Learning Kanji - Quick and Simple Tips and Tricks

So the other day I wrote something about the poodle's core and methodology when learning kanji. Now to continue on that topic, in more practical terms. I wouldn't really call it advice, because it's not like I'm trying to tell you how to do it, but rather me taking some notes on how I was, am, and am planning to improve my kanji skills. My kanji skills are pretty good, but there's still a lot more to go...

So to reiterate the main point of my previous post on this subject: focus on pronunciation - i.e. mapping the graphical form of a character to its pronunciation. Ok, unfortunately - due to the complexity of kanji - I guess we have to make that pronunciations. But I think it's best to focus on one main pronunciation. Usually that's an on pronunciation, but it can sometimes be a kun one as well for some characters. The important thing is that you choose one as the main one, but also try to remember the other ones as well. Now, I'd like to present three simple tricks for learning kanji:

1. Make sure you read a lot of kanji

This seems easy when you say it, but it is also easy to do, if you just do it. First of all get some books. Any book with kanji is pretty fine actually, but as I wrote in my previous post, I like "A Guide To Remembering Japanese Characters" by Kenneth G. Henshall. Get a Japanese dictionary, and flip through it as much as possible. One of my personal favorites on the toilet. Before going to sleep, during lunch, on the train, when there's nothing fun on the tv, basically just spend some time with your books that contain kanji, any chance you have.


I'll leave the topic of how to most efficiently gain knowledge from books for later - the most important thing is that you just open and read your book. If your Japanese skill is good enough to read (even haltingly) real Japanese literature, then that's so much better, because I for one prefer reading real books over "textbooks" etc. Anyway, as long as it contains real Japanese (i.e. hardcore kanji).

The Japanese Wikipedia is a superb source of reading material! It is very hardcore both when it comes to kanji and formal grammar/vocabulary (relevant for JLPT1!), and since cross-referencing is central to the idea of a wiki, you can just keep reading and looking up concepts that you don't understand. In fact, I strongly recommend reading the Japanese Wikipedia for improving any aspect of your Japanese - not to mention general knowledge. And you can read it at work while your code is compiling!

2. Practice "series" of kanji

There are a few gazillion permutations of the order in which you can study kanji. Like they do in Japanese elementary school, the order they appear on increasing levels of the JLPT tests, any kind of arbitrary order, or - the gods forbid - Remembering the Kanji order. Anyway that doesn't matter much. What I think does matter is that you study "series" of characters that you think have something in common. The number of characters in a series can be basically whatever is suits you, but for me it's usually between a quarter of a dozen to one and a half dozen characters.

When I say "series", I mean something like this: 激撤徹微徴懲 - these characters used to look very similar to me and when I saw one of them I used to go like "oh, one of those characters". 哀衰衷褒喪畏 would be another example. Or maybe they don't look similar, but their meanings/usages conceptually overlap, like 悼慨恨悔 vs 愉悦 etc.

Whatever trick you use to remember these is mostly up to you I think. For me they just seem to stick after a while. But the important thing is to make sure you don't forget them and can still distinguish between them. I print them out (I suppose you can write them by hand too if that's your thing) and put them on the partitions (walls are equally usable if you are lucky enough to have that) at my office desk, and on my iGoogle sticky note, and in text files on my computer, etc. Anywhere where you're bound to see them a lot. That way you'll immediately notice if when you see the note, you can no longer recall the details about a character. That's when it's time review.

3. Don't study kanji in isolation

I've seen it recommended on forums, web sites, and even books (do I even need to mention my arch nemesis any more?): learn the kanji then learn Japanese, or learn the meanings of kanji then learn vocabulary, or learn stupid keywords for all the kanji then learn their pronunciations (remember that pronunciation is the very core of each character!).


First of all: that to me that would be really boring. Don't encourage yourself to give up - have fun! Secondly: as I mentioned in the previous entry: kanji is the character set used to write Japanese. So don't study kanji without studying Japanese, and vice versa!

When I say "read a lot of kanji" and "practice series of kanji" above I don't mean just learn the pronunciation and meaning of each kanji and remember that like some damn parrot. What I'm talking about is to learn not only pronunciation(s) and meaning(s), but also words the kanji is used in - at least one, possibly many - the history/evolution of that character (if it's interesting, and it often is), and try to read texts containing that character (often you'd go from finding a character frequently used in a text to actively studying that character; I don't mean you have to find texts that match every character you want to study). Associate that character to other similar characters through "series" of characters.

Here again finding good reading material is essential. Besides Wikipedia, newspapers (i.e. news websites) are extremely good. The kanji in newspapers are definitely hardcore. A nice trick is to try and read the same kind of articles every day. Say you're interested - or just pretend you're interested - in economy - the stock markets, even. Then read some stock market articles every day. The first few days you'll find that the kanji and words used are extremely hard. But after a week or two you'll find that the same kanji and even the same words reoccur all the time. That's when you know which kanji you have to learn, and you've already got a great source of texts for putting them in context. I'd arbitrarily recommend Asahi Shimbun for a dose of daily reading practice.

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Lastly I've been recommended and lately seen a lot of recommendations on forums etc on using software/services for studying kanji. Programs such as Anki and Mnemosyne come to mind. I even saw some dude recommend using something called a "kanji box" or something for you Facebook. Now, I don't have a Facebook account, but I don't think being logged in to Facebook is going to do any good at all for your kanji studies, even with your fancy kanji box on your profile page. You're much more likely to spend hours randomly clicking around and not doing much intellectually challenging activities at all.

Color me old-fashioned, but if anything I'd recommend ordinary paper flash cards. But it's really boring to construct those... so I just keep my kanji and vocabulary in text files on the computer and print them out every once in a while and review those lists a few times. And since I'm surrounding myself with study material - always keeping a book within arm's reach, a kanji series on the wall, a computer that runs in Japanese, an rss feed with news in Japanese, etc - there's constant repetition, all the time. If you know you need to learn a certain kanji character, you'll active take notice every time it pops up. Just make sure to you maximize the chances of it popping up!

Learning Kanji - The Poodle's Core and Regarding Methodology

The other day I wrote a somewhat obstinate piece on why learning kanji thoroughly is important for the learner of the Japanese language, accidentally calling myself, and possibly you - my apologies for that - a dumbass in the process. Now that I've gotten that off my heart, I'd like to touch upon the much more difficult and substantial topic of how to learn those kanji. I do not mean this to be a definite and final guide in any way, but rather I hope to share my experience and thoughts regarding the most efficient way(s) to kanji fluency.

First of all: my kanji level is already pretty high. I can read books and (somewhat) newspapers in Japanese. Secondly: I find kanji quite easy to learn. I know a lot of people who think studying kanji is worse than being eaten alive by killer ants (I just saw the movie "The Hive", so please excuse the analogy), but for me learning kanji has always been very enjoyable. Intelligence tests have shown (as I already suspected) that my intellect is based around spatial/visual understanding of concepts, and perhaps kanji just happen to be my calling in this world... Or maybe I've found fun interesting and stumulating ways of studying kanji, which I hope - and actually think - is the case, because that means you can find it just as fun as I do!

Thirdly: I still have a lot of learning to do. I estimate I know about two thirds of the kanji I need to know now. So there's still a lot "in it" for myself to refine my study methods as well.


Anyway nuf of me jabberin bout myself. Please let me tell you what I think is the poodle's core of kanji, and the key to the successful learning of which:

KANJI ARE (MOSTLY) PHONETIC

It's true! Kanji, to the Japanese, is just the character set you use to write Japanese. Japanese is a natural language and thus it's primarily spoken. Kanji might not be the most efficient way of transcribing spoken word into writing, but it is nevertheless how it's done in Japanese. And efficiency aside - it's a very charismatic method!

Now, there are people - such as my arch nemesis Dr. Heisig - who want you to believe stories such as: Japanese is very easy for Chinese people to learn because they already "know" the characters, so the best way for a Western fatass such as myself to learn kanji must be to first remember their shapes and compositions and associate them to some stupid keyword. Then I'll be on a par with the Chinese and can start learning the Japanese readings and the words they're used in - not to mention trying to forget all the erroneous and stupid keywords I was made to believe to be actually useful.

Well people, I don't want to go through the process of becoming Chinese in order to become Japanese, nor do I want to spend substantial time memorizing misinformation, as the keywords are often not very related to the actual usage of the kanji. I want to learn Japanese kanji; their meanings, writings, usages, and - most of all - pronunciations.

Kanji are the characters used to write words, and thus it is essential to learn their phonetic values as well as practical usages in writing vocabulary words. Concepts such as "meanings" or "keywords" for kanji are constructed and construed.

I do believe kanji have meanings though, and I'd like to recommend a good book for learning them. It's the book called "A Guide To Remembering Japanese Characters" by Kenneth G. Henshall. First of all I'd like to raise my two major complaints about that book, that are essentially the same: the title and the "mnemonics" thing. I will go ahead and blame that -again! - mainly on my arch nemesis Dr. Heisig. It's all Heisig's fault! Everyone seems to think you need some magic mnemonic formula to magically "remember" the kanji... It makes me sick!

But Henshall's book - besides the name and the stupid "mnemonics" thing attached to each entry - is actually nothing more and nothing less than a simple etymological kanji dictionary! There are many of these in Japanese, and I strongly recommend you to upgrade to a Japanese one as soon as you're fairly comfortable with it, but until then Henshall's book is superb.

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Anyway, no book is the solution to learning the kanji. I believe everyday practical tricks are the key to that. More about that in the next post...

Learning Kanji - It's Called Literacy, Dumbass!

Do You Have To Know All The Joyo Kanji?

I seem to see the question Do I really need to learn all the joyo kanji? It's like two thousands of them and that seems a bit too much...

You know, that list was created by a bunch of bureaucrats who have nothing better to do than invent stupid lists and laws all days. Especially the order of the kanji in the list is completely insane - in many cases complex, compounded characters come before the compounds they're made up from, for instance.

Also, the word 常用(jouyou) means "daily use", right? Go out any exit of any train station in Tokyo and look around, and tell me if you don't see the kanji 丼(don). That kanji is not on the list. I guess the bureaucrats don't eat domburi, but that's their loss. On the other hand, they put 匁(monme) on the list - and that kanji is so stupid and useless I can't help but remember it, but I've never, ever, seen it used.

So, no, you don't have to learn all the joyo kanji! There are maybe 20, maybe even 50 or more on the list that you actually don't need to know. But here's the catch: you have to learn a lot more than that!

How Many Kanji Do You Actually Need To Know?

Unlike the last question, where I held on to the answer until the very last paragraph, I'm gonna answer this one right away: maybe about 3,000. Now, granted, I pulled that number out of my arse, but I think it's a decent estimate. That's in order to be considered literate in Japanese... If you don't need to be able to read all male given names (yeah I understand it's cool to give your kid some uncommon character, but come on...).

You see, even though school teaches the roughly 2,000 joyo kanji until high school graduation, most Japanese people can read more than that, even by the time they finish high school. That's what happens if you spend 19 years surrounded by kanji. Non-joyo kanji are not uncommon - I'm speaking from experience here - and in fact most Japanese people don't really know nor care about that stupid list - kanji are just characters you use to write stuff.

But 95% Is Good Enough For Me - Or Is It?

When I started learning Japanese, and in fact some times since then as well, I've seen statistics saying that 1,000 characters are the 90% most frequent, and 2,000 characters constitutes 98% of the kanji used. That might very well be true - I believe those numbers are more or less correct.

So then a seemingly valid, and common, argument would go something like "I don't need to be able to read specialized texts - or even the newspapers - manga/technical specs/email/whatever is enough for me, so being able to read 80/90/95/98% of the kanji is all I need".

I used to think a little bit that way too, to be honest. But there's a fundamental fault in that reasoning: Yes, no one needs, or can ever hope to be able to, understand 100% or even 99% of everything - I mean a lot of stuff in this world is meant for specialists in a particular field - but that's not the same as not being able to read the characters it's written in - that is called illiteracy! And kids: say Yes to mild stimulants, and No to illiteracy - its the bad.

Let me make up an example. This isn't gonna be the best example ever but bear with me as I'm just making this up. Let's take a word like 国立造幣局. Now, three of those kanji (国・立・局) are very easy - I'm sure they were among the first one or two hundred I learned. 造 is also pretty easy, it's at least below JLPT level 2, and very common. But 幣 is not very common, and has a somewhat specialized meaning (but it's on the joyo list and not knowing it constitutes illiteracy). So in that five-kanji word 60% of the kanji are trivial, and 80% are easy.

But then there's one that - while definitely not complicated - is at least JLPT level 1 worthy of difficult. Yet that's the one kanji that conveys most of the meaning, not to mention you can't pronounce the word without knowing its reading, so those who settled for 90% of the kanji will be 0% literate in this example.

Look at it this way: say that pronouns, prepositions, articles, and conjunctions made up 50% of the words used in an average English sentence. Then, would someone who decides to learn only the pronouns, prepositions, articles, and conjunctions of English be able to get the meaning of an ordinary English sentence? Of course not! Even though that person would understand at least 50% of the words used. Now, kanji are characters used to write words and not words in themselves, but anyway... if you want to get down to the monkey's balls with the Japanese language, you have to learn kanji thoroughly. And you might as well do it right away.

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Now I hope we have established a shared understanding that almost perfect kanji literacy is indispensable for the Japanese language learner. Next, I will be writing about how that literacy is best achieved.