I use physical flashcards. I find writing them out helps remember them (not only the kanji but also the stroke order and stuff), and also I like working on my handwriting.
Learning to recognize the the radicals (parts of the Kanji) really helps. So instead of a one big jumble of characters you don’t recognize it can be split into smaller parts. Most times the radicals have meaning to them too which helps to make sense of the Kanji. Because I have such a good grasp on the radicals usually I can look at a Kanji that is completely new to me for a split second and can write it perfectly 9/10 times.
Writing kanji is very rarely effective in learning unless you genuinely plan to hand-write kanji on a regular basis.
However, you should try to produce kanji too, not just recognize them. You’d do this by reversing your Anki cards and typing out the kanji as an answer. (If you used WaniKani the solution would be to use KaniWani/Kamesame)
I have great trouble remembering words unless I know the kanji for them in general 😅 that quite weird but any word stays with me more concretely if I memorise the kanji: to get to remember the latter I prefer writing them by hand with 振り仮名(ふりがな) on top of them. Muscle and photographic memory and hand-writing are great tools for remembering things of that kind!
4 ways to do it, I’ll keep it simple and fast
1: learn the radicals then the kanji, makes reading way easier but takes tonnnnnsss of time
2. Screw radicles, just learn kanji, still takes time but you only have 2100 something to learn (if you’re going based off of jlpt n1 requirements
3: write down new kanji you see when making a card on anki (write it on paper) using a dictionary like takoboto will show you stroke order, takes less time than learning all of the kanji first but still a while if you want to master each kanji
4. Finally you can just brute force it and go straight for learning words, this is what they used to recommend back in the day (though there has been changes since I started). It will take you longer to learn to read and write said kanji but you’ll be able to learn more words faster.
One way: Read the first bit of Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji/play around with the first levels of WaniKani to get a feel for making mnemonics out of the radicals, then write the kanji once (on paper or trace on your hand/in the air) when it comes up to see if you recall & can write it correctly. If you miss it, write it correctly a couple of times and move on, then review the ones you missed briefly at the end of the session
For me writing turned out to be essential to remembering the characters. In fact, I ended up studying my first 1000 kanjis twice. The first time was without writing and the result was that my brain remembered them as bunches of pixels on the screen instead of series of strokes (even though I already knew the radicals and their stroke order). So e.g. I could “successfully” learn a character in AnkiDroid but then miserably fail to recognize it in Anki desktop, because the font was slightly different there. In the end I decided to re-learn them all over again, this time with writing. I didn’t do anything fancy like calligraphy, just wrote each character a couple of times per card, but it helped anyway.
And actually I had the same problem with katakana too, constantly forgetting which character is which, until I started writing them.
But I’ve heard multiple times about people successfully learning the characters without writing them, so may be it’s just me.
I dont expect to remember a Kanji if i see it once, twice, or even the 5th time i see it. At some point it will eventually stick, if it doesnt then i will try to write it down, sometimes it helps. I gave up on writing as a whole though, i just write some kanji i have trouble remembering.
I remember them as a complete shape just as we learnt latin alphabet when we were like 5yo.
the I combine different radicals for the “intermediate” and “advance” kanjis and again I picture them as a complete shape in my mind. I don’t even think about the stroke order I already naturalize that, again, as we all naturalize the order stroke for each letter of the latin alphabet
For the readings I use vocabulary, videos and books.
9 comments
I use physical flashcards. I find writing them out helps remember them (not only the kanji but also the stroke order and stuff), and also I like working on my handwriting.
Learning to recognize the the radicals (parts of the Kanji) really helps. So instead of a one big jumble of characters you don’t recognize it can be split into smaller parts. Most times the radicals have meaning to them too which helps to make sense of the Kanji. Because I have such a good grasp on the radicals usually I can look at a Kanji that is completely new to me for a split second and can write it perfectly 9/10 times.
Writing kanji is very rarely effective in learning unless you genuinely plan to hand-write kanji on a regular basis.
However, you should try to produce kanji too, not just recognize them. You’d do this by reversing your Anki cards and typing out the kanji as an answer. (If you used WaniKani the solution would be to use KaniWani/Kamesame)
I have great trouble remembering words unless I know the kanji for them in general 😅 that quite weird but any word stays with me more concretely if I memorise the kanji: to get to remember the latter I prefer writing them by hand with 振り仮名(ふりがな) on top of them. Muscle and photographic memory and hand-writing are great tools for remembering things of that kind!
4 ways to do it, I’ll keep it simple and fast
1: learn the radicals then the kanji, makes reading way easier but takes tonnnnnsss of time
2. Screw radicles, just learn kanji, still takes time but you only have 2100 something to learn (if you’re going based off of jlpt n1 requirements
3: write down new kanji you see when making a card on anki (write it on paper) using a dictionary like takoboto will show you stroke order, takes less time than learning all of the kanji first but still a while if you want to master each kanji
4. Finally you can just brute force it and go straight for learning words, this is what they used to recommend back in the day (though there has been changes since I started). It will take you longer to learn to read and write said kanji but you’ll be able to learn more words faster.
One way: Read the first bit of Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji/play around with the first levels of WaniKani to get a feel for making mnemonics out of the radicals, then write the kanji once (on paper or trace on your hand/in the air) when it comes up to see if you recall & can write it correctly. If you miss it, write it correctly a couple of times and move on, then review the ones you missed briefly at the end of the session
For me writing turned out to be essential to remembering the characters. In fact, I ended up studying my first 1000 kanjis twice. The first time was without writing and the result was that my brain remembered them as bunches of pixels on the screen instead of series of strokes (even though I already knew the radicals and their stroke order). So e.g. I could “successfully” learn a character in AnkiDroid but then miserably fail to recognize it in Anki desktop, because the font was slightly different there. In the end I decided to re-learn them all over again, this time with writing. I didn’t do anything fancy like calligraphy, just wrote each character a couple of times per card, but it helped anyway.
And actually I had the same problem with katakana too, constantly forgetting which character is which, until I started writing them.
But I’ve heard multiple times about people successfully learning the characters without writing them, so may be it’s just me.
I dont expect to remember a Kanji if i see it once, twice, or even the 5th time i see it. At some point it will eventually stick, if it doesnt then i will try to write it down, sometimes it helps. I gave up on writing as a whole though, i just write some kanji i have trouble remembering.
I remember them as a complete shape just as we learnt latin alphabet when we were like 5yo.
the I combine different radicals for the “intermediate” and “advance” kanjis and again I picture them as a complete shape in my mind. I don’t even think about the stroke order I already naturalize that, again, as we all naturalize the order stroke for each letter of the latin alphabet
For the readings I use vocabulary, videos and books.