I’m currently in the beginning stages of learning Japanese, I have Hiragana and Katakana memorised, but I don’t know where to go next. Do I start learning Kanji? If so, are there any recommended “starter” kanji? Or should I begin on learning words and/or grammar?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
2 comments
You need to know about the 1st grader kanji, the Joyo. Learn some of them. Read the Wikipedia page about Kanji, because you will need to know what Ateji, Okurigana, Furigana and others are. You need to know that kanji do not have to be read ANY of the ways you find in a dictionary, and you will quickly learn words that are examples of this. Stuff like this which widens your horizon. What is a radical? Why is it possible to write words with only hiragana, only katakana, or a mix of kanji and hiragana? When do you mix kanji and hiragana? Does it tell you something of the type of word youre looking at? All that kind of stuff
And after you know some vocabulary, you learn the grammar. Or you learn grammar and vocabulary at the same time.
What you dont have to learn is how to write, or the exact stroke order, or the exact pitch accent. You can learn general rules for these, and even if the “rules” dont apply or you make a mistake, nobody cares about your stroke order, and people can still understand your words from context but you wont sound and write like a foreigner.
There are books that guide you from now on and teach you the most basic kanji. What they dont teach you a lot of times is all the stuff ive written up there, so beginners sometimes get really confused when the reading of the kanji of “anata” has no “ana” or “ta” or “a” or “nata” in it etc. You can find books like Genki for free online, but that is illegal of course *cough cough*, so don’t download it of course *cough cough*.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji)
Read through wikipedia, Skim through it. Widen your horizon. And when you know something about current day japanese, also learn about old japanese, it will clear many weird conventions up for you. For example, what’s with “wa” being written as “ha”? What’s up with “Kono, Sono, Dono” and such words? Why do adjectives (“i-adjectives”) not need something like “desu” at the end??? How can that be! How did this happen? And many more
Another thing to add:
You cant learn words without learning kanji.