Is it worth it to learn radicals when learning kanji?

8 comments

1. I never bothered. I learn the kanji as a whole using Kosandsha’s Kanji Learners Course.

2. I think it is. When you can identify each single piece of a kanji, you are likelier to decode it if you don’t already know it. Everybody learns differently. Asking these questions on Reddit is about as useful as asking if people use their turn signals.

3. Yes. They’ll help you distinguish one Kanji from another. Also, in the grand scheme of things, memorizing 250 radicals is a drop in the bucket considering the sheer amount of grammar, vocabulary, Kanji, and expressions you will need learn in your language studies. Definitely do it.

4. You don’t need to know all of them inside and out, but it’s useful to know what some mean and how many are pronounced (related to on’yomi).

5. Kanji are made up of components. There are a limited number of components and you’ll get to recognize all/most of them eventually.

   Each kanji has one or more components. One of those components will be designated as the ‘radical’ for that kanji (some people refer to all components as radicals, but that’s not correct).

   The ‘radical’ exists as an index into paper dictionaries. Such dictionaries are organized by radical so knowing the radical makes it easier to find the entry for a given kanji.

   With the advent of on-line and electronic dictionaries, radicals are not very important to know about anymore.

   Learning them is not difficult, but it’s not especially useful. I suppose knowing them can help with guessing the meaning or pronunciation of unknown kanji, but that doesn’t always work out either.

6. Being able to identify components of kanji is super useful; you’ll be much less likely to mix up similar ones like 持 and 待

7. Absolutely. Kanji used to be black magic to me and I kept making mistakes until I realised they are made of components.

   It’s like realising `d` is made of `o` and `l` and you can use it for learning.

8. That depends. I think you can devote some time to investigating which radicals the kanji you already know or plan to learn consist of, but in my experience, later on you’ll start noticing the little differences between similar kanji and how the radicals contribute to kanji on’yomi readings spontaneously :).