Quote:
Originally Posted by aphextwin
I'm just beginning but am finding the whole process confusing.
For example, one of the words (on smart.fm) I'm asked to memorize is "少ない". I look up "少" and it's kun-reading is "すく.ない"
if "少" = "すく.ない" then wouldn't
"少ない" = "すく.ないない"? It seems redundant. I noticed there's a "." in the definition, I guess signifying "すく" is the root? Is that what I should memorize when I'm learning "少".
In other words, when I'm learning kanji for the first time and come across "少" should I just memorize these three things
1) what the kanji looks like -> "少"
2) what it means -> small, few
3) its root -> "すく"
is that the proper process for a beginner. Is memorizing "すく" enough because when I come across it next time, in actual text, it will always have a suffix which finishes it off and becomes a word?
Just to reiterate, I don't get why when I look up a kanji kun reading it gives me a finished word. If the kanji = that finished word, why wouldn't writing that kanji be enough in actual text. There's always suffixes attached, leading me to believe the actual kun reading or root or whatever is smaller. What do I actually need to memorize right now as a beginner? Thanks
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Well, first let me say you are misunderstanding ”すく・少” is not a word by itself. "少ない” is a word. It means "few". It is an い-adjective, because it ends with an い (this will affect how you structure the word based on what you want to say) so for example, being an い-adjective, if you wanted to make it negative, as in "not few" the word would change to 少な
くない/すくな
くない。 Where the い in the regular (affirmative) adjective changes to a く for the negative.
Anyway they give you that whole word as an example, probably to give you something practical to relate the reading to, since すく・少 written as is cannot be used in the language. Think about like this.. if you knock the "ly" off of "slowly" does it still form an adverb in English? No of course not.
Anyhow, what worked for me was, rather than memorizing readings for individual Kanjis, I simply studied vocabulary words and memorized the kanjis associated with each new word. Now this is less systematic, but it was easier for me because I always had something practical (a real word I could use when speaking/writing) to help me memorize it. If you desire to be able to hand write stuff though, memorizing kanji one by one, might be better, but I personally do not see much point in putting lots of effort into hand writing things, because of our friend the computer. Just reading and recognition is what is truly important in my opinion.