Learning Japanese via Kanji
Man, I kind of wish I hadn't learned Kanji when, and the way I had. I don't really regret anything per se. But, now I'm seeing the value of learning Kanji properly. As I step out of my absolute newbie level and I start trying to really grow my comprehension I'm starting to realize just how crazy useful it would be if I had been actually trying this from the beginning.
A lot of sites and people DO recommend learning Kanji and learning it early, but approaches vary as do reasons. And a lot of these fail to explain why. I'll attempt to cover what I feel makes the most sense and why.
Firstly, where did I start with Kanji? After probably 3-4 months, I found a guide from Nihongoshark recommending using their deck and a particular process. This focused on creating your own stories for the Kanji based on the radicals and paying attention primarily to the meaning of the Kanji rather than the readings. And it recommends finding a pace you can stick to.
Before I go any further, I want to say that I think that this DOES meet certain needs. But it depends a lot upon exposure. As a casual learner who is interested in both speaking and reading though, I think it falls short. If I were more immersed or consuming a lot material on a daily basis, you would get a lot of what I'm about to suggest included basically as freebies in the process. As long as you were focusing on the Kanji while consuming that other material. So, it isn't by any means a BAD process. It just failed (in my opinion) to stress where it would be a good or a bad fit.
For those more casual learners, there are certainly benefits to learning the meaning of the Kanji. But, when you aren't processing a lot of Kanji daily, you don't always make the association between the Kanji meanings you know, and the words you're reading. And this is true for a few reasons; not all words formed of multiple Kanji make sense, or at least not to Westerners. And some I suspect even not to Japanese people.
The next problem is, even when it makes sense, the way a word is implied isn't always clear from the meaning associated with the Kanji. For instance, there are Kanji in this deck with meanings "pagoda" and "board". For the longest time I couldn't tell them apart because I didn't know "board" was referring to embarkation or loading something. Neither the Kanji, nor any of the words had any chance of making sense without the appropriate context.
The final big problem I hit was even when you know the definition, it isn't always clear how it might fit into a word. This is hard to describe, but as I learn more, I find each Kanji tends modify words in a different way, as well as it's position in a word (whether it is first, etc...). These nuances you can't learn or understand simply by assimilating Kanji meanings.
With these pitfalls, trying to use knowledge of Kanji to "guess" meanings of words leads to an incredibly low accuracy in the beginning. And I mean SUPER low. As I was getting through the Kanji originally and I would encounter words composed of those Kanji I would try and guess the meaning. I was probably batting less than 10%. However, the more my vocabulary grew, the better my accuracy.
For someone in my position, I think what would have made more sense would have been to throttle back the number of new Kanji daily from 20 to 5-10 and find or create a deck which included on and kun readings along with example words with each usage and their meanings. This is a lot or work. Yes. But so is 20 Kanji a day. And, since it necessarily includes words which are compounds of Kanji to cover all of the readings, it also helps reinforce other words as you go along.
Basically, I would have wanted to grow my vocabulary via my Kanji learning. Then, when I see a new word I don't just have a slight chance of knowing the meaning. I have a better chance of knowing the meaning and the pronunciation. And not only that, if you know the on and kun readings you even have a chance of understanding a totally new word you've only heard in spoken language. I wouldn't hold out MUCH hope of that being common. But, if you know the context of the sentence and you're only missing a word or two in it, you at least have a chance of figuring it out if you know both the Kanji meanings, readings and other words using them.
I would probably recommend as few as 5-7 new Kanji a day.
If you want to write in Japanese, then you also need a deck with stroke order. These DO exist already as a starting point. But, if you're adding writing into the mix I would say drop down to 3-5 Kanji a day.
If you want to shortcut a bit instead of heaping on more, maybe aim for what you think are the top 1-3 words, even if there are more readings rather than focusing on all variations of both readings. Then, you could probably make it up to 10 a day. What is important is that you have not just a mnemonic story to help you remember the meaning of the Kanji. Having vocab you drill yourself on as well will ensure you understand the "proper" meaning of the character and how to pronounce it. Even if you have just one word per Kanji. You should know which Kanji in the word it is, and the sound it gives to that word.
Most Kanji have just one On and Kun reading. And in many cases I find that either the On or the Kun reading is FAR more common for a given Kanji. And then, when there are multiple, it is often a result of euphony; so ひ becoming び or even ぴ. And if you've seen enough words or know how the euphony generally works, from one reading you might be able to properly read multiple variants.
Also, adding a word with a real meaning reinforces the learning. It creates more pathways in your brain to the correct meaning of the Kanji. You'll have both your mnemonic device and a vocab word (or multiple, depending on how much you take on).
I haven't used this technique myself. But I am planning on working to expand my Kanji knowledge. And this just might be something I do to get there. But, what I ultimately hope is that this explains why I think learning Kanji is useful to learning Japanese which gives some insights into what practices might help with which goals and study habits.
Doing 10 or less Kanji a day means at least 200+ days of studying for all of the Jouyou Kanji. Which is intimidating. No doubt. But, if you're learning casually... well, you're learning casually. And remember, if you were in Japanese you would be learning these over the course of your pre-College life. So, even 1 a day is quicker than you'd get through it in Japan as a native. If that is the pace it takes for things to stick, then that is the pace.
Also, as I said in an earlier post, adjust your deck settings in Anki. I personally find that while I can't remember too many new cards a day, I have yet to hit a point with reviewing where it wasn't helpful. When I first cranked up my settings I was pushing through 300-500 cards a day in my kanji deck for a week or two. But it meant I hit cards I was already starting to forget which I would have totally forgotten had I let the default limit dictate the review frequency. Not saying everyone is the same here, or that everyone can dedicate that time. Find the limits that work.
A lot of sites and people DO recommend learning Kanji and learning it early, but approaches vary as do reasons. And a lot of these fail to explain why. I'll attempt to cover what I feel makes the most sense and why.
Firstly, where did I start with Kanji? After probably 3-4 months, I found a guide from Nihongoshark recommending using their deck and a particular process. This focused on creating your own stories for the Kanji based on the radicals and paying attention primarily to the meaning of the Kanji rather than the readings. And it recommends finding a pace you can stick to.
Before I go any further, I want to say that I think that this DOES meet certain needs. But it depends a lot upon exposure. As a casual learner who is interested in both speaking and reading though, I think it falls short. If I were more immersed or consuming a lot material on a daily basis, you would get a lot of what I'm about to suggest included basically as freebies in the process. As long as you were focusing on the Kanji while consuming that other material. So, it isn't by any means a BAD process. It just failed (in my opinion) to stress where it would be a good or a bad fit.
For those more casual learners, there are certainly benefits to learning the meaning of the Kanji. But, when you aren't processing a lot of Kanji daily, you don't always make the association between the Kanji meanings you know, and the words you're reading. And this is true for a few reasons; not all words formed of multiple Kanji make sense, or at least not to Westerners. And some I suspect even not to Japanese people.
The next problem is, even when it makes sense, the way a word is implied isn't always clear from the meaning associated with the Kanji. For instance, there are Kanji in this deck with meanings "pagoda" and "board". For the longest time I couldn't tell them apart because I didn't know "board" was referring to embarkation or loading something. Neither the Kanji, nor any of the words had any chance of making sense without the appropriate context.
The final big problem I hit was even when you know the definition, it isn't always clear how it might fit into a word. This is hard to describe, but as I learn more, I find each Kanji tends modify words in a different way, as well as it's position in a word (whether it is first, etc...). These nuances you can't learn or understand simply by assimilating Kanji meanings.
With these pitfalls, trying to use knowledge of Kanji to "guess" meanings of words leads to an incredibly low accuracy in the beginning. And I mean SUPER low. As I was getting through the Kanji originally and I would encounter words composed of those Kanji I would try and guess the meaning. I was probably batting less than 10%. However, the more my vocabulary grew, the better my accuracy.
For someone in my position, I think what would have made more sense would have been to throttle back the number of new Kanji daily from 20 to 5-10 and find or create a deck which included on and kun readings along with example words with each usage and their meanings. This is a lot or work. Yes. But so is 20 Kanji a day. And, since it necessarily includes words which are compounds of Kanji to cover all of the readings, it also helps reinforce other words as you go along.
Basically, I would have wanted to grow my vocabulary via my Kanji learning. Then, when I see a new word I don't just have a slight chance of knowing the meaning. I have a better chance of knowing the meaning and the pronunciation. And not only that, if you know the on and kun readings you even have a chance of understanding a totally new word you've only heard in spoken language. I wouldn't hold out MUCH hope of that being common. But, if you know the context of the sentence and you're only missing a word or two in it, you at least have a chance of figuring it out if you know both the Kanji meanings, readings and other words using them.
I would probably recommend as few as 5-7 new Kanji a day.
If you want to write in Japanese, then you also need a deck with stroke order. These DO exist already as a starting point. But, if you're adding writing into the mix I would say drop down to 3-5 Kanji a day.
If you want to shortcut a bit instead of heaping on more, maybe aim for what you think are the top 1-3 words, even if there are more readings rather than focusing on all variations of both readings. Then, you could probably make it up to 10 a day. What is important is that you have not just a mnemonic story to help you remember the meaning of the Kanji. Having vocab you drill yourself on as well will ensure you understand the "proper" meaning of the character and how to pronounce it. Even if you have just one word per Kanji. You should know which Kanji in the word it is, and the sound it gives to that word.
Most Kanji have just one On and Kun reading. And in many cases I find that either the On or the Kun reading is FAR more common for a given Kanji. And then, when there are multiple, it is often a result of euphony; so ひ becoming び or even ぴ. And if you've seen enough words or know how the euphony generally works, from one reading you might be able to properly read multiple variants.
Also, adding a word with a real meaning reinforces the learning. It creates more pathways in your brain to the correct meaning of the Kanji. You'll have both your mnemonic device and a vocab word (or multiple, depending on how much you take on).
I haven't used this technique myself. But I am planning on working to expand my Kanji knowledge. And this just might be something I do to get there. But, what I ultimately hope is that this explains why I think learning Kanji is useful to learning Japanese which gives some insights into what practices might help with which goals and study habits.
Doing 10 or less Kanji a day means at least 200+ days of studying for all of the Jouyou Kanji. Which is intimidating. No doubt. But, if you're learning casually... well, you're learning casually. And remember, if you were in Japanese you would be learning these over the course of your pre-College life. So, even 1 a day is quicker than you'd get through it in Japan as a native. If that is the pace it takes for things to stick, then that is the pace.
Also, as I said in an earlier post, adjust your deck settings in Anki. I personally find that while I can't remember too many new cards a day, I have yet to hit a point with reviewing where it wasn't helpful. When I first cranked up my settings I was pushing through 300-500 cards a day in my kanji deck for a week or two. But it meant I hit cards I was already starting to forget which I would have totally forgotten had I let the default limit dictate the review frequency. Not saying everyone is the same here, or that everyone can dedicate that time. Find the limits that work.
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