Let's talk Kanji

[tangleweeds]

Despite having studied Japanese for three years at university (long ago), the course we used ignored the written language, and so my first priority resuming the language has been to achieve literacy. The kana are now my friends, so kanji come next.

For those who have become literate in Japanese, are there things you wished you'd known, or studied, or done more of as a newcomer to kanji?

The book that stood out to me after searching kanji threads on HTLAL is Let's Learn Kanji: An Introduction to Radicals, Components and 250 Very Basic Kanji. I've been learning to recognize radicals, but would like to know their Japanese names, I've downloaded samples of Remembering the Kanji and not clicked with it; I seem more tolerant of my own ridiculous mnemonics than other peoples. I'm more intrigued by the etymology or evolution of the characters, so recommendations in that direction are welcome too.

Are there apps anyone would recommend? I have vintage but functional devices for both Android and iOS, and I love playing with glowing screens. I'm enticed by Scritter, and googling the old HTLAL it looked like some people were using it successfully. But there are so many other Kanji apps I'd hardly know where to begin.

[vonPeterhof]

I'm more intrigued by the etymology or evolution of the characters, so recommendations in that direction are welcome too.

Henshall's A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters appears to be the go-to introduction to kanji via actual (known) etymology.

[Sizen]

The way I went about studying kanji was fairly basic. My brother gave me his copy of the Basic Kanji Book and I started by learning one kanji and all of its example compound words a day. After forty or fifty, I started doing two a day, then three, and so on. At the same time, I would go back and rewrite, by hand, all of the example words for each kanji in the book. By about 500 kanji, I had seen most of the radicals and most new kanji I saw didn't seem so foreign to me anymore. At about 1000 kanji, learning kanji became a breeze and I was able to do about ten a day on a good day. At the 1500-2000 mark, I stopped needing to study kanji actively to improve my reading. It took me about 3 years to get to this point.

All my advice will be based on this experience.

I'm not an expert and I don't pretend to know what I'm doing, but over the years, I've seen a lot of people fail at learning Japanese for the wrong reasons. I don't think Remembering the Kanji is any better than Scritter; and I don't think rote memorization is any better than SRS. All I know is that people often get frustrated with their lack of progress and then make mistakes that cause them to stop their studies. This is what you should be the most worried about, not your inability to read novels when you only started a year ago. (Not that you're worrying about that right now, but it may yet come. )

Personally, I haven't used many apps or specific "methods" for learning kanji, so I can't recommend anything. I'm the kind of guy who has tons of notebooks whose pages are black with my kanji reviews because that worked best for me. I say you should try everything and settle on what works best for you.

I do, however, have some general advice for once you've found your method:

1. Moderation. The more kanji you know well, the easier it gets to learn more. Don't get ahead of yourself or your studies will become unmanageable. First get a foothold, then start pushing yourself.

2. Constant repetition. If you don't review your kanji often, you will lose them. This is less of a problem later, but in the beginning, daily or at least consistant reviewing is essential.

3. Write them down. This is kind of optional and won't be necessary later on, but if you're struggling early on, writing new characters when you first learn them and as you review them does miracles. Take time to enjoy the process of writing them if you can.

4. Learn through vocabulary, review through vocabulary. Don't sweat on- vs. kun-yomi, just remember that 火 is hi on it's own, but that it's ka in kazan 火山 and bi in hanabi 花火. This is better than only learning a character's yomi and assuming that the on reading will only be in compound words and the kun will only be in other words. Learn and review on a word per word basis. You'll get better at guessing how to read words with time.

5. Kanji =/= Japanese. Lots of people burn out with Japanese because they focus too much on kanji and then get frustrated that they can't understand anything or communicate properly. Learn Japanese outside of kanji and they will be easier and more fun to learn.

You might see a common theme in all of my recommendations: kanji are demanding at first but get easier with time. It's like trying to babysit little children who will hide from you as soon as you turn your back on them: if you try to take on 2000 at the same time, you'll lose them all. Before you decide to babysit them all at the same time, take the time to get to know each of them and learn how to deal with them individually. Before long, they'll be like your own children.

Oh, and if you want a list of the bushu with all of their Japanese names, this site has them! Most of them are named after their kanji or what they look like, so it might be hard going to memorize the names without knowing the words first. I wish you luck though! I personally still haven't gotten around to learning their names.

There's also this kickstarter campaign that caught my attention a while back. It sounds like they plan on adapting their character dictionary to Japanese at some point and might be up your alley.

[lukbe]

From my experience learning Chinese, I pretty much fully agree with Sizen's advice here, point 4 being especially important.

I'd say, first learn a bunch by themselves trying to be aware of the radicals; and then just start learning them as they come up in texts. I am against the sort of approach of memorizing loads of characters upfront; I think it easily leads to burnout. I find it much better to learn with some form of context.

This is only for understanding though, being able to produce them by hand will take much more effort and practice (my character writing ability is WAY below my recognition ability.

In my case, as I've started to learn Japanese after already being able to learn Chinese, I prefer to read texts with as many kanji as possible

[Delodephius]

I agree with Sizen and stick to those points he/she wrote down myself, however I don't use a separate book or course to learn Kanji. I'm only learning those Kanji that appear in the Assimil Japanese book, or those I come across somewhere else and want to learn, so it's a bit chaotic, in no specific order of complexity or usage, just whatever comes my way. I was thinking of using Heisig, but there is no pronunciation provided for the Kanji in his book. So remembering some of the Kanji is hard, even though I memorise them through some mnemonic or just radicals.

[CittaKyle]

I really, really like an iOS app called "Scribe Origins"

I think it has a free version, but personally I paid the $6 or $7 for the paid version that unlocks all of the modes.

Here is what it offers:
* Built-in spaced repetition
* Both radicals and kanji
* Options to learn both kanji and hanzi via different learning lists (i.e. you can learn all of the Japanese ~2000 main Kanji, then change modes and learn another ~2000 Chinese hanzi, both simplified and traditional)
* Various game modes, including a really weird Tetris type game
* Good visual feedback on your progress (in the top lefthand corner it shows you how many you've learned)
* Various readings of the kanji
* Related vocabulary that uses the kanji
* A mnemonic story to help you remember, but you can type in your own as well
* the breakdown of what primitives make up the kanji

Basically... it's awesome as long as you don't need audio for the readings.

Personally, I'm using it no more than 10 minutes a day to learn recognition of a "keyword" for all of the Kanji. I'm currently learning Russian, and I have to be careful to limit my time on this app, because it's addictive

My plan is to learn the keywords and ability to recognize them all, keep drilling them a few minutes a day over many years, then when I start working on Japanese or Mandarin (haven't decided which yet), I'll have the Kanji foundation and learn the readings in the context of real vocabulary.

You might get turned off by the cutesy art, but there is a serious learning app underneath it.
They also have a similar app for vocabulary in Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish. I bought it the one for Japanese, but haven't used it yet. So I can't vouch.

Hope this helps,
Kyle

[edit]It does NOT show you brush stroke order, which may or may not be important to you[/edit]

[AlexTG]

I've been having a lot of success using Youtube videos of Japanese songs with lyrics. Here's the playlist I've been building of Japanese songs with lyrics. It's got heaps of rock, enka, and folk music. And here's Japanese versions of Disney songs with lyrics.

I follow along with the singer, trying to predict how the kanji will be pronounced, singing along if I can. At first it was really stressful because there were so many kanji that I didn't manage to recognize in time, even though I knew that I knew them. The songs just go so fast and the singer doesn't stop for you. But eventually I got the hang of it:

1. If you don't spot the meaning or reading of the kanji in time, that's fine, just make a note in your head of how it was sung. Maybe next time you see the kanji you'll remember, this was good practice.
2. Don't worry about the overall meaning of the song, just focus on the imagery and meaning of individual lines and maybe after a lot of listens it'll start to come together.
3. If a kanji/word keeps appearing and you're curious, look it up (I use jisho.org), either while the song's going or after, don't pause
4. Developing your recognition of one or two kanji or words during a listen is a great success. You don't need to be learning a million new things every listen.

[Xenops]

I am a strong supporter of the Let's Learn Kanji book. What I have been doing is this:

1. learn one or two each day
2. quiz yourself daily: can you hand-write the character, the sound in kana, and the meaning?
3. repeat steps 1. and 2.

I have also made Anki cards for extra reinforcement. After seeing Sizen's post, I see that I need to consider the on and kun readings, not just the ones in the book: but mainly I use the book.

[FreeEasy]

I'm an absolute beginner in the realm of Japanese but I've been making satisfactory progress with RTK's method. It seems a lot easier to study kanji separate from the Japanese language and then at a later date combine the two when your skills with each are at a stronger level. I've begun with associating the written kanji with their English word equivalents which I'm thinking will be easier to replace with a Japanese reading when the time comes. This also circumvents the frustration that could occur by trying to shoehorn the different readings in at the same time as the meaning.

As others in the thread have mentioned it seems much much easier to learn the readings on a word-by-word basis.