Kanji learning method.

[jamchan]

Hello everyone !

Today I started to study Japanese. I have bought the Genki books and I'm all set.

I'm just figuring out how to study the kanji. I looked at how Genki does it, but I really don't want to learn the kanji as a separate thing. Since I saw a few kanji's which weren't in the vocabulary of the same chapter. So I was thinking.. When I'm studying the vocabulary, I might as well learn the kanji for each word right away (if there is one).

This might take up a lot more time for each chapter because I also want to be able to write them.

Is anyone studying the kanji like this as well? How is it going? Are there any drawbacks by studying like this?

[Nameless]

Reviewing the Kanji

I'm gonna kindly ask Mr. Heisig to pay me for promoting so much his method.

To prove to you it works:
My stats:
875 Kanji

And I am still feeling like not making enough effort.
Imagine someone that does, that said, I will punish myself If I don't study harder from now on.

[jamchan]

I have looked into the Heisig method before. But the thing is, I want to be able to read and write the kanji from the words I learn in the vocabulary. That wouldn't work with the Heisig method.

Thanks for your input :3!

[TBox]

I'd like to recommend anki. Anki - friendly, intelligent flashcards

It's a flash card program. It's free and it has a whole bunch of decks with Japanese vocabulary.

My personal opinion is you buy a kanji book like the one recommended ^, download a set of *vocabulary* flash cards, and start the program. I'd cut back to 10 new cards a day instead of the default 20, but I am a lazy, lazy man. When you see a new word, look up the component kanji in your book, read the nifty mnemonics, but then memorize the word, not the kanji.

(Heck, I'm so lazy I skip the "look up the kanji" part. There's more than a few words where I have no idea what the individual kanji "mean" but I know the word itself.)

It *is* possible to reach the point where, as long as it's in anki, you recognize the word instantly, but outside of that context you get lost. It's important to be reading Japanese as much as you can outside of anki to make your lessons stick.

Of course, when you only know 20 words or so, "live" Japanese is still impossible. You might want to consider rikaichan rikaichan | polarcloud.com because you can hover over a word and it'll tell you what it is. The flaw there is it's a crutch, and it's easy to become addicted to it. You have to have the discipline to *try* to read a word first, before using rikaichan to look it up.

Now for something that I consider to be my personal secret. This is completely optional, if it looks like too much work just skip it. Rikaichan only works on digital data. I've tried many, many ways to look up kanji in pictures and books that I don't recognize. Multi-radical search is a pain. Hand written input requires you knowing stroke order, which isn't always obvious, especially when you're just starting. I have no idea why Japan doesn't have one, but China and Taiwan have DOZENS of shape based input methods. Cangjie has the best English tutorials, and it has the best kanji support as well.
Download it for windows here:
Pinyin Joe - Taiwan IME 2010 Update - New Phonetic, Changjie, Quick, Cantonese Jyutping Jyutpin - Office 2010
(You don't need office)
Learn about it here:
New Page 1
Practice here:
Cocoa Nuts
You might want to install this:
ChaJei (CangJie) Explorer

It took me about a week of serious effort before I was really comfortable with it, but I can look up kanji I don't know in seconds. Go to thunderbird, cangjie input, rikaichan: Got it. I'm faster than handwritten interfaces if the kanji has more than about 10 strokes. (OTOH, I'm in the uncomfortable position where I see 意 as 卜廿日心 first, and い second. But so far that's the only one to have gotten stuck that way. It was a hard kanji for me to learn for some reason. And it's a bit of a pain to be constantly switching between Cangjie input and Japanese input for okurigana, but IMO still better than your other options for kanji you don't know.)

So there you go, three suggestions, all of them flawed. Have fun.

Edit: D'oh, you posted while I was typing. Okay, you want to install rikaichan and the Japanese input method. When your textbook throws a new word at you, type it into Thunderbird or Firefox with Japanese input method on, hit space, it converts to kanji. Double check it with rikaichan to make sure you got the right homonym. You're on your own for memorizing. You could build your own anki deck if you wanted, with just the words from your book.

[jamchan]

Oh wow! Thanks for all the tips.

I definitely like the Anki and rikaichan idea. I will look into Cangjie after I got my nights rest. (Right now I only have played a bit with the normal Japanese IME)

Thanks again!

[delacroix01]

Well, I also use Anki, but I think it's best to build your own deck through reading and listening. When you have the context, it is much easier to learn the word, since you will have better understanding. And yeah, there is no need to learn single kanji at a time unless it is a word by itself. Repetition and overlapping will help you develop your vocabulary eventually.

Of course what important is your vocabulary size, not the number of kanji you know. However, knowing the most widely used kanji is a great advantage when learning new words. Right now my Anki deck has about 5100 words, containing around 2300 kanji, and I can learn vocabulary at a much faster pace compared to when it was only 1400. Also, aside from reviewing with Anki, reading a lot will help you store words in your brain better, just like with other languages.

[KyleGoetz]

I can't recommend any books for beginning with kanji. But at a sufficiently intermediate level, Kanji in Context (book) + Anki (software) = all joyo kanji in under two years, especially if you combine it with a little light reading every day (say, one newspaper article).

[KuroiBara]

I've tried the flashcard method, it works great (except when you lose the card...!)
Right now I'm just trying to learn the kanji for words I use the most (I've learnt 10 by heart since starting this method 2 weeks ago) so it can work if you are willing to put in the effort
The other thing I do is read books in Japanese. This can get stressful when I know I only recognise about 2 kanji in the whole book, but then the kanji that come up often get stuck in my brain and I remember them better when I learn them!
Hope that's helpful

[jamchan]

Definitely helpful =D.

Each time I'll start a new chapter I'll be creating an Anki deck. I like that there is also a mobile version of that program!

I have a few manga's with furigana. I can start with reading that until I got some decent books. I've read a lot recommendations for books from Murakami Haruki. I'll give those a try as well.

@KyleGoetz
I've looked up a review of Kanji in Context. Sounds very interesting! Too bad the books are so expensive. But I'll definitely keep that in mind.

Thanks everyone. ^o^

[delacroix01]

There's also a very good book for beginners called Basic Kanji Book, written by a few Japanese authors. You can find it on google.