Learning Kanji...

[Tomii515]

ok. I learned Hiragana and Katakana (well, most of katakana). I want to start learning some commen kanji symbols. Do you have to remember the kanji symbols, or can you learn them?

so far, these are the ones i can write without loooking at anything that i remembered:

私
木
林
森
冬
---
wow, 5 =O These are ones that if i saw, i would recongnize it, but i can't write it with out looking at a paper:

日本語
英語
---
OMG, 2! =O

So, as you can see, I don't know a lot. If YOU could, try to teach some commen ones, or maybe tell me some site to go to that might help...thanks!

Tomii

[KrazyKat]

Google is our friend.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta=

I really recommend looking around for a good book to teach you Kanji too.
Amazon.com
Lots of people say Heisig, but I didn't use that myself so I can't comment.
Flash cards are invaluable, but won't suffice by themselves.

[Damicci]

http://www.genki-online.com/js/
Your doing good keep up the good work.
some other common ones are:
子＝こ
学＝がく
朝＝あさ
女＝おんな
男＝おとこ
車＝くるま
父＝ちち
母＝はは
手＝て
耳＝みみ
頭＝あたま
足＝あし
口＝くち
人＝ひと
You can look those up to study them and learning the readings.

[KrazyKat]

You may be interested in this thread explaining kun-yomi and on-yomi.
http://www.jref.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23244

However, don't let the title mislead you, the plural of Kanji is actually Kanji.

[cacawate]

I've probably tried promoting this for sometime now. I think it is an amazing resource:

http://meiko.web.infoseek.co.jp/

[Damicci]

Good site Cacawate-san But that site is all in japanese. Might be a bit intimidating for beginners. Unless your vocab is pretty good reading the Flash animation file is a bit difficult. :cry:

[undrentide]

A friend of mine who is learning Japanese said that 和漢 is very useful.
I haven't checked it out myself, has anyone tried it?
http://wakan.manga.cz/

[Glenn]

I downloaded the trial version but didn't use it too long, because it could only hold 100 kanji, and I didn't want to pay for the full version.

[Nicky]

I use wakan, mostly as a word processor and dictionary. But it also lets me create vocab lists and lets me tag words that I've "learned", that I've "mastered", and vocab that are "problematic". And you can tag kanji.

[undrentide]

Thank you, Nicky san, for your comments. It sounds quite good, so I can recommend it to other friends.

Glenn san, is your comment also about 和漢?
(Sorry if I've mistaken.)
It seems that 和漢 is complete free as far as you use it for non-commercial purposes.

[Glenn]

Yeah, it was about 和漢. Hmm, maybe I'm thinking of another program, or they changed the way they distribute it. I could have sworn that was the one, though.

[undrentide]

Thank you Glenn san, for clarification.
I did not know about 和漢 until only recently, maybe they have changed it to free software.

[euske]

The important thing about learning kanji is to memorize them in the context, just like learning English words. Also, many popular kanji can form a composite word (jukugo). I tend to remember them as a whole, seeing them as a figure, rather than taking each letter individually.

[yukio_michael]

Originally Posted by euske

The important thing about learning kanji is to memorize them in the context, just like learning English words. Also, many popular kanji can form a composite word (jukugo). I tend to remember them as a whole, seeing them as a figure, rather than taking each letter individually.

This is the methodology I've taken up recently... can anyone else attest to it's usefullness to them, as uposed to rote character memorization.

[JimmySeal]

Learning kanji and words in context is vastly more effective than trying to learn them in isolation. In fact pretty much the only studying I do is from actual books (novels, computer books). When you've got 4000+ words to learn, what's the use of exhaustively memorizing 15 or 30 at a time?

However, I would not say the same goes for the form and writing of the kanji. They are complicated enough that unless you have a systematic way of remembering how they're written, you're going to go through a lot of banging your head on the desk and probably get nowhere. How are you going to tell 録, 禄, 緑, and 縁 apart if you only know them by sight? It's unreasonable. This is where Remembering the Kanji, Volume 1 by James Heisig comes in. This book is an amazing system for learning and not forgetting the meanings and writing of the joyo kanji. I'm convinced that unless you use this method or something very similar, you're going to have a very hard time learning kanji. I'm not affiliated with this book in any way but I recommend it to everyone because it helped me so much. I know people with much better Japanese than me who are now going back and using this book because they never learned the kanji effectively.

But like I said, once you've got the meanings and writing under your belt, learning the readings is a breeze. Since finishing the book I haven't deliberately tried to learn any readings out of context. I read books with a fair amount of furigana, and just pick up the readings naturally as I go along.

[strongvoicesforward]

Originally Posted by cacawate

I've probably tried promoting this for sometime now. I think it is an amazing resource:

http://meiko.web.infoseek.co.jp/

That site is great, cacawate!

Though, if someone hasn`t gotten hira/katakana down yet, it may be a chore.

But, why doesn`t it go all they way up to 6th grade? Do you know of another site like that that continues up to third year junior high school, or even high school?

[yorkii]

Originally Posted by JimmySeal

But like I said, once you've got the meanings and writing under your belt, learning the readings is a breeze. Since finishing the book I haven't deliberately tried to learn any readings out of context. I read books with a fair amount of furigana, and just pick up the readings naturally as I go along.

very interesting. i am currently undergoing a very similar process to that you have described here. i read (at the moment anyway) novels in Japanese aimed at elementary school level. this is useful because all the kanji have furigana by the side. the reading of the kanji is coming slowly but surely.
may i ask if you bothered to use the accompanying volume to Remebering the Kanji 1 -- RtK Vol.2? I have this book, but have not started to look at it until i finish the first. i am currently 2/3 of the way through the first
yorkii

[JimmySeal]

I purchased book 2 a long time ago, but I haven't used it and don't plan on using it. Heisig's first book was brilliant and I guess a systemized way to learn the readings for all 2042 characters is laudable, but I feel like after all that time learning the writing and meanings of the kanji, I'm better off learning stuff in context than doing a whole lot more memorization. Besides, just because Heisig conceived a great system for learning the meanings and writing, that doesn't mean that he demonstrated equal genius in book two. The learning methods in the two books are almost completely unrelated.

I guess if you were in a situation where you had to learn to read text without furigana in a very short period of time, you could do book 2 and then be in pretty good shape, but I've found that learning by reading young adult books with furigana, I'm able to pick up the readings pretty easily (usually furigana is only given the first time a word appears in a chapter), and I learn loads of vocabulary that way too.

One of the central methods of Book 2 is to group characters that have the same or similar reading and share elements (like 令, 冷,齢, 怜 all pronounced レイ). It's true that making note of such things is very helpful to learning, and if you can, you should stop and think for a minute when you notice something like that. Actually, one of the indexes to P.G. O'Neill's Essential Kanji is organized with that idea in mind, with cross references to kanji that have similar writings but different readings.

Well that was a mouthful, but I hope it helps.

[yorkii]

yea, it does actually. thanks for the information. like i said, it appears that we do have a similar method of studying. glad i am not the only one learning this way