Effective way to learn kanji

I just started learning kanji and I was wondering what are some ways you guys found effective when trying to memorize and write kanji?

Just make flash cards and review them often. Don't try to learn too many at once, or you'll only become frustrated and burned out.

Must have 1st method of effective memorizing - a sheer willpower

Learn about radicals.

I must say, the last advice was the best. Radicals increase your kanji acquisition power, pure and simple. Because then you can relate similar kanji - kanji with the 'heart' (心) radical, for instance, usually denote emotions or mental states. 愛(love; kokoro is not the radical but it is part of the kanji)、恋(love)、情(emotion), 感(feeling, feel), 悩(troubles), 惑(annoyance), 惰(inertia, laziness), 怒(anger), 悲(sadness), 怠(laziness), 志(will, intention, aim, purpose)、想(thoughts, feelings)、思(think). Those are just the few I could think of off the top of my head. Or, if you know the radical for seashell （貝）, which was used as money by the ancient Chinese, then you can know tons of characters related to money. 貨(currency), 貸(lend), 費(expense), 賃(wage, fee, rent, etc.), 買(buy), 資(capital), 貧(poor), 貢(tribute) just for example.

1) That's why radicals are important. Because your mind works by grouping similar things. And radicals can only make that grouping easier and faster. They will also have the effect of making those huge, scary looking kanji seem much easier because you will be able to break them down into their component parts. Complex kanji are not necessarily more difficult than simple ones. It's a matter of how easy it is to differentiate the kanji from others, and how concrete a concept it represents. For instance, I once heard about this really young Japanese kid who knew the Kanji for monkey 猿 (saru) and he was only in first grade. 'Monkey' is just a very concrete concept so it was easy to remember, as opposed to say...解 which means 'solve; understand; melt.' The first two definitions at least are pretty broad concepts.

2) Write each new kanji 20 times. Take your time too - you want to write legibly, and believe it or not legible writing makes it easier for you to remember the kanji.

3) Make sure you follow the stroke order diagrams or else you will never be able to write kanji in cursive (gyoushou).

4) Try to read the kanji in context. Either in a textbook or the genuine article - Japanese newspapers, magazines, websites, whatever. Don't be discouraged by huge amounts of kanji that you will find - just remember your purpose is to recognize only those kanji that you know. And you'll say, "Hey! I know that kanji! Awesome!" You can learn about total comprehension of the text later.

5) You also need to learn how kanji operate - that is, in what ways they combine. Certain kanji, for instance, act like the un-, in-/im-, non-, anti-, etc of English. 無、不、反. Those three are VERY useful. Learn about the types of kanji. The most common is a combination of one part that provides meaning and another that provides a sound. It's not always as clear cut as that, but for instance: 義、儀、議、犠. All four of those are pronounced 'gi,' which is provided by the first kanji in the list, and it has a meaning of...well, 'meaning.' There are many other such lists I could make but I think I got my point across.

6) And as the first replier said, USE FLASH CARDS! I have...4000 some flashcards, mostly of kanji compounds and some of kanji. I used flash cards when I was beginning and I'm using them again in my 7th year of study to help me remember the bigger and more esoteric compounds. For that purpose they are absolutely indispensable.

7) Many Kanji have multiple pronunciations and multiple meanings. Don't try to master all of them at once. 出、上、行、掛. Those are some very basic kanji that have multiple meanings and readings. It's best to learn the various readings and meanings as you go, acquiring more specific ones later. Learn 行く (iku, to go) first, then later you can learn 行う (okonau, to do, practice, conduct). Of course, it may be easier for you to learn both at once. I can't speak for all learners. You can decide how much you are capable of biting off at once.

8) Lastly, take your time! It's not easy acquiring kanji. Even Japanese people take their entire pre-college school years learning them. If kanji are part of what attracted you to Japanese or you just think they look cool, that will probably make learning that much more fun. And that's good. You should treat it as fun or else you may just give up like so many I have seen.

I personally don't like radicals. If I wanted something to remember the kanji by, I'd use mnemonics. Learning radicals is like learning a couple of hundreds of kanji in addition.
I found that learning to meaning of a kanji is easy, very easy, the hard part was memorizing the readings. The cure for this would be to read it in a context, so, try to get some book, or manga or something, a kanji dictionary, and start writing them out one-by-one. Some plain shounen manga would be the best cause of the repetition of stuff.

Mnemonics can work too. I still prefer radicals but I won't debate you.
There is a good book that you, I mean Kuro-Neko, might want to buy called "A Guide To Remembering Japanese Characters," published by Tuttle. Just go to your local bookstore or amazon.com. It provides the etymology (the origin) of each jouyou kanji - the 2000 some 'general use kanji' that are taught to all Japanese students. It's helped me in times of need!

Also, if you're learning kanji you must have a good kanji book. The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary is the best for beginning learners, in my opinion. Buy Nelson's NTC New Japanese-English Character Dictionary after you've learned a few hundred kanji. It's very detailed and probably the best any non-scholar Western student of Japanese could buy.

Buckaroo Banzai said:

Also, if you're learning kanji you must have a good kanji book. The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary is the best for beginning learners, in my opinion. Buy Nelson's NTC New Japanese-English Character Dictionary after you've learned a few hundred kanji. It's very detailed and probably the best any non-scholar Western student of Japanese could buy.

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Ahh yes, a small experience regarding that. I remember that I wanted to buy some uber pro kanji dictionary, but I was too lazy to look for a good, superduper detailed one, so I ended up buying Kodansha's one. Well, thank God tbh, when I first opened it, I was like: "what? Whats this? And this? And this? Whoa!"
Don't rush things, its better to spend a little more on two dic's than to buy a pro one and not understand a thing for like three weeks.

Hey haven't stopped by this thread for a wihile so I just wanted to thank everyone for their advice i'll take it all into consideration and see which method works best for me so thanks.

I found a cool program called KanjiGold. It's awesome. Try it. You can study by grade. It's kinda interactive too.

Dream of Kanji...Just keeping Pounding Kanji and eventually you will find a method that will work.

愛(love; kokoro is not the radical but it is part of the kanji)

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Kokoro is the radical.

im surprised noone mentioned heisig in this thread.
if you are a native english speaker, its the only way to go

Again what? Tell it more expandly, please. 何であり？

srintuar said:

im surprised noone mentioned heisig in this thread.
if you are a native english speaker, its the only way to go

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I recently ordered the 1st heisig book, (should arrive any day now) as I've decided to formally begin my kanji studies instead of just trying to absorb them through normal Japanese study. I'll try to post back and let everyone know what it's like.

Aside from that, I've been using this P.G. O'Neill kanji book:


I like it because instead of having to make a zillion flash cards you just make one cardboard cut-out and use it to scan down the page and cover up information, essentially creating a flash card out of the pages. (He lays them out in such a way that this works; the book is like a non-cut-out bunch of cards in book format).

I haven't tried his suggested course methods, I've just been going through the kanji and trying to remember the On and Kun readings. So far its working well.

To supplement this though, one really needs a contextual reference and complementary reading practice to put into use what's memorized. I can't imagine having 2000 random On readings floating around in my head without any reading practice.

[B]ハダカ[/B] said:

Again what? Tell it more expandly, please. 何であり？

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Its a book called "remembering the kanji" written by someone named "heisig".
Volume I is the only one of any use, don't bother with II or III.

I think I am going to get the Flash Cards instead of the book.
Instead of creating flash cards I will have them already.

I just received Japanese in Mangaland which is introducing Kanji as it teaches Japanese..

I'd go for either Ultimate Japanese or Genki. Also, its better to make and adjust your flashcards.

JMoon said:

I think I am going to get the Flash Cards instead of the book.
Instead of creating flash cards I will have them already.

I just received Japanese in Mangaland which is introducing Kanji as it teaches Japanese..

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I agree with derfel: 90% of my learning happened while making up my own flashcards. (electronically, but still) I didnt use many of heisigs mnemonics.
The only thing I found useful in his book was 1) The ordering, 2) The decompositions, and of course 3) The technique. I highly recommend reading and re-reading his preface.


About Japanese in Mangaland, great book. Too bad it wasnt around when I was learning It wont help you with kanji though, until youve finished heisig.

Well I started using the Heisig book. I think it's an interesting and useful companion to formal kanji studying but it's not breaking any major barriers for me so far (after the first 200 or so).

The mnemonics are interesting, sometimes a far stretch, and can help assign useful pictographic information to the kanji, but because there are no おん読み or くん読み you won't learn how to read kanji by using this book alone, just the general meanings.

It is useful for breaking down strokes and helping the reader become accustomed to identifying radicals and separating recurring 'primaries'; that is, themes, shapes, pictographs, etc. I find this makes it easier to remember how to write certian kanji. Instead of one big scary kanji it becomes a series of smaller more easily identifiable ones, and there the mnemonics can help you remember the meaning of their association better, although as I say, some are a far stretch to remember.

Overall, it's part of the bigger puzzle, there really isn't one straight method when it comes to trying to memorize these suckers. But that being said, I think the book is still helpful in accelerating your learning if used in conjunction with other things. The pictographic and story association method has certain benefits and, as archaic as it sounds, the more junk floating around in your head the more stuff will go 'click' and light-up one day so in that respect I do think its a good resource and I'd recommend trying it. I see it coming in useful down the road.

Personally I wouldn't use mnemonics all the time. Just try to remember the kanji by looking at it hard lol, if it doesn't work, make up a small story. Even better, start reading something, and learn the kanji you encounter frequently, you will learn them much faster, and you'll have a a larger base in less time. In my opinion its pointless to follow to official order if you use a different base of kanji in the stuff that interests you.

Derfel said:

I personally don't like radicals. If I wanted something to remember the kanji by, I'd use mnemonics. Learning radicals is like learning a couple of hundreds of kanji in addition.

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As far as I know (so I might be wrong here), most radicals seem to be part of the general use kanji, so you actually have to learn most of the radicals anyway. Some of the radicals are variants on other radicals (example: River 川 - River radical 巛 or Water 水 - variant 氵 as used in 河), while some others seem to be just building blocks with no meaning (like 丨). So you only really have to learn a handful of extra characters. As said, I might be wrong, however, if anyone is interested, I am able (and willing) to figure out exactly which radicals are general use kanji and which ones aren't, and post a list of all radicals with their grades added (if any).

Wow this thread is full of advice also for an aprentice Japanese teacher like me!

I think Buckaroo Banzai has pointed out almost everything you should know. If you want to learn as many kanji as you can read newspaper, it is very important to know radicals and variations of the parts which provide sounds. These are common ways Japanese people use to guess and remember the meanings and sounds of unknown kanji. If you are a beginner, pictographs and mnemonics will work.

When you write kanji, it is important to keep a balance of each kanji. Also be careful, the print styles often have different shapes from handwritten ones. Some people especially those who teach themselves do not realize that. Most textbooks and dictionarys use fonts similar to handwriting, but some still do not. For example, the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary is very good, but its characters are written in print style (including hiragana and katakana). Imitate the kanji in the stroke order diagrams if you want to use it.

Anyway, everybody has his/her best style, so try many ways first and find yours. Take your time and enjoy learning kanji!

This thread is very useful,

I looked up the Huttle book that was mentioned: A Guide To Remembering Japanese Characters and I found this preview on google books, it has a lot of the content included (I don't have enough points to post a link apparently, but just do a search).

Also, lately I've found Mnemosyne to be a very useful flashcard program for learning kanji-based vocabulary as well, just download it from the site and then you can download modules for studying vocabulary as well, or create your own (Again, I can't post a link but google it).

Thorham said:

As far as I know (so I might be wrong here), most radicals seem to be part of the general use kanji, so you actually have to learn most of the radicals anyway. Some of the radicals are variants on other radicals (example: River 川 - River radical 巛 or Water 水 - variant 氵 as used in 河), while some others seem to be just building blocks with no meaning (like 丨). So you only really have to learn a handful of extra characters. As said, I might be wrong, however, if anyone is interested, I am able (and willing) to figure out exactly which radicals are general use kanji and which ones aren't, and post a list of all radicals with their grades added (if any).

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That would be awesome! Can you pm me when you are done? I know a really good website with about 3500 kanji on it and there is this huge kanji list. But I am not sure which ones I should look at...