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First of all, it's certainly nothing new or revolutionary, rather the opposite. I just wanted your opinion on how I learn kanji.
So, I have been learning kanji for about one year, and I now know about 500. By that I mean I can write them by hand, I know their kunyomi and/or onyomi, their meaning and five or more compounds for each kanji (except a few odd ones for a beginner, like 貝 and 弓). The way I do it is I write each character at least 50 times by hand, and make flashcards out them. In my flashcard program I have one deck with only single kanjis and one with compounds that I review every day.
It's only recently that I've started reading Japanese texts aimed for beginner/intermediate students, so I add a few compounds with kanjis I already know from these texts. But mostly I learn without context and just use root memorization. In the very beginning I did this because I was so new to Japanese language and kanji that I didn't know any other way, but now I know of several methods that are supposedly better for non-Japanese. However, somehow I really enjoy learning this way even though I know it's not the most effective. I think it's because I like system and order and to easily keep track of my progress. I feel like I'll never lose motivation this way because I know exactly how far I am from my goal, which is the jyouyou kanji.
I have read though on different forums that this method is ineffective and close to useless, that it's impossible to learn 2000 kanjis the way I know these 500, and so on. No one seems to do it this way and everyone warns against it, so I'm starting to feel insecure about my approach. But I don't really want to do it any other way either. I think that when I get to that point where it gets really hard to remember the kanji in isolation I'll know enough to read Japanese pretty well and that way strengthen my memory.
I really want to hear someone's opinion or thoughts. Should I still change my kanji learning method? Do you think it's impossible to learn 2000 kanji by mostly root memorization? I also wonder if there really are anyone other than me that learn this way.
Thanks for reading:-)
eta: I forgot to say that I've upped my pace so that I'll certainly be done in less than four years. I learn five or six new kanjis every day now. -
Just do whatever works for you; there's no "best" method. Most people on the Internet who seriously learn Japanese use the Heisig method, i.e. coming up with stories that link together the primitive elements found in kanji (e.g., 冒 - risk - it's risky to look at the 日 with your 目), formalised in the book Remembering the Kanji. If you haven't tried that I recommend it, but if it's not for you it's not for you.
I wouldn't personally use your method, because I don't really like the idea of "learning kanji". I would rather learn words that I can add to my vocabulary. If I see 合 for the first time, I don't care that it can be read as ガツ or ゴウ; I'll just learn 合衆国 and 合意 when I see them. I don't see kanji as some separate thing that should be learned in isolation. But that's just me, as I say, just use whichever method you want. One thing though - don't think that you'll be done with kanji once you're done with the jouyou set. :P -
At first, I was going to say keep doing what you're doing, but reading your post again I'm not so sure. There's nothing wrong with your method of learning as such, except I think it would probably need to be supplemented by a lot of reading (I know you said you've started reading, but I think you might need to do more). The more kanji you learn the more difficult it is to keep them all in your head without forgetting them. The first 500 kanji are the most common so you'll get a lot of chance to review them without doing too much reading. However, later kanji appear less frequently (as well as being more abstract in meaning) so it takes more effort to keep reviewing them. Obviously the more kanji you learn, the more time it takes to keep going through and reviewing everything. Actually, this was my experience when learning Chinese, as I mainly only read things in my textbook and my environment like posters and signs.
Also knowing kanji and being able to make sense of what you're reading are a little different. Knowing a lot of kanji is good groundwork for being able to read, but you'll probably find it takes a while to be able to read fluently, even if you theoretically know all the kanji on a page. So while it's true that Japanese people learn kanji by rote, they also do a lot of reading as well to fix that knowledge in their heads and be able to use it.
As a general rule for learning, I think the most important thing is to be able to honestly assess how well you are learning, and if things are not working, then to try something new. If you find this happens with your current method then definitely change. If not, then there's no reason to change.
Just a few thoughts. I haven't always written 'I think' in my sentences, but this is all just opinion of course. Hope it made some sense. -
Thanks a lot for the input everyone.
I did read the introduction in Heisig's book and took a brief look at the first pages. I feel like if I did this method I wouldn't be able to go in "Japanese mood" until the very end, and that would demotivate me big time. But I do use something called Henshall Kanji Mnemonics now and then which seems a bit like the same concept.
Richard, I see what you mean by reading being different than knowing kanji. Kind of like practicing different body parts one after one to do this advanced dance move and then at the end having to bring them all together so that it works out? Bad example, but that's the first thought that struck me.
I will take your advice and invest more in reading. SRS is indeed taking up a lot more time recently, and feel like some of that time might be better invested in reading. Other than that, I still feel like I'm one the right track, it was just all the opinions on root memorization that gave me a feeling of not knowing what I was missing.
Again thanks for the replies and, louis, I hope you're right in that I won't be done after the jouyou kanji (if you meant motivation-wise?). Nonetheless my ultimate goal is reading a Japanese book, and I know I need more than 2000 kanji to do that, but it's still so far away I dare not think about it yet. -
Indeed, there are several people here who swear by Heisig's book, but I prefer learning kanji with reading and in the context of words and sentences like louis. I think I used a book by Henshall for awhile to learn the etymology of kanji, but it seemed like in the most interesting cases he ended up saying it was uncertain and giving some mnemonic, which I wasn't fond of. (I don't like mnemonics for some reason.) I also wasn't fond of his example compounds.
There's a specific Japanese book you want to read, or you'd just like to read some book? With my earlier answer, I was assuming your goal was to learn the joyo kanji (which I think is a perfectly valid, if uncommon, way to try to learn Japanese). However, I certainly don't know all joyo kanji (I have no idea how many I can read---maybe 1000-1500 in context?), but I can read a fair number of (non-technical) Japanese books with a dictionary. Sometimes I need to look up a kanji, but more often I need to look up the meaning of a word whose characters I already know.
I'm not trying to discourage you from your approach, but maybe if you tell us a little bit more about your precise goals (do you only want to read and not care about speaking/listening?) and resources (Japanese friends? Japanese books?), we can give some better informed opinions. -
There's not a specific book, the book-goal is really just to have something tangible to aim for. I can see it reads like I'm only focusing on being literate in Japanese, but I do practice speaking and listening too. My goal is to be able to speak and write in Japanese with ease and at an advanced level. I listen to Japanese roughly 2 hours a day I guess, speaking not so much yet. My focus is mostly to get over the kanji hurdle so that I can immerse myself completely and more effortlessly in Japanese.
As for resources, right now I'm only using one rather unknown(?) book called 総合日本語初級から中級へ Introduction to Intermediate Japanese - an integrated couse (that's the full title!) which was recommended somewhere on the internet. It features texts, formal and informal dialogues as well as complementary grammar and vocabulary. It seems good so far, but I'm looking for at least one more book that has its emphasis on shorter Japanese texts.
For kanji I own Japanese Kanji and Kana by Hadamitzky & Spahn, which I'm happy with for now. And of course I use various internet resources.
I do plan to do a Bachelor's degree in Japanese next fall, but right now I'm studying only by myself and have yet to find someone to practice my Japanese with.
That's roughly my situation at the moment. I'd be very happy to hear if someone has any Japanese book recommandations. I also appreciate anything else you have to say about my Japanese study, as this is the first time I've really been asking for any outside help. -
One suggestion I have is to not study kanji compounds/vocab by themselves, but to find example sentences so you learn their context. Many times there is a 1-to-1 translation, but often there isn`t. 選抜 may just be `selection` when you look it up, but its specifically used for choosing people for a team or from a screening test, not for choosing what candy bar to buy at the store, so I think adding examples amongst your flashcards and reading more for context should cement these words further.
As for reading suggestions, I think just variety and subjects that interest you are key. I have books on sports, marine life, fantasy novels, etc. that expose me to all sorts of vocab. And if its a certain subject, you will see specialized words repeated again and again. I saw 旗揚げ so many times in this book about a mixed martial arts organization and 砦 so many times in the fantasy book, I couldnt help but remember them. -
Well, it's certainly good to have example sentences when you're studying vocab, but I can't think of any books at the appropriate level that have example sentences for kanji. The Hadamitzky & Spahn books go through characters more or less in order of frequency, right? The only books I know of with example sentences/phrases for the compounds are those written for Japanese at a certain grade level (Kanji Kentei prep books or similar). Though if you want, you could always look up example sentences on here or your personal denshi jisho/dictionary depending on what you have.
In any case, if you know the individual kanji and some compounds, you can learn the usage later, even if this not the approach that many of us are used to. It sounds like since you'll be taking proper courses next year, you'll learn the usage for vocab as they come up, so I don't see it as that much of a problem. I often misuse words I've just learned in books or from a dictionary (even with some example sentences), but when Japanese have trouble understanding you, you get a better sense of the usage.
As for reading, I started off with children's books (and still read children's/YA books) but of course the easier ones don't help so much with kanji. Maybe manga is a good way to start if you can understand a fair amount of spoken Japanese (which is also crucial for reading children's books). As for texts, I'll browse through some books and let you know if I see anything promising. -
Well, your learning method sounds like the "hard" way. I was brought up in a Chinese school, and this was practically how we learnt to write "kanji", or Chinese characters (so I don't have a problem with kanji...). Students would go home each night and just write them over and over again, and you'd be expected to know it the next day (lol, those were horrible nights to recall). So I'd say that your learning method is probably not the best way? But it is certainly very effective in Chinese society, where an average person has to know around 5000 characters.
Good luck with your kanji :) -
Thanks for the responses!
tamatama, I'm not even sure myself in what order H&S go through the kanji. To me it seems very random at times. For example a small group of kanji that are either connected by radicals or meanings come after each other, like 券, 巻, 圏 and 勝, and then 勝 is the bridge to the next kanji 負.
I've considered children and YA adults books before, but I feel like I wouldn't learn the most useful vocabulary from them (like typical newspaper and everyday texts vocab). But I might be wrong about that. It would be great if you found any book with even a small range of texts:-) I'm sure the rest of the content is useful for me anyway.
Tobberoth, thanks for the tips! :-) I'll check them out.
kasenbon, thank you:-) I guess I'm lucky in some way as I've always liked the "school way" of learning things by memorizing. I'll continue this way for the time being and see for how long my brain can keep track of all the single kanji. If my learning rate starts to detoriate I might consider another method, but honestly I hope I won't have to 'cause it's a bit troublesome to change everything at this point. Hopefully I'll just be able to stick to it to the end despite all the obvious disadvantages there are to the "hard" way. -
Well, a couple books intended for English speakers are
Read Real Japanese Essays
Reading Japanese with a Smile
I bought the first one (and some similar fiction books), though I think the second looks more interesting. They both have good reviews on Amazon, but personally I couldn't really get into them because (1) I'm not really into short stories/essays and (2) I'd rather just read full Japanese texts, even ones for children. Anyway, you can figure out if they're appropriate for you.
It is true that children's fiction often uses a lot of different vocab than everyday foreigner Japanese, but some children's nonfiction might be worth considering. For example, there's a new series 科学のお話 (1 for each grade 1-6) which I think is good. On amazon.co.jp you can read the first couple stories in each volume to see what you think.
Incidentally, I just found my old H&S workbook, and it seems I went through about the first 600 kanji before giving up on it. The main thing I didn't like was they didn't really give any etymology. Also, the compounds they give you for each kanji only use kanji previously covered, so a lot of the compounds you see are some of the more uncommon ones. -
Thanks a lot! The first one I've seen before and am definitely going to buy sometime. I'll check out the other one too. Thanks for the tips on the children series as well. I've checked it out already and I like it!
I've also noticed the compound issue in the H&S book so I always check the common words for each kanji here on jisho denshi first, compare them with the one's in the book and change some up if necessary before making flashcards of them. This kanji book is certainly lacking in some aspects, I look forward to finishing it and buy something more advanced!
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