Quote:
Originally Posted by KudoSan
Im learning kanji and would like advice on learning it efficiently. What do you think is the fastest way to learn kanji??? 
Arigotou.
KudoSan. |
Hi,
Not to sound like a smart-a##, but the fastest way to learn kanji is to get pretty fluent in spoken Japanese first.
Think of kanji as "pictures" in picture frames.
To put the frames on your wall, you need something on the wall to hang the picture on. A hook. Without the hook, you can try as hard as you want to hang the picture, but it won't stay on the wall.
The "hooks" that I'm talking about are words. Learn the words, become familiar with how they're used, remember them, and then you'll have plenty of hooks on which to hang your pictures. In other words, learning the kanji is much easier if you already know (and can use) the words that they represent.
I've never know anyone to become fluent in Japanese by trying to learn how to read and write first.
Start with roomaji (English characters representing Japanese sounds). It's a quicker path to fluency, and thus kanji reading and writing.
Now, assuming you already have a pretty good level of fluency, I'll tell you how I learned how to read and write kanji.
Practice, practice, practice.
Write, write, write.
And then write some more.
Every time I learned a new kanji character, I'd write it down between 50 and 100 times by itself, while saying the "on-yomi" ("Chinese" pronunciation).
Then I'd do the same thing with all of the different "kun-yomi" (Japanese pronunciation), again, saying it as I wrote it.
Then I'd write the kanji in different compounds (generally Japanese nouns are made up of two or more kanji characters), and again, say the word as I wrote it.
Sound like a lot of time and effort?
IT IS.
But it works. I earned a B.A. in Japanese at almost a perfect 4.0 (while working on a Master's degree in accounting) using this method for all of my classes where we learned to read and write Japanese. The spoken classes weren't too bad, since I had lived in Japan for a while before finishing college (again, that fluency thing).
So buckle in, because to my mind, it's the best way to learn and retain written Japanese.
It also happens to be pretty much the same way that Japanese people learn how to read and write Japanese. And again, they don't start reading and writing until they have some fluency built up. I believe Grade 1 is where you get the first 80 kanji characters.
A word about flash cards.
Meh.
They're OK, but they should be used to support the learning style I described above, rather than as a primary learning method.
Why don't I like flash cards? Nothing personal. Flash cards never stole my lunch money or kicked sand in my face. But, they only help with recognition, not spontaneous language generation.
Being able to read and being able to write (by hand, without a dictionary nearby) are two completely different animals. One is tame, and the other hasn't been housebroken. It's a dangerous beast. It'll poop all over your carpet.
But...if you're planning on only ever using a computer to write Japanese, then I guess flash cards might be ok, since writing on the computer is basically an exercise in recognition (the kanji candidates are brought up in a list by the computer's brain, not yours).
You can ask the "keitai" (cell phone) generation in Japan right now if I'm right about recognition vs. spontaneous generation. Keitai could well be the death of Japanese kanji...we'll see.
I know...kanji is cool. I think so, too. But I've got 20 years of experience in learning and using the language, and I didn't start until well late in my teens, and I didn't turn out too bad (language-wise, at least).
Hope this helps