japanese kanji learning made fun

11 comments

1. Personally i just use a preset deck from anki for general japanese vocabulary. I don’t focus on kanji specifically, it just so happens theres kanji in the vocab

2. One thing that made learning kanji a ton of fun for me was learning Japanese calligraphy.

3. The most fun way to learn kanji I found for myself is simply reading Japanese dictionaries. Dictionaries with definitions, dictionaries with synonyms, etymology dictionaries – anything goes. I prefer purely Japanese dictionaries over Japanese-English dictionaries, because first one actually teach definitions, while the second ones teach you English analogues of Japanese words, missing a lot of nuances.

4. Something fun (or frustrating) is learning a bunch of kanji by similar components lol.

   Mnemonics gotta be really strong to not get these mixed up.

   Like these:

   # 沿 賠 倍 鉛

   # 雨 需 霞 霧 雷 電 漏

   # 緑 縁 禄 録

   Of course should be learned with some respective vocab as well, but its a good brain challenge. Definitely not the most efficient frequency wise, but all these are common enough and it should be easy to leave out kanji that are not common

   —

   Edit:

   # Also:

   # 菴 募 墓 幕 漠 暮 模 膜 慕

5. jpdb.io is kind of like heisig + anki, it’s what I mainly use and is fun imo

6. There is a lifetime membership sale for WaniKani every Christmas, so you could just pay the monthly until then and get that if you still like it.

7. The Lang Buddy chrome extension is the easiest tool since it’ll tell you a detailed definitions and teaches you additional words that use each kanji your learning or the stroke diagrams too

8. I enjoy learning the etymology of the kanji. Every kanji has its own unique story.

9. I’m not sure there is a way to make kanji fun? You just need to suck it up and grind through it. I hope I’m wrong. Not everything in life is fun tho

10. I just do renshuu (the app). Pretty fun to level up and you can discuss things on forum there etc. Also you can click the radicals to get the meaning, read between many user made mnemonics for all the kanjis and see related vocab etc

11. For me, wanikani is fun. Ive paid for the monthy and will get the lifetime in the winter, if there is one. I find the little stories funny and memorable, I like the pace and how its structured, the whole thing. In just 2-3 months of using it I’m reading sentences etc. … well worth the $.