Advice on Learning Kanji
 

I've begun learning some kanji and already I'm hitting a brick wall. I can easily associate the meaning and the kanji but I'm having a hard time remembering all the readings. If I can use the kanji for existing vocabulary then fine. My kanji guides casually give a reading but fail to associate that with a particular word.

How do others learn kanji? Would it be ok to just learning the readings for the vocabulary that I know then as I expand my vocabulary learn new readings for known kanji?

I would be grateful for any advice.


Thanks

I try and learn words. When you start out in kanji you get a lot of concrete nouns that make sense to learn as single kanji like 木 and then as you go on, you get a lot more kanji that by themselves basically have no easily translatable meaning like 御. And yeah, trying to learn that as ' means honorific but not actually the ~word~ "honorific" because that's something else' is a big headache.
I would say your plan isn't too bad. If you build a strong foundation, eg, knowing 集める as 'atsumeru', then all you need to do is keep an eye out for the irregularities such as 集権 where the same kanji is read as 'shuu'.

I think a very (very!) general rule of thumb is if it is "Kanji A+kana as verb" or "Kanji A +Kana as idiom" Then it's the kun reading. If it's "Kanji A+ Kanji B (+kana)" or "Kanji B + Kanji A" then it's the on reading.

For me, to learn Kanji, I write it over and over again whilst also writing the different readings. Write down words that use the Kanji with the different meanings and then the kana for them. Perhaps figure out a little mnemonic within the kanji for the different readings?
At least for myself, repetition and association is key.
And having a good resource, such as a really good book or Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten for the DS are great. (The DS game has English->Japanese->Kanji and vice versa capabilities)

For reading, just start making flashcards from a list of JLPT kanji and vocabulary. Use Anki on your computer for this. This will occupy your time for two to three years if you're diligent, and if you are not, for five or more.

While doing this, just read newspaper articles you get off the Internet.

Enjoy your Japanese literacy!

Also, write often, and use as many kanji as you can. This will force you to learn the kanji. Write kanji often.

There is no trick to learning kanji. You just write and read them constantly and you'll get there in a few years.

Isn't overuse of Kanji a bad habit?

Yes. But for the sake of simplicity (I'm not writing a hundred page essay on how to learn kanji on this site), I just said to write tons of kanji all the time.

I had a feeling someone would ask about that, though.

If you want my opinion asking how to learn kanji is a waste of time. Everyone's brain "files" information with different patterns. What works wonderful for me doesn't mean it works for you. You know what is the best way for you to learn, apply it to kanji.

I think a book called "remembering the kana" is really good and can help you.

"overuse of Kanji"

What does that mean?

Like obsessively writing 子供　instead of 子ども　or 有り難う instead of ありがとう. Or, I suppose using ateji over kana for certain words. Country names, for example, or 苧環 rather than オダマキ

I'd say with most learners, they tend to do the opposite and under-use kanji. By the time you start coming across things like 有り難う you're usually wised-up enough to realize that's OTT. Although stuff like 子供 and オダマキ can be more practice, trial and error.

Although off topic from the OP's question, since people have already answered them, I wanted to point out that 子供 isn't nesecarily over-use of kanji.

Some people think 子供 is correct, some think 子ども, and others opt for the all hiragana こども.
I don't think either of them are incorrect, although in my opinion 子ども just looks plain wierd... Maybe because I use 子供.

Wikipedia I believe has some interesting information about the subject.
子供 - Wikipedia

Of course I am open to being corrected on this but I don't think 子供 is over-use of kanji at all, and think it all boils down to personal preference on this one :)

That's good to hear. I've had my ear bent more than once for using 子供 and I always thought it was a bit over-zealous.

The reason is politics and linguistics, as described in yuriyuri's link. 供 means "servant" or "attachment" or "gift to the gods" or is ateji or partially indicates plurality, so people argue the kanji should not be used, but rather the kana preferred. Others argue that aesthetically it should be in kana.

Some don't like the implication of 子供 that children are merely "attached" to adults and the implication that they aren't individuals.

There are other kanji like this as well, that are disliked in certain situations for PC reasons.

Yeah, what columbine said. Not so much 子供 since that seems common among native speakers (and I see it more than 子ども) but 有り難う very much so. You know, just kanji at every single opportunity no matter how inappropriate.

My favorite "overuses" are:
有る
出来る
御座る
宝籤

The last one is because I learned the old form of another character you can use in the second position (but my Mac won't let me type for some reason) before going to Japan and used it as a side-show freak type thing, to make me look like some weird, kanji-obsessed foreigner for laughs when I was out with my friends ;) 鬮

Today in my Japanese class, my Sensei was talking to us level 4s about writing Kanji and she had a really good idea. She picked apart the Kanji and made a fun little phrase about it. Like 魚 for fish she said "All of the fish in Ku Field have mustaches" because it has the 'ku' katakana at the top, the kanji for 'field' and what she called a 'mustache' at the bottom.
This just clicked with me, and I am very excited about learning kanji again! Maybe you can use it, too, come up with your own!

It's a good way to start, but I warn you that this will become increasingly difficult as you're expected to learn 20 a week for a couple of years to hit that magical 2000.

While we are on the subject,

昼ご飯

昼御飯

Which one is better? I usually see the former, but that could just be because I mostly read things geared towards younger people for practice.

昼ご飯 or even 昼ごはん looks better. 昼御飯 is really a little too much even though you will see it quite frequently.

In casual writing (and speech), we often just say お昼 or おひる to mean "lunch". You will also see ランチ、to tell the truth.

We use 昼食（ちゅうしょく） quite often as well. It really depends on the situation.

That is what I thought, thanks :)

I'm a little surprised about the ランチ thing though. I learned it a long time ago, but my book likes to obsessively use katakana words in place of Japanese words (I guess to make the material easier or something) so I always see things like ミルク over　牛乳 etc. I thought they were just doing the same thing for ランチ but I guess I was wrong.

ランチ tends to be a word I see that restaurants use to describe cheaper lunch specials.

Most Japanese I talk to call lunch お昼, 昼ごはん, or ごはん.

Just a little phrase thwon in the whole discussion :)

About 子ども. Nagoyankeeさん explained in a thread why always more people tend to write 子ども and not 子供 (which is the same reason Kyle explained).
I can't find the post anymore, but if I well remember he said that the conversion to 子ども from 子供 is rather recent, thus people still write it as 子供. But I might remember it wrong...

I've only ever seen 昼御飯 when I've been doing kanji practice. When I've been reading emails from friends or playing video games I've only seen 昼ご飯. I guess its like learning the stronger words in Japanese. You need to know it for when you see/hear it, but you shouldn't really use it?

Thats a new one on me - I'll be sure to remember that! Thanks :)

Still on topic, how would you choose to pronounce the number 0?

I got a couple of question regarding lunch. In a work enviroment, Japanese people use 昼食 or they actually use the word 昼休み or maybe the latter is more a scholastic terminology? And for overnight workers? I work overnight and I was telling a Japanese person something happened to my lunch break...I used 昼休み, but I was not sure if it was appropriate also due to the fact that it was at 2am.
Thank you.

I'd say it's just about as correct as calling a 2am break a "lunch break" in English.

When you work overnight all your times are changed. So yes, if you talk to overnight workers we say lunch for our lunch at night. We say goodnight when we go home in the morning and good morning when we go to work at night. And it is not only me who I am not native English speaker, other 50ish co-workers do the same (I learnt from them actually).

That's actually my point. Natives know "lunch" is wrong, but they call it that anyway. I don't have any experience with midnight crews in Japan, but I would default to using vocabulary as if we were a daytime crew just like I do with English.

Does your native language not do this? ...was it Italian? I forgot. :/

It is kinda hard to say I am having a 2am snack meal LOL.
Yes, I worked 3 years overnight in my country too (you are correct it is Italy) and we do the same thing there. Actually, there we have community groups that work on creating daily entertainement activities (like people who work day shifts have when they have evenings free) just for overnight crews (like bars, pubs, restaurant, theaters...).
My father worked 36 years overnight (I guess it runs in the family LOL) and trust me when he spoke about supper it was 7am :)

I've only ever really seen it as 昼ご飯 from text sources I've read, but I haven't read that many.

Also, in response to Kyle's post. Some of those overuses are ridiculous, I forgot about 有る and 出来る. Although I've only been exposed to them by means of other Japanese learners.

And don't forget 御目出度！http://www.webdico.com:8080/kanji/ma...code=SHIFT-JIS

Urghhhhh~ That's just preposterous. Kantango doesn't even understand it!

OMG thats just insane!!

If people wanna use kanji so much then they should learn Mandarin!

I didn't know that one. Always wrote it as おめでとう, never even wondered if it used kanji. Even Windows IME doesn't know it LOL.
有難う :)