What JLPT level is best to start memorizing Kanji?

15 comments

1. Pretty much as soon as you learn the syllabaries it makes sense to learn some easy ones. Every level of the JLPT has kanji, doesn’t it?

2. N5 has kanji. There are lists of typical kanji for each level. For example https://jlptsensei.com/jlpt-n5-kanji-list/

3. The bare minimum? Know the kana (hiragana and katakana)

4. N5

5. Literally as soon as you know kana. Just learn new words with their kanji

6. try to reach out some n5 vocabulary words, and learn their kanji, its gonna be easier to learn the ones whose words you like the most
   when i prepared myself for n5, my easiest kanji to learn was はな- hana, flower (花).
   i recommend the minna no nihongo part 1 vocabulary, im currently prepparing for n3

7. Imo, you learn kana and grammar first, then study kanji radicals before you get into kanji, it will make it all much easier.

   Then just study vocabulary (kanji and all, don’t study kanji by itself.)

8. Get a kanji textbook and get grinding. There’s no easy way and anything that claims to have one is lying to you.

9. Jlpt 6 lol

10. From your very first lesson.

11. Start learning kanji 右今

12. Considering how the JLPT is graded, I’m pretty sure not knowing any of the N5 kanji at all at the time of your N5 exam will result in failure.

13. I did RRTK. Memorizing 1250 Kanji before doing anything was, to a minor degree, a waste of time because I forgot a whole lot of them. I know approximately the 5000 most common words rn which cover around 1500 most common 乗用 (jouyou kanji), atleast thats according to the stats in my Anki.

    Get the RRTK deck and do that while you immerse. Also, I think its more than enough to learn the most common 500-700 kanji and then just naturally switching off of it. There a lot of other ways to gdt started though, as I’m sure other Redditors also will comment on

14. Em, just after learning hiragana and katakana. You can’t pass even JLPT 5 without kanji.

15. I would suggest learning the kanji that you encounter and then not bother with any further on-readings that you don’t need so you can manage the mental overload. Try to put them into practice, construct sentences and read examples how they are used. Learn the stroke order with pen and paper, people who tell you to not bother with writing are nerds and brag in other fora how they write their own SRS scripts (boring). The part on your body that brings pleasure to yourself also works wonder with your memory. Get good books on Kanjis, learn the low level building blocks, try out different approaches (I like the kanji look & learn + workbook which is more or less the Genki kanji book). Get obsessed with them, as soon as your handwriting improves it’s quite fun.