Hello, everyone! A lot of you probably already know this, but for those of you who don't, I'd like… - Feed Post by Lyohl
Hello, everyone! A lot of you probably already know this, but for those of you who don't, I'd like to share some advice that really helped me with learning the meanings of kanji. A lot of Japanese learners tend to focus on memorizing every kanji individually, which can get very confusing, considering there are approximately 50,000 of them in total. However, by first studying kanji radicals, or bushu (部首), it's much easier to guess the meanings of kanji that you don't know, as well as it is to remember ones that you do. Radicals are the smaller elements that make up a kanji, of which there are 214. For example, the kanji for forest (森) is simply three tree radicals (木). Likewise, the kanji for above (上) is the radical for toe above the radical for ground, while the radical for under (下) is the radical for toe below the radical for ground. Of course, not all of the radical combinations are quite so straight forward, but it can still help with coming up with creative ways to remember the kanji.
Good luck! :)
Good luck! :)
posted by Lyohl
Comments 3
There are around 7000 kanji in Japanese, about 2500 in normal usage. (50,000 is Chinese I believe). Radicals will help for mnemonics and will occasionally give you hints.
When you learn a kanji you should be definitely be looking at the radicals or you will never be able to discern similar kanji in more difficult words.
For example,
購読（こうどく）paid prescription e.g to a newspaper
講読（こうどく）a reading or translation.
As you can see, the kanji and pronunciation are exactly the same except for one radical on the right.- left*
Similar as chinese
