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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
hey all,
i'm slowing but surely making headway on teaching myself japanese. i have a good kana workbook and am nearly finished with learning the phonetics and am using the "pimsleur, speak and understand" program for the oral portion.
so, the next logical step would be to start tackling those big-bad kanji. what's the best way to learn those? i would probably want to place more emphasis on reading them, not necessarily on the mechanics of writing them.
should i progress according to the levels on the proficiency tests?
how about learning them according the grade structure japanese schools use?
is there a list of most useful kanji in order to prioritize my learning?
what method do you use to learn them quickly?
besides rote memorization of the characters, where can i get entry-level material to help me actually read and understand the combinations outside of the canned stuff that comes with language workbooks?
if you can answer any of these questions or have other related advice i'd appreciate any guidance you all can give me.
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That's awesome that you're teaching yourself Japanese. I took Japanese for four years in high school, and two years in college, so I'll try to offer you as much advice as I can.
First of all, I would strongly suggest that you go to a college bookstore or something and buy a first year Japanese book. A really good series is the Youkoso! series.
You say that you want to emphasize reading them, and not writing them, but I found that it helped me IMMENSELY writing out the Kanji I was trying to learn. Granted, I did have to write them, but my ability to read them increased drastically. Try writing them, not concentrating on memorizing how to write them, but more just remembering what they look like.
As far as knowing which Kanji to learn, I would think that there should be some sort of source out there that has a list of the most commonly used Kanji, and that's what I would probably go by. During my schooling, I probably knew about 500 Kanji, which was about half of what I would need to be able to get by in most situations in Japan, and I'm pretty sure you can find a list out there somewhere telling you what the 1000 most commonly used Kanji are.
I hope that I've been at least a little help. If you need anything more specific, feel free to PM me. I love Japanese, and haven't really used it in a couple of years, and I think it would be cool to have the opportunity to utilize it again.