Every time someone talks about it people do in fact bring up the point you’re making here
For me, I can’t keep kanji in my memory unless I specifically study them and their components, because their structure is too foreign to me.
I do like learning kanji because, even when it’s the long way around to learning vocabulary, it helps a lot in recognizing which make up a word and makes it easier to figure words out, learn, and understand them. Without knowing the individual kanji, memorizing a word involves memorizing kanji shapes whose logic I don’t know. It is doable, but I’ve found the memorization flimsier that with kanji I got a strong grasp of.
I started learning kanji recently because after my first ~900 words on anki it was getting harder to recognize words using similar kanji, or different combinations of kanji that i know i already saw, but cant quite remember the meaning. I do believe learning vocab right away is better tho (or like, more rewarding usually cause you can recognize a word you just learnt and thats fun), if you dont face the problem i had with memorizing.
I think a big deal is made about it because reading comprehension is a critical language skill. If you’re more concerned with speaking, then yes, learn vocabulary first and foremost. But even basic vocabulary like shoes 「靴」 and umbrella 「傘」 have kanji that are considered N3 and N1 respectively.
Granted, learning vocab is something that shouldn’t be overlooked, because if you don’t have the vocab to map kanji to, it’s worthless in terms of comprehension. It’s best to learn with a mix of both.
I once learned just how to read and recognise the first 1000 Kanji from RTK.
I then studied for N4. My experience told me that words that included the Kanji I knew just stuck so much faster since the kanji it consisted of was not just some gibberish.
I then used 3months to learn how to WRITE the whole RTK of 2200 characters. Simply because a 3-month investment into turning the kanji into “not gibberish” make everything SO much easier for me.
I do not study any kanji individually in terms of the readings – I just learn words written in Kanji with some furigana.
Doing RRTK up to 750 helped hugely with memorising vocab and kanji for me personally. I find it way easier to create mnemonics for vocab knowing what the individual characters mean.
[deleted]
They are part of the Japanese language. It is quite simple – if you intend to go to Japan, and interact with i.e. menu’s on restaurants, any type of public system, read any type of litterature, news etc. you need to learn not just hiragana and katakana, but also kanji.
I know it sucks, and it *IS* a massive task, but… Yeah learning a language is a big task.
I don’t know specifically about the process of learning kanji without learning the Japanese language..? If people find that interesting by all means… For me it is just a natural part of learning the language.
I think it comes from the misconception that what makes Japanese so hard are the kanjis, and the process of learning them using flashcards creates this rewarding feedback loop that makes progress visible in the short term and keeps you motivated.
Memorizing kanjis, the keyword associated with it and stroke order doesn’t take any exceptional skill. Kids these days can memorize thousands of pokemons shape, name and power just by watching it over and over again, so why an adult following a structured study plan and tons of memorization tools can’t?
Of course, the Japanese writing system definitely adds a layer of getting used and difficulty to learning Japanese for those who grew up reading the alphabet, but it is far from being what makes Japanese so hard.
If you ask me, the hardest part is the asymmetry between vocabulary with no direct translations from English to Japanese and vice versa, word order, and of course the unrelated cultural and historical influence imbued in the expressions.
Basically, aside from loan words, you can get very little of a headstart into learning Japanese if your native language is English. A headstart that you would get if started learning another European language.
> Am I missing something here?
almost no one says you should memorize kanji only. delete this post and reevaluate
I’ve recently finished learning meanings and on readings for all 2000 joyo kanji, and I regret nothing.
Yes there are irregular readings, like 似非 or 欠伸, and yes kun readings must be learned for each word separately. But having at least a vague idea of what each kanji in an unknown word means is extremely useful.
Not to mention being able to guess jukugo reading 80% of the time. And even when the word can’t be guessed, I found that my new card retention rate for my vocab deck skyrocketed since I stopped running into words made out of kanji I don’t know.
Stumbling upon words like 新婚旅行 or 有給休暇 when reading and instantly guessing what they mean and how they’re read is super gratifying.
What’s the point of learning the English alphabet? Why not just learn words and phrases instead? I think there is a misunderstanding of the purpose of keyword systems like RTK. The primary purpose is not to learn the meaning of Kanji. It is to be able to identify, and put a unique name to every Kanji. Just like you have a name for every letter of the alphabet.
So when you see a new word, like ‘日本’, you can easily remember how it’s written by remembering ‘sun, then origin’, rather than trying to remember ‘The kanji with the rectangle and the horizontal line in the middle, then the one with the vertical line in the center, and the long horizontal line crossing the top part, then two diagonal lines coming out of the left and right, and the small horizontal line crossing the bottom part’.
The fact that the key words sometimes resemble the general meaning of the Kanji is just a minor bonus.
Writing kanji by hand helps me learn and actually differentiate them so much it’s not even funny. I understand it’s a long process and may not be the most efficient, but I’m in it for the long haul and willing to put in the upfront work to do RTK and get familiar with the kanji. It’s made learning some vocabulary a lot smoother for me already, personally speaking.
It’s simply frequency bias & overrepresentaiton of a hard topic.
*Obviously* you have to learn words, grammar, etc. But it’s kind of solved problem.
Use flashcards, watch as many jDramas as you can stomach, try talking to native speakers.
Kanji learning however is harder for westerners, and there are many ways to learn, thus more discussions.
This is same reason why you’ll see so many discussions on pitch accent (and polarizing opinions).
1. learning kanji is also learning “words” too because you learn kanji readings – which are words 2. learning kanji greatly helps to structurize all your related vocabulary knowledge because japanese words are either based on kanji or are written with them
Because of the JLPT. It’s a way to measure progress. I agree vocabulary is more useful but that being said being able to write kanji is a very useful skill that most have difficulty with.
It’s circular: I learn words as a way to learn their kanji in order to be able to read other words that contain those kanji, and maybe guess their meaning.
If nothing else, knowing how to read a new word makes it much easier to look it up in an online dictionary if I don’t recognize it by sound and can’t guess it’s meaning from its kanji.
Best way to put it would be some people think it’s easier to learn it before getting into words so that they can remember the word easier, it’s a lot easier to remember words when you can easily remember the kanji
I personally just learned words but if you have the time I’d probably start with kanji and words at the same time, so that you’re taking adventure of both kanji knowledge and word knowledge
a lot of it is new learners making the mistake of ignoring vocab and only raw memorizing a bunch of kanji and then getting horribly confused and frustrated, and then some that attempt to be helpful unfortunately just give them a different anki deck instead of the advice that they need to learn vocab, and the dysfunctional cycle continues
That’s because that’s the harder part to retain. I still remember the grammar structures I learnt 6 years ago, but I have to keep memorizing kanji since I don’t encounter it naturally on a daily basis. Also sometimes when you need to skim, reading kanji and grasping the meaning is faster than translating the entire sentence in your head.
some people learn it one way (RTK first, vocab later)
some people learn it another way (vocab first, memorize the shapes along the way)
You can actually achieve high levels of Japanese with both strategies.
For me it is easier to remember vocabulry readings when i know the kanji that is mixed in the words, also i need to be able to wrote them down so i need to study them anyways
I’m assuming your question is “Why bother memorizing individual kanji instead of memorizing words and phrases instead?”
I think this is a good question and I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted.
I personally think it’s better to study words and phrases (with their associated kanji) rather than study individual kanji, and there are quite a few people who believe the same.
Of course, if you’re completely new to kanji, maybe it would be beneficial to study 100 or so to give yourself a baseline and develop your ability to visually recognize characters. Also, it probably isn’t a bad idea to add specific kanji if you want to meet a specific goal (jouyou for example) and you can’t find any words which use x kanji.
For the most part, from my experience I think you’d be better off learning kanji passively through words and phrases (which ideally, you have seen used in some context at least once).
Edit: If your question is “why should I learn kanji at all when I could just learn the words and phrases instead?” , then this answer doesn’t apply
Sometimes I see this construction in older books. For example 思うて (https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000119/files/624_14544.html) from 山月記 or 言うて. I don't…
24 comments
Every time someone talks about it people do in fact bring up the point you’re making here
For me, I can’t keep kanji in my memory unless I specifically study them and their components, because their structure is too foreign to me.
I do like learning kanji because, even when it’s the long way around to learning vocabulary, it helps a lot in recognizing which make up a word and makes it easier to figure words out, learn, and understand them. Without knowing the individual kanji, memorizing a word involves memorizing kanji shapes whose logic I don’t know. It is doable, but I’ve found the memorization flimsier that with kanji I got a strong grasp of.
I started learning kanji recently because after my first ~900 words on anki it was getting harder to recognize words using similar kanji, or different combinations of kanji that i know i already saw, but cant quite remember the meaning. I do believe learning vocab right away is better tho (or like, more rewarding usually cause you can recognize a word you just learnt and thats fun), if you dont face the problem i had with memorizing.
I think a big deal is made about it because reading comprehension is a critical language skill. If you’re more concerned with speaking, then yes, learn vocabulary first and foremost. But even basic vocabulary like shoes 「靴」 and umbrella 「傘」 have kanji that are considered N3 and N1 respectively.
Granted, learning vocab is something that shouldn’t be overlooked, because if you don’t have the vocab to map kanji to, it’s worthless in terms of comprehension. It’s best to learn with a mix of both.
I once learned just how to read and recognise the first 1000 Kanji from RTK.
I then studied for N4. My experience told me that words that included the Kanji I knew just stuck so much faster since the kanji it consisted of was not just some gibberish.
I then used 3months to learn how to WRITE the whole RTK of 2200 characters. Simply because a 3-month investment into turning the kanji into “not gibberish” make everything SO much easier for me.
I do not study any kanji individually in terms of the readings – I just learn words written in Kanji with some furigana.
Doing RRTK up to 750 helped hugely with memorising vocab and kanji for me personally. I find it way easier to create mnemonics for vocab knowing what the individual characters mean.
[deleted]
They are part of the Japanese language. It is quite simple – if you intend to go to Japan, and interact with i.e. menu’s on restaurants, any type of public system, read any type of litterature, news etc. you need to learn not just hiragana and katakana, but also kanji.
I know it sucks, and it *IS* a massive task, but… Yeah learning a language is a big task.
I don’t know specifically about the process of learning kanji without learning the Japanese language..? If people find that interesting by all means… For me it is just a natural part of learning the language.
I think it comes from the misconception that what makes Japanese so hard are the kanjis, and the process of learning them using flashcards creates this rewarding feedback loop that makes progress visible in the short term and keeps you motivated.
Memorizing kanjis, the keyword associated with it and stroke order doesn’t take any exceptional skill. Kids these days can memorize thousands of pokemons shape, name and power just by watching it over and over again, so why an adult following a structured study plan and tons of memorization tools can’t?
Of course, the Japanese writing system definitely adds a layer of getting used and difficulty to learning Japanese for those who grew up reading the alphabet, but it is far from being what makes Japanese so hard.
If you ask me, the hardest part is the asymmetry between vocabulary with no direct translations from English to Japanese and vice versa, word order, and of course the unrelated cultural and historical influence imbued in the expressions.
Basically, aside from loan words, you can get very little of a headstart into learning Japanese if your native language is English. A headstart that you would get if started learning another European language.
> Am I missing something here?
almost no one says you should memorize kanji only. delete this post and reevaluate
I’ve recently finished learning meanings and on readings for all 2000 joyo kanji, and I regret nothing.
Yes there are irregular readings, like 似非 or 欠伸, and yes kun readings must be learned for each word separately. But having at least a vague idea of what each kanji in an unknown word means is extremely useful.
Not to mention being able to guess jukugo reading 80% of the time. And even when the word can’t be guessed, I found that my new card retention rate for my vocab deck skyrocketed since I stopped running into words made out of kanji I don’t know.
Stumbling upon words like 新婚旅行 or 有給休暇 when reading and instantly guessing what they mean and how they’re read is super gratifying.
What’s the point of learning the English alphabet? Why not just learn words and phrases instead? I think there is a misunderstanding of the purpose of keyword systems like RTK. The primary purpose is not to learn the meaning of Kanji. It is to be able to identify, and put a unique name to every Kanji. Just like you have a name for every letter of the alphabet.
So when you see a new word, like ‘日本’, you can easily remember how it’s written by remembering ‘sun, then origin’, rather than trying to remember ‘The kanji with the rectangle and the horizontal line in the middle, then the one with the vertical line in the center, and the long horizontal line crossing the top part, then two diagonal lines coming out of the left and right, and the small horizontal line crossing the bottom part’.
The fact that the key words sometimes resemble the general meaning of the Kanji is just a minor bonus.
Writing kanji by hand helps me learn and actually differentiate them so much it’s not even funny. I understand it’s a long process and may not be the most efficient, but I’m in it for the long haul and willing to put in the upfront work to do RTK and get familiar with the kanji. It’s made learning some vocabulary a lot smoother for me already, personally speaking.
It’s simply frequency bias & overrepresentaiton of a hard topic.
*Obviously* you have to learn words, grammar, etc. But it’s kind of solved problem.
Use flashcards, watch as many jDramas as you can stomach, try talking to native speakers.
Kanji learning however is harder for westerners, and there are many ways to learn, thus more discussions.
This is same reason why you’ll see so many discussions on pitch accent (and polarizing opinions).
1. learning kanji is also learning “words” too because you learn kanji readings – which are words
2. learning kanji greatly helps to structurize all your related vocabulary knowledge because japanese words are either based on kanji or are written with them
Because of the JLPT. It’s a way to measure progress. I agree vocabulary is more useful but that being said being able to write kanji is a very useful skill that most have difficulty with.
It’s circular: I learn words as a way to learn their kanji in order to be able to read other words that contain those kanji, and maybe guess their meaning.
If nothing else, knowing how to read a new word makes it much easier to look it up in an online dictionary if I don’t recognize it by sound and can’t guess it’s meaning from its kanji.
Best way to put it would be some people think it’s easier to learn it before getting into words so that they can remember the word easier, it’s a lot easier to remember words when you can easily remember the kanji
I personally just learned words but if you have the time I’d probably start with kanji and words at the same time, so that you’re taking adventure of both kanji knowledge and word knowledge
a lot of it is new learners making the mistake of ignoring vocab and only raw memorizing a bunch of kanji and then getting horribly confused and frustrated, and then some that attempt to be helpful unfortunately just give them a different anki deck instead of the advice that they need to learn vocab, and the dysfunctional cycle continues
That’s because that’s the harder part to retain. I still remember the grammar structures I learnt 6 years ago, but I have to keep memorizing kanji since I don’t encounter it naturally on a daily basis. Also sometimes when you need to skim, reading kanji and grasping the meaning is faster than translating the entire sentence in your head.
some people learn it one way (RTK first, vocab later)
some people learn it another way (vocab first, memorize the shapes along the way)
You can actually achieve high levels of Japanese with both strategies.
For me it is easier to remember vocabulry readings when i know the kanji that is mixed in the words, also i need to be able to wrote them down so i need to study them anyways
I’m assuming your question is “Why bother memorizing individual kanji instead of memorizing words and phrases instead?”
I think this is a good question and I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted.
I personally think it’s better to study words and phrases (with their associated kanji) rather than study individual kanji, and there are quite a few people who believe the same.
Of course, if you’re completely new to kanji, maybe it would be beneficial to study 100 or so to give yourself a baseline and develop your ability to visually recognize characters. Also, it probably isn’t a bad idea to add specific kanji if you want to meet a specific goal (jouyou for example) and you can’t find any words which use x kanji.
For the most part, from my experience I think you’d be better off learning kanji passively through words and phrases (which ideally, you have seen used in some context at least once).
Edit: If your question is “why should I learn kanji at all when I could just learn the words and phrases instead?” , then this answer doesn’t apply