Can someone explain the basic rules of kanji and where to start learning them?

[lonex]

So... I'm an American-born-Chinese and I'm having trouble on where to start learning kanji. I just need to know when and where to start because when I learned Chinese when I was little it was the chalk-on-board talk and the characters were pretty much shoved down my throat year after year.

To add on to that, there seems to be a differentiation in terms of how kanji is used relative to the Chinese counterpart. Does the kanji get pronounced different under different contexts? How does the individual kanji change when they get pieced together to form a word? I'd greatly appreciate it if someone can clear up the basic "kanji rules" for me.

I'm still new to this so please direct me in the right direction

 

[Toritoribe]

To add on to that, there seems to be a differentiation in terms of how kanji is used relative to the Chinese counterpart. Does the kanji get pronounced different under different contexts? How does the individual kanji change when they get pieced together to form a word? I'd greatly appreciate it if someone can clear up the basic "kanji rules" for me.

The following explanation might be somewhat helpful.
Kanji - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[lanthas]

To summarize: indeed, unlike Mandarin where most hanzi have only one pronunciation, in Japanese most kanji have multiple ones, and which one is used depends on the word. The readings of each kanji can be put in four groups:

• Kunyomi: typically (but not always) used when the kanji is the only kanji in the word. For example: 強い = tsuyoi (strong).
• Onyomi: typically (but not always) used when the word contains multiple kanji. For example: 強化 = kyouka (strengthening).
• Irregular: a unique pronunciation that only occurs in one specific word. For example: 強請る = nedaru (to pester).
• Names of people and places: here, pretty much anything goes. A given written name can be pronounced in many different ways (for example 西野 = Saino, Seino, Nishino or Nishimura), and a given spoken name can be written in many different ways (e.g. there is a seemingly infinite number of ways of writing Akira). For this reason, Japanese forms and business cards often ask for/display the name twice: once in kanji (to show how it's written) and once in kana (to show how it's pronounced).

Even after that, the pronunciation can still change. For example, if you combine 出 (as in 出力 = shutsuryoku) and 発 (as in 発言 = hatsugen), you get 出発 "shuppatsu", not "shutsuhatsu".