C. ([info]troisnuits) wrote in [info]linguaphiles,
@ 2008-11-21 23:33:00
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Memorising Kanji
Hi everyone!

I'm an English & French speaker who's previously done a few years of Spanish and Russian (all of that is gone, except for my ability to read and write in the cyrillic alphabet :P).
I'm doing a degree in Japanese and I am really struggling with finding the best way to learn how to write kanjis. Well, how to remember all the various transcriptions, rather. I feel completely overwhelmed by them already although we've only been through seventy of them or so. I have the time and I think the dedication to do OK, but I really need a decent methodology.

The material we work with is a print-out she gave us (of hundreds of pages) broken down into numbered lessons. Except there is no theme to each lesson or anything, it's totally arbitrary. And they are no classified by key or anything either.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated! Also I do not have a photographic memory at all which I think complicates things :/

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[info]alirose
2008-11-21 11:11 pm UTC (link)
for kanji I just drill with flashcards over and over. It's more complicated with meaning, on reading and kun reading, so on one side of the car I put the kanji, and on the other I put the readings at the very top and the meaning at the bottom and cover either top or bottom depending on what I'm working on. it gets easier with practice. a little bit anyway.

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[info]troisnuits
2008-11-22 01:34 pm UTC (link)
Have you found flashcards work when you have a lot of them to learn though? I started making some exactly as you suggested a few weeks ago, but then wondered if it'd be very effective when I got to the hundreds of them to know.

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[info]alirose
2008-11-22 04:18 pm UTC (link)
Yup. You should see the stacks of flash cards I have for Chinese and Japanese. And it's good because I can always go back a quiz myself, even when I'm not taking a class.

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[info]keskiyonaurinko
2008-11-24 07:43 pm UTC (link)
Just think about how rewarding it'll be when the stack of cards you know > the stack of cards you don't know!

Seriously, though, flashcards are really the best way to do it, imho. It's the biggest hurdle for me when I'm studying the language informally; I can't conjure up the will power to just charge through and do it.

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[info]keeraa
2008-11-21 11:19 pm UTC (link)
Writing them really helped me a lot in the beginning. After a while you start to recognise the patterns, which leads you to associate the radicals and such with meanings. Then when you come across a new kanji, it becomes much easier to guess its meaning.

On flashcards I used to also put sample sentences so I could get used to reading it in context, possibly with other kanji that I was focusing on at that time.

There's no real easy way to go about kanji; it's memorisation through and through. But, just like everything else, if you keep using it, it's eventually got to stick! Good luck!

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[info]troisnuits
2008-11-22 01:36 pm UTC (link)
Okay, I guess I will try a little harder with the writing :) thanks!

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[info]amiveryfar
2008-11-22 01:17 am UTC (link)
Digital flashcards with audio helped me a ton. :D It helps attach a oral to the visual. If you have an iPod Touch or iPhone, you can download such an application via iTunes and practice on the go. :D

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[info]troisnuits
2008-11-22 01:37 pm UTC (link)
Digital flashcards with audio? That sounds intriguing. I don't have an ipod touch or iphone though :( thanks for the idea though, I'll try to hunt such a program down!

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[info]akibare
2008-11-22 01:29 am UTC (link)
The only advice I have is that you should drill on actual words, not only the kanji alone, particularly if you don't speak Japanese normally already.

The reason is, as you probably found out already, Japanese read the characters in many ways, varying by word, and while there are some good rules you can guess by, there really ARE no hard and fast rules for which reading goes where - the reading is the one that makes a word that makes sense, of course.

Sometimes the meaning and the reading are tied (such as the example 楽, which is read がく when in the "music" sense and らく when in the "easy" sense) but not always. Of course, when they are, it's important for you to learn that, also.

So, get a good dictionary that lists words using those letters, and make sure that you have at least ONE word for each reading, AND each meaning, and each combination of those. Then make the flash cards from those.

Eventually you'll know the meaning partly from the official definition, and partly from "it's the X in XY" type descriptions, and those descriptions will make sense.

This is how kids in regular school learn them also. They have it a bit easier since they have the vocabulary first (so when they learn 電気 when studying 電 it's a word でんき they've heard forever) but there's really no way around it, plus you'll get vocabulary at the same time. Tests are always either reading or writing of words, in fact words in a sentence context.

Others maybe have better answers, I know there are people who seem to be able to learn everything in a very few years but... I don't know, I did the slow way in school.

In the third grade we start learning about 部首（ぶしゅ）or "parts", "radicals" that have meaning in characters. Also then we learned about the types of characters 六書（りくしょ） like 象形文字・指事文字・会意文字・形声文字 (ones that are literal drawings, ones that are diagrams, ones that are combined by meaning from other characters, and ones that have a meaning part plus a "sound" part). 75% of characters are that last type, they have a "part" for the meaning, then the rest is a clue of the pronunciation. Once you start noticing on your own how characters share parts, you should look this up and learn the parts (the ones you're noticing, look for third grade materials or you can ask your teacher, he/she would be happy to tell you about it I'm sure) because it will become a shortcut, AND it will help you describe characters that you don't know to Japanese-literate people, which comes in handy. Also you need it to use a regular character dictionary.

But the basic thing is, learn the characters, then drill hard on compound words that have them in there (plus sentences with the relevant verbs/adjectives/etc for the kunyomi stuff too of course).

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[info]troisnuits
2008-11-22 01:39 pm UTC (link)
Thank you so much for posting that :) I'll try to find a good dictionary ASAP.

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[info]shizuku_san
2008-11-22 04:32 pm UTC (link)
I really like Kodansha's Essential Kanji Dictionary.

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[info]darth_blade
2008-11-22 01:52 am UTC (link)
I would recommend reading actual Japanese text. Kanji is my weakest point when it comes to Japanese and I had great difficulty keeping up with my class using just flashcards. I then decided to train myself on actual text and began reading first the Japanese wikipedia and then untranslated manga. The latter is especially effective since many comics already have furigana next to the kanji.
Also, try to remember radicals and phonetic radicals. Especially phonetic radicals. Those allow you to guess the reading of a character with a fairly good chance of getting it right. It's not even close 100% but it did help me pass a test after a late-night party and it did help me appear more proficient than I really am at an interview, so I would say it's pretty effective.

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[info]troisnuits
2008-11-22 01:42 pm UTC (link)
Actually the whole reason I'm getting worried is that I have a reading exam in January and while I assume there won't be much in terms of kanji, it would be horrible to just get stuck in the first sentence without being able to move on!
But seeing as I am a first year student, my vocabulary is still really really limited.
I'll try to keep the radicals in mind :) thank you very much!

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[info]keskiyonaurinko
2008-11-24 07:45 pm UTC (link)
"after a late-night party"

You sound like my kind of language learner. ;]

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[info]ladymurasaki06
2008-11-23 03:45 am UTC (link)
I found Japanese search engine with hiragana above each kanji character. It's called "キッズ(kids) goo" http://kids.goo.ne.jp/. I'll show you how to use this site for your study:

Please make sure that the "ひらがな変換" button is "ON"(upper-right side of the website, just next to "ヘルプ(help)"!! This is important.

1.Put some word you know like "花(flower)" or "猫(cat)" into the search box.
2.Click the "けんさく" right side to the search box.
3.Many search results will appear, and you will notice that each kanji has hiragana above it.
4.Then choose whatever you like from the results.
5.Read the wensite you chose with your dictionary or online free tlanslation servises.

hiragana might be too small to read without some adjustment, depends on your computer. If you can change the font size, you can learn Japanese with lots of fun! If you find this information helpful, just give it a try and make your Japanese better and better. I tought that it's much more helpful to learn kanji by linking to other words, phrases, and contexsts rather than memorizing only kanji and their readings abstractly. That's why I reccomend this kind of learning method.Good luck!

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[info]keskiyonaurinko
2008-11-24 07:47 pm UTC (link)
I would like to take the time to direct you to an AMAZING Firefox extension called Rikaichan : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2471 .

I fully endorse it; it works extremely well!

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[info]ladymurasaki06
2008-11-26 01:43 am UTC (link)
That tool sounds great! I didn't know about that since I'm Japanese so I don't have to learn how to read kanji except for very difficult or rarely used ones.

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