Quote:
Originally Posted by ByTheWay
I've begun learning some kanji and already I'm hitting a brick wall. I can easily associate the meaning and the kanji but I'm having a hard time remembering all the readings. If I can use the kanji for existing vocabulary then fine. My kanji guides casually give a reading but fail to associate that with a particular word.
How do others learn kanji? Would it be ok to just learning the readings for the vocabulary that I know then as I expand my vocabulary learn new readings for known kanji?
I would be grateful for any advice.
Thanks
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I try and learn words. When you start out in kanji you get a lot of concrete nouns that make sense to learn as single kanji like 木 and then as you go on, you get a lot more kanji that by themselves basically have no easily translatable meaning like 御. And yeah, trying to learn that as ' means honorific but not actually the ~word~ "honorific" because that's something else' is a big headache.
I would say your plan isn't too bad. If you build a strong foundation, eg, knowing 集める as 'atsumeru', then all you need to do is keep an eye out for the irregularities such as 集権 where the same kanji is read as 'shuu'.
I think a very (very!) general rule of thumb is if it is "Kanji A+kana as verb" or "Kanji A +Kana as idiom" Then it's the kun reading. If it's "Kanji A+ Kanji B (+kana)" or "Kanji B + Kanji A" then it's the on reading.