heyy, i started learning japanese with the help of duolingo roughly a week ago. i noticed that i am struggling immensely with memorising kanji – did anyone else suffer with this and how could i overcome this issue? any help is appreciated!
When I come across a kanji I want to learn, I learn its stroke order, meaning, radical and/or other components, and a few vocab that show its most common readings (I usually pick just three or four readings total of both kun’yomi and on’yomi). I create a sentence or two for each word using the grammar I have already learned and I have at least one review day where all I do is go over and review. Anki also works great to review. You can make your own deck or find pre-made ones.
This are things that have worked and continue to work for me:
Wright Juku and Tokini Andy have websites with more features, but they are paid.
Apps/Websites:
Wanikani (first 3 levels are free then paid for the rest)
Japanese Kanji Study (Android)
Books:
Japanese from Zero Kanji
Remembering the Kanji
[Kodansha Kanji Learners Course](https://keystojapanese.com/) There’s a book, but it also has a site that suggests how to study it.
Edit: It seems like I do hours of studying kanji, but I don’t. My total study time for kanji is maybe a half hour at most. Wright Juku has a video in her playlist about efficient practice that has some great tips about not learning everything on the first day. Tokini Andy’s way of writing the answer first, either with a pen or your finger, when doing Anki is a great tip too. I actually use a small dry erase board.
if you’re one week into learning, you don’t need much kanji for quite a while, don’t go overboard on that. learn all the kana first and get away from romaji, that’s the first new-typography goal to aim for
also kanji memorization outside of vocab is largely not necessary for most learners. you can, but it’s not how you read. learn characters as you learn new words – the vocab is the key thing to learn, not the constituent characters
also please take up something other than duolingo, it’s well known to not only explain grammar poorly, but it presents things in a very confusing order that doesn’t make sense. pick up genki 1 or tae kim’s online guide. duolingo can be used to reinforce what you learn, but it’s confusing for a lot of people as a primary explanation source
Kanji is really hard! I found it a lot easier to learn kanji radicals and then slowly build on those radicals to make more complex kanji. Wanikani really helped with that for me.
then start working on duolingo with kana only. after that i suggest getting ‘a guide to japanese grammar’ by tae kim and ‘remembering the kanji’ 1 (and eventually 2) by james heiseg.
duolingo is a good resource but it should be a small part of your learning. dw about kanji rn, it took me around 3 weeks to start working on kanji. take your time and enjoy learning
also [this](https://djtguide.neocities.org/guide) is a good resource on guiding your journey, although it is not perfect… none of these resources are but they mostly work
You started a week ago chill, it takes time
I like to learn them like compound words. While of course they aren’t words, I read them like words. As an example take 魔女. The first part is read “ま”. Which ま being 魔 and the part is read as “じょ“ which じょ being 女. You put them together and you have the word for witch which is 魔女
Yeah at first it was tricky, but it gets easier.
You’ll start noticing patterns and kanji components that repeat themselves all the time. Once you’re familiar with all of them they’ll be much easier to remember (repetition is important too, you don’t just see 1 kanji once and remember it for life without ever reviewing it).
You’re only a week in though, that’s nothing compared to the years you’ll have to dedicate to learning the language. Your brain will get used to memorizing kanji, give it time.
Also, as others have said, it’s too early for you to learn kanji, start with hiragana, katakana and some basic grammar, you can learn some kanji in parallel but don’t let it become your first priority. Reading and knowing what every word in a sentence means does nothing for you if you can’t understand the grammar behind it.
8 comments
When I come across a kanji I want to learn, I learn its stroke order, meaning, radical and/or other components, and a few vocab that show its most common readings (I usually pick just three or four readings total of both kun’yomi and on’yomi). I create a sentence or two for each word using the grammar I have already learned and I have at least one review day where all I do is go over and review. Anki also works great to review. You can make your own deck or find pre-made ones.
This are things that have worked and continue to work for me:
[kakimashou.com](https://www.kakimashou.com/) for stroke order and other information for kanji
Ringotan App for writing, words, and readings
MochiMochi is another one I like, but a little expensive for me
[Wright Juku Online’s Kanji memorization and kanji videos](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAXWXz1_PXES36XflVbERuV6GX_pDKv-t&feature=shared): watch a few of her memorization/how to study videos and you can apply that to whatever method you want to use to learn kanji.
[Tokini Andy’s YouTube Kanji series](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA_RcUI8km1ME3ewzc4pcJ-cA-cw0-nKa&feature=shared)
[Anki Flash Card system](https://apps.ankiweb.net/)
Wright Juku and Tokini Andy have websites with more features, but they are paid.
Apps/Websites:
Wanikani (first 3 levels are free then paid for the rest)
Japanese Kanji Study (Android)
Books:
Japanese from Zero Kanji
Remembering the Kanji
[Kodansha Kanji Learners Course](https://keystojapanese.com/) There’s a book, but it also has a site that suggests how to study it.
Edit: It seems like I do hours of studying kanji, but I don’t. My total study time for kanji is maybe a half hour at most. Wright Juku has a video in her playlist about efficient practice that has some great tips about not learning everything on the first day. Tokini Andy’s way of writing the answer first, either with a pen or your finger, when doing Anki is a great tip too. I actually use a small dry erase board.
if you’re one week into learning, you don’t need much kanji for quite a while, don’t go overboard on that. learn all the kana first and get away from romaji, that’s the first new-typography goal to aim for
also kanji memorization outside of vocab is largely not necessary for most learners. you can, but it’s not how you read. learn characters as you learn new words – the vocab is the key thing to learn, not the constituent characters
also please take up something other than duolingo, it’s well known to not only explain grammar poorly, but it presents things in a very confusing order that doesn’t make sense. pick up genki 1 or tae kim’s online guide. duolingo can be used to reinforce what you learn, but it’s confusing for a lot of people as a primary explanation source
Kanji is really hard! I found it a lot easier to learn kanji radicals and then slowly build on those radicals to make more complex kanji. Wanikani really helped with that for me.
I tried several different methods and the one that clicked for me was [this app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lulilanguages.j5KjAnd).
first use this to master hiragana and katakana
https://kana-quiz.tofugu.com/
then start working on duolingo with kana only.
after that i suggest getting ‘a guide to japanese grammar’ by tae kim and ‘remembering the kanji’ 1 (and eventually 2) by james heiseg.
duolingo is a good resource but it should be a small part of your learning. dw about kanji rn, it took me around 3 weeks to start working on kanji. take your time and enjoy learning
also [this](https://djtguide.neocities.org/guide) is a good resource on guiding your journey, although it is not perfect… none of these resources are but they mostly work
You started a week ago chill, it takes time
I like to learn them like compound words. While of course they aren’t words, I read them like words. As an example take 魔女. The first part is read “ま”. Which ま being 魔 and the part is read as “じょ“ which じょ being 女. You put them together and you have the word for witch which is 魔女
Yeah at first it was tricky, but it gets easier.
You’ll start noticing patterns and kanji components that repeat themselves all the time. Once you’re familiar with all of them they’ll be much easier to remember (repetition is important too, you don’t just see 1 kanji once and remember it for life without ever reviewing it).
You’re only a week in though, that’s nothing compared to the years you’ll have to dedicate to learning the language. Your brain will get used to memorizing kanji, give it time.
Also, as others have said, it’s too early for you to learn kanji, start with hiragana, katakana and some basic grammar, you can learn some kanji in parallel but don’t let it become your first priority. Reading and knowing what every word in a sentence means does nothing for you if you can’t understand the grammar behind it.