掲示板 Forums - Any tips for Kanji Shiritori?

I’m having trouble with the four word Kanji shiritori. Searching up kanji in the renshuu dictionary doesn’t help me figure out 4 word combos. How do you all approach it?

Generally just learning four character words! Although thank you for the jisho reference :)

I feel like learning enough words to make any noticeable difference is going to be very difficult. Having said that, my recommendation is building your own Custom Lists of four-character words.

I'll give you a quick rundown in case you're not familiar with those.

From here (image) you select "New List" > "Words", check "This list is part of a set" (if you'd like), add at least one word (can be a placeholder), and save your list.

​I suggest a format similar to this one (by @Shamugan). You'd have one set (name it "Shiritori: Four-character words", or whatever you'd like), and lists that cover at most 5 kanji at a time. You can go in JLPT order. After that you'd pick one or two common words (as best as you can) for each kanji and add them to the list.

I couldn't find any lists that already do this, but even if I did, I'd still recommend making your own. The process itself helps with learning words.

You can also write your own usage notes specifically for Shiritori. Maybe mnemonics that focus on the first character.

PS: You can just make one list (no set), and just throw everything in there. Much easier if you don't care about being organised :D

Note: While I think this is one of the best ways to learn more four-character words, I don't think it's suitable for beginners. You should probably be focusing on more important things. If you're more of a beginner that is, I don't want to assume things :)

Edit: I might make one of those lists myself, sounds like fun. Although my idea of "fun" might be different than most people's

There's also some pretty cool words like 東西南北 and 春夏秋冬 that help with memorising on'yomi. I don't know that many of them though. Might be worth looking around for them. Maybe even asking a native speaker :)

Both of these examples are, as far as I know, exactly the same in Chinese. 一生懸命 and 七転八起 don't seem to be present in Chinese. The latter might come from this though - 七跌八起 - not sure. I don't know Chinese.

Welp, was going to talk about my list if someone wanted to use it as a base but ギョルギ九十三 was faster than me x)

A few things I want to add though. Not every 4-characters words are equally useful to learn. For the idiom ones, I recommend an official list of 4-character words for the kanji kentei exam, like on the jitenon site (here). Ah and it start at 5級 because you're not evaluated on those until 5級. At the same time, you probably won't see words like 春夏秋冬 or 東西南北 (or 上下左右 which is another useful one for on'yomi). Because these are not considered idiomatic. Don't trust the "4-kanji compound" on renshuu, there are a lot of non-idiomatic words marked as "4-kanji compound" and also idiomatic one that are not marked as "4-kanji compound" (It's from the free dictionary that renshuu used and I guess they didn't established a strategy when they did that).

Also, if you just want to browse idiomatic 4-character words, you can check this section of the jitenon (here). You can browse them by kana, kanji, kanji kentei level or usage (like "greeting", yeah, there is a 挨拶 category x) ).

Now, for the non-idiomatic one, I don't think there is a real list for those... Because you should be "able" to understand when you see them if you are good with kanji. Even the one you didn't study. Because they are usually just combination of 2 or 3 kanji compound words and once you know them, it's relatively easy to understand them. At least, for Japanese (maybe not so much for us :v)

That's why I also include them in another list (Non idomatic Four and More Kanji Compounds) because they quite useful to study. The 10級 and 9級 are not that useful because I restrain myself to only used kanji that were already studied or kanji of the same level but starting from 8級, it was more "useful". Boring sure but useful xD.
It's full of words like:
日本社会事業大学
教育委員会
千九百年代
外交問題
There are "boring" but they can make you work on eight kanji and reading at the same time as well as all the components (日本社会事業大学 -> 日本 + 社会 + 事業 + 大学). Quiet useful to review them all and see if you did correctly memorize them.


Anyway, just some idea/consideration if you want to create your own list. Which is honnestly one of the best way to learn faster imo.
And if you want some help for you list, don't hesitate to drop by our study group "Community List Builder" whose goal is to help each other to build lists like that =p (the feature is still in beta so if you want to take a look, you need to go to the experimental setting).

頑張ってね～ :3

Edit: Pup72, there is a lot 4-character words that share the same meaning between chinese and japanese. Like 海千山千 (sly, crafty). From what I know, it came from an old tale about an snake that lived a thousand year in the sea and a thousand year in the mountain and became sly, crafty (in a positive way) after experiencing all of that. Japanese also studied those tales and imported those 4-character words (and in a lot of expression, it's still preserved because of that). That doesn't means that all of them were completely preserved nor that Japanese don't have their own but it still quite a lot x). Also, on jitenon, I often found 4-character kanji that I can't found neither on renshuu or in my twenty dictionaries with yomitan... (probably too uncommon to include them in normal dictionaries x) )

EDIT2: okay not sure about the 海千山千 x) (couldn't find a good source and can't search in chinese). But I do know that there is a lot them that share some meaning because of those old tales

thanks !