Can I please ask for your help? (Confused)

[Kendaichi]

Why hello there! Sit right down, make yourself at home!
Anyway...I've always had such an interest in the Japanese language, and I've attempted to learn it many times. I always took quite a ignorant path and I just went straight to formal phrases alone, after about a few days I always gave up!

Lately...I've been researching more and more about the most effective way to learn it. So far, I'm 7 days in, I've got a pretty strong grasp on all Hiragana and quite a light grasp on the first 30~40 Katakana, everything's going smoothly and it's been a very fun experience thus far. I'm far more motivated than I used to be, and I'm trying to not be overwhelmed!

Now then, to the whole point of this topic...I'd assume that this question has been asked multiple times, but it'd help much more if I was told the answer personally, and...well, from what I've already searched, the answers vary so much that I get confused...

Right...after learning Katakana, I was going to move onto learning the first 1006 Kanji (Kyōiku kanji). Today I actually tried learning the first few and I couldn't help but realise that many of them had around 2~4 different ways of saying them! After researching more about it I now know about On'yomi & Kun'yomi.

Feeling overwhelmed, I started researching about which one is necessary to learn, and I read comments telling me to learn ALL of them (VERY overwhelming, but a clear path) but I also read comments telling to not bother with any of them, and just learn vocabulary (which confused me). Eh?!

I also hear from those answers to NOT learn Kanji before you learn vocabulary, so am I going a bad path with this? I'd love some help here. Kanji seemed relativity simple at first (雨 meaning rain, 森 meaning forest, and that's it) but now it just feels like SO much more than that and I'm just not sure how to approach nor use it.

Sorry if I seem ignorant, but can I have some help here? After Katakana, do I start with vocabulary, Kanji, both, none? I'd love some help on this as my mind is foggy on the matter.

Thank you very much!
-Chris

 

[eeky]

As far as Japanese is concerned, I agree with the principle that you should learn vocabulary in context rather than learning kanji characters for their own sake. If you follow a textbook learning approach then you will be introduced to more and more kanji as you learn more vocabulary, so it's not a "one or the other" situation.

Even so (and hopefully I'm not contradicting myself too much), I decided fairly early on to try to learn the core meanings of all the Joyo kanji. I think this is not for everyone (it took me about 18 months), but for me it seemed worth the effort. It obviously enables you build up a good familiarity with all the kanji, so that everything doesn't just seem like an impenetrable forest of unknown symbols. Also, if you set up a file of characters along with their core meanings (in English) and readings, you can very quickly locate any character you encounter by searching on the meaning that you know, and then easily copy and paste the character into a dictionary, and/or check the readings, or whatever you want to do. I personally find this so much quicker than looking up a character by radical/stroke-count, or trying to draw it in some kanji recognition program, that I think this one technique has actually saved me more time than it took to memorise the meanings in the first place.

Even though I have memorised the core meanings of many characters, I find that when I'm reading fairly fluenty, which I can currently manage only with very simple Japanese, I do not consciously refer to that memorised knowledge. Instead, I see the kanji as words, or parts of words, i.e. as vocabulary. When I hit something kanji-related that I can't read fluently (which is much of the time!), I can try to glean a meaning from the recalled core meaning, and I can quickly look up more about the character in the way I described. Eventually when I can read even advanced Japanese fluently (if I don't die or give up first), I will no longer need that rote-learned knowledge.

My original plan was to rote-learn character readings too, but after several attempts I gave up. I found the readings completely unmemorable in isolation, and the whole exercise was just mind-numbing. Now I treat all readings as vocabulary learning. So, I aim to learn the pronunciations of words (sometimes single kanji, but often kanji compounds or kanji + okurigana), not character readings in isolation.