Learning to write kanji

[Kentaku_sama]

Have you ever seena native japanese or chinese write kanji, it's so fast! and you dream about you being able to write them that fast! Well I have a book named "Easy Kanji" and it dosen't have lessons in it, only little pages with one 5 kanji per page, usually having to so with the radiacle, and then a little grid to practice them. what I'm wondering is that at the beginning It goes over the basic strokes of kanji. Should I spend weeks mostly practicing these strokes or at least before I practice kanji each day?

Another Question I have is why is it important to learn an individual symbol? I mean for writing it makes sense, but If your learning to speak and read kanji why not just learn entire words at a time?

I have a lesson bool that every so many pages they give you a few more words to practice, and any words that aren't romaji , I go and look up and find how it's actually written in a book. (is this a good idea?) It's embarrassing when some one asks you what does this mean, and you can only read each symbol and not the whole word.

 

[Amigo]

Have you heard about the Heisig's method?
That method is based in "imaginative memory" according to Heisig.
The fisrt book is about the meaning and the written form, whereas the second book is focused in the reading: fonetic reading (ON YOMI) and lexical reading (KUN YOMI)
To me is the best way to learn Kanji for foreing people. I started that method 3 years ago and finish both books in 6 months. However I have never stopped to go over again 'cause you trend to forget the less used of them.
I revise only the second book because you can find number-references to the first book to check the meaning.
Precisely I'm going over it again.
Remembering the Kanji and Remembering the Hanzi - Wikipedia

 

[Soloistic]

I don't believe you need to learn the on and kun readings of every kanji you come across.

Learning kanji through sentences/words is an excellent method and is used quite frequently. Instead of learning all readings of each kanji, learn the reading of the kanij your using. The more you read/write these sentences/words, the more comfortable you become with them.

Then later down the road when you come across the same kanji using a different reading, learn it for that word.



There is an interesting method found on this site where you learn Japanese from using it, and learning it through sentences, not individual words, readings.
About | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time

 

[Amigo]

Oh! Thank you for the link. I didn't know about that book.

Anyway, "Remembering the Kanji" books use that method as well.
There are chapters in which you can study kanji's pronunciations from very useful words. In special because there's no other way to learn them, since they don't have any "phonetic radical" to associate with.

You can learn more than 1100 kanji just by "phonetics radicals"!! It sounds tempting. You can save a lot of time.

It's funny when you read correctly a word in Kanji but you don't know the meaning. In this case you just need to use the dictionary without counting the strokes or analizing the official radical... to find the word. It's a relief.

 

[Glenn]

t's funny when you read correctly a word in Kanji but you don't know the meaning. In this case you just need to use the dictionary without counting the strokes or analizing the official radical... to find the word. It's a relief.

Yeah, but since I have a 電子辞書 with a writing pad I don't have this problem anymore (it's so awesome!). This reminds me, though, of one time when I was reading through some 吉本ばなな book and I came across the word 暗澹. I remember asking my ex-girlfriend (she's Japanese, btw), "do you read this あんたん?" and she said "I have no idea." So I checked it and I was right. That was pretty cool too, and I think it's why she started asking me how to read some words.

 

[Mike Cash]

Just make sure you're not concentrating on learning Japanese writing to the exclusion of learning the Japanese language; they're not the same thing.

 

[Glenn]

Or at least if you are doing it, realize that you're doing it.

 

[Amigo]

Yeah, but since I have a 電子辞書 with a writing pad I don't have this problem anymore (it's so awesome!). This reminds me, though, of one time when I was reading through some 吉本ばなな book and I came across the word 暗澹. I remember asking my ex-girlfriend (she's Japanese, btw), "do you read this あんたん?" and she said "I have no idea." So I checked it and I was right. That was pretty cool too, and I think it's why she started asking me how to read some words

Cool

What does 吉本ばなな book mean? I couldn't find it in any dictionary.

(she's Japanese, btw)

What does "btw" mean?
I'm sorry, it's just curiosity.

 

[Glenn]

Yeah, you won't find it in a dictionary for a few years, most likely. That's a Japanese author's name: Yoshimoto Banana (or Banana Yoshimoto, if you go by the western order).

BTW means "by the way."

 

[bakaKanadajin]

I agree with Soloistic's point. It's hard to learn kanji void of any contextual reference. I only study kanji I don't know as I come across them in my grammar and reading books. Unfortunately the JLPT has little use for stroke order, so although I'm learning them in context I am not learning to write so much as to read these kanji.

I am going to slowly remedy this by using my DS to play kanij games and I'm also reading Heisig's book. Over time I would imagine that by breaking things down with mnemonics, reading the kanji and then practicing them either on the DS or on paper when I have time, I will come to be able to write them all. This is a supplement to remembering them, so it's beneficial but not my primary method. First off, as Mike Cash pointed out, using the language is key. These days hand-writing has little impact on your ability to communicate in Japanese society.

 

[Putrefaction]

Remembering the Kanji is OK, but Remembering the Kanji V2 blows.

 

[Glenn]

Yeah, you're not supposed to even open it until you finish the first book. I peeked too, though. Heh. Anyway, I really liked RTK; I just wish my imagination were a little better so that it would have been even more effective.

 

[Putrefaction]

Well, I mean, for some stuff that I had in one book that matched up with Genki, "Jo/onna" was "Goddess". . . I dunno, I found it incredibly stupid, maybe it was just the one I downloaded.

The thing I didn't like about RTK is no on/kun. What's the point of it, then? :\ I'd use it as a reference guide. I use O'Neill's Essential Kanji, 2000 essential Kanji and their On/Kun, strokes, two ways to use them (one on and one kun demonstration) and it builds off Kanji you've already used.

 

[Glenn]

You sure that wasn't 女神 (megami -- goddess)? Hard to imagine a mistake that glaring in there. It is good to cross-reference characters for meaning sometimes, though, as the keywords can have some sense that you just don't think of and end up with something completely off for the meaning.

On a side note, I remember starting out with Hadamitzki and Spahn's Kanji and Kana, and for 明 they had one of the meanings as "clearns" or something like that. That confused the heck out of me. I had to go to English dictionaries to be sure there wasn't some word like that that I hadn't heard of.

[ETA] The point of RTK is that it doesn't have any readings, so your head isn't cluttered with information all at once, leaving you not knowing anything about the character because of information overload. That's also why there's only one keyword meaning per character.

 

[Amigo]

Yeah, you won't find it in a dictionary for a few years, most likely. That's a Japanese author's name: Yoshimoto Banana (or Banana Yoshimoto, if you go by the western order).

:roflmao: