I’ve got most of hiragana and katakana down (self taught), and I feel like it’s time to start learning kanji. I just don’t know where to start. I don’t know about any methods of learning besides just straight memorization, which is what I’ve been doing, but I feel like there’s something that would work better for me. Any advice, resources, etc would be nice
3 comments
Learn vocab and memorize the characters as they come up
Flash cards can help but they’re only one tool
Write the letters by hand and pay attention to stroke order
Learn the radicals and elements of new kanji you run into, they’ll repeat and make recognizing and memorizing new characters easier
https://smile.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268/
The sidebar has some links to the basic ideas
most people use one of these
* KKLC (kodansha kanji learner’s course) this is a book you can buy, it gives you kanji and some vocab
* RTK (remembering the kanji) this is a different book you can buy, it’s focus is a bit different since it tells you kanji but you learn vocab later
* Wanikani: This is a website and it’s not free. You learn kanji here. It has a nice interface.
* Koohii-Kanji: This is a website and it is free. It has kanji stories similar to RTK. It is not as beautiful as wanikani
* Learn with Vocab: This is popular, you read a book, magazine, or whatever you want to read, and learn needed kanji as you go using some method like koohii. You might wanna learn a few some other way first to get some traction though.
* Rote memorization: You write it like 10, 15 times a day and it sticks like magic.
Not sure which is best but there are a lot of options. I do “learn with vocab” since I like to read currently.
Some people like to learn entire vocab words with the kanji in them, while other people find that overwhelming and instead focus on recognizing individual kanji, then building those up into words. It’s just a matter of what works better for you.
I personally use WaniKani, which teaches a few individual kanji at a time and then teaches a bunch of related vocab words. It starts you off by learning radicals (basic shapes within kanji), gives you a silly name for each of them, then uses those names to make a mnemonic that helps you remember the completed kanji. Once you’ve got the complete kanji down, it’s easier to tell the difference between similar-looking vocab words.
Other popular methods like Remember the Kanji (RTK) use a lot of mnemonics too. Whatever route you go with, I recommend looking at the radicals used in each kanji, and see if mnemonics give you a boost.