I started 4 days ago. I know 120 kanji :p I can't name them all off the… - Feed Post by KenjiSama
I started 4 days ago. I know 120 kanji :p
I can't name them all off the top of my head (who can?), but when I see them, I automatically know what they are and how to write them (learning stroke order too).
I think I can learn more than 30-40 a day, but I don't want to burn myself out.
Don't worry, I'm not doing them all at once. I do 10-20 when I wake up, and 10-20 in the evening.
I can't name them all off the top of my head (who can?), but when I see them, I automatically know what they are and how to write them (learning stroke order too).
I think I can learn more than 30-40 a day, but I don't want to burn myself out.
Don't worry, I'm not doing them all at once. I do 10-20 when I wake up, and 10-20 in the evening.
posted by KenjiSama
Comments 12
I got through the 1,972 kanji in Slime Forest Adventure within 3 months. It only helped me to recognise them though, unlike what you are doing where you are able to write them.
Are you able to write the kanji you learned completely from memory? or is it just the stroke order that you are able to remember if you are already looking at the kanji?
For me, I can recognise the kanji I've learned upon seeing them and quickly remember their basic meanings/readings. However, for many of the kanji, if I try to draw it on paper then I soon realise that I'm unable to remember what it looks like. Sometimes it's because I can't remember which radicals the kanji actually has, and other times I realise that even though I've remembered them I can't picture the shape of the kanji components vividly enough to be able draw them.
I can read fine, and I can type the kanji fine on a computer (because you only have to know the reading and then recognise the correct kanji in the conversion list), but writing on paper is a different story. I don't know how useful being able to write kanji on paper is, but it is pretty cool and I guess it must significantly help your ability to recognise kanji . So it's cool if you are able to do that. ^^
He said he can't name them off the top of his head - so I'd figure that carries over into not being able to draw them off the top of his head.
I can't name them off the top of my head no. But when I see the Kanji, I immediately know the meaning, and how to write it...
It's like English, I dare you to try to write 120 words....see you have trouble...but when you see the words, you know what they mean yknow?- According to http://wordcounttools.com I wrote more than 120 unique words in my last post without even trying to do that. I could probably name 120 different animals without any problem. :P
But anyway...
Say you had learned the kanji which is used to write cat. If you are able to remember that it means cat when looking at it, and had also learned how to write it with the correct stroke order... I was just wondering if you would be able to write it completely from memory with nothing to look at but a blank sheet of paper?
I'm struggling to picture what it actually looks like right now, even though I would recognise it in a split second if I caught a glimpse of that kanji. xD - Huh? I could write 120 words no problem. If you limited me to a starting letter, like "a", maybe it would take a good amount of time, but just 120 words? All you need to do is look around and you have ammunition. That's good that you have some kanji under your belt. Learning the stroke order actually makes sense - it's easy except for some very strange cases later on. I know the meaning of a ton of kanji more than I know how to read, especially in context - that's the way it goes. Don't even get me STARTED on names. Last names, no problem - perhaps an issue with the first time you encounter 長谷川 or something, but first names? I hate you.
- mog, I know that one off by heart - the left hand is the animal radical that looks like a curved line with two horizontal lines through it, it has kusa at the top, and then a rice field below.
- @Arachkid, Wow, that was a good description. I can picture it pretty well just from what you said. I think I would still mess up on the dog/animal radical on the left hand side though.
And yeah, 120 words beginning with the letter X would be hard I suppose... I think... Hmm...
xylophone, x-ray, x-rated, x-factor, x-axis, x-chromosome, xmas, xenophobia, xenophobic, xenophobial, xenophobe, xenophobism, xenophilia, xenophilic, xenophilial, xenophile, xenophiliac, xenophilism, xenomania, xenomaniac, xenogenesis, xenogeny, xerox, xeroxed, xeroxing, xenon, ...errr, Xerxes?, xebr...
Okay, yeah, I give up. I'm not sure how many of those were "unique" or even real "words". But I think I could have carried on dragging out the -philias and -phobias all the way to 120 -- like I didn't even bring up the fear of xylophones! :D - Well, "x" is a bit of a hard one. There is only 120 words beginning with x on the oxford dictionary website, which includes proper nouns (places, etc).
I love remembering kanji by their radicals - it just opened up kanji for me, which is good because my first experience was the kanji 上, and every reading, and I have a headache I need to stop studying now I will never understand kanji. :P Or when I first got to Japan and we went to go open a bank account with the Japanese post office, which requires the person who is going to open the account to write the address in kanji. Seriously, we went to the place they have set aside to write, my wife wrote it because ugh, we went back and they said - no, HE needs to write it.
The area name I live in is 篠塚. That is two of the 8 kanji I had to write that looked absolutely horrible since I only knew kana at that point. :P 
@mog86uk Did you pay for the full access to Slime Forest Adventure or was it all free before?- @Arachkid, Haha, that must have been a bit of a nightmare? I would just have taken the sheet of paper your wife wrote on and tried to trace over the top of it? Not sure what they'd think about you doing that though. :D
@acenshi, I paid the measly ~£13 (US$20) one-off payment for the full version with free updates for life, however I also donated quite a bit more afterwards. The free version teaches recognition of around a thousand kanji now anyway, but I think you still need the full version to learn most the readings and to do the second half of the "story".
I would check out the free version first to find out if it is your kind of thing. I don't think it suits everyone (heavy amount of typing, retro rpg style, offline PC application, etc.), but for me personally it suits what I like absolutely perfectly. ^^ - @mog They actually took her paper away. Loads of fun. It's like when we went to go get my first visa, there are three forms you start with, then you need to fill out another form that as an exact copy of one of the forms you just filled out. It took my wife taking me by the hand and going to a corner to "fill that out" to calm me down from being so angry at the bureaucracy. It's like they say, Britain introduced bureaucracy to Japan. Japan perfected it. Horrible. Which reminds me, I'll be trying for permanent residency this year, which depending on who you ask, may or may not require you to draw a detailed map of where you live. Pffffft.
- I haven't tried it yet, because my grammar sucks, and I can barely form a sentence, but I believe I can if presented with a blank sheet of paper. I write all my kanji by hand, on a piece of paper. Takes a long time, but I have better retention then just staring at the screen...
