Quote:
Originally Posted by Nagoyankee
Never knew there were two schools! There is only one in Japan, which is the first one you mentioned. I don't think the second method works well unless the student has an innate photographic memory.
If a student is learning kanji in a good order AND in context by using a proper book, most of the first few hundred kanji that he learns will be in their kun-readings. The kun-readings are more important in an early stage because they are the meanings of the kanji in Japanese.
Take 空 for example. Its kun-reading is そら. What's the Japanese word for "sky"? It's そら（空）！
The on-reading is くう, but you will waste your time and effort if you try to remember that the first time you encounter the kanji 空. I say this because you don't know when you will encounter a compound using 空, in which 空 is read くう. There is NO correlation between そら and くう to start with, making learning both simultaneously difficult. Only when you encounter a word like 空港（くうこう=airport） or 空気（くうき= air）, you can learn its on-reading くう.
It may be 6 months later when you learn a compound using the kanji you encountered today. Could be even longer. This is why learning the on-reading with the kun can be a big waste of energy. Frankly you won't be able to remember the on when you see a compound later on.
I actually think the learner would end up hating kanji and therefore the language itself if he practices this "second" school's method.
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Sorry Nagoyankeeさん, I should have been more precise. When I was talking about two ways of studying I meant amongst non Japanese.
Personally I like better the second way I listed and I feel more confortable learning kanji this way. Mine is not only a way of learning kanji, but a way to learn more words.
You see, when you mentioned the kanji 空 and say that you learn i is sky, I think it is perfect for a Japanese kid. But if a father tells his kid something like 鞄を空けて the kid will understand even without knowing how to write it. I would just sit there saying huuuhhh??????
When I study my kanji and learn 空= クウ そら、から、あく、あける、あき、すく、すかす 、むなしい I am not learning by heart the sound of a drawing, but actually learning some words, bringing me closer to the genearl knowledge of a Japanese kid.
True it is not easy, above all for what concerns the 音読み. Probably if you asked me amongst the kanji I know which ones are read こう I would have problems to tell you all of them...maybe a couple
But the fact is that in my opinion the student need to associate more the meaning to the knaji and the same time the reading. For the oldest kanji of my studies now it comes natural when I see the kanji reading it almost without thinking it. However when I study them I don't associate sound to pictures. I associate pictures to meanings and sound to meanings, then match them. So for example when I study 岩 I study that it represent a rock. Then I put next to it the words ガン and いわ and associate to those word a rock. So when I see the flashcard of 岩 first thing I see is a rock, then I think how to say rock and it comes out the reading. Only after a long time the association 岩 いわ becomes direct. That is why if I had seen when I first started studying the kanji 間 I wouldn't say カンーケン あいだーあいーま...but I associated first the kanji either to a gap of space or time or to a measure of almost a mile.
Of course the hard times come with kanji such as 付, where learning the readings fortunately is easy, but associating all the meanings remains a very hard hustle
But as I said, this works fine for me, doesn't mean it is the best way or that it can work for everyone.