Besides learning the diary 2 thousand individual kanjis is not functional because the massive majority of the times you see kanji they are in conjunction, therefore whatever the reading you learned of so kanji that’s part of so conjunction or the meaning of it will not stay the same because now it works in a dynamic.
Besides each of those kanji having about 6 different readings, the so conjunctions will have, for example, at least 3 kanjis united, and you only know one of them, for example, the only reading you know from this one kanji is not the reading that is used in the formation of so conjunction and, if you, somehow, get it right, there are two more kanjis to bet on luck that you will even know at least one of their 7 possible readings, and, for the finale, if you don’t know all of the kanji readings, you won’t know the word’s reading, you might at max know the first, the middle one or the last one’s reading but it won’t matter, because about the word itself, wich is the point of it all, you won’t get any clue of it.
Besides, if you get to know 2 of the 5 possible readings for the first one, 3 of the 5 possible readings for the second one and 1 of the 3 possible readings for the last one, you cam be absolutely sure that, whatever readings are the ones you know are not the ones that are used to form that conjunction. Then it ends up being one of the 3 ones you didn’t know of the first, the 2 of the second and of the last one.
And if, miraculously, you get to know all of the readings of all of the kanjis included, how will you know which combination is the right one?
And if, miraculously, you get to know the reading of the conjunction, but you only know the meanings of the kanjis themselves alone, individually. Then it all begins again, if you know two of the kanji’s meaning, it means nothing, if you know only one, it means even less, if you know all three, you might get the very idea of what the word is expressing but you don’t actually know the word’s exact meaning until you learn the word itself’s meaning, it’s about dynamic after all.
And, mixing the reading complexity with the meaning complexity, it almost always happens like this: 3 kanjis, you know the meaning and the reading of the first one, you only remember the meaning of the third one and you know absolutely nothing of the third one – it ends up that the first one’s reading altogether with the other kanjis and in unity of the word itself used the one reading you didn’t know of + it’s individual meaning has very little relevance (and the more kanji the word has, the less relevance one kanji’s individual meaning has is conjunction); the second one’s meaning has the same effect as the first one’s one reading that you knew that was not actually used on the conjunction: none and the third one is a mystery. And, at the end of the day, the dynamical meaning of the whole kanji is not just unknown because you only know kanji’s meaning on their own but the help those individual kanji meanings give to the word discovery is entirely abstract.
You know combination of license plate? It feels just like that.
And all that’s with only 3 kanjis, imagine more. And also, that’s only about the reading part, imagine of the listening-to-writing, the writing part and there’s also the formation of words based on kanjis, you will never actually get to form a word that actually exists so you will have to go decorating words with kanjis and its thousands of possible readings and meanings until you finally do it.
If, in sequence, you got 15 kanjis right and 1 wrong, you don’t think “oh, well, I only got one wrong”, but more likely “oh, well, I only got fifteen right”, because, if you don’t know every kanji, it’s easier to just assume that the 15 were exceptions rather than the 1 being one.
What the heaven should I do? Am I being too extreme? Is there any solving for any of those problems?
And there are also those cases where I know the word but I don’t know it’s kanji, so,, there’s no meaning, me, knowing the word’s reading and meaning if, when it appears to me, with its damned absurd 21 strokes kanji, I don’t recognise the word so it just stays in the unknown side for me.
I know many words, but, very less than half of the amount of words I know, Is the amount of kanjis I know, and not surprisingly, 70+% of those words I know are formed by kanji but 4% of those 70+% of words I know is the amount of kanji knowledge I got.
So I know it’s wise to not focus on kanji that much and just focus on the understanding and decoration of the words themselves, but then it makes everything even more expansive. And also, I kind of feel like getting attached to kanji and forcing to master them is the same thing as trying to decorate english word’s radicals to try to form and get inducement to the rest of english language. It’s like decorating the kanji tele (from the conjunction “television”) for example and expect that, decorating radical from radical will, someday, give you vast knowledge of the language you’re trying to learn.
And besides all that stuff, not only dynamical work on kanji is hard but individual itself is too, so it wouldn’t help much otherwise anyway.
And, of course, that thing about the meaning of the kanjis individually not helping to get the idea of the conjunction in dynamical means, sometimes, of course, it does help. But sometimes, the elements of the dynamic (kanjis) simply do not give specific ideas in relation to the dynamic’s meaning itself, make sense to a certain level but you just couldn’t guess, if it were to guess, yk? Sometimes it’s just not convenient to bet on guessing.
Man, 2 thousands doesn’t sound as much, but, 2 thousands are not only “2 thousands”, it is “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 […] 1999 2000”
Like, what I mean is 🤯
4 comments
[what half of the half of 2000 literally looks like](https://images.app.goo.gl/FRCaZVx285Ej4Fcj9)
You are overthinking it.
Pronunciations should be learned as you study vocabulary. At some point you will intuitively understand how to pronounce unknown words, sometimes even with unknown kanji.
Now, the biggest question is whether to study kanji in isolation. Some people do that, some don’t. Personally, I completed Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Course, memorizing just English keywords without pronunciation, and I think it helped me greatly. The goal is to learn recognizing kanji as individual entities and understanding their meaning. Learning pronunciations in isolation is useless because there is too much dependency on the context, e.g. where the kanji is used, which goes far beyond just onyomi/kunyomi.
I wouls advise you to take a step back. See the bigger picture. You’re in tunnel vision, my friend.
I want you to think of the word “way”. Have you ever read an English-English dictionary for the word “way”? Last time I checked it was about 5-6 pages of different meanings. But if you are a native English speaker or fluent in English you will have learnt the different meanings of “way”… along the way of learning; like “the way home” or “the way of life” or “there is always a way” or “the way we speak”… it’s endless. But a new learner will probably think “okay, so I know what “way” means in my language but suddenly it has five new meanings depending on context and it’s overwhelming me; how will I ever know them all?”
Now think of the pronounciation of “though” and “tough”. One letter removed and already the sounds are different. Same goes for any homophones the English language has. But I guess if you are fluent in English you will have no problem reading and understanding the difference between “the maid made the bed” or “he is bald” but “the baby bawled”. Would you not say this is as equally confusing and overwhelming for a learner of the English language as you feel with Kanji right now? Yet your language machine in your brain as successfully installed all of the meanings of “way” at some point and you probably aren’t even giving it much thought.
Kanji are intimidating and will overwhelm you if you let them. Know the meaning of a kanji first, you will learn its reading with vocab and with constant repetition and revision. For me, a recent word was 記憶; memory. I would read it as “memory” first when I saw a sentence with the kanji but over time I learned its reading きおく. Same goes for classics like 今 (いま) and 日(ひ) but 今日 (きょう)；or 年 (ねん) but 今年 (ことし) and 来年 (らいねん) Only regular exposure to vocab will get you more vocab.
Don’t stress yourself. You’ll get there as long as you don’t stop. Take breaks when you need them and find something to enjoy Japanese and find motivation to do it daily. Take it one step at a time.
Just learn words.