Questions about learning kanji

[area99999999]

I've taken a few glances at Japanese in the past (enough to know the kana, a few hundred words, and some kanji), but I'd like to start seriously studying the language. I'm slowly wading through all the information on the internet and trying to put together a study plan, but I'm having trouble figuring out where to begin.

As to kanji, my basic plan -- though it's not at all set in stone -- is to learn the jouyou kanji first. I want to learn them fully, without taking shortcuts or using extraordinary methods (Heisig). Writing each kanji, its reading(s) in kana, its meaning, and then reviewing with my notes and Anki sounds good to me. But there are a couple problems:

1. I've read that the jouyou kanji are what one would need to read a Japanese newspaper, but that doesn't make sense to me. The jouyou kanji are individual characters; even if you knew all of them you wouldn't be able to read compound kanji, right? Say I know that 学 is pronounced gaku and 校 is kou. That wouldn't allow me to read 学校 because it's not pronounced gakukou.

Should I start with the jouyou kanji anyway, or should I learn kanji a different way?


2. Most kanji have more than one reading. Learning multiple readings for each kanji all at once seems absurd (生 ), especially without context. I think the best method would be to learn the most common reading(s) first and learn the others as I encounter them.

The problem is, I don't think there's anyway to know which reading is the most common simply by looking at the kanji in a dictionary. When I'm learning a new kanji and writing the meaning down in my notes, how should I determine which reading(s) to write and memorize? Maybe I should just leave extra space and write the other readings as I encounter them?




Thank you for your time. I appreciate your attention.

 

[Glenn]

The reason they say you need to know the 常用漢字 to read a newspaper is because you're not as likely to know how to read 学校 if you only know 学.

Maybe learn the words they're used in, then learn the readings of the characters that only have one, or one ON and one kun. I don't think there's a pretty way around the ones that have multiple readings, unless they're multiple kun readings that are indicated by differences in okurigana, like 強い/強まる/強める and 強いる, for instance (I count the first three together because the root represented by the kanji is the same).

 

[vonessar]

Definitely try to learn them with some sort of context to back up whatever approach you decide to take.

 

[eeky]

Say I know that 学 is pronounced gaku and 校 is kou. That wouldn't allow me to read 学校 because it's not pronounced gakukou.

Sound changes like gakukou -> gakkou are not totally predictable, but they are not random either and certain patterns do become familiar.

By the way, is there word for this type of sound change -- something analogous to 連濁?

 

[Toritoribe]

It's called 音便[おんびん] "euphonic change" in broad sense. 音便 refers to the euphonic change in conjugations of verbs / adjectives (e.g. ありて --> あって(促音便[そくおんびん]), ひらきて --> ひらいて(イ音便), たのみて --> たのんで(撥音便[はつおんびん])) in narrow sense.

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

If you are not going to do Heisig or similar methods, I strongly recommend you memorize the traditional radicals in all their variations. It's essential to have some understanding of the pieces that make up characters. You can learn it up front, or you can learn it by making mistakes over and over until the significance of each stroke becomes apparent. (The time taken may not differ all else being equal, but all else is likely not equal - the frustration factor of making hundreds of mistakes can sap motivation.) Of course, many repeating components in kanji aren't named as radicals; most, but not all, of those non-radical components are kanji themselves.

There are very many ways to learn the kanji effectively. One way that is -not- effective is to study each of the characters in isolation and try to learn its readings and how to write it, which unfortunately, seems to be your intention.

Learning common vocabulary and the characters used to write it is better. If you must learn in Jouyou order, then at least learn a few example words with each character.

 

[Morphling]

As Glenn has pointed out. There is no easy way out. The best way is to read children's books and read a lot if it and start from there. Manga also helps if you stick to the everyday life genre. The Kanji used are very basic in children's books and will give you the most used reading. Upping the difficulty will get you exposed to more Kanji but they will all be practical at least.

Learning Kanji by itself only works in Chinese as Kanji is designed for Chinese not Japanese. Most characters will have 1 reading in Chinese and you can call it a day. Unfortunately the way Kanji is integrated in Japanese, it is highly messy, even the natives struggle. There are still Kanji quiz shows popular in Japan which you won't find in China as it will make very boring material.

If you have no Kanji background, you will need to learn the reading of the characters on a CASE BY CASE basis. Usually compound kanji with no kana following it is Onyomi reading and the rest is kunyomi but there are so many exceptions it's pretty wonky to rely on this. I would advice against learning character on its own. A lot of readings are one hit wonders and would just confuse you. Even Onyomi can have 3 readings tou go and kan from 3 periods of China. So why bother.

 

[nekojita]

You don't need all the jouyou kanji to read a newspaper (actually, many newspaper publishers use their own lists, which are based on the jouyou but differ slightly, because to not be able to write 炒める in kanji is fracking ridiculous). The "you must need X kanji to read Y" statements are misleading - it's not as if every kanji will appear in every newspaper article, and of course you need to know the vocabulary as well (知事 is a popular one in the news lately - like to see anyone guess that from the "kanji meanings"). Also you don't necessarily need to know every kanji/word to understand the broader meaning of the text (contextual reading), provided you understand most of it.

An alternate method would be something like Kanji Odyssey . There's also a book "Kanji in Context", or you could just acquire loads of kanji kentei practice materials (with the right keywords there's plenty of free ones on the internet).

Long term, what you will need is a combination of a good chunk of the jouyou + some non-jouyou (which exactly will depend on your interests and reading material). Personally, I think you should only be learning kanji/vocab off a list for a minimum period - basically, until you are able to start reading and pick up new words/kanji from there.

Knowing things like radicals definitely helps - I wouldn't suggest you memorise every traditional radical at the beginning, but be aware of the most common ones. One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the construction of kanji from meaning/phonetic components - i.e. 長、朝、張、帳 are all read ちょう (on-reading), with the 長 component in each of the latter giving it the reading, while the left hand side is related to the meaning (sometimes a bit abstractly).

 

[area99999999]

Thank you all for your replies. I really appreciate them.

As I hinted at in my OP, this plan is just my best attempt to devise a method for learning kanji -- in no way do I insist on it. I want to glean the opinions of people more experienced than me to find a method I can commit myself to.

So, from your posts it seems that 1. Learning kanji without context is a no-go, 2. Simply learning all the jouyou kanji first is not a good plan, and 3. There's no real method that can be used to determine which reading(s) to favor.

Should I just find some reading material and learn new kanji as I come to them? For instance, say I find a simple book in Japanese. I could read until I come to a kanji I don't know, then look it up and add it to my notes and flashcards and begin to practice it. I could do that for a few words each day until I'm able to read the whole paragraph-->page-->book.

Would that be a reasonable method? I haven't been able to find anyone on the internet who has a SPECIFIC method for learning kanji. That is what I'm trying to find so I can get started with Japanese.

Also, with the above method I would learn the radicals first.

 

[eeky]

Should I just find some reading material and learn new kanji as I come to them? For instance, say I find a simple book in Japanese. I could read until I come to a kanji I don't know, then look it up and add it to my notes and flashcards and begin to practice it.

If you are reading from books, and the characters have no furigana, and OCR technology is no better than when I last looked, then you will find it extraordinarily tedious to look up unknown kanji characters as you encounter them. This is one reason for learning lots of characters by rote.

 

[Morphling]

If you are reading from books, and the characters have no furigana, and OCR technology is no better than when I last looked, then you will find it extraordinarily tedious to look up unknown kanji characters as you encounter them. This is one reason for learning lots of characters by rote.

I would imagine that this route is extremely tedious boring and hit and miss. Much easier if you get children's books with furigana or mangas with a non sci fi theme. Learn from context is the best way to learn for Japanese as in Japanese context is everything.

 

[area99999999]

I don't really see why it would be any different than learning them from a list. If I learned kanji from a list, I'd just pick 5 or so a day and study them. If I were reading a book, I'd just take the first 5 or so foreign kanji I came to and study them. The only difference is that in the latter I'd see them being used in context.

Thanks again for your replies, guys. I really do appreciate your help, but I'm still not finding the answer I'm looking for.

Perhaps you guys could tell me how you started learning kanji?

 

[eeky]

I would imagine that this route is extremely tedious boring and hit and miss.

Far less tedious and boring than taking five minutes to decipher each sentence because of the time taken to look up kanji characters. For me it has absolutely been a life-saver. However, my learning methods and requirements may not be typical because I am only interested in learning to read and I have no interest at all in manga.

 

[RickNZ]

I decided that kanji are too crazy to treat as an organised system through any one method. I use mnemonics and learning techniques randomly from all over the place, or ones I just made up, and do as much reading of real Japanese text as I can to get things in context.

 

[Morphling]

I decided that kanji are too crazy to treat as an organised system through any one method. I use mnemonics and learning techniques randomly from all over the place, or ones I just made up, and do as much reading of real Japanese text as I can to get things in context.

Yeah i would agree with that. Kanji in Japanese is way too random to learn by rote. There are plenty of books with furigana so those will save you a lot of looking up.

 

[eeky]

Yeah i would agree with that. Kanji in Japanese is way too random to learn by rote.

Memorising kanji meanings by rote is quite feasible. I am proof of that, and my memory is nothing special. Memorising kanji readings by rote is a colossally mind-numbing exercise, like memorising a string of random numbers, as you say.

 

[area99999999]

I decided that kanji are too crazy to treat as an organised system through any one method. I use mnemonics and learning techniques randomly from all over the place, or ones I just made up, and do as much reading of real Japanese text as I can to get things in context.

I suspect most Japanese learners share that sentiment , which is probably why I haven't been able to find any clear answers.

I'm thinking about trying Heisig's method since the overwhelming majority of people who have followed through with it speak so highly of it. Anyone have any experience with it?

 

[Glenn]

Yes.

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