Where to learn Kanji?

[Tiduas]

I am trying to learn Kanji, but i have no good place to learn it at.
All sites just have the Kanji, along with some bad ways of learning pronancuation of it.

I wanna know where you all learn the Kanji? There must be a good place where i can learn them on. Or maybe there is a fantastic book out there?

I have tried to learn from ThejapanesePage but they are teaching me so many hard kanjis before the easy ones and i just don't like to learn them that way, and they don't have so many kanjis either. Otherwise it's a good site

[Javizy]

The easiest way to learn them has to be the Heisig method. A lot of people criticise it, but I think that's because they don't understand exactly what it sets out to achieve.

Basically, it allows you to associate a keyword with a character in such a way that you remember how to write it from memory. Simply writing out characters again and again gives you no means of connecting the meaning with the writing, and no understanding of the individual parts of each character, so it's incredibly easy to forget. What Heisig attempts to do is give you a mental image of the meaning created from associating the radicals that make up the character.

Take 厚 for example. Its primary meaning is 'thick', and it's made up of three parts: 'cliff'. 'sun', and 'child'. So you put together a little story that suits you using these elements, for example, 'anyone who'd leave a child on a cliff under the sun would have to be thick'. This may sound stupid, but if you're able to make a vivid image of this situation in your mind, the writing of the character jumps out at you when you think of the word 'thick'.

It requires some patience though, since you can't really learn the readings until you learn all the meanings, otherwise it complicates things and slows down the process. However, you start to associate the meanings with the Japanese words rather than the English ones, so you can use them in your writing. Furthermore, it is surprisingly easy to learn 50 or more characters per day with a fairly minimal effort, you'll be quite surprised if you try it.

Naturally most people want to start reading straight away, but Heisig is like insurance for the future, because it really is hard to forget them if you follow the method properly.

PM me if you're interested because I'm pretty sure the book is out of print and only available secondhand at jacked up prices, so I think this is one case where a bit of a file sharing wouldn't hurt

[ddell]

I've found that Zhongwen.com is a good place to learn Kanji. This site is about Chinese, and I know there are differences between Japanese Kanji and Chinese Hanzi, but the way the characters are broken down into parts and the way the characters are organized into families, makes this site very powerful.

It's also very handy that you can look up the characters several different ways and each character is presented as a link to its full definition. For example, if you've looked up 明, it will say that it's composed of 日 and 月, each of which are also links to their own definitions.

There's also a book form of this website: Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary, by Rick Harbaugh (available on http://www.amazon.com)

[Zarmao]

Remembering the Kanji Part 1 has been newly re-printed in a 5th Edition. It's available and really cheap on Amazon (around 21 bucks).

Part 2 and part 3 do seem to be out of print. But I'm hoping that they too will be reprinted sometime soon now that part 1 has a new edition.

[annie]

I like the Basic Kanji Book (4893580914). There are 2 basic volumes, and then 2 intermediate. But I don't like the Intermediate ones as much.

[untmdsprt]

I've found that writing the kanji of the words you already know is a great help to me. They make more sense than just trying to memorize every kanji and not knowing where they're used. It also helps to know how they're pronounced this way.

[kichigaijin]

Just thought I'd post my strategy:

1. Use Kanji-A-Day & the practice notebooks off of thejapanshop.com for the wrote practice of the first 730 kanji. Then use Kanji & Kana (1 & 2) for any after that.

2. Use "Read Japanese Today" as a quickstart for some easy mnemonics

3. Use "Remembering the Kanji" from Henshall, and "Kanji Mnemonics" from Bodnaryk for anything after the first 300

4. Use "Decoding Kanji" Habein & Mathias, "Kanji in Context" Japan Times, and the Nintendo DS to refine the kanji I have- including quizes, popular combinations, and some more advanced study in the structure of the characters.

I've pretty much ignored kanji for the most part. I'm somewhere around 200 on a good day. Decent number more i can recognize but don't know exactly how it's written. Finally realizing how much it's hampered my ability to increase my vocabulary.

I'll tell you if it works.

[nandemoii]

I've been learning Japanese for some time now, but I have NEVER tried to learn kanjis. And what's more, I DO konw plenty of them. How is that possible?

The way I do it:

I use Japanese texts written both in kanji and only in hiragana.
The text is translated into a language I already know.
The Japanese text, the hiragana transcription and the translation are all placed in vertical columns side by side in the same page.
The Japanese texts are recorded by Japanese native speakers.

1. I read the translation to be able to understand what it is all about.
2. I listen to the Japanese text and SIMULTANEOUSLY look at the written text in Japanese.
3. I listen to the text and SIMULTANEOUSLY read the translation.
4. When I understand the text, I listen to it once or twice more and than go on doing other texts in the same way.

I do not try to learn kanji, what I am interested in is the story, not the language.

And the strange thing has happened:
Now I am able to type in planty of simple texts in Japanese using kanji.
And what's more I am able to recognize the kanjis in new texts and read them without any audio to support me.

By texts I mean TEXTS (a story, a joke, a newspaper article, a poem, a novel), not individual kanjis on their own.

That's true, I am not able to write kanjis by hand, but I hardly ever use a pen to write anything even in my mother tongue or English, and I write quite a lot.

I am sure that if it turns out necessary to do so, I will be able to master the stroke order in a relatively short time.

And now you can see:
something big above your head:
天。


PS
Heisig method is no good, it is a waste of tme.

[TheNationalPool]

For me, it's just pure repetition.

I go here:
http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/ka ... yframe.htm

and grab a pen and a notebook and go at it for awhile.

Good luck! That's what works for me.

[kichigaijin]

Update
Finished "Read japanese Today", it kinda stunk, a lot of the kanji were old-fashioned or just plain wrong.

Ran into a roadblock today in my tutoring session.

In a nutshell, my tutor doesn't know how to quiz me or test my progress with my current kanji approach. That approach consists of running through the first 730 kanji in the kanji-a-day calendars, focusing only on stroke order, english meaning, 1 or 2 readings, and a couple specific combinations. Seems my approach is a bit too cursory (at this stage) to be considered achieving working knowledge of the kanji.

Unfortunately, I'm not quite at the Kanji in Context level eventhough I have the books.

It looks like I'm going to have to go with a separate book to actually learn the kanji more deeply.

I'm still planning on going through the calendars for some immediate familiarity, as well as reading through a mnemonic book or two just for added exposure, and moving on to Kanji in Context later.

Took the advice of a friend who's about the most advanced guy I know locally and went for the Beginning Kanji series. Hate spending more money but at least it's got exercises that can be photocopied, as well as focus on readings & combinations.

If I use the Beginning Kanji books as my main "textbook" when it comes to kanji, while using everything else as a supplement, I should be alright- I hope. hehe

PS- i've been reading parallel translations, working with Japanese e-mails, and Japanese websites for years. Although I can recognize a good number of kanji I would never say I "know them". It's too easy to get confused by look alike kanji and to not know specific readings (especially when ateji are involved).

[kichigaijin]

UPDATE:

Just wanted to report an update.
Basic Kanji Book (Volume 1) is a really sweet book/series.
I finished the first 5 chapters in like 4 days (55kanji).
Trying to pace myself a little bit.
I could easily drop everything else I'm doing to try to zip through this book.
It's a lot of fun and the drills really nail home the readings & a good number of combinations.

ところで
listening to Newbie Lesson 7, Math for Language Learning #1 and can't stop laughing at Yoshi. Man he's awesome.