Learning the Kanji

Hey everyone.

Been years since I've last posted in here. Glad to see many of the old faces still around. I briefly studied Japanese back in 2007/2008 before actually going to Japan on a two week vacation with some friends. After that I ended up focusing on other subjects (like college and work).

I happened to move to Mexico last year (I'm originally from Portugal) and had quite some trouble with the Spanish (even though it's so similar to Portuguese). But when I eventually came back to Portugal I noticed my memory was stronger and that realized I wanted to learn more languages (Currently I have fluent Portuguese, passable English, and passable Spanish).

I remembered Japanese and decided to try learning it again. Maybe even go on some 2/3 month ryoka vacations or work for a couple of years just to get the experience (since I liked living in a foreign country while back in Mexico). Surprisingly, although I didn't remember everything, what I didn't remember I was able to quickly re-assimilate (apparently it was still in my brain somewhere). But I got frustrated trying to go through some online lessons. The fact that I had kanjis, grammar and vocabulary all taught at the same time with no apparent structure other than it being focused on specific grammar, was making it difficult to me to assimilate new kanjis and vocabulary.

So a couple of months ago I decided to instead do it one at a time and started memorizing the Jōyō kanji (all 2,136). Right now for each kanji I'm memorizing just one general meaning. Which means no kun/on readings nor memorizing several possible meanings. I'm planing to work on those whenever I start learning vocabulary. I plan to take the N2 test July next year.

The way I memorize them is to have a list with the Kanji and it's meanings, chosing one meaning and then write the kanji down while saying the meaning about 5 times in sets of 10 kanjis, then repeating the set until I'm able to write down the kanji by only reading the meaning. I'm also making sure I'm able to remember and write each down in less than 5 seconds.

I'm currently on the 500 Kanji mark and will soon make the jump to 650 (as soon as I have the last 100 in the 5 second each mark) which will bring me to N3 level in terms of Kanji.

I would like to ask the helpful peeps around here, who certainly have way more experience in learning (and helping other learn) Japanese about what you think about my method, if indeed it will be helpful in the future and if you would change anything to it.

Thanks for your patience.

According to your story it seems you have A LOT to do than just memorizing Kanjis if you want to get a N2 certificate.

I suppose I am doing the opposite -I am spending my time studying the On and Kun readings of the Kanji without the meaning. I figured that if I could pronounce the word, it would be that much easier to look the meaning up in a quick electronic dictionary. Along the way I have discovered that there are shared readings for a good number of non-radical elements, which helps me out a great deal.

I was also planning on taking the N2 in December, however that just gives me enough time to learn the Kanji by themselves, and I question whether or not my vocabulary will be there that soon after that landmark. I am assuming that I would need another year of reading text for that to happen, but I could be grossly exaggerating the difficulty of the test -considering the N3 seems rather simple.

I should say that I am studying Kanji in addition to reading comics and listening to conversations. However, I expect the vocabulary used in novels to be far different from that of ordinary comics.

Check this website out, he really did a good job at shedding light on the new testing system, and more importantly he has links to some free practice tests so that you can judge your present condition:
JLPT N2 Practice Test

I can safely say that learning grammar is way more interesting than Kanji, but that assume you got some vocab on your backbone.

The reading comprehension of N2 is on another level of N3, that it is much more complicated. Listening comprehension is also longer and harder, sign...

Andromedashun said:

According to your story it seems you have A LOT to do than just memorizing Kanjis if you want to get a N2 certificate.

Click to expand...

Indeed. I have no illusions about that. I'm hoping I can do it in one or two years if I work hard on it. N2 is just my end goal (which allows me to work in Japan in case I want to when the time comes).

Andromedashun said:

I can safely say that learning grammar is way more interesting than Kanji, but that assume you got some vocab on your backbone.

The reading comprehension of N2 is on another level of N3, that it is much more complicated. Listening comprehension is also longer and harder, sign...

Click to expand...

I aree. Learning grammar is a lot more interesting than just memorizing a ton of characters. But I'm looking it in a practical way. I learned English by reading (books, video games, movies subtitles). I plan on doing the same thing for Japanese. I'm planning to start reading online newspapers, books, games, mangas (ideally children's mangas with lots of furigana). Although furigana will help me, lots of resources do not have them (e.g. online newspapers). So if I'm able to know which kanji is what, I can look it up while reading. And even if I don't get the grammar completely I can always get a sense of what is being talked about, increasing my vocabulary in the process. I can then complement by learning about the grammar structures I find here and there. This, at least, is my plan right now.

In terms of reading comprehension I'm not even close to N3, let alone N2 (I know more kanjis than actual words). I would probably manage N5 if I had a week to review the stuff I previously learned. I've had some Japanese classes back in 2008 which were more advanced than the N5 level. I'm thinking in enrolling again this September.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

BrianLewis said:

I suppose I am doing the opposite -I am spending my time studying the On and Kun readings of the Kanji without the meaning. I figured that if I could pronounce the word, it would be that much easier to look the meaning up in a quick electronic dictionary. Along the way I have discovered that there are shared readings for a good number of non-radical elements, which helps me out a great deal.

I was also planning on taking the N2 in December, however that just gives me enough time to learn the Kanji by themselves, and I question whether or not my vocabulary will be there that soon after that landmark. I am assuming that I would need another year of reading text for that to happen, but I could be grossly exaggerating the difficulty of the test -considering the N3 seems rather simple.

I should say that I am studying Kanji in addition to reading comics and listening to conversations. However, I expect the vocabulary used in novels to be far different from that of ordinary comics.

Check this website out, he really did a good job at shedding light on the new testing system, and more importantly he has links to some free practice tests so that you can judge your present condition:
JLPT N2 Practice Test

Click to expand...

I usually use a kanji handbook which allows me to look for stroke count, radical or reading, so I usually go for either stroke count or radical. I assume that by the time I start betting on vocabulary I will just use the kanjis as any other character (like hiragana and katakana). And I'm planning on taking N2 in about one year and half (December but next year - 2014).

Although I'm going to go for comics (which are simpler with lots of visual aids) I'm probably going more for online newspapers. I figure that it will contain mostly formal speech (which will be what I would mostly use if I were to work in Japan) and probably (I hope) articulates and interconnects ideas better.

It is interesting what you mentioned about the shared readings for non-radical elements. Do you mean something along the lines of 語 and 五?

Thanks for sharing your study method, it's completely different from mine.

I think there are many ways to learn this language, and many people have learned it using different methods.

So just in my opinion, learning a skill in isolation is OK up to a point, but at a certain level you reach a degree where you should really try a systematic approach. A lot of the kanji you see will be used in compounds with other kanji, or as verbs with grammatical endings, so really the ideal way to learn these is through reading them in context and understanding that context. I can understand the frustration of having too much information thrown at you at once, but there are some textbooks out there that have a lot of fans. Japanese for Busy People, Genki, etc. I haven't used either but I think they would be a good starting point, if nothing else. A systematic high-quality textbook is also important given the abundance of poor materials on the internet for learning Japanese. You may not find Japanese as easy to learn by just reading things like English was for you, since English and Portuguese are much more closely related to each other than English/Portuguese and Japanese, and even if you do pick things up there may be gaps in your knowledge. I see it all the time, and it's preventable.

hideway said:

It is interesting what you mentioned about the shared readings for non-radical elements. Do you mean something along the lines of 語 and 五?

Click to expand...

That's called 音符[おんぷ] "phonetic element". (The antonym is 意符[いふ] "semantic element".) In most 形声文字[けいせいもじ], semantic element is the same as 部首[ぶしゅ] "radical". See the examples below.

phonetic element 召[ショウ]
招 沼 昭 照 紹
(On'yomi of these kanji are all ショウ.)

包[ホウ]
抱 胞 砲 泡 飽

交[コウ]
校 絞 効 較 郊

This kind of knowledge might help you to guess how to pronounce unknown kanji/kanji compounds, as native Japanese speakers sometimes do. (Most natives already know the correct readings of common kanji, so this method is applied only for kanji which are quite rarely used, though.)

If your aim is to pass the JLPT within a given time scale (for some particular reason, like admission to a university course), then you should concentrate on the skills that will help you there. In particular, reading speed and listening comprehension are two skills that haven't been mentioned yet. As the JLPT does not test translation, knowing simple English "meanings" of kanji will not be as much help - at N2 level you're supposed to understand the difference between "similar" words like 人生・生命・一生・寿命.(example stolen from the online example questions).

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that the joyo are a) all necessary to learn right away and b) the only kanji you need to know. It's not as simple as that. Neither is it as simple as "I now know X number of kanji" - there is a sliding scale of knowledge (reading/writing/non-standard readings/place names/obscure words/etc). The kyouiku (education) kanji make a decent starting point if you feel like you need some guiding list to start (and probably overlap largely with what N2 requires).

In general I recommend a 漢検 (kanken)-type method since that's what helped me - basically lots of learning to read/write in context with plenty of vocabulary alongside. I use Kanken DS and similar programs (but there are loads of apps for various platforms or you can find example kanken tests online).

If you don't need to pass the JLPT immediately, then I would also suggest shying away from learning "to the test", as I personally can think of nothing that will kill motivation quicker than a huge list of obligatory things to cram. Nobody learns (I don't think) Japanese just to pass a test - the test is a means to some end, or a way of checking your progress.

So what are some things you want to be able to do with/in Japanese? What you need to do that may be different to what you need to pass a given test. Slang/internet slang/regional dialects/names of historical figures/classical grammar/specialist terms for field of interest X are all things the JLPT won't test - but they might be things you're interested in learning.

Building on what nekojita said, when I took the JLPT2 I had spent a while working in an all-Japanese environment and had done a fair amount of reading. My impression from hearing the other test takers during breaks was that listening and reading were their two major problem areas, so much so that it left me thinking, "If you had trouble with something no more difficult than what that was, you're sitting the wrong level of the test".

Thank you all for your replies!

My objective is to learn Japanese in order to be able to read newpapers and be able to speak fluently enough to be in a workplace environment. My objective of taking the JLPT N2 in about one year and half (if I'm ready by then) is merely so I can have some means to prove I can do it (as most companies in my field seem to request at least the N2 certificate). Although I'm not planning on learning just for the test I would assume I will be doing some cramming when the time arrives,

I've already started noticing how the meanings of some Kanjis can be quite different from the one specific meaning I chose to memorize. One example is this thread (七転び八起き). I already memorized both 転 and 起 but as "to turn" (転) and "to wake" (起), so the sentence didn't seem to make sense. Of course have in mind that I don't know the verbs nor recognize that particular conjugation. Although knowing the Kanjis allowed me to at least get somehow near to the sentence meaning (otherwise I wouldn't even have a clue about what was going on) and able to add new meanings to Kanjis I already knew.

The kanken test seems great. Didn't know about it and I'll definitely use it

Mike Cash, since I'm not planning to go to Japan before I already have a N2 certificate, how do you suggest I train listening? I plan on reading online newspapers and such to help with the reading part, maybe even some books, but am unsure on what to do regarding listening.

Thanks again for your replies

I'm the wrong person to answer that question, I'm afraid, as all my listening experience has been in Japan. I'm sure others will have some good suggestions.

Got to be honest, there are tons of resources out there to learn kanji, but very few for beginners-intermediates to learn listening. Most classrooms and programs are obsessed with shoving kanji down people's throats at the expense of any speaking/listening.
In any case, I have heard good things about Learn Japanese online. With our podcast, learning Japanese is easy. | JapanesePod101.com
I've never used it myself so can't really comment on it, but it may be worth a look. Unfortunately most of the best listening materials are for those with an already advanced command of the language (such as interviews, documentaries, news shows, etc.).

This may sound like something that a beginner would say, but just watch TV. My listening comprehension in Japanese is rather poor, since I get absolutely no Japanese TV where I live. However, the TV waves are flooded with Korean TV. In comparison, my Korean listening comprehension is far past my reading ability. Unfortunately, that's a rather passive way of learning, and would require a good number of years. I can only speculate on more active ways of working on that.

A good intermediate between learning materials aimed at foreigners and the more advanced stuff is learning materials aimed at native speakers (not kiddy shows, things aimed at the teenage market can be good).

e.g. This series on better handwriting, and similar. Since the aim is (hopefully) to provide clear information on a subject, things should be stated more simply/clearly.

A wide range of things is good - if you just read/watched news all the time you'd get good at that but miss out on other things. Google for stuff in Japanese (you'd be amazed what turns up by appending 動画 to a search term).