I have been on Japanese 3 for about an month now and struggling with the Kanji. They all look the same to me, and as a result struggling to remember them. So far only one has stuck, and that is Shin 心. I thought I had got Park sussed, and then I saw another Kanji that looked almost exactly the same.
So… Is there a trick, and easy way to learn/remember Kanji.
A couple of suggestions:
You could try memorizing some radicals and their meanings.
You could practice writing the kanji. Even if you aren’t really planning to learn how to write a lot of kanji, I think that learning how to write a few might really help you memorize kanji more easily.
Yes. Try search James W. Heisig books. “Remembering the kanji”. It is very useful.
I strongly suggest first learning the kanji by their meanings, rather than the readings. 心, for example is usually read as こころ when used by itself, and しん when used in a compound with other kanji. This isn’t something that’s practical to try to memorize with every single kanji right at the start, so I think learning the readings with vocab later is the way to go. When you’ve studied the words 心 (こころ, heart) and 熱心 (ねっしん, enthusiasm), for example, it becomes a much more natural link in your head how the readings are used.
Many kanji have several different possible readings, and honestly, trying to learn all of them right at the start is far more trouble than it’s worth, in my opinion. Take a look at this one’s readings, for example.
This is the course that I started my kanji journey with, and I highly recommend it. It has tons of helpful mems that really helped me get used to the radicals and start remembering how to ‘build’ the kanji in my head.
As neoncube suggested, you may want to start with learning radicals first, so that you already have knowledge of them when going into the kanji. I did kanji first, personally, sort of learning the radicals as I went through the mems, and I did okay in the end, but it may help. I used this course to brush up on radicals later:
More than anything, just remember that it takes a while to get them to stick, and try not to get too frustrated with it! It often felt like I was just hitting a brick wall over and over again when I was learning them, but looking through the mems each time and trying to familiarize yourself with each radical used in the kanji, and trying to come up with a story to help you remember, really goes a long way over time.
Good luck!
Good advice from TinyCaterpillar
I also kind of learned the radicals as I went along. As it turns out, there are at least a few radicals that are also very often used as full-blown characters (such as 心 [heart] and 口 [mouth]), too.
Great advice about learning the meanings first, too, IMO. If you can find a course or pair of courses that tests on both meanings and readings for the same Kanji, that might be ideal.
try this:
http://www.kanji-trainer.org/index.php
(has mnemonics)
or peruse Jim Breen’s resources to find something that suits you: http://nihongo.monash.edu//Japanese.html
(Jim Breen has been around for decades, his pages/dictionaries etc are … good!)
I shall not be buying books for a long time, so thank you for that suggestion. However it is some where to look, if or when the opportunity arises. Thank you.
Ah, the repeat thing, it is how I originally learn Katakana.
It might get a little expensive though, all the ink, and all that paper. Lol.
Great idea. Nice one.
This is freaking awesome. A wealth of information, right there, waiting for the taking.
The only word I have managed to remember, and now I find out on its own it mean Heart. Kokoro. When I first heard it in one of my favourite songs I looked it up, Aimer, Last Stardust, great song.
You have given me much to look at, and it is very much appreiciated.
Thank you.
Hey, try my course.
I just list Kanji word from Arigatou of Kokia.
Here it is: Learn Japanese Word through Arigatou song
You can read the lyric here: Arigatou - Kokia lyric and translation
I’m not acquainted with that specific deck. I’m using the ‘Speed Kanji’ deck. The objective were to learn the meanings rather than all the yomi. I got the idea from blogger Matthew Hopkins, who writes on britvsjapan.com how to go about learning kanji fast.
Those little building blocks, if you can open mind to enough of any logogram to know its meaning, then its yomi aspect should be much simpler later on to develop.
Being in cultural immersion would be somewhat advantageous to learning onyomi & kunyomi because chance to use it practically would itself be encouragement.
Also, consider that each logogram has only one radical. Radicals do, however, exist apart from a specific logogram; and some radicals are their own logogram. So you may see a logogram made up of many radicals, but in fact it has only one radical of its own that defines it. The other figures show how their action relates to the radical, and though they may be radicals that belong to other hanzi themselves for the kanji, they are not acting in that capacity for the logogram.
TinyCaterpillar posted one, but you can find a list of radicals also at kanjiAlive.com.
Also useful may be to learn to understand and interpret radical positions, which can be learned from a Memrise deckKanji Radical Positions.
Some others have recommended that when learning yomi, aim generally for one and then go learn the others later. I’d suppose a list of yomi the same in the kan and on ways each would be most inviting along these lines.
I hope that helps some.
Four months later:
I completed the Speed Kanji course and learned all the 2136 Jōyō Kanji meanings (well, basically).
One tip I read yesterday was that study of onyomi can eventually become something of an intuitive matter, where you can often guess the onyomi without knowing it. While not saying your chances with kunyomi won’t get predictive, other sources cast a gloomy outlook on that prospect.
Another tip would be to learn a kunyomi meaning so you can relate the Japanese to the Hanzi character.
Kanji further break down into three periods of history when Chinese characters were imported.
Another insight: Chinese characters in Kanji come from turtle shells, which were burned for purpose of getting at meaning, burned until cracks developed.
And a last tip would be to read over the articles at tofugu.com (19 at last count) to learn as much as you can about Kanji and why its study can only be simplified just so-much.
Good luck in your Kanji study!
@arcflight You did it all in 4 months? that’s pretty quick. I spent a whole year I think. Maybe a little more.
You had read my previous post in this thread and know I didn’t do the ‘yomi,’ just to be sure.
They’ll be easier now, I just know it! The Obenkyo app has them, and all I need to do now would be to set up my approach. I’m looking to meet or exceed 6 months, based on your citation