Should I be learning just meaning of radicals, making mental connection between them and image that they are expressing or meaning and how to read them? I know some of them are kanjis for them self so should I learn those now or later? Add furigana to my anki deck?
Also, another question. As there are kanji examples for every radical in my\* anki deck, should I add how to read those kanjis? I know there are multiple readings kunyomis and onyomis, how should I go about that?
\*I’m using [fluent forever’s](https://blog.fluent-forever.com/japanese-radical-deck/) free radical deck from 2015. It has 80 characters.
**IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD IT**: *Had trouble downloading it first – so, right click “download here” highlighted text, inspect it and click on the link in inspect tab, now in anki it didn’t work straight away, I found deleting* `:` *helped. So browse->cards->and delete* `:` *for all 4 types of cards. I’d share mine but you need to go through them yourself to make mental connection between images, which you can change, and characters, and then unsuspend them.*
6 comments
Radicals typically don’t help you with reading or meaning. Learning them does pay off though because it can help you a lot with both kanji writing and lookup. It also helps with memorization for many people because you will start to break down complex kanji into their radical components mentally rather than just seeing each one as a big jumble of different lines.
It’s something you can pick up progressively alongside normal kanji study, you don’t need to start memorizing every radical before you do anything else. If you’ve been holding off on N5 or N4 kanji I would recommend going ahead and starting.
Radicals don’t have a reading. They have names, but they’re not related to the reading.
You really don’t need to learn the names of them. Most Japanese people I know are hard pressed to make more than educated guesses on most of them.
I do use the Fluent Forever method in Anki myself. And I decided not to bother with learning radicals really or their meaning.
I am of a simple opinion. If a radical is a word or part of a word with meaning, I will learn the word. I have difficulty understanding the composition of a kanji, or recognizing it using what I have seen is the meaning of the radicals.
The way I approach it, is I do recognize that Kanji can be composed of other characters or even radicals, during writing practice, but I attach little meaning to it. Because I don’t often connect the meaning with the composition of radical meanings.
In other words, it is nice if you want to be quicker about stroke of a complicated kanji.
My advice is, do add the radicals as words to your deck and try to spot them in harder words, but don’t attach much meaning.
Lastly, I do recommend Gabe’s Japanese Model deck (second edition). It is great for inputting compound Kanji words into Anki. It is the main way I use it. I have been putting off cracking that bad boy open to make my own version.
I’ve started wanikani and it’s really useful. It helps me differentiate different kanji from each other and therefore remember their onyomi readings. This in turn helps me remember the pronunciation and meaning of vocabulary. Even stuff not covered in wanikani.
Personally, I don’t feel there’s much to be gained by learning radicals, but if you have a specific interest in them then you might find this useful – [https://www.joyokanji.com/radical-terms](https://www.joyokanji.com/radical-terms)
Don’t bother learning radicals