended up mostly learning how to read kanji in the context of words and phrases, making heavy use of flashcards.
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Monty
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Re: So how did YOU learn kanji?

Postby Monty » Thu Oct 28, 2021 11:42 am

gsbod wrote:I used Basic Kanji Book 1&2 (strongly recommended especially if you're not into grand mnemonic systems) and then tried and failed a few times to get through Kanji in Context, and ended up mostly learning how to read kanji in the context of words and phrases, making heavy use of flashcards.


Thanks for your reply. So using one of your words as example, how would you memorise the reading and meaning of 警察?
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gsbod
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Re: So how did YOU learn kanji?

Postby gsbod » Thu Oct 28, 2021 11:50 am

Monty wrote:Thanks for your reply. So using one of your words as example, how would you memorise the reading and meaning of 警察?


Difficult to say for certain. I definitely made a flashcard and drilled it in Anki, but by that time I think my general appreciation for how kanji "works" as a system had already been developed, primarily through the Basic Kanji Books but through other studies too, which helped make it stickier somehow.
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Leurre
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Re: So how did YOU learn kanji?

Postby Leurre » Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:59 pm

For me, purely as a function of vocabulary that I learned.
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lichtrausch
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Re: So how did YOU learn kanji?

Postby lichtrausch » Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:42 pm

The first four or five hundred rote, using Hadamitzky's Langenscheidts Handbuch der japanischen Schrift, with special attention paid to radicals. The rest through vocabulary.
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