Hello everyone, I have started studing japanese recently, but I am having a hard time remebering kanjis, and for some reason I just can’t any motivation to learn them either. So can anyone please give some tips or shortcuts to remember kanji.
A lot of us start out by learning little stories to go with the kanji, via RTK, wanikani, or Kanji Damage, and gradually work from that to memorizing kanji and vocab at the same time.
The first few kanji are the most difficult since they just seem like random images. Learn the stroke order of kanji and just write them out a bunch.
I find learning kanji one of if not the most enjoyable part of learning Japanese tbh. I think some of the main reasons I think that include:
1. From what I’ve seen, a lot of people learn kanji with the names that were coined a long time ago and they’re far from perfect. They’re too complex and plain incorrect to what they actually mean. Something that completely fixes the issue for me – is jpdb’s own naming system. Awesome free website. If there are names I’m not happy with, I just change them myself.
2. Spaced Repetition System. There’s a lot of options nowadays, the other comment lists some – wanikani, anki, etc. That’s really important, especially if you plan on learning a lot of kanji, without this kind of software it’s gonna be tough.
3. All sorts of mnemonics. 開 kind of looks like hands opening a gate and 木 looks like, well, a tree. It doesn’t have to look like anything, it may also be symbolic. Make little stories within the kanji, they can be silly – actually, sometimes it’s better when they are, makes it easier to remember.
4. That’s a bit more advanced, but as you learn you’ll start noticing patterns. Some components that seemingly make no sense are there for a reason. Sometimes there are so called “semantic components” some are obvious like 氵that is often used in words related to water and cleanliness, or 言 that is used in words related to speech. Some semantic components are less obvious like 月 (moon) that often appears in words related to body parts and 貝 (shellfish) that is often seen in words relating to money. There’s also “phonetic components,” also something you’ll start observing later on.
4. Something some people do, some don’t – but physically writing kanji down helped me immensely.
Hopefully this is at least somewhat organized, if I seem deranged in this – welp, that’s just something learning kanji does to you I suppose, lol. Good luck to everyone.
Start. That’s basically the single biggest tip and shortcut I can give you. The more complex kanjis, the ones that deter people, are ultimately constructs made of parts. Start with the basic kanji, your 木, your 日, your 人, etc. and as you get more familiar with writing, it will come naturally.
If there is one more tip, it’s to not rely on shortcuts. A book I used early on was Basic Kanji 500. Go through it once or twice, focus on writing exercises, the ones in context help best. Every supposed shortcut or ‘bypass’ to this familiarisation method is a crutch and only hurts the user when it’s time to stand on your own two feet.
read it and write it a lot. Japanese students have to write it down dozens of times and it’s a language that they know
Unless you *need* to write (which even if you live in Japan you probably don’t) it’s probably a good idea to not obsess about learning how to write Kanji. It’s really easy to forget how to write characters if you’re not constantly maintaining upkeep on your memory and doing so can easily become a task that takes away from your listening/reading practice and can actually make you much worse at Japanese in general in the long term.
Technically you can learn how to read to a very high level without ever learning to write Kanji. The way to do this is simple- just read and look up each and every word you don’t know. At first you’ll forget Kanji the second you move onto the next word and you might be disheartened because you’ll find yourself looking up the same characters over and over again- but that’s OK, that’s just how the process is and there’s nothing wrong with that.
With that being said I wouldn’t recommend completely ignoring dedicated practice.
I recommend you go through an RTK Anki deck (both recognition and recall) and not be too strict with yourself. The goal isn’t to remember how to spell every character, but just to familiarize yourself with the various components that form Kanji by consciously paying attention to them a little more than you normally would if you were just trying to read.
By doing this your subconscious will be less likely to conflate similar looking characters and make it much easier for you to retain the readings.
TLDR; reading >>> writing.
You simple start “remembering the kanji”. Nah jk but there’s a book called rtk (remembering the kanji) that helps people out by making it simpler, I recommend the free anki deck “rrtk” which is a custom version rtk if I remember correctly, it’s pretty useful when you get to kanji that look very similar
I just learned the ones i was actually interested in learning very first. Aswell as common kanji. Some examples are 猫 (ねこ)私(わたし) 今日、木、曜日、何、語、月、ect once you get the ones you actually want to know down, the others will come to you so much easier. I also recommend looking at JLPT 5 Kanji list so you get somewhat of an outline of what you need to learn. https://jlptsensei.com/jlpt-n5-kanji-list/
8 comments
A lot of us start out by learning little stories to go with the kanji, via RTK, wanikani, or Kanji Damage, and gradually work from that to memorizing kanji and vocab at the same time.
The first few kanji are the most difficult since they just seem like random images. Learn the stroke order of kanji and just write them out a bunch.
I find learning kanji one of if not the most enjoyable part of learning Japanese tbh. I think some of the main reasons I think that include:
1. From what I’ve seen, a lot of people learn kanji with the names that were coined a long time ago and they’re far from perfect. They’re too complex and plain incorrect to what they actually mean. Something that completely fixes the issue for me – is jpdb’s own naming system. Awesome free website. If there are names I’m not happy with, I just change them myself.
2. Spaced Repetition System. There’s a lot of options nowadays, the other comment lists some – wanikani, anki, etc. That’s really important, especially if you plan on learning a lot of kanji, without this kind of software it’s gonna be tough.
3. All sorts of mnemonics. 開 kind of looks like hands opening a gate and 木 looks like, well, a tree. It doesn’t have to look like anything, it may also be symbolic. Make little stories within the kanji, they can be silly – actually, sometimes it’s better when they are, makes it easier to remember.
4. That’s a bit more advanced, but as you learn you’ll start noticing patterns. Some components that seemingly make no sense are there for a reason. Sometimes there are so called “semantic components” some are obvious like 氵that is often used in words related to water and cleanliness, or 言 that is used in words related to speech. Some semantic components are less obvious like 月 (moon) that often appears in words related to body parts and 貝 (shellfish) that is often seen in words relating to money. There’s also “phonetic components,” also something you’ll start observing later on.
4. Something some people do, some don’t – but physically writing kanji down helped me immensely.
Hopefully this is at least somewhat organized, if I seem deranged in this – welp, that’s just something learning kanji does to you I suppose, lol. Good luck to everyone.
Start. That’s basically the single biggest tip and shortcut I can give you. The more complex kanjis, the ones that deter people, are ultimately constructs made of parts. Start with the basic kanji, your 木, your 日, your 人, etc. and as you get more familiar with writing, it will come naturally.
If there is one more tip, it’s to not rely on shortcuts. A book I used early on was Basic Kanji 500. Go through it once or twice, focus on writing exercises, the ones in context help best. Every supposed shortcut or ‘bypass’ to this familiarisation method is a crutch and only hurts the user when it’s time to stand on your own two feet.
read it and write it a lot. Japanese students have to write it down dozens of times and it’s a language that they know
Unless you *need* to write (which even if you live in Japan you probably don’t) it’s probably a good idea to not obsess about learning how to write Kanji. It’s really easy to forget how to write characters if you’re not constantly maintaining upkeep on your memory and doing so can easily become a task that takes away from your listening/reading practice and can actually make you much worse at Japanese in general in the long term.
Technically you can learn how to read to a very high level without ever learning to write Kanji. The way to do this is simple- just read and look up each and every word you don’t know. At first you’ll forget Kanji the second you move onto the next word and you might be disheartened because you’ll find yourself looking up the same characters over and over again- but that’s OK, that’s just how the process is and there’s nothing wrong with that.
With that being said I wouldn’t recommend completely ignoring dedicated practice.
I recommend you go through an RTK Anki deck (both recognition and recall) and not be too strict with yourself. The goal isn’t to remember how to spell every character, but just to familiarize yourself with the various components that form Kanji by consciously paying attention to them a little more than you normally would if you were just trying to read.
By doing this your subconscious will be less likely to conflate similar looking characters and make it much easier for you to retain the readings.
TLDR; reading >>> writing.
You simple start “remembering the kanji”. Nah jk but there’s a book called rtk (remembering the kanji) that helps people out by making it simpler, I recommend the free anki deck “rrtk” which is a custom version rtk if I remember correctly, it’s pretty useful when you get to kanji that look very similar
I just learned the ones i was actually interested in learning very first. Aswell as common kanji. Some examples are 猫 (ねこ)私(わたし) 今日、木、曜日、何、語、月、ect once you get the ones you actually want to know down, the others will come to you so much easier. I also recommend looking at JLPT 5 Kanji list so you get somewhat of an outline of what you need to learn. https://jlptsensei.com/jlpt-n5-kanji-list/