All 214?

[RebelDogg]

I've been trying to wrap my head around Kanji since last night. I keep trying to come at it from different angles to find what study method will work for me.

I'm not sure if I should just start memorizing the 80 first grade characters and go from there or if I should start by memorizing the radicals.

I figure to start with the radicals and that should give me a better understanding of kanji in general.

So now here are my three questions:

Should I try to memorize all 214 radicals? My kanji book lists "The 79 Most Important Radicals." I was going to make 214 flash cards... but is that just kinda pointless?

Are the radicals like kanji in that they have several meanings? My book and a web site I was on didn't agree on the meanings of all the radicals. I just figured I'd write both meanings down to be safe.

Lastly, does the meaning of a radical change at all depending on it's location in the kanji? I was using the radical lookup in my book and noticing that kanji with the same radicals had similar roots. But if the kanji was say, in the ashi position instead of the hen position it didn't work out as well.

Thanks!

[Jessi]

Hi RebelDogg,

I wouldn't recommend just memorizing radicals to learn kanji. Start with the 80 first grade characters, and pay attention to the radicals that pop up a lot as you go along, but don't focus only on them. I'd focus more on the meanings of the kanji themselves rather than the meanings of each individual radical - while there are many kanji that work like pictographs in the lower grades, you'll find that as you progress to harder kanji the relationship between the radical and the kanji isn't always that obvious.

[chameleoncoder]

Hi,

I just wanted to throw out there another method that you may be interested in looking at. The Remembering the Kanji book by James Heisig has an incredible method for learning the kanji. The site Reviewing the Kanji (http://kanji.koohii.com/learnmore.php) is a companion to the book and has incredible material to help you get through it. There are lot of people who don't like his method but there are just as many who do and have used it to master the kanji. You can even download the first few sample chapters of the book at the link above which has around 250 of the kanji in it. To be fair I should say that the method is more of a two step process that involves first mastering recognizing and writing the kanji and then going back through them and learning the multiple readings.

Good luck with whatever method you choose!

[RebelDogg]

Thanks for the replies.

Jessie: After some thought and reading I agree with you. I should have stuck with my first mind about going with the first 80. I think I was trying too hard to remember every little thing about the kanji and getting mad at myself when I reviewed and didn't remember everything. However, I tend to study too hard and for too long and often times after a few hours I'm burnt. But then the next day I'm surprised to see how much I actually remember after I rest. So it's back to the first grade, so to speak!

chameleoncoder: I have heard of this book. I've been a bit leery of it because I've seen at least as much hate of it as I have love. But I've decided to go ahead and order it off of Amazon anyway as I've read the first few pages and think I may benefit from the method at least for now. Besides that, kanji has been whooping my butt and I really need a good structured method rather than straight random memorization!

Thanks again for the replies!

[Javizy]

I think you'll like Heisig. It definitely gives you the structure you want, and it's just so simple and easy to progress through, with immediately visible results. The only thing that should put you off it is the fact that it won't teach you how to read, but you'll be able to do this yourself many times faster after you finish it. I've read lots of criticism about it, but it seems to be based on either a lack of understanding or some sort of bitter nitpicking. The best thing you can do is judge for yourself.

[Gosza]

Javizy and chameleoncoder - I just started learning Japanese two weeks ago, but as you may imagine I immediately came across Heisig's books when browsing through various websites and forums. I wanted to check whether this way of learning would work for me so I got Remembering the Kana (Hiragana) and I found it very easy and effective. I can’t, however, imagine how would it work with Kanji.

If Kanji have meanings, unlike simple sounds in Kana, how does RTK1 work exactly? Are the given keywords in any way associated with the meaning hiding behind the Kanji? Is it worth spending let’s say a year learning only how to write Kanji and only then going through it all again to learn the readings and meanings?

I’m impressed by Hesig’s technique and I definitely see myself using it to learn Kanji but I’m a bit put off by the fact that it feels that I won’t be actually moving forward that much (I know I might be terribly wrong here, hence this post).

[QuackingShoe]

@Gosza,
I don't have time to make a big post or run the search myself at the moment, but I wanted to mention that there are a lot of posts by myself and Javizy and others on this site that you can search for. There's also a very active forum on kanji.koohii.com that has a few stickied threads all about it.

[chameleoncoder]

Hi Gosza,

As QuackingShoe mentioned there's a lot of good material about your questions over at the kanji.koohii.com site but I thought I'd add a few things here.

If Kanji have meanings, unlike simple sounds in Kana, how does RTK1 work exactly? Are the given keywords in any way associated with the meaning hiding behind the Kanji? Is it worth spending let’s say a year learning only how to write Kanji and only then going through it all again to learn the readings and meanings?

The Remembering the Kanji book is actually quite a different approach than the Kana books, since the characters are much more complex. The keywords in the book are in fact the actual (or a variation of the actual) meaning of the kanji in english.

The hardest part about learning the kanji would definitely have to be learning to recognize and write them. Even if you were learning the readings at the same time as the kanji themselves (as you would with other methods) you are still learning the same thing. Only with the Heisig book you associate the kanji with a meaning you already know (since it's english) and can therefore use that meaning as a building block to remember the character itself. Without this association you would have only the japanese/chinese readings, which may not even be words you have learned yet and are therefore left with a huge amount to memorize and not much to help you remember the character.

Taking a year to get through the book would be at quite a relaxed pace. Most go through the book at around 15 - 20 per day which equals out to around 100 - 133 days. Then on your second pass through the kanji to learn the readings, your workload is far less as you are now essentially just learning vocab. I don't think the Heisig method would be considered any slower than doing it all together, in fact it might be faster since your speed may be increased due to better motivation.

[Gosza]

Thanks for the short explanation and thanks for that website. It's really strange that I haven't come across it before.

Getting back to my kana.