Kanji Trouble

Hey everyone

So, I think one of the hardest points of learning japanese is remember the kanji. Like, I can recognize them when im reading and stuff, the ones i know and stuff, but it so hard for me to remember the correct way to write it and the meanings and the readings and everythign... lol

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone had any good ideas in order to study kanji. I was thinking about buying on or two kanji study "games" for Nintendo DS.

Idk, i just want to find a good way to study and memorize them. Because right now, i dont think the way im doing it is wrokign

yoroshiku!

Hey man. My mind may work differently from yours so just take my advice on hand. It's actually a combination of a lot of other people's advice.

1) Memorize Kanji with other Kanji, or in phrases. The first 100 or so you can memorize by itself, but then it becomes much easier to memorize in pairs.
2)

Writing them over and over not only helps me remember them, but when I see it I automatically draw the stroke in my head or in invisible ink with my hand. But don't worry, I forget stroke patterns all the time, especially for "right" and "left".

And let me tell you, that's just page 1 of my book. I have right now, what, like 20 pages filled in. I'll scan them later, not like it's super awesome, just shows what I did.

3) I learn 8-10 at a time, then take a "quiz" on the past 20. So far I'm up to 600, with at least 550 memorized (I do forget easy ones, at least drawing wise--I can identify them no problem. I actually forgot how to "write" namae in Kanji, but if I saw it I'd know what it was).

4) Don't skip weeks and weeks...I just skipped 2 and I forgot 580-600 for the most part, their readings...


I too prefer electronic things because I'm "going green" as they say, but I have a Kanji book -- Essential Kanji by PG O Neill. Two qualms: He uses 8 Kanji / Page, where I think it should be 5, and the major complaint - romaji. I dislike it now even though I type in it, I wish it was hiragana/kata so badly. I plan to take pictures of the Kanji and save them on my computer so when I'm anywhere I can look at'em!

To me, the hardest part of Japanese is not Kanji. It's the sentence structure, which actually encompasses On/Kun readings...and I have a topic about that! Yay!

Hahah thanks for your advice

I actually have a little notebook for kanji, too! haha. I write one over and over on each line... I have a couple pages, which are liek 200 or so kanji. However, I keep forgetting the ones I've previously learned!

And also, I have essential kanji too! I usually don't use it to learn kanji, however I do use it as a kanji dictionary and look up kanji i dont know by stroke count or pronounciation, in order to find out the meaning or the correct way to write it, etc.

I like your quiz idea. And maybe I shouldn't try to learn so much at one time; I usually do 14 or 15. But yeah, it also could be cuz i never go back and test myself on them again, and i stop studying them for long time periods.... lolol.

Well, thanks again for your advice

You might find the application on FaceBook called "kanjibox" incredibly useful. Set your skill and it tests you on the relevant kanji. SUPER useful!