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[silent-noise]

so i'm currently learning japanese...i got the hirigana and katakana down...but what's the best way of learning the kanji? i'm finding it extremely difficult to remember the characters, adn their meanings...which is kind of ironic given my background...

[PAULH]

[abufletcher]

The only way to learn anything is to make it relevant to you and your own interests. Learning random kanji will waste years of your life -- as it has wasted years of every Japanese person's educational life (and I still have university students who don't know the kanji for many words). I've tried kanji lists and flash cards but always end of giving up once I notice that 90% of the kanjis are completely irrelevant to my life.

I suggest you go to the bookstore and buy a magazine on a topic of interest to you. Find an article in it that you really wish you could read, and start there.

BTW, I find the traditional radical system to be rather bizarre and archane. I'd recommend you start with a dictionary that uses the Halpern system. This is a modern, logically thought out system that groups kanji according to their wholistic dominant visual shapes (much as I suspect normal human vision works). I find it much easier to find an given kanji this way that according to radicals.

[guest of Japan]

The traditional radical system comes in handy when looking them up on your electronic dictionary.

Honestly though, Kanji irk me something aweful. About 6 months ago I had about 400 in my brain, but basic grammar and functional vocabulary were fast escaping my brain. I changed course in my studies. A few hundred of those kanji are no longer in my brain. God, how I miss studying Spanish so long ago. If only my wife weren't Japanese and her family, too.

[shuize]

When I was a foreign exchange student I met another foreign exchange student from Italy who passed along some very wise words about the study of kanji:

Only the first 1,000 are hard. After that it gets easy.

[Brooks]

I like the Kumon series of books.
I learn what elementary school kids learn.
And if you sign up for JLPT next year you will have a good excuse to study more.

For Kanji, you can remember by writing. But you need a lot of reading practice, too.

Frankly, I find Japanese grammar more difficult to understand or remember.

I remember going to Frankfurt a couple of years ago, and I thought it was nice that even though I didn`t know German, at least I could partially understand signs. In Japan, it is a challenge.
I have come to really appreciate alphabets.
Kanji really seems passe.


look at this www.kanjisite.com

[Zzonkmiles]

Ride the train and read maps. That'll help you learn the on-yomi (readings) of a whole ton of characters since these maps and station signs often include romaji.

I agree with the poster who said make your learning relevant by buying a magazine about a topic that interests you. You'll pick up a lot of vocab that way. I personally play Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games in Japanese and that helps a lot for me.

It's hard now, but it does get easier if you stick with it. You'll be surprised at how many characters you can pick up or even accurately guess what the meaning is just by like at them. There IS a method to the madness (most of the time). For example, if you combine 暗 (the kanji alone means "dark (kurai)" but its on-yomi is "an") and 示 (the kanji alone indicates "show" and is read as "ji"), you get 暗示, read as "anji," which means "hint." When you "show" something in a "dark" or "shrouded" way, you are giving a "hint." Kinda logical, right? There are loads of sensicle kanji compounds out there, but you have to be disciplined enough to stick with it.

[abufletcher]

[MeyeQui]

If you look in the book section of your basic 100yen shop, you'll find children books that can be quite useful. These books have short stories that use hiragana and kanji. However, above the kanji are small hiragana transcriptions. There is frequent repetition of the same kanji and kanji combinations. The drawings are pretty rad and if you feel like it, you can colour them in.

I've wasted a lot of time trying to learn too much at once. Don't set ridiculous goals. Don't read through a stack of 100 cards of fresh kanji. Learn twenty at a time and always review before starting another batch.

Be patient and postitive... it's possible. Good luck.

[abufletcher]

The problem with children's books is that you end up learning a bunch of fairytale vocabulary! I experienced that both here in Japan and in Mexico with the book my kids brought home from school. I learned such words as "fiery beast" "fairy princess" and "jackel" -- but somehow this didn't help me much in my daily life.

A better bet than stories are non-fiction books aimed at the elementary grades. But there's still the problem of having to wade through tons of kanji's you may not every use with any frequency.

Stick with what you really want to read. For example, I'd really like to be able to read the kanji on the the various online shops for mountain bikes, camera gear, and RC aircraft. For me, "mokei" and "gijutsu" might be useful vocab items but you might find them fairly useless.

I'll admit though that I'm only interested in passive recognition.

[Lynn]

[craven]

There's a great series of books called "Basic Kanji" that I'd recommend to you...the beginner pink book has around 250, and will get you through 4kyu on the JPLT. The intermediate blue book takes you up to 500, and is more than enough to ace 3kyu. The orange advanced book is much bigger, but worry about that when the time comes.

These books do a pretty good job at getting you used to stroke order (I found it much easier to remember kanji and radicals by writing them, particularly later on when you start to see things repeating), and has lots of interesting exercises, stories and games to practice.

The other posters have already mentioned this, but it can't be said enough. If you want to get good at kanji, the textbooks need to be your STARTING point. Grab manga, newspapers, magazines, or whatever you get your hands on and start going over them with a kanji dictionary. The red Jack Halpern kanji dictionary is excellent, and super easy to use.

Kanji can be a bitch, but it sure makes reading easier by breaking up the words. I go back and look at my introductory furigana textbooks and it makes me crazy to read them!

Oh, and i haven't tried it yet (I'm going to give it a shot starting this month), but I know several people who rave about the Hezig (sp?) "Remembering the Kanji" books. It's really important to remember though that again, those are STARTING POINTS, and that the only real way to learn kanji is to put in the time and effort

Has anyone tried the Hesig stuff? Is it worth the hype? I just got slapped by 1kyu on the JPLT, and want to relax for a couple of months and try something new.

[SEndrigo]

Many people have recommended the James Heisig kanji books, and in fact I know some people who have learnt Kanji using those books.

Regarding whether or not Kanji are logical, many characters and combinations are indeed logical, but the method used to study them is not, and neither is the fact that each character has several meanings.

You're right, it is absurd to think that one can't read a newspaper until he has finished high school !

Why not do like the Koreans and invent a more sensible, logical, phonetic writing system?

There are hiragana and katakana, but unfortunately, you'll have a tough time understanding anything in Japan if you don't know Kanji.

This is the biggest part of the reason why Japanese will NEVER be an international language...no one wants to spends years just to learn how to read this crap.

[pnksweater]

I haven't studied Kanji in about 5 years... but back in the day when I actually cared deeply about learning Japanese I went through about 100 a week. For me the trick to cramming kanji (and this is for cramming... use this when you want to pass a test, not read a news paper 10 years from now) was two fold.

1: assign each radical a meaning. Break each kanji down into its radicals and make up stupid stories about each involving the radicals' meanings to link it mentally to the kanji's meaning.

2: Writing flash cards. Each kanji would get it's own flash card. Writing them on the card helped me remember. As I went through the cards I'd also write the character I was looking at in the palm of my hand using my finger. (More kinetic learning) Practice the kanji in a way that helps you learn. Are you a visual learner? A kinetic (tactile) learner?

[kdynamic]

Why do you want to learn Kanji? If you don't plan to stay in Japan very long term, it's a lot of effort for something you will quickly forget.