Hello there, I am new to posting. I have been studying Japanese only for around 2 months and I… - Feed Post by kidasmommy
Hello there, I am new to posting. I have been studying Japanese only for around 2 months and I have all of Hirigana down and some of Katakana but I have literally 0 Kanji down. I am so intimidated by the Kanji because the way I am memorizing the Kanas won't work the same for Kanji. I have been writing the Kana down until I can recognize what sound it makes and writing it. I can write and say all of Hirigana from memory. I haven't started on grammar and sentence structure or formality. Any advice on how to learn the Kanji?
posted by kidasmommy
Comments 2
Hello, first of all good job at mastering Hiragana. In order to start with kanji, you will need to have furigana mastered (katakana<not that much>+hiragana), in order to ease conversion and understanding of actual kanji. There's a lot of kanji characters, so I suggest you use any method written below (using all of them at once will increase the coverage and understanding them closer to natural memorization, alike natives do). Here are the items you should follow when learning Kanji:
1. Visually remember the image of every kanji (broken down even further, learn the strokes and radicals <optional>)
2. Learn them mechanically, by simply doing any quiz-like application (plenty on this site) and surf through as many kanji as you can and do a revision on learned ones frequently (This might sound tough, but after you undergo several weeks of training like this and try reading a text in Japanese you will recognize the kanji characters that you previously learned instantly, along with the meaning)
3. Learn each kanji's kun/on readings/pronunciation
4. You need to have a very strong grasp over Japanese vocabulary. Knowing, for example 1000-3000 words phonetically with their kana reading will improve your kanji learning dramatically
I am using all of the items above at the moment and I can point out that step 2 and 4 complement each other perfectly.
1.Install rikaichan/rikaikun in firefox/chrome.
2.Head over to any grammar learning site of your choice and start learning grammar.
3.Use rikaichan/rikaikun to see the meaning of any kanji/word you encounter.Write them down(This will help in memorizing them).
This method is working for me.See if it works for you.
Key to memorizing is doing as much reading and writing as you can.
