I’ve been trying to learn japanese casually but the issue I’m facing now is that I already know mandarin chinese (which uses characters like kanji but have different pronunciations)
So I can read a sentence and understand generally what it means but it’s confusing to learn the pronunciations. Is there any strategy other than rote memorization to utilise my preexisting knowledge of chinese?
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I think it’s memorization for the most part still, sorry.
At the Tokyo full-time language school I attended, most of the students were from China. The school used Minna no Nihongo for beginner textbooks (vols 1 & 2).
They used a separate book for kanji (for each kanji, the book showed: stroke order, on/kun pronunciation, 2-3 words with example sentences). So this book taught both writing kanji & vocabulary.
The Heisig method is not relevant for you as you already know the hanzi.
The Tango series is popular in forums for vocabulary but has a different approach to vocabulary
https://www.ask-books.com/jp/hajimete-jlpt/
Even my Japanese friends said they can’t pronounce every word they read in the newspaper or a book, particularly names. However, most of the beginner and intermediate words are high-frequency so I would recommend learning the pronunciations even if you can cobble together the meanings (if you are looking for a high level of proficiency).
It’s no different from learning Chinese pronunciations in that there is also no equally effective trick to learning Chinese pronounciation of hanzi. Also good to get out of the way that Japanese kanji pronounciations are not based off of modern Mandarin.
Your preexisting knowledge will help you a lot, you just won’t notice because you have no frame of reference
For people who don’t already know chinese characters memorising kanji is even harder but the process is the same for everyone; memorization
Just learn words and eventually you’ll learn the common kanji pronunciations passively
Font ude Heisigs RTK, just Saying. Worhless for ur situation.
Note that the stroke order has minor differences, so if you have kanji tests you’ll need to memorize whatever is different. Incorrect stroke order should be considered incorrect in Japanese language classes, though there could be exceptions.
Basically just focus on the words as oral, spoken words, as sounds that mean things, as if it were a language with no kanji–and then be glad that the ways you *graphically* represent those meanings will often be already familiar to you.
Read books and notice reading patterns
I would try to find a forum where the primary language is Chinese and ask there, you may get better answers.