Bucket-Hat Guide to Learning Kanji
I gotta say, learning Kanji seems to always be one of the biggest talking points when it comes to learning Japanese for people who are serious about attaining any reasonable level of skill/fluency in the language.
So, firstly, the useless statement I have to make before I dive into the juicier details. There is not right or wrong way to learn Kanji. But, this really stems from the fact that there an infinite number of specific reasons one might be seeking to acquire this information.
More realistically though, I see 2 primary approaches which might make sense. And out of those, one isn't REALLY all that realistic:
Sure, you can distill this down and fast track it in a fraction of the time. But, you likely don't have the same level of immersion and reinforcement. And you likely have no need to learn in this fashion.
If you have a LOT of time on your hands, and you plan to learn how to read, write and speak in Japanese and want to progress in all of these at roughly the same pace... it might make sense to try and learn Kanji this way. But, even at an accelerated pace, you're probably going to spend at least a year on Kanji alone before you even get your feet wet learning anything else.
Why, because the native way of learning the Jouyou Kanji is to take them in chunks. Spend hours practising writing out each Kanji in the correct stroke order. Committing some sort of basic meaning behind the word to memory. Learning all of the different Kun and On readings. And still likely walking away confused by the "meaning" of the Kanji or how to make use of any of that knowledge. And then multiply that by about 2200.
I'm not going to dive into the why of it, because there is a lot to say, and a lot I probably don't even know on the topic. Suffice it to say, it works, but there is a reason they spend over a decade on this endeavour.
The next approach is fairly common among people learning Japanese as a second or otherwise additional language. And that is to try and learn the meaning of the Kanji first. This will usually occur after having learning Hiragana and Katakana and maybe some basic phrases and grammar. But, you won't normally get too far in your studies before you realize that you NEED to get this done sooner or later. So, it blows my mind that there are some key things which no one seems to state loudly and clearly enough.
Learning Kanji this way can happen a LOT faster than a decade+ or whatever accelerated schedule you might devise for learning the "native way". The common approach is to learn 20-25 a day using flash cards in a SRS app like Anki. At this pace you can finish it in about 3-4 months. Even at just 20-25 a day though, this can end up taking up between 30mins - 1hr or more each day depending on your retention rate and the complexity of how you're remembering the meanings. So, don't get too ambitious unless you have a LOT of free time on your hands.
But, that isn't the part where the advice falters. Look at any forum, app, etc... where there is a community of people learning Kanji and you'll quickly find a post like "What is the difference between village and town?" or "WTF is a decameron?".
Short answer; it doesn't matter.
Kanji do not mean/represent words. They represent concepts. Some times those concepts align nicely with a single word in English or your chosen language. But most times they don't. Some times remembering the meaning helps you guess/decipher what some new Kanji compound means... but other times, it will lead you on a wild goose chase.
You don't really want to learn the "meanings". What you REALLY want to learn is how to distinguish one from another. The real "meaning" of a particular Kanji is something you're only really going to understand with repeated exposure.
So, don't beat yourself up trying to figure out the difference in meaning between words like village and town. Or forest and grove. These are just placeholders. It is only important that once you decide upon a placeholder you can correct assign it to the correct Kanji later.
If you come across Kanji which use words which seem like synonyms to you... change them (if that helps). Call them Village #1 and Village #2. Call them A and B. Call them Bob and Fred. It doesn't REALLY matter what words you ascribe to them, so long as every time you see Bob, you remember that it is Bob and not Fred or even Sarah.
THIS is the single most important thing to remember. No matter what meaning you give a Kanji, in many cases you'll eventually come across that Kanji in a word, where your understanding of that thing you've associated with it... doesn't quite make sense.
I don't really have any problem with the names given with systems like Heisig's which is pretty popular. It makes sense for your placeholders to have some significance to what that Kanji will eventually come to mean for you. It may even help in your vocabulary acquisition.
The other thing people don't seem to appreciate is, if two Kanji placeholder words have very similar meanings to you, that is probably because the kanji have very similar meanings as well. Japanese has synonyms just like pretty much every language. Furthermore, if a Kanji has a meaning which makes no sense to you, there is probably a reason for that; some Kanji which made the Jouyou list are common elements in names, rather than in words. Spending hours trying to beat both the Kanji and the meaning of the meaning of the placeholder word aren't going to net you any real world value.
Like I said, what is important isn't what you think the words assigned the Kanji mean. What matters is that you can UNIQUELY identify each one. Period. You don't need to know what a decameron is. Though, I'll wager every person studying Kanji does by this point. If you decide to use the word decameron, it matters that you remember to call that Kanji decameron every time you see it until you get far enough along in your studies that you don't need placeholders any more.
How then do you learn the readings and how to write Kanji? Well, that is up to you. But, I will say this... if you do a bit of research on how the On and Kun readings are used, and then dive into the vocabulary, that the readings will get learned naturally over time as you absorb more and more vocab.
Writing, you can do along side learning the meanings if you want. Or you can learn it after the fact. Unlike reading, writing is a completely disparate skill. And much less natural than speaking or reading. It may take a lot more time to master. You won't necessarily learn to write the Kanji simply by learning to read and recognize them. So, it does boil down to you preferences and goals.
If you know, or think you know you want to learn writing, my advice is to try it alongside learning the meanings. But, be willing to put it on the back burner if it is crushing your motivation. You can always come back to it later. Like I said, it is a totally different skill from reading, and you won't really lose anything by not learning the reading and writing of the Kanji at the same time. There are SOME benefits to learning them at the some time, but this mostly revolves around reading hand written or painted kanji. Learning the brush strokes is supposed to help decipher that mess. I can't vouch for that. My writing is not that far along.
Whatever your approach, 頑張りなさい.
So, firstly, the useless statement I have to make before I dive into the juicier details. There is not right or wrong way to learn Kanji. But, this really stems from the fact that there an infinite number of specific reasons one might be seeking to acquire this information.
More realistically though, I see 2 primary approaches which might make sense. And out of those, one isn't REALLY all that realistic:
- Learn Kanji like a native.
- Start simply by learning to distinguish each Kanji.
Sure, you can distill this down and fast track it in a fraction of the time. But, you likely don't have the same level of immersion and reinforcement. And you likely have no need to learn in this fashion.
If you have a LOT of time on your hands, and you plan to learn how to read, write and speak in Japanese and want to progress in all of these at roughly the same pace... it might make sense to try and learn Kanji this way. But, even at an accelerated pace, you're probably going to spend at least a year on Kanji alone before you even get your feet wet learning anything else.
Why, because the native way of learning the Jouyou Kanji is to take them in chunks. Spend hours practising writing out each Kanji in the correct stroke order. Committing some sort of basic meaning behind the word to memory. Learning all of the different Kun and On readings. And still likely walking away confused by the "meaning" of the Kanji or how to make use of any of that knowledge. And then multiply that by about 2200.
I'm not going to dive into the why of it, because there is a lot to say, and a lot I probably don't even know on the topic. Suffice it to say, it works, but there is a reason they spend over a decade on this endeavour.
The next approach is fairly common among people learning Japanese as a second or otherwise additional language. And that is to try and learn the meaning of the Kanji first. This will usually occur after having learning Hiragana and Katakana and maybe some basic phrases and grammar. But, you won't normally get too far in your studies before you realize that you NEED to get this done sooner or later. So, it blows my mind that there are some key things which no one seems to state loudly and clearly enough.
Learning Kanji this way can happen a LOT faster than a decade+ or whatever accelerated schedule you might devise for learning the "native way". The common approach is to learn 20-25 a day using flash cards in a SRS app like Anki. At this pace you can finish it in about 3-4 months. Even at just 20-25 a day though, this can end up taking up between 30mins - 1hr or more each day depending on your retention rate and the complexity of how you're remembering the meanings. So, don't get too ambitious unless you have a LOT of free time on your hands.
But, that isn't the part where the advice falters. Look at any forum, app, etc... where there is a community of people learning Kanji and you'll quickly find a post like "What is the difference between village and town?" or "WTF is a decameron?".
Short answer; it doesn't matter.
Kanji do not mean/represent words. They represent concepts. Some times those concepts align nicely with a single word in English or your chosen language. But most times they don't. Some times remembering the meaning helps you guess/decipher what some new Kanji compound means... but other times, it will lead you on a wild goose chase.
You don't really want to learn the "meanings". What you REALLY want to learn is how to distinguish one from another. The real "meaning" of a particular Kanji is something you're only really going to understand with repeated exposure.
So, don't beat yourself up trying to figure out the difference in meaning between words like village and town. Or forest and grove. These are just placeholders. It is only important that once you decide upon a placeholder you can correct assign it to the correct Kanji later.
If you come across Kanji which use words which seem like synonyms to you... change them (if that helps). Call them Village #1 and Village #2. Call them A and B. Call them Bob and Fred. It doesn't REALLY matter what words you ascribe to them, so long as every time you see Bob, you remember that it is Bob and not Fred or even Sarah.
THIS is the single most important thing to remember. No matter what meaning you give a Kanji, in many cases you'll eventually come across that Kanji in a word, where your understanding of that thing you've associated with it... doesn't quite make sense.
I don't really have any problem with the names given with systems like Heisig's which is pretty popular. It makes sense for your placeholders to have some significance to what that Kanji will eventually come to mean for you. It may even help in your vocabulary acquisition.
The other thing people don't seem to appreciate is, if two Kanji placeholder words have very similar meanings to you, that is probably because the kanji have very similar meanings as well. Japanese has synonyms just like pretty much every language. Furthermore, if a Kanji has a meaning which makes no sense to you, there is probably a reason for that; some Kanji which made the Jouyou list are common elements in names, rather than in words. Spending hours trying to beat both the Kanji and the meaning of the meaning of the placeholder word aren't going to net you any real world value.
Like I said, what is important isn't what you think the words assigned the Kanji mean. What matters is that you can UNIQUELY identify each one. Period. You don't need to know what a decameron is. Though, I'll wager every person studying Kanji does by this point. If you decide to use the word decameron, it matters that you remember to call that Kanji decameron every time you see it until you get far enough along in your studies that you don't need placeholders any more.
How then do you learn the readings and how to write Kanji? Well, that is up to you. But, I will say this... if you do a bit of research on how the On and Kun readings are used, and then dive into the vocabulary, that the readings will get learned naturally over time as you absorb more and more vocab.
Writing, you can do along side learning the meanings if you want. Or you can learn it after the fact. Unlike reading, writing is a completely disparate skill. And much less natural than speaking or reading. It may take a lot more time to master. You won't necessarily learn to write the Kanji simply by learning to read and recognize them. So, it does boil down to you preferences and goals.
If you know, or think you know you want to learn writing, my advice is to try it alongside learning the meanings. But, be willing to put it on the back burner if it is crushing your motivation. You can always come back to it later. Like I said, it is a totally different skill from reading, and you won't really lose anything by not learning the reading and writing of the Kanji at the same time. There are SOME benefits to learning them at the some time, but this mostly revolves around reading hand written or painted kanji. Learning the brush strokes is supposed to help decipher that mess. I can't vouch for that. My writing is not that far along.
Whatever your approach, 頑張りなさい.
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