Is learning kun and on or meanings necessary?

I’ve been recently memorizing some kanji while writing down the kuns, ons and meanings, but is it really necessary? Am i just wasting my time? Should i only learn the stroke order?

4 comments
  1. If you take 10 people learning Japanese, “learn kanji” means 10 different things to them.

    If you just want to recognize the kanji without any vocab, I think the consensus is that you should hold off on learning readings until you learn some vocab.

    If you are learning with vocab, you might learn readings without actually realizing you are, because all vocab which uses kanji is full of readings.

    If you are going to bother writing them, do the stroke order correctly. But unless you are going to live in Japan (or maybe you are already there), writing them has less value possibly than reading them.

  2. meanings are helpful sometimes. the kun/on readings can be learned when you’re learning vocabulary. writing is helpful as a memory tool.

  3. This is not a very common answer so take it with a grain of salt, but here’s how I do it :

    Whenever I encounter a word I don’t know, I add the kanji to a deck if I don’t know them, then the word to another one.

    For kanji, I learn both their meaning and their on reading. Learning kun reading isn’t much use because they’re very unpredictable and depend heavily on context. However on readings are pretty consistent, and there are only a few dozen possible one, whereas kun readings can be almost anything.

    Since most compound words use on readings, it allows me to correctly guess the readings of such words with ~80% accuracy. Not to mention how you’ll eventually pick up on patterns, like for example kanji with 白 in them often have はく as their on reading.

  4. Not in the beginning. Once you have a few thousand vocabulary words (and are able to read them in kanji) under your belt then learning on and kun readings for certain kanji can be very beneficial, but learning them early on will just confuse you because you’ll constantly be wondering why this or that word is using the “wrong” reading or a reading that the kanji doesn’t even have. So early on learning readings can be downright detrimental at times.

    Learning the meaning is the other way around. It will help you a great deal in the beginning, but once you have a few thousand words under your belt you probably shouldn’t bother because the meaning will sorta just come naturally as you learn words.

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