Learning Kanji

biasaf · 31 Mar 2011

Well, basically I'm still a beginner and I've recently started learning Kanji.
Uhh.. the problem is there are wayy to many and I have no idea where to start o_o'
My teacher said it's enough to just learn the combinations and vocabulary and leave the readings for later..
I got no idea what to do and how to learn it..
have you got any ideas/suggestions?

どうもありがとう～!

P.S ; English is not my native language so there might be some grammatical mistakes 8D (feel free to correct me? ~ )

eeky · 2 Apr 2011

I use flashcards with the kanji on one side and core meanings/readings on the other, which is a pretty standard technique. I've been systematically learning the kanji in order of decreasing frequency (most common first), using a frequency list I found in a dictionary. My original plan was to learn readings and core meanings, but I found it so hard to retain the readings, and progress was so slow, that I gave up on the readings and now just concentrate on learning meanings (which I find much, much easier to memorise).

Although it's sometimes disappointingly hard to figure out meanings of compounds from the core meanings of the individual kanji, I do find that just being familiar with the characters makes texts seem much less daunting. It's much easier to remember new uses and compounds when you feel you are already "friends" with the kanji, rather than everything just being a bewildering sea of squiggles. Unfortunately I am still weak on readings -- I often hit words whose meaning I understand but I don't know how to pronounce.

Glenn · 2 Apr 2011

I agree with what eeky says. One thing I'm learning about memory and learning is that if you start with one thing, then stack anther thing on it, and keep doing that you're going to get farther and with better results than throwing everything into your mouth at once. By way of example, I'm actually having a disconnect with other people studying Chinese because they're coming at it fresh, whereas for me the characters are not such a big deal because I'm used to them, so I'm just learning readings (and in some cases meanings). My experience with a text seems to be fundamentally different from theirs. Another example: I have certain words set as appointments in Outlook at work, so every day at 3:30, for example, I see 踝: くるぶし -- 足首の関節の内外両側にある突起した骨。At first it was a lot, and I had trouble remembering the reading (because of the way I studied kanji, the writing came fairly easily). Now it's getting down to where I can feel on my right ankle where I touch every time to let myself know what 踝 are.

eeky, which readings are you having problems with? Do you know about the 音符? They help with 音読み. 訓読み, on the other hand, are a bit trickier. You kind of just have to get used to those.

eeky · 2 Apr 2011

Glenn said:
Do you know about the 音符?

You mean the phonetic element of the kanji? Yes, I'm aware of the general idea but I've never systematically studied it. However, I do try to notice where characters that share the same component have the same reading -- like I would try to notice and remember that 議 and 義 both have the reading "gi", for example. Do you think it's worthwhile trying to systematically learn these phonetic elements? I seem to remember reading that there are a lot of exceptions and inapplicable cases. Do you know of a good list anywhere?

Glenn · 2 Apr 2011

I pretty much just went by general rule-of-thumb and noted exceptions mentally when I came across them. Your example leads me to believe you know exactly what I'm talking about, so I think you'll be fine as far as 音読み go. Another example (associating with you 義 example) is 生. One of its 音読み is セイ, as I'm sure you're aware, and it's also a component in the following: 性, 姓, 星, and 牲 (which is the one I was associating, from 犠牲 (ぎせい)).

So I'd say that if you learn the basic character and its reading you'll probably have a good idea of how to read other characters it's a part of. 音符 are fairly consistent from my experience, although there are tricky cases (like 妝, which you may never come across), but in those cases you just need to look up the character. Plus you should be checking on readings of words as well, because those can be a little less than predictable at times. At any rate, aside from some exceptional cases, learning readings of basic characters generally leads to being able to read more complex characters they show up in, and the larger your vocabulary of these phonetic components is, the more easily you'll be able to guess readings of characters you don't know (for instance, I was able to guess how to read 暗澹 the first time I saw it without looking it up. Of course, I looked it up anyway just to be sure I was right).

biasaf · 2 Apr 2011

I see then.. I guess I will start with readings and meaning first..
I know it might take some time to remember all of them but I guess it will pay off later.

Hmm there is one more thing;
In the sentence 'Kare wa furansu-jin da to omou.' (彼はフランス人だと思う｡), what does the 'da' stand for?

And in 'Ashita ame ga furu to omoimasu.' what does 'GA' stand for?
I must admit, I still don't know the difference between ga and wa..
I know wa is a TOPIC marker while ga is a SUBJECT marker.
Can you give me an example of the statement above?

Thank you ~

Glenn · 2 Apr 2011

だ is the sentence-final plain form of the copula, "to be". 彼はフランス人だ means "he is French."

は and が... well, to be very general about it, は is used to mark old, known information, and が is used to mark new, unknown information, which can be the focus of the sentence (as if it's the answer to a question) or it can just mark neutral description. は can also be a contrastive marker, and が can also mark objects, but that's getting away from topic vs. subject. Suffice it to say that finding a book that explains the two and gives lots of examples is probably the best route to understanding these two, and it's going to take a while. They're tricky, to understate the issue.

biasaf · 2 Apr 2011

I see. So that means that da/desu should come before ~to omou, right?
As for が, I just tried looking it up on google and I found this explanation:

3.3.4 The 「が」identifier particle
Ok, so we can make a topic using the 「は」and 「も」particle. But what if we donʼt
know what the topic is? What if I wanted to ask, "Who is the student?"What I need is some
kind of identifier because I donʼt know who the student is. If I used the topic particle, the
question would become, "Is who the student?"and that doesnʼt make any sense because
"who"is not an actual person.
This is where the 「が」particle comes into play. It is also referred to as the subject particle
but I hate that name since "subject" means something completely different in English
grammar. Instead, I move to call it the identifier particle because the particle indicates that
the speaker wants to identify something unspecified.

Example 2
(１) 誰が学⽣？- Who is the one that is student?
(２) 学⽣は誰？- (The) student is who?
Hopefully, you can see that (１) seeks to identify a specific person for 'student' while (２)
is simply talking about the student. You cannot replace 「が」with 「は」in (１) because
"who" would become the topic and the question would become, "Is who a student?"
The two particles 「は」and 「が」may seem very similar only because it is impossible
to translate the difference directly into English. For example, 「私は学⽣」and 「私が学
⽣」both translate into, "I am student."* However, they only seem similar because English
cannot express information about the context as succinctly as Japanese sometimes can. In
the first sentence 「私は学⽣」, since 「私」is the topic, the sentence means, "Speaking
about me, I am a student". However, in the second sentence, 「私」is specifying who the
「学⽣」is. If we want to know who the student is, the 「が」particle tells us its 「私」.
You can also think about the 「が」particle as always answering a silent question. For
example, if we have 「ジムが⿂だ」, we are answering a question such as "Who is the
fish?" or "Which person is the fish?" or maybe even "What food does Jim like?" Or given the
sentence, 「これが⾞」, we can be answering the question, "Which is the car?" or "What is
the car?" The 「は」and 「が」particles are actually quite different if you think of it the right
way. The 「が」particle identifies a specific property of something while the 「は」particle
is used only to bring up a new topic of conversation. This is why, in longer sentences, it is
common to separate the topic with

After reading this I think I've got a better view over the two.
What I really wanna know is about 'ame ga furu'.
Could it mean that the speaker want to basically say
'Out of all others,ONLY RAIN is falling....' or something like that?

Also, on wikipedia it's stated that が can also be used as a 'noun connector' and there is that example; wa ga kuni (我が国）which is being translated into 'my/our [collective] country'.
What's the difference between 我が国＆我の国?

And one more last thing.
'Kono kangae o dou omoimasu ka. (この考えをどう思いますか｡)' = What do you think about this idea?.
What is 'dou' exactly?

Sorry for all of my questions I just have too many lol..

Thank you once again !

Mike Cash · 2 Apr 2011

Are you using a textbook or other structured learning materials?

biasaf · 3 Apr 2011

Yeah, I'm using a textboox my teacher made..
and japanese.about.com .

Mike Cash · 3 Apr 2011

biasaf said:
Yeah, I'm using a textboox my teacher made..
and japanese.about.com .

There's your problem right there.

eeky · 3 Apr 2011

biasaf said:
'Kono kangae o dou omoimasu ka. (この考えをどう思いますか｡)' = What do you think about this idea?.
What is 'dou' exactly?

どう means "how". It modifies 思います -- so literally "How do you think about this idea?".

Sorry, I'm not confident about answering your other questions...

biasaf · 3 Apr 2011

Mike Cash said:
There's your problem right there.

How come?
How do you learn your Japanese?

eeky said:
どう means "how". It modifies 思います -- so literally "How do you think about this idea?".
Sorry, I'm not confident about answering your other questions...

Oh, I see.
Well, thank you !
Hmm.. What do you mean by modifies?
どう is an adverb while 思います is a (godan) verb.

Mike Cash · 3 Apr 2011

biasaf said:
How come?
How do you learn your Japanese?

The problem with homemade textbooks is that they lack a pedagogical structure. By the nature of your questions it was pretty obvious you're not using structured learning materials.

A professionally prepared textbook will build your knowledge and skills step-by-step. Homemade materials inevitably have a "shotgun" approach (Vocabulary/grammar introduced in an almost random manner, with lots of gaps).

I learned before the internet was around, so my choice of learning materials was limited to college textbooks and reference books. I think that was probably a good thing, because too often on the internet I have seen "the blind leading the blind" with well-intentioned people eager to "teach" others some point of Japanese when they have either a weak or mistaken understanding of it themselves.

biasaf · 3 Apr 2011

That's not true at all. She's a Japanese teacher and she already made over 6 textbooks. I just decided to try and learn new things so I used the internet..
That's why it's kinda my fault for rushing it..

Toritoribe · 3 Apr 2011

biasaf said:
So that means that da/desu should come before ~to omou, right?

No. だ is not needed when there's no copula in the subordinate clause. (e.g. 彼は来ると思う "I think he will come.") Also, です or any other polite forms can't be used with と思う.

○フランス人だと思う
○来ると思う

Xフランス人ですと思う
X来ますと思う

biasaf said:
What I really wanna know is about 'ame ga furu'.
Could it mean that the speaker want to basically say
'Out of all others,ONLY RAIN is falling....' or something like that?

雨が降る: simple statement, future tense
雨が降っている: simple statement, present progressive
雨は降っている: the one you wrote(は acts as a contrastive marker here.)

As Glenn-san wrote, は/が is rather tricky. I suppose It would be extremely tough to grasp for non-native learners.

biasaf said:
What's the difference between 我が国＆我の国?

我が sounds more solemn. In addition, 我が国 can mean "our country". Incidentally, 我の is pronounced as "ware no", and not "wa no".

biasaf said:
What do you mean by modifies?
どう is an adverb while 思います is a (godan) verb.

Exactly. Adverbs（副詞） modify verbs/adjectives（用言）. Some types of adverbs can also modify nouns or adverbs, though.

Mike Cash · 3 Apr 2011

biasaf said:
That's not true at all. She's a Japanese teacher and she already made over 6 textbooks.

What are her qualifications? What are the names of the textbooks and who publishes them? Which schools use them?

Torrential · 5 Apr 2011

Hi Biasaf,
I'm looking for keen beginners to test a program I have written for learning kanji. I actually wrote it for my children, who are learning Japanese at school, but I have decided I will learn the joyo kanji as well. I find the kanji fascinating.
The idea of the program is that you draw the kanji with your mouse and get feedback on each stroke. The program keeps track of which kanji you know and how well you know them, so it works out the optimal time to review them. It also gives automatic usage examples and readings, the detail of which is tailored to which kanji you already know (so, for insance, it can just give you compounds made from known kanji).
Everyone is slightly different, of course, but I personally suspect that learning readings in isolation is largely a waste of time. If you learn a few typical usages for each kanji (actual words or phrases), then the most common readings will start to seem natural because they will be part of the words or phrases you have already learned. Once the kanji is very well known, you could study the readings just to consolidate the knowledge and see if there are any readings that you missed with the usage-based approach.
I agree with a comment early in the thread that it is best adding one bit of knowledge at a time. The first step is to make kanji your 'friends' by learning what they mean. Once they are familiar, you can add further layers of understanding.
I can't post a link because I am new here, but I'd be happy to receive emails to discuss access to the program. It is completely free at this stage, even the full version, though it will eventually have a freeware and a $5 version. I tried getting beta testers at about.com but haven't had much success. (I did get some useful feedback but I need more).
Cheers,
Torrential.

biasaf · 5 Apr 2011

Torrential said:
Hi Biasaf,
I'm looking for keen beginners to test a program I have written for learning kanji...

Sure! Sounds awesome!
I think I can help you.
Could you PM me with the details?

Torrential · 5 Apr 2011

Done. The links should be in your intray. Please give me some feedback one way or another, cheers, Torrential.

Torrential · 6 Apr 2011

Biasaf,

Some of your questions are covered in the online help, but briefly... The kanji sequence can be set by the user, and usage information pops up when you show the program you know how to draw the kanji. The stage at which the usage information appears, and the level of detail at each stage, can be configured by the individual user. Full usage infomation is one click away from the mnemonic screen.

The premium version is free, but you need a licence. Just send me your user number.

Cheers,

Torrential.

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