How to best learn kanji?
 

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.

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.

I agree. It helps immensely to practice writing them. You should learn some to read and write, and some just to read (later on to learn how to write them).

This book (and its corresponding vol 2) was really helpful to me:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books

http://photobucket.com/albums/v295/masenkos/?

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v295/masenkos/kanji.jpg">

This isn't going to be an easy task to tell you the truth. It's not something you come in contact with everyday, unless you make a strong commitment to. I grew up in Taiwan and finished partial 8th grade before moving to US. I think I had learned a few thousand kanji characters (FYI-Japanese Kanji originated in China) up to that point.

Of course you want to start out with simple characters, ones with fewer strokes. Some complex characters are made up of two or more simple ones. You will need to memorize the pronounciations and the meanings of each character.

Also, Kanji is probably used in less than 30~40% in any article/publication. In order to be able to read adequately in Japanese, you must also learn Hiragana and Katagana. Your local library should be a good source if you are really interested in learning Japanese, or other languages for that matter.

You might also try the program at http://lrnj.com/
It's not finished, but there's enough to get you started, and the author swears up and down that he'll finish one of these days.

Practice, practice, practice... That is the only way to learn/memorize the ungodly amount of kanji out there. What worked best for me at first was a basic flash cards, then advancing to a combo of childrens books and low level flash cards, and now I am at young adult books and moderate level flash cards.