I have read countless posts about learning kanji and—from what I’ve seen—the general consensus is that it’s probably better you learn kanji via vocab. Right now I just started the core 2.3K deck, but I want to learn how to write the kanji that I see in the vocab. Should I just look up how to write each new kanji I encounter individually, or is there a more streamlined method? I am aware of things like RTK or WaniKani, but since I am already doing the 2.3k deck, I was thinking that might be too redundant—which I wouldn’t mind, but within reason. Any advice?
20 comments
Remember the Kanji is the book people recommend. I believe it has stroke order listed. Follow that, open up a notebook, and get writing
If you are on iOS you can try https://jitakuapp.com
It has a feature that allows you to import the kanji that are in your deck and learn their writing using SRS
Remember the kanji + repetition + reading the vocab in simple sentences
I haven’t really gotten to kanji yet but my plan when I start is to go through the RTK book/Anki deck and write every single one I learn over and over again. It has the stroke order so it’s just repeating it until you get it down. I bought a specialty journal composition notebook for it that has grids.
I like putting Kanji on jisho.org for stroke order and new vocab.
Well, in websites like jisho.org and apps like Kanji Study, you have a recorded demonstration of the stroke order, it’s how i learned personally.
At first you’d have to check out every kanji individually, but after you memorize the stroke order of like a few dozen of them, you’ll pretty much be able to write most kanji correctly without even needing to check them out first.
“Memorizing the stroke order” sounds awful, but it’s easier than it sounds and the best thing of all: it’s incredibly repetitive, once you start you’ll notice the patterns.
Being someone having done RTK, I can highly recommend it for learning to write. It’s a big commitment though and I’m not sure if its entirely worth the effort is requires. It took me 4 months and many many hours of story creating and reviews to complete it. The benefits? Well I can pretty much write any kanji I want (with reference), but I find the need for that skill to be very miniscule. Also I’ve drilled in the meaning of a lot of kanji, albeit to an English word, and when I see complicated kanji it doesn’t look like scribbles anymore, but a series of components I can break down into parts.
Would I recommend it in early stages? No, no I wouldn’t. Writing kanji at a beginners level seems very inefficient, and it requires a lot of time that would otherwise be better spent on other skills.
Would I recommend it later down the line if you already know the meanings and can read them fine? Yeah sure, but only if you really want to learn how to write.
The truth is that if you’re not planning on living in Japan then the need to write kanji is virtually non-existent. And even in Japan itself the need for writing has been diminishing because of the convenience of a keyboard doing it for you.
What if you just wanna do it for fun? Than hell yeah man go for it. Just know that it’s a big time commitment, and your time might be better spent on learning vocab, grammar and immersion.
You should learn stroke order logic first. Beware remembering 2000 letter wrtting is a big task. However writting correctly a kanji you see is not that difficult. There a big difference in the way you use pen between roman letter and kanji stroke but it should be readable.
I wrote [Ringotan](http://www.ringotan.com) specifically because there were no good SRS apps that teach you how to write kanji. It also supports both RTK and Wanikani. Try it out!
Pen and paper. There’s no memory like muscle memory.
KKLC w/ the corresponding anki decks work pretty well.
My Sensei makes us write them down. It’s an old school way, but very effective (at least for me). The stroke order helps with muscle memory, and when learning kanji, any kind of memory is beneficial.
I didn’t think I was a fan of the RTK method but I’ve been trying jpdb recently and they default to it (with their own keywords). It prompts with the keyword and I write in the air with an imaginary pen (which I’ve heard is nearly-but-not-quite as good as using pencil on paper). Yet to see how this method really turns out but I have been able to read and write quite a few words so far at least.
I’ve been using the app “Learn Japanese! – Kanji.” Teaches stroke order, and I’m a fan of being able to trace them on your phone touch screen as opposed to needing to always have a pen and paper around.
not so much a resource but a tip: start off by learning the radicals that make up the kanji, rather than memorizing them individually. It makes it a million times easier to remember.
The dictionary that I use shows the stroke order for kanji so I just practice writing a couple of times. Other comments are right wherein a lot of patterns get repeated.
The name of the app is imiwa?
[App Store Link](https://apps.apple.com/in/app/imiwa/id288499125)
Wikipedia has animated kanji with stroke order for Japanese and when they differ for Chinese too, I put them in a small web app/site as animated flashcards: http://indexflip.com > menu > Kanji 1st Gr
I found an app just called Kanji! on the Google appstore, to unlock all (N5-N1) for lifetime was less than £5. I find it helps to learn stroke order, but highly recommend writing by hand as well cuz it’s so different from using your finger
Going to paste a couple of comments I made since this is a very common question:
>Stroke orders can be guessed like 98% of the time from the basic rules + following the stroke order of a kanji’s parts (e.g. any kanji that includes 兆, like 逃, 挑, etc. will use its stroke order).
>The remaining 2% are the outlier patterns, like 座/挫/etc. vs 土, 藪, 飛, 升/昇/etc., 卑 (new form) vs 牌 (uses old form), 兆, 叫 vs 収, 虚 vs 噓 (uses old form), characters that include 臼 like 興/歃/鑿/與/etc., 偏 vs 冊, etc.
>learning to write kanji is helpful in many ways:
>* it helps you make out messy handwriting via counting the strokes and checking where they start and end
>* it helps you recognize the individual parts that make up a kanji instead of seeing them as monolithic blotches. This makes it easier to distinguish similar-looking kanji
>* muscle memory is a nice addition to your arsenal to recall things when your memory is kind of foggy
Please do RTK I learned how to write the 2,200 jouyou kanji from memory in literally 3 months.