Kanji Order

[Urami1]

Hi. Is there a specific order to kanji in each grade? I have a few resources on learning kanji and they all have differing order which is a little confusing when learning new kanji.

[Psy]

Hi. Is there a specific order to kanji in each grade? I have a few resources on learning kanji and they all have differing order which is a little confusing when learning new kanji.

Can you be a little more specific? Typically (at least in the graded lists I've looked at) they are sorted in Japanese alphabetical order first by on'yomi, but different learner's guides sort them as they see fit. I'm not sure how this would make things more difficult for your learning, but if you could provide some more detail about the problem you're having I'll do what I can to help you.

[プチクレア]

Psyさん is right, as always; in japanese books (for example kanji books for middle school children), they are sorted by alphabetical on-yomi order; a few english language books ( the "Guide to remembering japanese characters", for example) also use that order, as do most computer flashcards programs. I'm not sure about the JLPT order however (I think the kanjis may be sorted by stroke number)

Inside of a same aphabetical group (for example all characters pronouced ホウ), they are usually sorted by stroke number;

Urami1さん, in my experience the most confusing thing of all is having several sources for learning new kanji (if only because of the reason you pointed out, but also because translations may differ, you might be learning japanese in a language that's not your mother tongue...). I have enough kanji guides to open a small bookshop ! But in the end I found using only one paid far more than trying to combine different books.

And if you're looking for electronic ressources (ie flashcards or such), there are quite a few on the net that correspond to given books (mostly Heisig, but also the JLPT levels, and a few others)

[Javizy]

If you mean the order the characters are presented in the books you are using, the differences are probably due to the respective author's approach to teaching them. There is no set order for learning them, but some approaches make the task easier than others.

JLPT, for example, requires you to learn the characters in four groups, which I assume are in order of common use. You end up learning characters which contain other characters that you haven't learnt yet, so your memory has to do a lot of unnecessary work.

The book I would recommend is Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. It introduces the characters in an order that means you always have the building blocks you need to construct the more complicated characters. Understanding what the individual parts of a character mean allows you to recall them far more easily. There are a lot of other advantages to this book (including stroke order), but I always seem to be ranting on about it, so I'll leave you to check it out

[Psy]

The book I would recommend is Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. . . . but I always seem to be ranting on about it, so I'll leave you to check it out

You really sound like I did 2 years ago. I even tell people it's the secret to my kanji success and the reason I'm able to study 10~20 (more when I did it full time) new characters in one day and still retain them... yet they still turn up their noses at it and continue to suffer with their class task of learning 80 kanji in the next month and a half... that's less than a week's work, people!

[josiah]

http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/pdf/RK4/RK4-00.pdf

is it really that good??

[Psy]

http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/pdf/RK4/RK4-00.pdf

is it really that good??

If you follow through with it, it absolutely is. From what I hear a lot of people end up disliking the lack of readings and end up trying to incorporate them and further details into their studies (something stated quite plainly in the beginning not to do), and then later give up out of frustration. It does take a leap of faith to do to this much work without studying a single word of Japanese... but I haven't heard of anyone who finished Heisig and regretted having done so-- I know I haven't, and I'm well on my way to reading Mandarin.

[プチクレア]

I know I haven't, and I'm well on my way to reading Mandarin.

Mandarin ?
I'm one of those people who couldn't get through Heisig (not because of the reading, but because I had trouble memorizing the "stories" for the kanji)

However, I'm willing to try again if there's a mandarin equivalent .

[Psy]

I know I haven't, and I'm well on my way to reading Mandarin.

Mandarin ?
I'm one of those people who couldn't get through Heisig (not because of the reading, but because I had trouble memorizing the "stories" for the kanji)

However, I'm willing to try again if there's a mandarin equivalent .

Umm? You don't have to "memorize" the stories so much as you do visualize them. Once you can see what's going on in your mind's eye, the work is done and you can move on. You don't even need to use Heisig's stories-- they're just there to show you the kind of things you're supposed to be coming up with. Since 75% of the characters in the book don't even have stories, I'd advise giving it another try.

There is no Mandarin equivalent of the book, but the mnemonic system introduced in RTK is applicable to learning any character you'll ever encounter. Because of Heisig and my ongoing study, the radicals and visualizations have become so well established and reinforced in my mind that I today can see an unfamiliar character in the morning and, spending only a moment to make a mental note, be able to write it out on paper later that day straight from memory-- This is the kind of proficiency I wish on all students of kanji and why I so highly praise RTK.

The only real snag is that you do have to work hard for it.

[Javizy]

Like Psy said, you don't memorise the stories themselves, but rather the image that they create. Memorising the stories would be like trying to remember 2000 Shakespeare quotes word-for-word, where getting a word wrong means miswriting part of a character. If you create a vivid enough image encompassing all the elements of the character, just hearing the keyword is enough to bring it surging back to the front of your mind, just like if somebody asked you 'how's your family?' when you hadn't seen them for a while, you'd have vivid images of your parents and siblings in your mind's eye.

Heisig's stories are stories that worked for him. For me, a lot of them were TERRIBLE, so I made my own for those ones, which is what you have to do after 500 characters anyway. You have to choose something specific to your interpretation of the word, something you can get back to without any effort. You should ask yourself some questions when doing this: when I hear this word in a months time am I going to remember this image easily? Is this image flexible enough to combine with other images? Will I confuse this image with any others?

A lot of the time, I use characters or people that relate to the word since they can easily act in your other images. One of mine features Geppeto (工) from Pinocchio high-five-ing Van Damme (力) because they made an achievement (功) on Xbox 360. Whatever works, right?

[プチクレア]

I still found that difficult. My main problem was that by changing the keywords for the core characters, the stories tended to lose coherence ( I found myself using similar but not exact keywords in different kanji and then got lost). However, I think the basic principle is sound; what I mainly like in Heisig is that book 3 ( I'm not sure it's still in print) focuses on kanji beyond the 1,945 jouyou, and that's what I'm aiming for now...

[Urami1]

I was wondering more if there was a certian order. RIght now I'm really using 4 resources. 2 of them are online, 1 is an actual book and 1 is a Nintendo DS game I imported from Japan.
The online resources are:
http://japanese.about.com/library/blkodarchives.htm (I use this for stroke order mainly),
http://www.nihongoresources.com/ (I use this one as a kanji dictionary).
The name of the book I'm using is "A GIude to Reading and Writing Japanese" by FLorance Sakade.
The name of the DS game is Kageyama Method - Dennou Hanpuku: Tadashii KanjiKakitori-Kun.
The book is ordered by the onyomi reading but the DS game and the online resource I use for stroke order I really don't have a clue how they're ordered.

[Psy]

I was wondering more if there was a certian order. RIght now I'm really using 4 resources. 2 of them are online, 1 is an actual book and 1 is a Nintendo DS game I imported from Japan.
The online resources are:
http://japanese.about.com/library/blkodarchives.htm (I use this for stroke order mainly),
http://www.nihongoresources.com/ (I use this one as a kanji dictionary).
The name of the book I'm using is "A GIude to Reading and Writing Japanese" by FLorance Sakade.
The name of the DS game is Kageyama Method - Dennou Hanpuku: Tadashii KanjiKakitori-Kun.
The book is ordered by the onyomi reading but the DS game and the online resource I use for stroke order I really don't have a clue how they're ordered.

Again, there isn't any strict order, only suggestions. People have different approaches. Pick one, go with it, and stop obsessing about it. Better to decide how you want to learn and study consistently, as you need to learn the whole jouyou anyway.

[annie]

Again, there isn't any strict order, only suggestions. People have different approaches. Pick one, go with it, and stop obsessing about it. Better to decide how you want to learn and study consistently, as you need to learn the whole jouyou anyway.

Well, there is actually a strict order in which Japanese students study them (in elementary & junior high, at least, I can't speak beyond that)

If it's a Japanese nintendo game, then it most likely goes by that order.

But, as I've said before I don't advocate that order for Japanese as a 2nd language learners.

[Psy]

But, as I've said before I don't advocate that order for Japanese as a 2nd language learners.

That reminds me... I'm not sure that I would advocate it for Japanese as a 1st language learners either. Since you're there in the thick of it, would you have an opinion about what they say regarding current students and their ability with kanji? Is it true or isn't it? Is it a big problem or is it just the media dramatizing things?

Just curious!