So I hear about people learning kanji as a unique part of learning japanese. While others learn them throught vocabulary. Is there a reason for the first case? why would i care to know what a kanji means while i can’t read it or the other way around? Why not just learn the different words?
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Knowing the meaning of individual kanji helps figuring out the meaning of words you don’t know.
If someone couldn’t tell that 連絡 and 合格 don’t actually share the same kanji, that might be a sign they need to learn the individual kanji first as opposed to the full word right off the bat.
I never learnt kanji separately, just via vocabulary. If you were going to study kanji I’d study readings via words (it’s how Japanese people learn)
Knowing kanji makes it easier to memorize vocab since your brain starts treating words as combinations of known elements, not some unintelligible scribbles. You absolutely can bruteforce your way by just learning words. It’s just a matter of which way is faster, and I don’t think there is a consensus regarding that.
You need to learn each word to actually know how it’s read and what it means. But knowing the individual kanji with a reading or two each helps you learn vocab rather quickly, since a lot of words are pretty much what you would guess, or at least quickly make sense.
You could probably learn kanji from vocab, but I personally like Wanikani’s approach of building them up from radicals first, then applying them soon afterwards. It’s less to digest at once.
Why not learn them alongside each other? Individual kanji plus some of the common words it’s in. Best of both worlds.
As for benefits of not learning kanji *just* through vocab:
You can learn them in a sensible order rather than a random one (e.g. learning 森 after 木 or noticing that the ones with 白 in them are usually pronounced はく)
And it helps you learn new vocab later, like knowing Greek and Latin roots for English.
Well the main reason would be if they think a bit differently, maybe a different way to study works better for them personally. There are many different approaches that all successfully lead to the same result of learning the language. Its mainly about finding the ones most efficient for you personally. Its also important to find a way to study that motivates you. If a type of study is technically less efficient, but it motivates you to study more often, that can be a good thing for you overall.
That all said, I think for the majority of people learning kanji alone is not recommended, and will add unnecessary confusion on when to use different pronunciations or definitions. Even if having trouble telling kanji apart, I would first try learning common components before switching to a kanji based study.
Although studying individual kanji as needed is totally okay. I would say most people should have vocab as the main focus overall.
I couldn’t distinguish kanji from one another in vocabulary words until I started learning the kanji separately.
How do you just memorize vocabulary without learning kanji? Never tried it before and I’m just reaching the early N4 kanjis.
But imo, I feel like managing to recognize different onyomis are pretty great when you’re reading something.
I think it’s just more efficient. I took 4-5 months to get through the 3,000 Jouyou and Jinmeiyou kanji with RTK before doing anything else. Now that’s done and it’s no longer a hurdle (though I still do daily Anki RTK flashcards).
Also, learning vocab is so much faster when you’ve already done the kanji. It just makes sense. My current deck of active vocab words in Anki is 20k cards in circulation. It took me about a year to go from zero to 20k after doing all the kanji. I think it would’ve been slower overall if I didn’t cover the kanji first.
The only downside is that it’s a real grind and can be demoralizing. Keep that fire in you!
I get overwhelmed very easily when I see a word with a complex kanji and it’s very hard to remember it. If I know the kanji learning that word becomes immensely easier and makes the process fun as well
There are benefits to learning through vocabulary like others have said but honestly, I find learning the kanji fun in its own right. I remember early on seeing 大人 and reading it as “big person” in my head, when I flipped the card and saw it was adult it made me laugh.
Breaking down the words or concepts into their building blocks and thinking about how people thousands of years ago decided to represent them with the Chinese language they had, it’s fascinating to me when you can see why they choose to represent the concept of an adult as the symbol for big and then for a person. These situations come up all the time and are a unique draw to the language from a learning perspective.
I do both at the same time. I will study a kanji and what its meaning is plus a couple of common readings. Then I will also learn a handful of words using it, maybe 3-5, and try to vary across some of the readings as well. I typically also try to pick words I could see myself using.
I like learning the meaning because it makes it easier for me to recognize what words are. For example, take the word 大人. You might not know the word but if you know that 大 = big and 人 = person, you could realistically guess the word means adult. Of course, it’s also a good example of a word where learning the word itself is important because it’s not using one of the main readings for 人 so you need to memorize the word itself.
BECAUSE kanji ARE vocabulary (trust me)
you should learn words, only words are readable
that being said, just like learning greek and latin roots and some word patterns in english makes recognizing and remembering english vocabulary easier, learning some degree of general familiarity with kanji is also helpful
and sometimes studying kanji and radicals makes it easier to distinguish otherwise very similar kanji, which can help
ultimately the goal is the vocabulary, but some small portion fo time spend in studying related material can sometimes pay off in slightly more time benefit than that which you put in
that balance is up to you
I still haven’t found a good argument.
First gaining a deep understanding on how kanji are composed so that you don’t confuse similar looking kanji like 絡 and 格 (as mentioned by another poster) is one reason. Kanji is complex and there is a lot of “data” to absorb to gain proficiency, however kanji is also logical (in spite of what some may say). Breaking down a complex system and learning parts at a time can increase absorption and retention. This is why systems like RTK are popular among a lot of learners, not because it teaching you vocabulary or how to read, but rather it makes the process easier if your patient to basically do the “prep work.”
I was using an Anki deck that just had words with Kanji in them set to 10 words a day and they built up so quickly because I wasn’t able to learn 10 a day at all. I even set it down to 5 and was still struggling.
Using WaniKani’s system of learning the Kanji and then all the words that use that Kanji I easily learn way more than 10 a day probably more than double that with minimal difficulty.
The vast vast majority of Kanji vocab words in some way relate to the meaning of the word more often than not it’s something like 女王 is ‘woman king’ which means queen or 平気 is ‘flat energy’ which means calm. And even when it’s something a bit more vague which it’s usually not you can usually derive some sort of clue to help you remember. You absolutely can just learn that 女王 means queen but that’s not going to be the most efficient way of remembering for everybody.
It will make sense to you once you get past the ~5000 words mark, or start studying for N1 kanjis. The kanjis from that point start getting ridiculously similar (some of which has only a few words associated with it) and I found no way around if not studying the remaining kanjis one by one (writing included).
If you are still at n5, n4, n3 level kanji, you can easily get away with it though.
It’s all about knowing a proper identity of each kanji. Lets say you know 作る and 動物. Then you stumble upon 作動. Since you haven’t studied what 動 means in isolation, what’s stopping you from inferring that 作動 is some kind of an animal?
Or what if you first learn 納豆 and then think that 納める is something that has to do with beans?
Note that the there are multiple different semi-overlapping approaches to learning Kanji and there is a difference between what can be called RTK purist approach of learning some number of Kanji by keywords in advance without learning any words vs RTK pragmaticjpdb.io approach of learning Kanji by keywords as you learn words with them. The former is more controversial than the latter.