Yes and no. Don’t focus on radicals, because you would loose time and actually you can make link between radicals you see in kanjis with similar meanings by yourself, it becomes easier as time goes on. You should try WaniKani, it gives you radicals and kanjis to learn pretty smoothly.
Though don’t worry to much about kanjis, you don’t need to know every one of them to understand Japanese properly, 500 is already great, and it is achievable. Patience, practicing (even just reading), and you’ll learn them little by little.
Personally I focused on learning kanjis and even if it was quite useless as those kanjis are almost never used alone, it helps me a lot now as I don’t need to learn a lot of kanjis regularly
The best way to learn kanji is the one you stick to.
The most important thing is to keep studying years after years.
Find the one you’re the most confortable to and stick to it.
Ultimately, if you give up in 1 year, whatever the method, it was pointless.
I’m learning kanji through wanikani, which is not optimal, but that’s the only way I found to consistently learn them.
Learning radicals is part of learning kanji, so there’s no point doing one without the other. Starting with just vocab is fine to begin with. Eventually learning kanji and learning vocab become kind of the same thing anyway, so i’d say just start with what you find most fun and engaging and let the more difficult stuff develop organically
Focus on vocab
If radicals interest you and if learning them helps or at least doesn’t hurt your kanji learning, then by all means include it
Always feel free to add stuff that interests you. Calligraphy, history, etymology, anything
It might take some time from other core things but that’s okay, keep loving the learning process, that’s #1. If something becomes boring or stressful, tone it down or cut it out for a while. Reevaluate and retool later
Do both. Doing one is better than doing neither, so if you get bored with one do the other.
5 comments
Yes and no. Don’t focus on radicals, because you would loose time and actually you can make link between radicals you see in kanjis with similar meanings by yourself, it becomes easier as time goes on. You should try WaniKani, it gives you radicals and kanjis to learn pretty smoothly.
Though don’t worry to much about kanjis, you don’t need to know every one of them to understand Japanese properly, 500 is already great, and it is achievable. Patience, practicing (even just reading), and you’ll learn them little by little.
Personally I focused on learning kanjis and even if it was quite useless as those kanjis are almost never used alone, it helps me a lot now as I don’t need to learn a lot of kanjis regularly
The best way to learn kanji is the one you stick to.
The most important thing is to keep studying years after years.
Find the one you’re the most confortable to and stick to it.
Ultimately, if you give up in 1 year, whatever the method, it was pointless.
I’m learning kanji through wanikani, which is not optimal, but that’s the only way I found to consistently learn them.
Learning radicals is part of learning kanji, so there’s no point doing one without the other. Starting with just vocab is fine to begin with. Eventually learning kanji and learning vocab become kind of the same thing anyway, so i’d say just start with what you find most fun and engaging and let the more difficult stuff develop organically
Focus on vocab
If radicals interest you and if learning them helps or at least doesn’t hurt your kanji learning, then by all means include it
Always feel free to add stuff that interests you. Calligraphy, history, etymology, anything
It might take some time from other core things but that’s okay, keep loving the learning process, that’s #1. If something becomes boring or stressful, tone it down or cut it out for a while. Reevaluate and retool later
Do both. Doing one is better than doing neither, so if you get bored with one do the other.