掲示板 Forums - Baby steps for Kanji?

A bit confused about what I should be focusing on at my very very beginner level of Japenese in regards to Kanji. Easily grinded through katakana/hirigana and have about 250 words under my belt and basic grammar, but at a loss with Kanji, feel like I'm crawling along. With meanings and different pronunciations, it's like triple the effort for me to learn a single Kanji. I cant imaging learning thousands over the the coming years. More like decades lol

Do I need to memorize the kunyomi and onyomi for Kanji. Like am I wasting time trying to remember kunyomi and onyomi and meaning for each, or should I just focus on meaning of the Kanji?

Would appreciate recs or insight into how to get started or simplify the learning process there. I feel like at present I can only manage 2 a day and have to pause a few days at a time and review the few that I know as I'm easily mixing up different kunyomi and onyomi with each other.

ありがとう,

マットlearns

Two kanji a day is the same pace that I use. Don’t worry, it adds up faster than you might think.

There are many different approaches to studying kanji, but no one best approach for all people. At this point in your studies, it seems to work well to just learn them organically. Once you are comfortable with the basics, you can decide if a systematic approach is right for you.

Personally, I focus on on’yomi. The bulk of my study time is devoted to understanding which kanji have which on’yomi and why, but I didn’t settle on this approach until I already had several hundred characters under my belt, so it probably isn’t that useful to you.

Japaneses take 1 year to learn the first 80 kanji (0.2 kanji/day).
The second year, they learn 160 kanji (0.43/day).
Then, they spent the next 4 years learning around 200 kanji per year (0.54 kanji/day).
After that, they enter middle school and learn around 300-330 kanji per year for 3 years (0.82 - 0.92/day).
And finally, in high school, they learn around 100-200 remaining kanji (0.27-0.54/day).

Basically, they never learn more than 1 kanji per day. Especially, the first year. They start slow, build a foundation and slowly raise the pace through 5 years in primary school and they peak only at middle school (but still not even close to the pace of most foreigners).

You can, and probably will, learn faster if you want to but you really don't have to. They don't go that fast for a reason. Kanji are hard and taking your time will help more than you think.

That being said, you can rush the kanji if you want by focusing only on their meaning. There are some people that do that and they also have fun doing that. It also have some pros. Like recognizing more kanji in new words which in turn make them easier to learn... but not to read.

Taking your time to learn the reading and the meaning at the same time will make words even easier to learn (just it won't work as often since you will probably know less kanji compared to other learners at the same level). You can even guess the kanji without seeing them sometimes. Just by knowing the reading + the context in a conversation for example. I played that game a lot with some friends (Like "Wait, don't tell me, is it that one and that one?"). Surprisingly, it happened quite often and I had more success than I expected.

Bottom line, with 2 kanji/day, you're learning 10 times faster than Japanese in their first year.
As for the method, it's more of a matter of personality than efficiency or difficulty imo.
Either you choose to make it easy by going even slower (like natives btw) or you choose to focus only on the meaning first (like most foreigners).
I choose the slow approach and I don't regret it. Sometimes, I feel frustrated and wish I had rush the kanji but when I'm able to guess a word meaning and/or reading just with the kanji and context, I don't (Which happens quite often btw, 2-5 per week on average probably).

Anyway, don't need to overthink it, kanji just take time to learn. So just choose the method you enjoy the most.
頑張ってね～

PS: Kanji learning order matters. There are some kanji list with a learning order which will be easier for some people and not others. It's worth taking a look.

I forgot yesterday but "basic" kanji and readings are not really basic.
In most lists, they are usually the most "productive". By productive, I mean that they are used in a lot of words.
But the reason they are productive is because they often have a lot of meanings and readings (otherwise, it would awfull to distinguish words).
Kanji like 生, 下, 上, etc are the most obvious examples. In a way, they are the worst to start with but at the same time, they are also the most useful to know in a long term.
That's probably also why native takes their time (Even between the JLPT kanji list and the kyouiku kanji list, kanji learn at school, the order is very similar).

Similarly, the primary school readings (with a small 小 in the dictionary) are also very productive but also very difficult for the same reason. Especially for foreigners. But they are also the more rewarding in the long term. On average, I know 50-150 words thanks to them. But like I said before, I was very slow to learn them compared to most. Right now, I'm focusing on middle school kanji and readings and they are a lot less productive and useful (but also easier to learn in a way).

So here too, you can choose. Personally, I only learned the primary school readings for 3 years and it was already a lot of work. But it was worth it since they are extremely productive.

Ah and kanji become easier with time too. At first, they are like a bunch of random strokes but later, you will recognize a lot of part and it really help a lot. I don't study at the same pace I had when I started. And I don't struggle as much too.

So really, the most difficult part is the first few hundreds kanji. Once you're past that stage, not only will kanji be easier to learn, but new words too.

I have a controversial opinion that for kanji you might want to look into kanji-focused study methods. Renshuu is the best one in all tool but when you want to go deeper on a specific thing variety in approaches is good.

I am happy with wanikani so far, less intimidating for a beginner as it's very railroaded, but there are many other sites and books

I am at 60 kanji in a month of casual evening study, and the best thing is that when I mark kanji as known in renshuu the vocabulary quizzes start using it and I am like "wow this word I learned a month ago makes so much more sense now" :)