Okay so I’ve been learning japanese with duolingo, i thought at first it was pretty easy, i mean, duo would just throw the kanji as a new word and that’s it. But after i did some search, i realized how much it’s missing. For you to learn Kanji you have to learn radicals, kunyomi, onyomi, stroke order, and i was like “wtf is this??”
So basically how i was learning it was like this: duolingo would teach me a new kanji/word, i would open jisho for the meaning of it and the stroke order, i write down the kanjis in my notebook and all of the sentences with it.
I’m really lost on how should i learn it, considering i constantly forgot some kanjis and i have to remember them again.
Also i currently cannot afford a good japanese course so duolingo is my only way. I’ve been using since january this year.
Does anyone know an efficient way to learn and memorize each kanji?
(I also noticed how Duo doesn’t teach us verbs with る, or does it?)
8 comments
Read the sidebar. Duolingo doesn’t teach anything.
First off, Duolingo is crap. In general, but also for Japanese in particular.
Second, see above.
Get a textbook. It’s less interactive, but at least you’ll learn something from it.
I think it is best to read a book. I recommend the website 「青空文庫 (Aozora Bunko)」, where you can read famous Japanese books for free. In particular, the genre of 「児童文学 (children’s literature)」 uses many simple kanji characters, so you will be able to understand Japanese as you read 🙂
Did Duolingo for a year. After dropping I realized how slow it made me learn and grow.
Downloaded a PDF of Genki, and I have been using Anki. Especially because of Anki, I know somewhere in the ballpark of 700 – 800ish kanji after another year.
Any additional questions I have, like conjugations, sentence structure or the nuanced differences between X, Yand Z, I look them up. 9 times out of 10 my very question was already asked and answered long before I went on this journey.
> Also i currently cannot afford a good japanese course so duolingo is my only way
That is very much not true. There are so many free Japanese resources online. For example, Tae Kim‘s guide is a very good resource for grammar.
Then there’s stuff like the ToKini Andy YouTube video series on Genki, or the Japanese from Zero video series, who all accompany a book, but can very well be used without having the book in question.
I suggest kanji look and learn is a good start textbook. When you start learn kanji only need learn the meaning of that kanji, don’t bother remember about on and kun reading. You will learn that with vocabulary through reading. Download Anki and get all in one kanji deck for everyday exercise.
I suggest kanji look and learn is a good start textbook. When you start learn kanji only need learn the meaning of that kanji, don’t bother remember about on and kun reading. You will learn that with vocabulary through reading. Download Anki and get all in one kanji deck for everyday exercise.
If you have trouble to remember I suggest write it down, it help me with memory the kanji.
I used Anki to learn somewhere around 600-700 kanji over the last 6 months (through vocabulary only; I do not study kanji in isolation). Sometimes I’ll do a review and get confused with some similar looking kanji; or I don’t recall within 2-3 seconds. When that happens I’ll start the learning process all over again. The re-learning process does not take that long.
For vocabulary words, I still sometimes mix up words like 見つける/見つかる or 早い/速い. These words take a lot longer for me to retain, but it does eventually get in there.
I try to aim for around a 90% retention rate. I tend to forget kanji that don’t come up that often. Overall I’ve spent about 2-5 minutes per “not super common” Kanji (looking at statistics)
I started using ringotan yesterday to learn how to draw things. Seems to be extremely effective at allowing me to retain the stroke order, proportions, etc. Only time will tell if I remember long term. I learned 私、人、一、二 yesterday along with half the hiragana.
I thought Duolingo taught verbs like 食べる early on.
You can use yomichan if you want to make it easier to look up kanji online & add them to Anki. A lot of my vocabulary words I know are from seeing them in the wild and thinking: “that seems useful to know.”