should i learn kanji first before learning grammar?

9 comments

1. You need to learn words to understand the example sentences used for grammar, so do them both at the same time.

   Kanji are things you’ll be building up for years as you learn words since you expect to see excess of 3000-4000 of them.

2. Go to japanesepod101.com. They have free lessons. Also buy some grammar books and some Kanji textbooks. You can also use free apps like Scripts, Infinite Japanese, Drops, Memrise, and a paid one called LingoDeer.

3. Both. You need both. Do both. Both.

4. It’s the wrong way to go about learning it according to a lot of people here. But I just straight up memorized 2300 kanji woth both readings when I started learning japanese. Took me about 100 days but since then I had very little issue with reading kanji.

5. Learning kanji has extremely benefitted my learning ability and I can tell you why:

   When you know around 500-800 kanji (personal experience) in both meaning and reading, you can read simple texts (N3) and understand the majority of them even without knowing the grammar fully. You can expand your studying to reading N3 texts and dissecting the sentences and grammar that you know already or don’t know and learn the grammar in action.

   I suggest an SRS based system on the side. First learn hiragana and katakana and completely ban romaji from your brain!!! Then get N5 grammar down and familiarize yourself with N5 kanji. Then I would simultaneously start with something like Wanikani (my personal life saver) and N4 textbooks.

6. The tricky thing is that you need both. I chose to “familiarize” myself with Kanji first. For N5, that would boil down to about 100. Don’t aim for perfection. Make sure you just get the gist of it. Then, focus on picking up grammar. Now, you have the tools to learn in context. That’s the way I did it. it might work for you, maybe not.

7. Lots of people have ready answered. There is too many kanji to just learn them. They have different readings depending of words, sometimes there are two verbs with one kanji with slightly different meanings (transitive/intransitive for example). I think it would be best to learn in the same time both grammar and kanjis. Or learning only the N5 kanjis at the start if you really want to know them all/three free levels of wanikani also have lots of n5 kanji and theyre pretty good and recommended too.
   When I was learning at some point I felt that I know words but don’t know grammar. Then, I knew some grammar but didn’t have verbs to practice so I focused more on vocab. As for now, I definitely have both vocab and grammar lacks, but I can already understand a lot of things (I’m staring N4 materials so still kind of a beginner, but I can listen to N3-N2 podcasts and get some things).
   Also, langugae is not only about vocab and grammar :>

8. In the long run – focus kanji, short term (at the beginning) grammar and mid term both with adjustments to how much each part will be learned.

   At least that’s what worked for me but I never really focused on one thing in particular. I mean when you learn grammar you automatically learn words and vice versa.

9. imo maybe you should do both up to N4. Then focus on only reading and kanji. And then resume grammar when you are more comfortable with the language….this worked for me as studying grammar as a beginner was very challenging…i didnt understand the language very much…so grammar was killing me..

   After jlpt n4 I studied kanji first and then grammar…all of it while reading a coupe of hours a day…Kanji will take you a while….took me about a year and a couple of months to learn all kanji in the jlpt by doing 4 hours a day (of mostly review and repetition….was only doing about 5 new kanji a day)….but then i separately studied grammar….which took me another year…when I restarted grammar (from n5) it made sooo much more sense which is why i recommend that approach.

   TL;DR: learn grammar after a year of reading… And learn kanji as youre reading to make it easier…