How long did it take you to understand Kanji? (~ 2,000 characters)

[fatum]

Hey there,

I'm able to read and write most Hiragana now, and I'm starting to study more Katakana as well. I'm still having a bit of difficulty differentiating (shi & tsu, ri & n) シ & ツ, and リ & ン.

I'm mainly concerned about Kanji at the moment, because most writing that you'll find is composed of Hiragana and Kanji. I can probably recognize the order of Katakana characters to understand the foreign words. I made flashcards for Hiragana, but I'll probably write an application for Kanji as there are too many characters for flashcards. Is this an accurate listing of the characters?
List of jōyō kanji - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How long did it take you guys to fully understand Kanji? What do you believe is a reasonable amount to study at a time? I was thinking about trying 100 at a time, but I'm not sure if that would be an overload of information.

Thanks for any help!

[ryuurui]

you learn kanji all your life, and if you stop, you will start forgetting them. There is no time limit for it either, as everyone has different ways and abilities of "inhaling" them. Also, learning single kanji makes no sense, you learn them in phrases, such as 漢字, otherwise it'll take you more time and will be frustrating. There are flashcards with kanji online:

Speedanki: Kanji Flash Cards with JLPT Vocabulary

It takes time for us foreigners to learn them, as Asians employ (or learn to employ) different part of the brain for learning kanji from a very young age, and they understand them and comprehand them in a different way.

Finally, I suggest you learn the correct stroke order first, and read about kanji construction. It will benefit your further studies. Undertsanding kanji parts and radicals is crucial, in my opinion, in successful studies of Chinese characters.

[delacroix01]

I was thinking about trying 100 at a time, but I'm not sure if that would be an overload of information.

100 at a time would be too much for a beginner. I started learning Kanji since 2009 with just 2 new kanji a day. Now it's 5 kanji a day and I can say that I cannot go any further than that. Since you are using flashcards, you should learn kanji in words and phrases because that's the most effective way to store them in your brain. Also, Anki's Japanese plugin has kanji listed by grades, so it's easier to study than by picking them randomly. Good luck with your studying.

[KyleGoetz]

It took me years (I'm right around 1900 currently after a two-month break doing only review), but I had long periods of time where I was lazy. But it's been nine-ish years since I started studying Japanese in college.

I do not believe anyone can do more than twenty kanji a week consistently. But be advised twenty is very tiresome, and you have to be very organized about it.

Once you pass kanji #200 or #300, there won't really be any general language textbook with a "system" for learning them anymore. You'll have to buy a book specifically for kanji, and I suggest Kanji in Context. It is out of print, but easily the best book for learning kanji.

There are approximately 140 kanji "chapters" in Kanji in Context (but it doesn't cover the newest 100ish joyo kanji). If you do one a week, that's three years, factoring a few weeks for laziness and vacations. One lesson a week is very doable, especially once you're an intermediate student. And the book has as much as five to ten vocab words, on average, for a kanji, so you actually learn them in compounds. You will also learn obscure readings if you wish. For example, 紅葉 is read both こうよう and もみじ. The first is "red leaf" or "autumn-tinged leaves" (literally red + leaf) and the second is "maple tree." The second is a non-standard reading, but I know it by heart because of this book (technically I think people write it モミジ now instead of in kanji).

I cannot recommend Kanji in Context enough. It is hands down the single most important book an intermediate student of Japanese can own. No other single book comes close.

[yuriyuri]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

I cannot recommend Kanji in Context enough. It is hands down the single most important book an intermediate student of Japanese can own. No other single book comes close.

I also want to take this oppurtunity to recommend Kanji in Context.
I started using it as a begginner, which was a little difficult at first because there were no English translations, but it really did help me to learn how to read kanji and get used to reading and understanding Japanese in general.

You say you are thinking about writing an application for kanji instead of making flash cards, so I just want to recommend trying out a flash card program called Anki before writing anything yourself, just because it is already a well written program and just works.

As for how many kanji to study at once, you can make that number anything you want provided it doesn't burn you out, so you will have to experiement with different numbers until you find an amount that is right for you.
But at the same time I would also say that even if you don't reach your goal of X kanji every day it doesn't matter.
The kanji aren't going anywhere so you have as much time as you need to learn them all.
The important thing is to not stop (So don't burn yourself out) otherwise you will have to re-learn everything (As I have had to do twice now)

And just to give you my experience in reading, I can read roughly 900 ~ 1,000 kanji after about 3 years of study.
During this time I have been working, taking holidays, seeing friends, being a normal human being etc, and I feel as though I haven't taken my study very seriously and have been quite lazy.
I also haven't gone out of my way to find kanji which I can't read yet; I just learn them as they come up.

When it comes to writing, you can learn to write anything without actually being able to read it.
This is what I did to start with and learned how to write (not read) 2,000 kanji in 6 weeks.
However learning to write (and remember how to write with correct stroke order) roughly 100 kanji a day was very tiring.
I also didn't have any reason to write kanji by hand after learning how to write them all so I stopped reviwing my flash cards and forgot how to write all but the most basic kanji after a couple of months.
So if you are thinking of trying to learn how to write each kanji with it's readings at a rate of 100 a day, based on my experience with writing only, I would agree with Kyle about not being able to do more than 20 a day.
Try something like 10 ~ 20 a day instead and see how it goes

[RickOShay]

Well that is hard to say, cuz I kind of took a leisurely pace with learning, after I had done with my two years of study in college. So I really don't know.
I think anybody who truly kept at it though could have 2000 down in 3-5 years.

But your average person who has a life etc, would probably need 5 or more.

In any case you will find that lots of similarly looking kanji start to have the same readings, so it kind of helps. I should say though I never bothered learning individual kanji, my approach was to learn new vocabulary words and always learn how to read their kanji at the same time.

[siokan]

It doesn't understand still well. (゜∀。)

[steven]

For what it's worth, I was different in that I gave up traditional learning partway through college. Instead of trying to study Japanese from textbooks, I just decided to open my ears and take in as much as I could (while of course being active about it).

Even after I moved to Japan I didn't actively study for a while... I tried once but didn't see a point. A year ago or so, reading about Kyle and his "kanji conquest" inspired me a bit to give it another go. This time I had a different approach though-- First of all, I knew most of the words I was studying. I knew their context in everyday conversation.

I started VERY simple and have been working my way up. To give you an idea, I started with one of those Hiragana/Katakana level books for kids (it was for Japanese kids of course). I'm very happy I did that because it fixed a couple of funky stroke orders before I went on to kanji and just made my writing look better and more balanced. Then, and even now, I'm just slowly moving up. They have books for elementary school students. The first year one, and by and large the second year one were brain-dead easy for me, but there was always the odd kanji here or there (or odd usage) that would either fix a problem or just help out my spoken language. Going through those kinds of elementary school level books is great because you don't have English (or whatever your preferred language is) getting in the way.

I've seen a lot of bad translations that simply don't work well, so I prefer to just avoid the step of "translation" and take it in as pure as possible. I prefer this method to the method of studying kanji that I've seen/heard for the first time. It is in my opinion a more native approach... and frankly takes less effort.

There are times when I kind of binge and do a lot of studying, times when I kind of do a little a day, and times when I slack off. It still amounts to me being able to read a little bit more each day. I also like to just kind of read documents and copy the kanji I don't know (which is admittedly a lot). I don't expect to learn them just by doing that, but I feel as though it accounts for some of the exposure that I missed out on by not growing up in Japan or as a Japanese.

Of course I don't have grades and tests and all that bogus to worry about, so I don't have to subject myself to the odd order of textbooks/language courses.

[KyleGoetz]

I'll append that the whole motivation behind making this kanji push was that I was tired of reading Murakami haltingly. I wanted to pick up ノルウェイの森 and read it straight through.

I imported a Japanese copy, but I haven't sat down to read it yet. I probably should. I keep thinking, "Oh, after these last hundred or so kanji!"

[fatum]

Thanks for all of the help and resources!

Originally Posted by yuriyuri

I also want to take this oppurtunity to recommend Kanji in Context.

I think I'll look into finding this book.

Slightly unrelated, are these two phrases identical?

わたしはねこです and 私は猫です

The intended phrase being: "I am a cat."
Watashi wa neko desu.

Wa (as for) Watashi (me), desu (I am [a]) neko (cat).

The software that I use to insert Japanese characters converts some of the words into Kanji characters if I want it to, but I'm not sure if everything is inserted into the right place? If that's true, then I can already type in kanji, I need to start recognizing the characters so that I can read them.