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Learning Kanji

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exDragon
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Learning Kanji

Postby exDragon » September 17th, 2009 4:51 pm

Hajimemashite, exDragon desu. Dozo yoroshiku. I have just started out here and I'm wondering how should I start learning the kanji. I don't know how to compare the dialogue in kanji to the translation. Also how come the pronounciations of the words sound different from them being said at normal speed.

GiaAnaniah
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Postby GiaAnaniah » September 18th, 2009 8:17 am

I SECOND THIS QUESTION.
im a noob and i have no idea
where to start learning kanji. XD

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untmdsprt
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Postby untmdsprt » September 18th, 2009 8:31 am

Personally I would start with the vocabulary you already know and learn its kanji. What good is learning kanji for words you don't understand? This will reinforce what you do know and then you can move on to new words.

Second, if you are planning to take the JLPT, see what kanji you need to learn for your level. That would be another goal to set.

Lastly, find the correct stroke order in which to write the kanji, get a notebook, and then write each one over and over. I usually write kanji about 80 times each just to get in the habit of doing it. You remember your days in grade school and the teacher made you write out each word 20 times? Same thing!

@exDragon - What do you mean about pronunciations? The words are said so that you hear how they're normally pronounced, then said slowly so you can hear each syallble. "ashita" is said like "ashta" normally but "a shi ta" slowly. Is this what you mean?

Javizy
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Postby Javizy » September 18th, 2009 12:22 pm

Words you already know might be ones like 始まる made up of 女 and 台, 終わる made up of 糸 and 冬, or 駅員 made up of 馬, 尺, 口, and 貝. There are countless examples like this, and not learning the characters in a logical, progressive order is really going to make life harder, if not impossible. The one character you'd want to learn would be 忘 for when you tell your friends about how your kanji studies are going.

The letter E may be the most common one in the alphabet, but knowing it doesn't help you read 'down' and 'dunk', or even words that contain it like 'hello'. You should forget the idea that learning the most common characters is going to help you read faster, and choose the approach that makes learning ALL OF THEM easiest. Whatever method you choose, you're not going to be reading for a long time, so it makes sense only to think about the long-term.

My recommendation is Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. He lays the characters out in a progressive order, introduces the stroke order, and has devised a nifty little mnemonic system that will make learning kanji a relative breeze if you have some imagination, and doesn't require you to repeatedly write the characters out until you're sick of the language.

Belton
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Postby Belton » September 18th, 2009 6:24 pm

The one character you'd want to learn would be 忘 for when you tell your friends about how your kanji studies are going.


After completing Heisig you might be able to read 独善的

indiana23
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Learning Kanji

Postby indiana23 » December 20th, 2009 4:54 pm

Well, I've tried to go at Kanji several different ways. And none of them have worked well. Text books will usually give you Kanji that go along with the Chapters. First, they may be Kanji that are really common, but then later they switch to "lower-level" Kanji, although I haven't really figured out what make some Kanji more difficult than others.

What does make sense, to me at least, is learning how to read the most common ones. In turn, you should then be able to find them in your cell phone or on your computer. Now, this helps to answer your other question. Knowing if there is a long vowel or little tsu will help you type in the word correctly. I can't tell you how many times I've beat my head against the wall, trying to find a word in my phone. Only, I can't find it because the way all the Kansai people say it, isn't the way you write it.

Anyway,

Now, if you're going to be dating a Japanese person, this is really important. You can do a lot of flirting on a cell phone and don't expect your text messages to have any furigana or explanations. Learn to read the most common Kanji, make sure you can correctly pronounce the words, then you will be able to hash out romantic gestures, that will hopefully score you a second date.

Taurus
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Postby Taurus » December 21st, 2009 3:09 am

Belton wrote:
The one character you'd want to learn would be 忘 for when you tell your friends about how your kanji studies are going.


After completing Heisig you might be able to read 独善的


I fear this thread is going to become a reprise of every other thread on this subject, but]: it's horses for courses. Use whatever technique works for you. The traditional ways are:

The method used in Japanese schools: kanji are grouped into several tiers, mostly according to how commonly they are used. Every school year, students are taught a new tier, and they learn them by writing them over and over, and associating them with words that they've already learnt. They have an advantage, though, in that they've got plenty of time and know plenty of words already.

The method used by a lot of Japanese learners: kanji are learnt as they come up in textbooks, or in the same order that Japanese students learn them. Students either write them over and over, or they try to recognise them by sight. A lot of the time, students will also try to learn all of the associated readings, either in isolation, or in context, by learning words associated with each kanji (for example, the kanji 急 can be read 'kyuu', or 'iso', depending on which word it appears. Some people just learn those two readings; other people try to learn words that contain those readings).

The method that Javizy recommended, used by some other Japanese learners: This guy called Heisig arranged all of the kanji into a logical order that makes learning them easier, and devised a visual mnemonic system for learning them. Lots of kanji are re-used in other kanji. If you learn the kanji that are re-used first, then it makes it easier to learn the kanji that re-use them. Especially when you use Heisig's mnemonic system. For example, when I first wanted to remember the kanji 急, I thought of a witch, who is in such a 'hurry' (the meaning of the kanji) that she 'binds together' (the top part) lots of 'broomsticks' (the middle part), but her new device is so fast it nearly gives her a 'heart'-attack (the bottom part). (I don't really need to think of her any more - like scaffolding, these images fall away when you don't need them any more.)
The biggest drawback is that because you learn the kanji according to how they are written, you don't learn some of the most commonly used kanji until the very end - so you'll end up learning potentially obscure kanji before you'll ever need to use them, and won't really feel the full benefit until you've learn all of the 2000-odd kanji in his book. (One of my Japanese friends saw me learning the kanji for a particular type of flower and asked me why on earth I was learning it - it's only ever used at funerals.)
Other potential drawbacks are that Heisig recommends you associate each kanji with an English keyword, instead of their sounds in Japanese; and he recommends that you learn them as an entirely separate process, in advance of trying to learn Japanese. Then, when you learn Japanese, you simply learn each word as several kanji, and thus you learn their readings as a byproduct (ie. by knowing that the kanji 急 appears in the words 急行 and 急ぎます, for example). Those aren't necessarily drawbacks though, depending on how you learn.

In any case, my own use of Heisig has transformed my ability to learn Japanese. For ages I was limited to textbooks. Now that I've gone through Heisig, anything in Japanese is fair game. I mentioned in another thread that I've been playing Final Fantasy. At one point, a word that contained the kanji 避 came up and I was able to look it up online using the Mime pad to draw it using my mouse. Before doing Heisig, I'd have had no way of doing that.

You should try all of these techniques to see how they work for you. If you want to try Heisig, the first part of his book is available as a sample online.

Yamanchu
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Postby Yamanchu » December 21st, 2009 9:18 am

Indiana23, I study kanji from a book called 'Reading Japanese'. It's an older book, but I've found it to be brilliant for learning kanji and has helped my reading kanji heaps.

tanitayou
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Postby tanitayou » December 21st, 2009 9:35 am

anoyher book (main book + exercise book") is KANJI-LOOK AND LEARN published by The japan times.
It contains the first 512 more common kanjis ( all the old JLPT 4 and 3 level + some from the 2). There are some mnemonics hints to help you remembering the kanji, something similar to the Heisig method(I know the method only by reading suggestions and explanations in this forum).
I think you can find a sample in the japan times site.Ganbatte ne.

SeeingLifeAnew
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Postby SeeingLifeAnew » December 24th, 2009 7:25 pm

Yamanchu wrote:Indiana23, I study kanji from a book called 'Reading Japanese'. It's an older book, but I've found it to be brilliant for learning kanji and has helped my reading kanji heaps.


Yamanchu, is this the book to which you're referring?
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Japanese- ... 672&sr=1-1

Yamanchu
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Postby Yamanchu » December 27th, 2009 3:14 am

Indiana, that's the book. It starts off with katakana and hiragana before getting into the kanji. I does, I think 425 ish kanji, so not all the kanji, but it will give you a very good start into the kanji. I suggest you do the katakana and hiragana even if you already know them, it's very good revision. I've always struggled with katakana and this also helped me heaps with katakana.
If you have any questions, let me know, no prob.

Meredithcat
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Postby Meredithcat » August 24th, 2010 11:33 pm

Another site that I found to be very helpful is kanjidamage.com. It's organized similarly to Heisig, but it doesn't have the same drawbacks people normally associate with it. For each kanji, it gives you both readings (onyomi and kunyomi), sample jukugo and how to use them, and a mnemonic to remember the writing and onyomi. (Oh yeah, and it's totally free.) It's somewhat shorter than Heisig, with only about 1700 kanji instead of 2042, and contains most (but not all) of the Joyo kanji. In the end, you'd come away with knowing not just how to write the kanji, but how to use them properly in a sentence. I just wish I'd known about this website before I'd done Heisig.

In the end, though, different methods work for different people, and it's usually best to experiment with different methods until you find one that works for you. When I was in school, the normal learning method (e.g. writing them over and over again) didn't work at all for me and just made me more frustrated, but that doesn't mean it's totally useless for everyone. Just keep an open mind, look at all possible resources, and choose the one that's right for you. :)

j_bertoni2279
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Postby j_bertoni2279 » September 12th, 2010 11:02 pm

I used the Heisig books and don't feel that they have any particular downsides.

I started reading the kanjidamage site, and didn't think much of his writeup. I didn't spend long on it, but his comments on 記憶, for example, don't agree with my dictionary.

seifip
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Postby seifip » January 22nd, 2011 11:36 am

design is like a puzzle... I'm just trying to solve it now

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