I'm in a possibly slightly unusual learning situation in that I concentrate almost entirely on studying written Japanese. I know the meanings of lots of kanji, but the biggest problem I have right now is with readings (which I want at least to be able to say "in my head" as I'm reading). When I'm reading, it seems like I spend half the time looking up readings for kanji and kanji compounds whose meanings I know or can guess given the context and the fact that I know the characters' basic meanings. I've tried rote learning character readings as I did with meanings but it's hopeless; the readings seem completely unmemorable, obviously with massive numbers of homophones, and they simply do not stick. I've also tried rote learning vocab, but it's incredibly boring. Does anyone have any brilliant new ideas about how I can make better progress in memorising kanji readings?
Remembering kanji readings
- Thread starter eeky
- Start date
Coffeesan
先輩
- 6 Jul 2011
- 164
- 3
Doubt I'll be a lot of helping being a newb myself but do you mean you're finding it hard to remember the phonetic elements that go with Kanji? Like heres a basic example..
私 --- Obviously the Kanji for I/Me and you would recognise it as such but you cant remember the phonetic/syllable kinda part that goes with it like ''watashi'' ?
Thats easiest example I can do as I dont know much Kanji but if I understand you right.. I have the same problem too I can see and understand a lot of Kanji but I forget how to physically say them things like he, her, person, year etc..
Anyway with regards to remembering things I would suggest just drawing the Kanji really large and sticking them to the walls and objects, it makes you look like some batshit crazy scientist but its pretty effective.
- Thread starter
- #4
How is that?
- Thread starter
- #5
Yes, that's the basically what I mean (though with 私 = ''watashi'' being such a common usage, that's one reading I actually do remember!) But when I hit 私立, for example, I probably wouldn't be able to remember that 私 is read as し. At least ''watashi'' is vaguely memorable, but し isn't, especially since there are about a million kanji (OK, exaggeration) that can be read し. This is where I think that learning whole words, like 私立 = しりつ is better, yet I tend to find that even if I've learned 私立, say, I still can't often bring to mind the reading of 私 in the context of some other compound.
- 15 Mar 2002
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The other problems with 私立 are that it is read exactly the same as 市立, that they both can be used in the same context, and that the meaning is very different. To prevent confusion people sometimes say わたくしりつ for 私立.
There is no super-duper method for solving the problem you face. It does require a lot of in-the-trenches grunt work and tons and tons of exposure to "get" it. It's not fun. It's not sexy. It's a long tedious task. That's why you find there are oodles and oodles of beginners who think it would be way kewl to be able to read Japanese and very very very few foreigners who have actually stuck with it and developed any real facility with reading Japanese. If there were an easy way to do it the world would be awash with manga nuts blissfully reading their manga in the original and you would have heard about it already.
There is no super-duper method for solving the problem you face. It does require a lot of in-the-trenches grunt work and tons and tons of exposure to "get" it. It's not fun. It's not sexy. It's a long tedious task. That's why you find there are oodles and oodles of beginners who think it would be way kewl to be able to read Japanese and very very very few foreigners who have actually stuck with it and developed any real facility with reading Japanese. If there were an easy way to do it the world would be awash with manga nuts blissfully reading their manga in the original and you would have heard about it already.
It is simple. If you want to learn how to read them, you need to read a lot, aloud. And then, I still suggest you to write new phrases down by hand. Also, since c.a. 85% of the kanji are semasio-phonetic, such as this one Kanji: 花 you need to understand and learn the sounds of the phonetic kanji compounds / radicals. This will come with time, as you study the characters, but if you aware of this while studying, it will speed the whole process up.
- 15 Mar 2002
- 16,758
- 2,298
Key points of the above post:
1. Time
2. A lot
If there were a rapid shortcut to this then native speaking children wouldn't require several years of instruction in it. Think of that....there are no greater advantages than already knowing the language and being at that time of life when the brain is most receptive to learning.....and it requires years. The adult foreign learner can hardly hope to find some method for chopping that down to a few months. There may be the occasional genius who comes along and does it, but for the rest of us it just isn't going to happen.
1. Time
2. A lot
If there were a rapid shortcut to this then native speaking children wouldn't require several years of instruction in it. Think of that....there are no greater advantages than already knowing the language and being at that time of life when the brain is most receptive to learning.....and it requires years. The adult foreign learner can hardly hope to find some method for chopping that down to a few months. There may be the occasional genius who comes along and does it, but for the rest of us it just isn't going to happen.
Coffeesan
先輩
- 6 Jul 2011
- 164
- 3
This is very true, the best time to learn a language is in early childhood as your brain plasticity is extremely loose as we get older we lose this and external stimuli have a far more diminished physical alteration on our brains. The common term the young brain is a sponge is a very simple summing up of the said change. A 30yr old may be extremely intelligent and know far more than a 5 year old but they'll still never be as efficent at soaking up a language as a child is. Even the relative exception regarding polyglots most of them were bought up in at the very least trilingual enviroments. Really 'some are just good at languages' is a very rare phenomenon. Here in the UK we dont start learning second languages until we're at least 12 by which time its too late for the large majority of kids. The rest of europe have the right idea drilling it into kids from pre-school. If anyone wants their kids to be multi language fluent you need to drill it into the little bastards early
Last edited:
Glenn
一切皆苦
- 8 Jan 2004
- 7,842
- 200
To piggyback on what ryuurui said, most characters have a phonetic element that will clue you in to its on-yomi. That makes it a lot easier to guess readings of characters you don't know, but you should still check to be sure it's right. Lots of times if I come across a word and I'm not sure of its reading I'll type it and see if it comes up in the conversion. Usually I don't have to do this more than twice. Also, I do most of my reading online, so I do lots of copying and pasting into dictionaries, like the one at goo.
nekojita
先輩
- 14 Jan 2009
- 1,660
- 444
Everyone learns differently, so really it's all about what works for you. That said, nothing works like half an hour a day, every day, no excuses, of your chosen method.
I found involving more audio helped me hugely, this was:
1. more listening practice, so I knew how the words sounded rather than just seeing the readings written down. I find either hearing a word after having learnt it on paper or hearing a new word directly after learning it on paper cements the memory like nothing else.
2. like @ryuurui says, reading aloud, or subvocalising if others are in the room. I still sometimes do this when reading online, and use rikaichan to check if I was right after each sentence. You can set it to display readings only by hitting "d", if you want to avoid also seeing the English definitions.
3. saying the readings when handwriting, so if I was writing a sentence with 運動 I'd be sitting there going うん・うん・うん・どう・どう・どう・うんどう . Sounds silly but I do think it helped. It's the combination of more than one method, I think, that helps - reading along while listening to audio is also good.
When I was trying to boost my reading level so I could read independently I was drilling (pretty much daily) kanji to kana and kana to kanji via a KanKen DS game - the sentences/words I wrote on paper were the ones where I needed to look up the English meanings. Since I started from the lowest level, I often found I recognised many of the kanji but still couldn't pass because I didn't have the vocabulary needed, so increasing my vocab was pretty important here.
I liked working via kanken and similar games because they provided me with structure (grade levels, immediate feedback), and a shiny interface to make the process slightly less tedious.
That's not to say I consider this a "shortcut", but I do think it's important to include reading/writing/listening/speaking together, and to make the process interesting enough that you will work on it regularly and not get too bored/frustrated.
I found involving more audio helped me hugely, this was:
1. more listening practice, so I knew how the words sounded rather than just seeing the readings written down. I find either hearing a word after having learnt it on paper or hearing a new word directly after learning it on paper cements the memory like nothing else.
2. like @ryuurui says, reading aloud, or subvocalising if others are in the room. I still sometimes do this when reading online, and use rikaichan to check if I was right after each sentence. You can set it to display readings only by hitting "d", if you want to avoid also seeing the English definitions.
3. saying the readings when handwriting, so if I was writing a sentence with 運動 I'd be sitting there going うん・うん・うん・どう・どう・どう・うんどう . Sounds silly but I do think it helped. It's the combination of more than one method, I think, that helps - reading along while listening to audio is also good.
When I was trying to boost my reading level so I could read independently I was drilling (pretty much daily) kanji to kana and kana to kanji via a KanKen DS game - the sentences/words I wrote on paper were the ones where I needed to look up the English meanings. Since I started from the lowest level, I often found I recognised many of the kanji but still couldn't pass because I didn't have the vocabulary needed, so increasing my vocab was pretty important here.
I liked working via kanken and similar games because they provided me with structure (grade levels, immediate feedback), and a shiny interface to make the process slightly less tedious.
That's not to say I consider this a "shortcut", but I do think it's important to include reading/writing/listening/speaking together, and to make the process interesting enough that you will work on it regularly and not get too bored/frustrated.
Janet Merai
先輩
- 10 Mar 2007
- 122
- 3
Oh yes, this is a terrible problem for me lol
Just recently I began a system where I make a note on every kanji in my iPhone Japanese Dictionary and describe a mnemonic story for each of then and surprisingly, I had and still have no problems remembering them :3
I was playing the Japanese version of Shining Force and made some mnemonic notes and memos of what I thought every radical or what makes up a Kanji meant in my own way to help me remember what every Kanji is... it's so easy now XD
Just recently I began a system where I make a note on every kanji in my iPhone Japanese Dictionary and describe a mnemonic story for each of then and surprisingly, I had and still have no problems remembering them :3
I was playing the Japanese version of Shining Force and made some mnemonic notes and memos of what I thought every radical or what makes up a Kanji meant in my own way to help me remember what every Kanji is... it's so easy now XD
