Here is the reason why I think you should learn vocabulary before you learn kanji(or learn kanji with vocabulary). I recommend you to learn vocabulary, or in other words, learn sounds of words before learning kanji is because SOUNDS ARE THE FOUNDATION AND FRAMEWORK OF A LANGUAGE. No child aquire language by learning writing system. Everyone learns writing system after they acquire spoken language. Let's take a look at how Japanese kids start learning kanji. According to Ministry of Education, first graders learn 80 kanjis a year, second graders 160, third 200, fourth 200, fifth 185, sixth 181. They learn in total of 1026 kanjis. Those kids, who already had acquired the language, start their kanji leraning at the age of 7, they learn in total of 1026 kanjis in 6 years. SIX YEARS! And there are 2136 common kanjis(常用漢字), so they only learn a half of common kanjis in 6 years. They spend another three years in 中学校 to learn rest of the common kanjis. But those are kanjis that are "required to teach in the school", not that we all know all the common kanjis when we became adults, in fact there are many Japanese adults who cannot write many common kanjis, even those who don't reognize some of it. So what is the optimal strategy of acquisition of Japanese for foreign learners. Should you start learning kanji from the beginning? Of course, if you are interested in kanji system, you can just start studying it, there are people who knows kanjis but who cannot speak the language. But if your goal is to acquire Japanese language, my suggestion is you should learn vocabulary first. Fun about language learning lies in "now I can talk!" After you learn all those boring basics of a language, when you realize "oh I can now communicate using the language I'm studying", that is when you feel really happy and feel motivated to study more. Apart from knowledge about basic grammars, it is vocabulary that brings you that feeling "now I can communicate". That is also how child acquire their language, they build up their vocabulary everyday, it is not that they learn vocabulary by learning kanji and put them together like building blocks. And also, there are two thousands common kanjis that takes Japanese kids 9 years to learn, how long does it take you to memorize them all? I'm not saying that you shouldn't study kanji at all. My point is, your kanji learning should be on foundation of vocabulary. You learn vocabulary, sounds of the words by hiragana (or katakana), then you can learn the kanji that is used in the word. Or if you really hate learning kanji, if you can't bring yourself to memorize kanjis, then you can ignore kanji first and try concentrating in studying words first. It is fun to learn words, because the more you remember, the more you can actually communicate. That's where the joy of language learning lies. Of course, you need to remember kanji to pass JLPT exam, you need to recognize kanji to read Japanese text, so you will need to study kanji eventually. But the most important thing in language learning is "continuation" "never give up". Language learning is a long process, takes months, years to feel the improvement. If you think kanji studying is boring and you want to quit studying Japanese because of it, you can quit studying kanji for now and concentrate in studying words. You can acquire Japanese without studying kanji. There are many foreigners who speak Japanese fluently but haven't studies kanji. And also, it is MUCH EASIER to study kanji AFTER you have Japanese basics, build "sense" of Japanese（語感）. That is how Japanese people themselves learn Kanji, we all learnt kanji after we acquired the language. If you like studying kanji and that is your motivation, or if you are talented in learning kanji, then yeah, go for it. But if you feel bored in the process of memorizing all the strokes of complicated characters before you even have any sense of the language, you can quit doing it and use your time on more useful and practical thing, learn vocabulary.
Thank you for saying this! There are so many people who say that to learn Japanese you should start by learning the writing system. It has never made any sense to me. You can't read and write in a language until you have acquired the language. Thank you for explaining it so well!
First, this argument is a complete non sequitur from what you say in the video, but even that aside, you seem to assume that "communication" and interaction means exclusively oral communication. It does not. Actually living in the country and interacting in any meaningful sense with the words around you requires some ability to interpret the writing. Interacting with Japanese people via text or indeed precisely the type of writing you JUST USED YOURSELF (i.e. 「ごかん」じゃなくて「語感」) can be just as "enjoyable" and just as meaningful for real communication. If people want to live freely and function independently in Japan, they will need some ability to do that, not just "for the JLPT," but to achieve their own goals. As someone who has taught people and seen the transition from not understanding any of the writing around them to being able to understand what's written, I can assure you that there is also great joy in having a whole world that was inaccessible to you open up. Calling that "impractical" presumes that people's only interaction with Japanese will be oral. Why make that presumption? Why assume that we will forever remain on the outside of the country, never needing to interact in any meaningful way with the written word? More importantly, though, you seem to assume that learning one thing is *opposed* to learning another. That's just not true. Memorizing vocabulary in isolation can be very difficult. To use your (fallacious) reasoning, do you have any idea how many words an average 10-year-old knows in their first language? It's hard to estimate, but even conservative estimates are in the 10,000s of words. Even if we just limited it to the most frequent words, it's still a very large amount of memorization, and relying on sound alone--especially when those sounds themselves are difficult for people to hear (e.g. ここ、公庫、国庫、高校、国交・・・)--is a very daunting task. Thinking of kanji as *support* for vocabulary learning--in other words, as something that mutually reinforces learning--is much more helpful. First and second language learning are very different processes, with very different constraints, input conditions, and goals. I would suggest you consider them and the goals of second language learners more carefully before proselytizing incoherent advice.
Nope, deaf people learn language without sounds. For me, reading the Japanese is 1.decoding the word without actually voicing it, 2. remembering local Chinese reading, which is Japanese. That is, recognizing a word and voicing a local reading, when needed. It works well with dialects and other languages. For example, I remember the wrong reading of English words as a primary (Latin), and a local reading which is used to voice the word, it may be different in different places, and have some stupid rules, which I don't have to remember. You are absolutely wrong about learning with vocabulary - I once wasted my time doing that and had to re-learn things by looking for their actual meaning. Most vocabularies don't explain the meaning of a particular word, and list close matches, which are not the same as the meaning of the word, except those international terms.
i remember talking to a native japanese speaker about my struggles with kanji and the response i got was "dont worry if you mess it up, we mess it up all the time. as long as you have the right feeling its all good" and that made me so motivated to keep learning
I agree I been learning Japanese by watching anime and it works but while kanji is not big priority I am taking small steps to learn it because I intend to but I do agree vocabulary is more important
It’s a waste of time to learn a writing system that has so many symbols for few phonetic concepts. It’s ridiculously inefficient. Why, when leaning words in Japanese can be a rewarding experience like in English, where almost every word means something different. I’ll never learn kanji, because I value my time better than to learn 4000 symbols for 400 words.
@@kentozapater8972 If you ever watch Japanese TV, you will see there are popular shows which have a few celebrities ('idols' in Japanese) being tested on the meaning of kanjis. Or, the other way round, being tested on how to write a kanji when given the reading and the meaning. So Japanese people find it quite normal for anyone not understanding kanji, or not being able to write them correctly. In fact they find it hilarious! Because they make the same mistakes!
This is the truth. People get scared when they realize they have to memorize thousands of kanji. But the real grind is vocabulary. It will take so long to acumulate vocabulary, that you can relax about "learning all kanji in 3 months".
Exactly! I've never had a single moment where I've been unable to read something because I didn't know the kanji. You never know a vocab word but not the kanji, it just doesn't happen. And when you have tens of thousands of vocab words, wasting time trying to combat a problem that doesn't exist is just foolish.
Unless you learned by listening immersion. Picking up vocab was effortless but I can barely read past elementary school level. So depending on individual circumstances, there can definitely be value in studying kanji themselves.
@@niwa_s The point of the video is to show why you should learn kanji WITH vocabulary. Learning kanji in a vacuum or vocabulary without kanji is not very useful, as you have demonstrated.
@@SonarHD The point of my comment is that everyone is not starting out in a vacuum. They don't enter a classroom having been exposed to literally zero Japanese ever. As a result, what is or isn't a good strategy heavily depends on the individual's starting point. People having picked up a bunch of vocab and even grammar through consuming anime, dramas, panel shows etc. isn't going to be all that rare. It's very common for a learner's listening, speaking, reading and writing skills to be all over the place in general. So yeah, rigidly studying kanji would be a waste of time for many people; for others, it's exactly what they need. I'm not saying this video is wrong, just missing some nuance.
@@niwa_s Even if you know what a bunch of words sound like, what use would learning Kanji by themselves have without a connection to words? It’s basically what people who learn Kanji in isolation do, and that’s why they aren’t able to read Japanese properly (as the video demonstrates). Surely that’s not what you’re saying would be beneficial for some people, because I don’t think learning Kanji in isolation would be beneficial for anyone regardless of what level they are or how they started learning Japanese.
@@AdamRana He's just logical and honest. Everyone learns how to speak first. Even westerners learn some variation of latin alphabet, few years after they say mama or papa. I've learned some Japanese words just by watching anime with english subs. And English isn't my native language. Sometimes you will get the meaning just out of context of given situation. When you see some guards startled by something and shouting "Dare da?" it has to be "Who's there?". There's no other way. Especially when situation occurs few times and each time you hear same thing. Just as he said vocab is the basis for any form of communication. Pity some don't give jidai geki, or anime credit it deserves. You can learn some nice stuff as well. Like: korose, shine, konoyaro, baka, chikusho. Kenpachi from Bleach taught me meaning behind tsugi and tatakau for example. But the real bonus is that Japanese pronunciation and Polish pronunciation are very alike, which makes it easy for me to write down what I hear.
I agree that kanji should be learned in vocabularies. As a Chinese native speaker, I can understand or at least guess the meaning of kanji words, and this indeed makes reading Japanese texts much easier for me. But the greatest disadvantage is that it also makes remembering the pronunciation much slower for me, and for the longest of time I cannot associate kanji words with their pronunciation (especially when it's not Onyomi). To illustrate, it's like I know 今日 means "today" when I see the kanji, and I know きょう is "today" when I hear it, but I cannot associate 今日 with きょう. Of course this does not happen for a simple word like this, but it still tortures me, and I'm still trying to improve 🥲
@@casercaser6413 When I say Chinese I mean the language not nationality. PRC does not have monopoly of the language. I have no intention or desire to be Chinese national & will never do in the future.
I mean some kanji have just been associated with already existing Japanese words either because it was used in Chinese or because the meaning seemed close enough... 海月kurage (which can also be read as kaigetsu, but it changes its meaning) 静寂 shijima (seijaku or jōjaku are also possible) 鶏冠 tosaka (keikan is also accepted) 大人 otona (can also be read as daijin or dainin, but the meaning changes) As you have probably noticed kaigetsu, seijaku/jōjaku, keikan, daijin/dainin are closer to the Chinese pronunciation but the combinations are so many that it is often impossible to predict how the kanji will be pronounced Umi/kai+tsuki/getsu = kurage Shizuka/sei/jō+sabishii/jaku= shijima Niwatori/kei+kan = tosaka Ookii/dai+hito/jin/nin = otona
As a professional Japanese-to-English translator for the past 30+ years I can tell you that kanji are the least of your problems if you aspire to read Japanese. This is because you can simply look them up in a kanji dictionary. And if you look them up often enough you remember them. The far greater challenge is understanding what the sentence says. One technique that can help you learn to read is to find a short newspaper article about a topic or incident you've already read about in English, and then see if you can read it in Japanese. Still, even after all these years I still come across sentences that pose major problems, sentences that I have to walk away from and come back to before it makes sense. As far as 'learning the kanji' goes, forget about it. You learn the kanji you need to know to do whatever you're doing and don't worry too much about all the rest. On the bright side, conversational Japanese is comparatively easy if you memorize some vocabulary, mainly because you don't need to use much grammar when speaking.
Yeah i remember when i was studying for the level 2 exam, i would get destroyed by the reading comprehension. Sentences wouldn't mean what i thought they mean. The feeling that came along with that after a while shredded my confidence and motivation. Congratulations to you for your accomplishments in translating texts.
@@neelroy2918 Good question. Because their language expresses their perception the world? I often find myself wondering if they even see the world the same way I do. Too, as an island nation, they've been largely uninfluenced by outsiders for most of the past 2,000 plus years.
I spent some time learning the "meaning" of a bunch of Kanji and radicals. But I've never bothered with learning the "readings" - how they "sound". But knowing the "meaning" has helped me to recognize words faster, and to remember them. As for the difficulty of matching "readings" to actual pronunciation.. wait till you start looking at people's names! There's a reason Japanese bank accounts have the names recorded in katakana..
@@alexhenson I did the same. Just the radicals and the meanings. It makes it much easier when learning vocab, because a lot of kanji look alike. 滅 and 減 for example. I never confuse them when I see them in context, though because by learning the radicals and meanings I've trained my brain to distinguish between them. Now all I have to do is learn the readings in-context, which is what he is describing
As a Chinese speaker, writing kanji is very easy for us. But sometimes it’s also very hard for us to know how to pronounce each kanji, because there is no any rule in Japanese kanji system, you need to memorize it by each vocabulary instead of each character. By contrast, you need you memorize each pronunciation of each Chinese character if you’re learning Chinese. And that’s the difference between Chinese characters and Japanese characters 😂
@@davibergamin5943 In Chinese, normally one character corresponds to only one syllable. Like 天気 in Japanese, this is a typical word which conforms to the feature that I mentioned above. 天 corresponds to “ten” (it is “tien” in Chinese ) 気 corresponds to “ki” (it is “chi” in Chinese ) From above, you can see that it conforms the feature of one character one syllable. That’s how normally Chinese works However, 車(kuruma) is a character with poly syllable, this is not working in Chinese. (We call 車 as “che”, it is still one syllable)
Every chinese words only have 1 pronounciation, only some have more than one such as 得(dé) or 得 (dei) The difficult part of learning Chinese is recognizing the word, not how to pronounce them, they’re very easy to pronounce because each letter only have 1 reading, unlike Japanese with multiple. (This doesn’t mean I think Chinese is easier as JapaneseI)
Exactly! But knowing Chinese is definitely a plus especially when you're skimming through some long Japanese text with lots kanji in it, you can get the meaning pretty fast, since you know their meaning even without knowing their correct pronunciation.
I still find it easier to learn kanji vocabulary by learning how to draw the kanji. Since a lot of the kanji's are similar, knowing each component help me identify each of them(I am currently around N3) although you should just learn the main idea or meaning of the kanji instead of learning all reading. For example you should remember 小 as a meaning of something small. then you can just learn 2 words with different reading like 小さい・小学生 and you will already know most of the important forms, meaning and reading of the kanji
@the only god that's why you also learn hiragana, katakana, and use source...... I thought that I made it obvious that you need to learn the pitch accent of the word as well as the kana reading but mb
@the only god yeah America is shit so glad I don't live there. And you need more than just passive income to learn a language. (You wont learn just by living in Japan for example) Listening, reading and talking practice is a part of the things you need to do. The process to learn Japanese is actually easy but long. 1.Kanji 2.Vocab 3.grammar 4.income and outcome. I quite know how to learn new languages. For example, English is not my main language. Also, pitch accent is important but is not really the priority. ESPECIALLY if you don't have much time to study each day. I have been studying Japanese for 2 years and I can start to understand Jdrama, podcast, anime, I can write Japanese, I started to talk recently. Also, I am not quite sure of the reason you replied to me
The best feeling when learning Japanese is seeing a new word and being able to correctly guess the reading because of many different instances where the kanji are used. Feels like I am slowly progressing even if I don't notice it when studying daily.
there are no financial nor social benefits for me to learn Japanese, yet somehow i feel very relieved when i'm able to recognize a Japanese word, it's like having superpowers lol
Of course, by learning vocab, you do still ultimately learn the kanji. The difference is you actually learn them in various contexts that are actually practically used. Learning Japanese got so much more fun when I stopped trying to learn the individual kanji.
i am very beginner, in fact i haven't even mastered kana yet, but my understanding is that when i start learning kanji I'll be also expanding my vocabulary, could u please elaborate further on this subject and inform me whether my appoach is wrong!!
@@naser1109 I'm no native but I'll try to make some suggestions based on my own learning experiences! The bulk of Japanese words consist of either a kanji combined with kana, or they're made up out of several kanji. Of course there are plenty of single-kanji words too but there are a lot that are _not_ so I'd recommend focusing on actual vocabulary, so that you become able to read the words in sentences in a natural way. Of course I do think that there are a lot of common basic kanji that _are_ worth learning by themselves (mainly the N5 and N4 ones), but one issue that the video mentions too is that there are a TON of ways to read them and you don't really want to get stuck trying to learn every single meaning and pronunciation about each kanji that way. It's not fun at all, demotivating, and it doesn't really stand up to just learning the actual words. A lot of kanji are reused between similar words so over time you'll start recognizing them anyway. Actually, it's a good idea to look up a few common words that use the kanji that you want to learn and learn those words, so that you have several words you can now associate the kanji to. Once you do get started with kanji + kanji vocab, I would suggest also finding ways to learn to recognize the shapes more quickly, since most kanji are made up from the same basic shapes (radicals) that can really speed up your recognition of the kanji. Just find a way to keep it at least a little fun. 😊 In short, maybe start by learning the basic N5 and N4 kanji by themselves but don't bother with every single reading, and learn two or three actual words that actually use each of those kanji. Oh, and good luck! Don't get discouraged! がんばれ！！
@@naser1109 That was a lot of text but I forgot something fundamental: is your main focus to learn to speak and listen, or is it to read? For me, reading was more important which is where my suggestions were coming from. But if speaking and listening are more important, you can learn vocabulary entirely by sound and/or kana. Dictionaries will have the pronunciation of all words available in kana too, after all.
@@DaVince21 ありがとうございました that was very helpful, because i had the wrong idea about kanji it seems, my main goal is to understand Japanese not necessary t0 speak it or write it. however, learning kana has helped me to check the pronunciation of some words accurately so it was useful. the reason why i got all hyped and interested in kanji is that it seems very easy to memorize, for instance when i see the word 日本語 i can immediately recognize its meaning , also when i see the word 日本人 i know its pronauciation and meaning, so i thought by memorizing and learning kanji japanese will be easier but i guess you cant have the honey without the sting.
@@naser1109 Oh knowing kanji is definitely worthwhile but again I would primarily consider them to be elements of words rather than just words. It DOES help you understand new words that reuse kanji you've seen before, just like in your example! Just make sure to focus on the actual useful and practical bits of kanji, I suppose I was trying to say in a roundabout way.
I'm so glad I saw this video! More people need to see this. Kanji readings are imprisoning new learners with their vast amounts of possible pronunciations, but the truth is that vocabulary is more important than any of that! I learned so much more from this video than I may have learned in 3 days of memorizing readings. Great video!
You just learn the kanji in combination, they can't hold random pronunciations, they make sense in context with other words, as it happens with Chinese today: people learn the array of characters per word, not word per hanzi. You can notice this with kung fu style names.
Japanese student who studied abroad here; while I do agree that the primary way you should study kanji should be by vocabulary, I also believe that it is worth studying the kanji for their radical and at least the common onyomi for it studied in schools. Yes, 心地 and other jukujikun and ateji often do not line up with the official readings; that’s to be expected given how languages evolve. However, these are the exception rather than the rule. Being able to determine the radical of a kanji will allow you to look it up and the compound word you seek in a traditional Japanese dictionary with ease, way better than fumbling through a phonetic dictionary without the correct reading, and knowing the common onyomi for kanji will generally allow you to parse together a reading that’s either correct, or at the very least understandable to a native speaker. Totally understand the frustration, but hang in there everyone! :D
But the thing is, you learn the on'yomi just from learning a vocab with on'yomi. I never had to study that the on'yomi for 改 was かい, I just inherently knew it once I learned the words 改善 and 改革. That's been the case for every kanji I've ever encountered.
@@aloysiusdevadanderabercrombie8 that's fine but I think you'll often mistake kanji for ones that look similar to what you already know, or you won't recognize kanji you know in new words sometimes. That was my experience trying to just learn by reading and looking up vocabulary, kanji fell by the wayside and I had to recognize the full word. Studying kanji instead, I know both meaning and pronunciation even for new words 🤷 Aside from really easy and distinct ones, it's too slow to learn them incidentally if you like books.
@@CaptainWumbo I personally don't find that to be the case. Sure, that happens on occasion, but it's not nearly frequent enough to outweigh the amount of vocab I could learn in the time it would take me to learn the kanji separately
Where I disagree most strongly with the video is that kanji provides an invaluable built-in set of vocabulary you can study via the kun readings. They *are* words unto themselves! And what's better is that kanji provide a basic lesson plan you can use for building your vocabulary, rather than having to hunt everything down or simply hoping to run into everything you need in the wild. As far as on readings are concerned, it's true that there are several options for a lot of characters, but the fact is that certain ones are *far* more common than others, especially when you get into contexts such as Buddhist vocabulary. Knowing the readings allows you to make an educated guess, and in the cases where you are wrong you take the lesson, remember it for next time, and keep going.
This is really revealing and relaxing to know. I was getting frustrated because I couldn’t remember every sound of every kanji but I can remember easily vocabulary
I think the best way to learn kanji is combining vocabulary's learning (giving a lot of importance to sound, indeed) and kanji's studying. This video already talked about the importance of learning vocabulary. So, instead, I am going to talk about finding a good strategy in kanji's learning. There are many ways to study kanji (some of them are based on mnemonics, which is not really convenient to me, and I hate writing kanji dozens of times). Here is my personal strategy: first, learning the most basic kanji that are used to create more complex kanji, and then those new composed kanji will eventually be parts of more complex kanji. The most basic and important kanji I learned to handwrite first are those which are parts of those "class" I created (this list is not complete, of course), knowing that many of them are pictograms (and a few others are ideograms): - 7 days of the week: the 5 Chinese elements (火 (fire), 水 (water), 木 (wood), 金 (gold, metal), 土 (earth, soil)), the sun (日) and the moon (月). - human body (and animal body or animal parts): 目 (eye), 耳 (ear), 口 (mouth), 舌 (tongue), 首 (neck, head; and I would add 頁 which are the same origin and meaning at first), 身 (body), 手 (hand), 足 (foot), 爪 (nail, claw), 骨 (bone - particularily the upper part 冎 (skull)), 毛 (hair, fur), 角 (horn), 羽 (feather, wing), 牙 (fang), 皮 (skin), 革 (leather, and I would add that one as well: 韋), 肉 (meat), 牛 (cow),... - living things (animals (and creatures of mythology), plants and human beings): 馬 (horse), 鳥 (bird), 犬 (dog), 羊 (sheep), 鹿 (deer), 虫 (insect), 魚 (fish), 貝 (shellfish), 豚 (pig - particularily the left part 豕), 亀 (turtle), 虎 (tiger), 兎 (rabbit), 象 (elephant), 龍/竜 (dragon), 鬼 (Oni), 竹 (bamboo), 豆 (bean), 米 (rice), 人 (person), 女 (woman), 子 (child), 方 (person), 母 (mother), 父 (father), 我 (I, weapon)... - nature: 山 (mountain), 雨 (rain), 川 (river), 石 (stone), 谷 (valley), 光 (light), 地 (earth, particularily the right part 也), 天 (sky), 空 (void, sky), 穴 (hole), 夕 (evening), 玉 (pearl)... - human creations: 刀 (katana, knife), 寺 (temple), 車 (wheel, car), 皿 (plate), 糸 (thread), 井 (well), 戸 (door), 工 (craft), 門 (door), 田 (rice field), 衣 (clothes), 矛 (pike), 弓 (bow), 矢 (arrow), 斤 (axe), 物 (thing), 台 (pedestal), 殳 (pike), 書 (particularily the upper part 𦘒 (writing brush)), 巾 (towel), 里 (village), 作 (particularily the right part 乍), 文 (phrase, text)... - abstract concepts: 事 (thing, fact), 本 (origin), 元 (origin), 末 (end), 未 (not yet), 心 (heart), 力 (strength), 欠 (lack), 又 (again), 気 (spirit, mind, air), 臣 (servant), 辰 (dragon in Chinese Zodiac), 良 (good), 可 (acceptable), 大 (big), 小 (small), 少 (a few), 今 (now), 年 (year), 字 (character, letter), 其 (that), 比, 寸 (length), 尺 (distance), 北 (north), 西 (west), 東 (east), 南 (south), 上 (up), 下 (down), 半 (half), 発 (departure), 中 (inside), 白 (white), 赤 (red), 青 (blue), 束 (bunch), 早 (already), 間 (space, interval, gap), 一 (one), 二 (two), 三 (three), 五 (five), 十 (ten)... - actions, feelings, states: 言 (say), 食 (eat), 示 (show), 辛 (spicy), 行 (go), 止 (stop), 申 (say), 会 (meet), 合 (join), 見 (see), 立 (stand), 生 (life), 死 (death), 亡 (death), 有 (existence), 無 (nothing, no, nil), 買 (buy), 売 (sell), 比 (compare), 甘 (sweet), 化 (transformation), 走 (run), 干 (dried)... By understanding perfectly their shape (so that I can write those kanji without hesitation), I am able to learn (and even handwrite) much more complex kanji very easily, and those ones helps me to learn and handwrite easily other more complex kanji. For example: - 五 (five) + 口 (mouth) = 吾 ("I", "me"), and 言 (say) + 吾 ("I") = 語 (language, talk, with the same pronunciation ゴ as 吾 which is a phono-semantic kanji whose pronunciation is itself based on the pronunciation of 五). - 羊 (sheep) + 我 ("I") = 義 (morality), and 言 (say) + 義 (morality) = 議 (discussion, deliberation, with the same pronunciation ギ as 義 because it is a phono-semantic kanji). But be warned that this study is just a part of kanji's learning, because, like said in this video, it is essential to learn vocabulary, in real context (reading, speaking, listening, writing), so that it helps you to give more sense to those kanji. And it is by learning new vocabulary that we learn new (and rare) readings on some kanji.
Oh, so kanji is low-key like Korean? Reason why I ask that is because hangul follows that same exact formula of combining 2 different characters/letters to form a word, except, when you think about it, hangul is like LEGO pieces of some sort
@@kanamenaito I love when this happens! Like the moment I realized 勉強「べんきょう」 had the kanji for 強い 「つよい」in it, which helped me recognize BOTH words more easily from then on. It's extremely hard to remember the meanings of individual kanji in a vacuum, but realizing benkyou is essentially "strive (to be) strong" and tsuyoi is "strong" gives you a practical association that solidifies their meaning in your mind.
When I first tried learning Japanese, I tried learning exclusively through vocabulary. But I found out I can't remember kanji characters just by learning a word associated with them. I need to study the character (and its components) first and associate a meaning with it, so that it sticks in my memory. Only then can I actually recognize the character while reading. I'm guessing this is due to the complexity of many kanji characters.
@@lennartvandervelden1093 I can learn the word meaning and reading, but I won’t recognize the kanji characters used for the word (and therefore won’t recognize the word) unless I specifically study the characters (as in the looks and composition of them)
Yeah, that's how I learned Japanese. Just memorized the words. I mean, eventually you start recognizing the characters and associating them with certain meanings and sounds so you can kinda guess what a word you don't know is supposed to be, sometimes, but like you said, the are no rules and some words just make no sense.
Exactly. It's so much easier to just learn vocab. Every benefit people ascribe to learning kanji on their own has been ones I still get just learning vocab. Had I tried studying kanji in isolation, I just would have gave myself way more extra work for absolutely no gain.
This is what I do. Just learn the vocabulary and you will know how to pronounce the words. You would never be able to distinguish between “日本” and “本日” if you didn’t know what the words actually meant.
@Soyel Nanori are nonstandard half the time anyways. Just learning the common names and the ways they're most commonly spelled is enough. If someone has a weirdly spelled or weirdly read name you're going to have to ask them anyways
This makes me feel so much better about my struggling to study the kanji. I started getting quite confused when the app I use would throw two kanji-sound questions at me in a row where both have one of the same sounds. I think I'll still try to remember know the rough meaning of kanji but ignore the sounds, since my sense of it is that kanji are somewhat like how English uses foriegn roots to make compound meanings. Bi-cycle, helico-pter, etc. Even in English we have the problem of one meaning that has multiple roots, like how "tetra" and "quad" both mean four.
You just saved me so much time with this Japanese lesson. I thought that I had to master all of Kanji to be able to be fluent in speaking and reading in the Japanese language, but you are right. Being able to have vocabulary match up to specific Kanji will help my Japanese language speaking and reading ability. I've subscribed to your channel because I still have a lot to learn and you're a very good teacher. Thank you.
When I started I couldn't see kanji basically, it just looked like random lines. Learning radicals and basic kanji (just the meaning, no sound) really helped me remember vocab way faster and easier.
I just came back two days ago from a trip to Japan. I'm glad I concentrated on learning grammar and pronunciation rather than kanji only. I was able to communicate with Japanese people and spoke only Japanese about 90% of the time. One thing I love is how they will use hiragana in train stations and on trams (presumably for kids) so I can sound out the kanji. I will continue to learn kanji but also focus on the main thing for me, which is spoken Japanese. In fact, learning the vocabulary has actually made it easier for me to learn the kanji. A good example is "restroom," which in romaji is "o te arai." When I started seeing "arai" in other contexts, I realized it's the word for washing, so when I learned the word for laundry, "sentaku," I spotted that same kanji. 🙂 I agree with the author that learning vocabulary first (like Japanese kids do when they grow up, even before they can read) is crucial.
I just started learning Japanese a few weeks ago and just started with kanji. I am so glad I saw this video just now, I was trying to learn all the readings instead of just the meaning. Thank you, I will not study the kanji's meaning + simply words that have that kanji. I think this is still useful, since it may help visualize the word by knowing which kanji it consists of, like "sometimes" which is Time and Repeater (Time twice), which makes sense. And since Time is Toki, it thus is TokiDoki (Because of the damn thing that I don't recall)
But kanji are my favorite part of japanese! I love learning them! Plus, knowing the meaning of them helps tremendously when in Japan. I also know vocabulary made up of the Kanji that I know (which is why I know their common readings as well), but the meaning is really what makes the difference when in Japan (as an introvert who doesn't necessarily want to speak to anyone and just wants to find their way around).
@@humanbean3 Extactly, considering a majority of spots cater to English translation on signs and such, its so easy for your eyes to read them compared to Kanji. Whereas if say, there was no English announcement or wording on a train indicating stations, I'd have to learn them.
@@RockoStarrYou Thing is, the kun readings *are* words unto themselves. This is a false dichotomy, and relying on ateji words to say "you can never know how to read a word in Japanese" is utterly disingenuous. It's like saying you can never know how to conjugate verbs in a European language because irregular verbs exist.
I take time every day to read manga or light novel in Japanese, at least one chapter a day. It was really hard in the beginning, especially since I had to go back to my resources almost every sentence to check the meaning and/or reading of a word, but pushing through I really noticed a difference in my understanding of the language. I think the best way to learn kanji is definitely to read as much as possible
do you know any good websites to read manga in japanese? i noticed that on panels i have seen on twitter that are in japanese have the hiragana next to the kanji in smaller writing so that might help with my vocab
@@yadugu Bro, there's a ton out there! Look for ''Raw manga'' on google. You'll find websites with mange straight from Japan that hasn't been translated. The hiragana next to the kanji are called ''furigana'' which are there because a lot of the people reading manga are still young.
kaname prolly the most helpful guy ever i've been putting off continuing to learn jp because i was (and still am) so confused about the onyomi and kunyomi
One of the words that made me realize this was 大人. Kanji are very easy but it's still not だいじん but おとな. 😄 It still gives me a good feeling to know the basic onyomi and kunyomi but yeah, learning vocabulary is key, too. Don't learn vocabulary exclusively, try finding sentences in which they are used. Even better for saving them to your brain.
I really like the WaniKani approach. I'm using it after about a year or so of study, and it's really solidifying a lot of the vocab that I've learned. It also pairs learning the kanji with vocabulary of multiple readings right after. Doing vocab with kanji together has been the best for my long term acquisition. Learning the Kanji helps me recognize and remember the characters when used in vocabulary, and sometimes the reverse is true. I'll remember a kanji from a word that also uses it, which will help me figure out the word I'm stuck on.
Oh my gosh, yes! I try to find similarities or hints to guess the meaning of the kanji but I'm usually wrong and none of the pronunciation I've tried to guess are correct 😅. So, now I'm at the point where I see some kanji and I know the English translation, but don't know the Japanese pronunciation lol. I'll take that as a positive though since it means the kanji are starting to mean something to me and not just random pictures anymore
Really good advice! If you anyone wants to jump into kanji and you're dedicated you can make stories for each kanji (look up mnemonics and heisig's remembering the kanji) to help you remember one meaning for the kanji and use a flashcard program. it's still a huge investment but I think it's worth it if you really want to improve your ability to read. It helped me when I was trying to read light novels. I could infer what a lot of the words meant based on the kanji without having to look them up.
Upper beginner here almost finishing joyo 2136 rrtk kanji studying. The reason why Kanji studying is important is so you can distinguish Kanji so easily. I was once tested by my Japanese friend and I confused 歩 and 走 in a sentence, and that is when I am still not halfway through studying 2000 kanji. Memorizing meanings also help me acquire vocab faster since I already have the gist created by the kanji meaning. I also encounter unknown kanji like 濡れる (wet) but I can immediately tell its components (water, demand) and make a story mnemonics, (in a wet weather, the demand of water goes down). However I think that you get the readings naturally, as you learn words. While immersing, i think kanji and kanji combination words became easy to remember because of studying kanji. Still, immersion/learning vocab is more important, and more significant part. But I don't think Kanji studying is not important. Most efficient kanji study is if you associate it with learning words.
Hello! Professional language teacher here and resident of Japan for 30 plus years. I completely agree with you. Whenever people ask me how to learn Japanese I tell them to forget kanji etc. in the beginning and learn vocabulary, concentrating on listening and speaking. I am still not great at the writing system myself even after all these years, but I am more than conversational and this makes my life here enjoyable and successful. That being said I am still learning and I find your videos very helpful. Every time I watch one, I learn something new. Thank you!
i think of "learning kanji" as learming the general concept each kanji represents, since kanji are concept characters, not pronunciation characters. So when i learned kanji, i learned their meanings, and didn't bother with the readings since those always felt disconnected from the kanji Because of that, i expected this video to be about not learning the meaning of kanji, which seemed a strange recommendation, as knowing the meaning of all the Jyōyō kanji has allowed me to understand about 80% of kanji-heavy sentences already, and has also made learning all the specific words i am now studying to learn easier
its a waste of time IMO. i just learn vocab and after about a year, have naturally learned a lot of the kanji's "meaning", but also the bonus of knowing like 4k words and can enjoy native media.
For me i view it as just writing practice because i want to be able to write quickly. But in terms of learning every reading i never got it, to me its almost like learning to roots of all the english words to be able to recognize the words better-its a good skill to have but not one that a person who doesnt know the basics should focus on.
@@jebbushu711 i think it can be useful if you do it at the beginning for maybe like 1 month, just to get familiar with all the kanji parts, but doing that for many months and/or years is really silly IMO.
@@humanbean3 It’s all a matter of learning preference. I find it quite helpful for me personally to spend some time familiarizing myself with kanji one by one, as it reinforces kanji-heavy vocabulary and general understanding in a way I don’t get by just reviewing vocabulary or reading, and offers a great way to expose myself to some vocabulary associated with a kanji that themselves get reinforced in reading. what works and what doesn’t w language learning isn’t at all a one-size-fits-all affair it also helps that I just particularly enjoy kanji and writing, so sitting down for 45 minutes or so to deeply learn 3 kanji at a time has just become a part of my routine that works for me.
@@yeen4204 I understand, and i actually did that for a while too. I just think it's a waste of time to do that for very long. some people do it for up to a year or many years. I just want people to know there's a different way that actually has benefits.
That's really good advice. I only realized the same idea from trial and error of ironically studying kanji with wanikani. I realized that by learning vocabulary through wanikani, I was progressing and understanding a lot more, a lot faster. And incidentally also learning kanji, building intuitions, etc.
why waste your time learning some english made "meaning" to single kanji though? you can skip that entire process and just learn the words and learn the "meaning" naturally through actual japanese vocab.
@@humanbean3 you're not skipping anything by doing that. You still have to learn the meanings and doing so in English first is quicker and makes memorizing vocab and readings easier since you'll already have a database built in your brain you can reference. It's like saying "why do vocab flash cards", yeah you could technically just learn naturally through immersion only but there's literally this free hack you can do to force your brain to learn quicker so why not take it.
@@mrhockeyplayer909 you don't have to learn the "meanings' of single kanji seperately. just learn words and those meanings come naturally. also the "meanings" are basically just the kunyomi of the kanji
@@mrhockeyplayer909 If you know 予報 means "forecast" and 予測 means "estimate" and 予期 means "expectation", then you will know 予 means something like "prior estimate" in any compound it's in. If you know 泳ぐ means "to swim" and 水泳 means "swimming" then you know 泳 means "swim". If you know 気温 means "temperature of the air" and 温度 means "temperature of objects" and 体温 means "body temperature" then you know 温 means "temperature". There is absolutely no reason to waste time learning these kanji on their own when you _already will need to learn these vocab words_, because once you do learn the vocab words, you will know the reading and meaning of the kanji.
@@aloysiusdevadanderabercrombie8 If you already know 温 means temperature/warmth and 体 means body, the first time you come across 体温 you'll instantly be able to understand the word and your brain will have an "aha" moment where you realize "oh that's the combination of body and temperature to make 'body temperature'" which makes memorizing that new vocab word way easier. I'm not claiming you can't learn the meanings of the kanji naturally through vocab, I literally said that will happen automatically. I'm saying it's quicker and actively aids you in learning new vocab/readings to drill the kanji meanings directly while learning vocab at the same time.
you got yourself a new sub.... thank you so much I am starting to learn and I have no idea where to start, I am more and more comfortable reading and writing kanas but still don't know where to go from there and you make my life easier thanks a lot
I've found it difficult enough to memorize readings that I mostly don't do it. However, it is very helpful to learn a meaning for each kanji by labeling them with an appropriate English keyword. It helps the vocab stick a lot faster, and you can guess meanings of new words quickly. Also, a kanji will often have the same on'yomi reading across different compound words, so noting the reading can make learning new vocab with that kanji faster. I would also note that words like kokochi are in my experience quite an exception to the rule - usually readings are not obscured in this way apart from very common words that become exceptions due to their frequent use.
I think learning the shapes of kanji is extremely important for reading (duh). And the best way to remember the shapes is to understand how they are constructed, by writing them by hand (muscle memory helps). Then the shape becomes an anchor for the words you read to gradually get attached to.
I found studying readings helps because it's like Latin and Greek roots for English. It gives you an educated guess as to the meaning and the pronunciation, even if it's not always perfect. It also helps normalize seeing kanji as they are. Kokochi as the reading takes the koko from kokoro and takes the chi. So knowing those readings helped give an educated guess and a way to help cement the actual reading of the word. You also don't need to know all of the readings for a kanji, just knowing the most common is all that's needed.
I laughed so hard at the "Why ? There is no why, that's the way it is. There's a word and someone decided to use these two characters" becasue it's SO TRUE. I realized in my 3rd year of learning Japanese there isn't much point into learning all the readings for each kanji and then learning to piece em together. It's just better to learn kanji and compounds as vocabulary because you're essentially killing two birds with one stone. People see that Japanese has 2k or more kanji and think of it separate from vocab (which is much higher) and then get scared, but when you stop thinking of them as separate things then it isn't so bad.
My favourite example is 今日, meaning today. Written with the Kanji for now (ima) and day (hi,bi,nichi,ka, maybe some more). But you pronounce today as kyou. If you learn a Kanji, learn all the possible combinations as well. Makes learning easier.
Yes, learning kanji via vocabulary is probably most effective and understandable way unless you’re studying some one-in-a-lifetime use kanji. For me the first kanji i learned was 大 from 大鳳 read as tai, then when i actually started to study Japanese i learned 大き, same kanji similar meaning but now you actually read it as oo and then we have 大学, again with similar meaning but now you read it as dai. Thus by learning three words and seeing all of them have 大 in beginning we learned three readings for this kanji
You nailed it. I was in many many different Japanese classes in college and was usually the best speaker in my classes because I learned through immersion and vocabulary mostly. There were always other students who boasted that they “knew” hundreds or thousands of kanji but they could barely form a sentence or construct an argument in Japanese. I sometimes broke down and “studied” kanji for tests but I usually gave up after a while with the meaninglessness of it. I started reading novels in Japanese and kanji did trip me up (especially with name readings) but I challenged myself to just finish and not get hung up on the kanji readings but more so the general meaning. I felt more connected to Japanese by taking this approach and seeing your examples written out really make me think if I had started off learning all the readings for a kanji first, I would have given up on Japanese way before becoming fluent.
idk, i've heard this advice many times, but it didn't work for me at all. several times i tried to learn vocabulary without knowledge of kanji and each time on the third-fifth day i already was too overwhelmed. instead, i spent about two months learning the basic 500 kanji, and then moved to vocab. knowing the meanings of kanji helped me memorize words much faster.
This is the best advice I've ever heard; I wish someone had told me this a lot earlier in my quest to learn Japanese. For a long time, I used kanji as a kind of cheat to the meaning of something...but over time it became clear that I simply did not know enough Japanese words. I was looking at "pictures" and thinking in English. My focus now is on building Japanese vocabulary (in the context of sentences or larger passages, of course).
I just started learning Japanese and Kanji just seem such a scary thing to learn, so I decided to ignore them for now and start by learning Kana and some basic sentences. This video assures me, that I made the right decision.
Now I understand it. It's more logical for us to start with vocabulary. I should take notes of your vid next time I try to learn (and master) Japanese! どうもありがとうございます!
As a Chinese native speaker, learning Kanji is pure pain, because I keep reading it the Chinese way. But the upside is I can still understand what it means without even knowing how to pronounce the character
I always heard people say Chinese people had an advantage or had it easier with Japanese, but all the actual Chinese comments (here and in other places) seem to have this same story. Chinese sounds like a nightmare to learn on its own, too. Both the writing, and the tones for speaking. English sounds like a pain because of its dumb and inconsistent rules, but Chinese sounds way harder. At least with English you can sound out words even if you don't know them, and through that, even without help or looking it up, seeing it enough times you can learn through context just as you would with listening. And the sound is a very good reminder for what the word sounds like, because it's just... right there to get from nothing, lol.
As a Japanese native speaker, yeah I understand some or many Chinese characters without studying, but some words and characters differ from the kanji vocabulary. Of course Chinese pronunciation is hell for the Japanese 😂 However, after learning English pronunciation, it becomes a little less difficult (but it's difficult still) 一緒に勉強頑張りましょうね!
I love this channel so much after two views. You are the Japanese version of cure dolly in my mind. Your approach makes some of the most difficult concepts actually feel approachable
Yes trying to memorize readings of individual kanji is mostly pointless unless it is a word by itself. Studying vocabulary is much more important. However, if you absolutely must learn to read (and also maybe write) kanji the fastest way is to use an approach that teaches the kanji by order of radicals and memorizing only their meaning rather than their pronunciations (such as Heisig's "remembering the kanji"). This "by the radicals" approach slowly builds simple kanji like 口 and 木 into more complex kanji. You're much less likely to mistake similar looking kanji if you're more aware of all the building blocks that go into them. Trying to learn kanji in the order of how frequently they appear or how Japanese children learn them in school is not very efficient if your goal is to be able to recognize at least all the ~2000 commonly used kanji. To reiterate, this is if you want to do it quickly. It's more of an intermediate/advanced strategy for filling in the gaps in your kanji knowledge, but if you're really serious I'd recommend it because the quicker you get comfortable with kanji the quicker you can start reading higher level material which will really boost your acquisition rate. Understanding the meanings of the kanji also helps you guess at a word's meaning without seeing it before.
Im glad thats the method I always used. I thought I might as well learn words & their respectice kanji as I learn vocabulary. What happens now is that when I find a new pairing that contain some kanji of other words I immediately can think of possible readings for the word. Its not always correct but many times it is.
100% I’ve said this for so long. Learning readings on their own is just useless. If you learn them in words you’ll not only learn a lot of vocabulary but you’ll also start to get a feel for which readings might be used and when.
I use Heisig technique to learn core meaning of each kanji and how to write it. But only writing and meaning, no reading. And also I learn new vocab and connect it to the kanjis I already know
Great one. Vocabulary is the most important thing when learning a language indeed. Even if your grammar is bad, you'll be able to communicate and understand things if your vocabulary is huge.
Kokochi may be one (albeit of many) exceptions, but that doesn't mean that there aren't "rules" that will help you figure out vocab you haven't encountered if you know the individual kanji. It may also help you discern the meaning from it's parts. So, much of the time, knowing the kanji and the rules about which readings to use under what circumstance can help you learn and remember faster. *but sure, you shouldn't learn kanji in isolation and expect that it will make you fluent. Relevant Vocab must follow soon after.
This is sooo true. I started out learning all important readings, "meanings" and radicals of every Kanji I learned. By doing this I realized how little I actually learned from this. It didn't really help me read except for letting me make a good guess and the "meanings" don't really help you either. It can sometimes be very interesting like 花火 for example. "Flower-Fire" is a beautiful description of firework but if you didn't already know what that means you probably wouldn't have understood it anyways. And there are waaaaay harder examples like "Leave + Come"... 出来る So yeah, after realizing how flawed my learning technique was, I did a 180° and stopped learning Kanji individually entirely. Now I only learn them in vocabulary
Thank you for your honest advice. I couldn't agree more. I came to this conclusion myself. Thank you for confirming my thoughts. People ask me how to speak English, l say learn new words as, without words you can't express yourself.
I do agree that it is better to learn Kanji with vocabulary (and that learning the possible readings of each Kanji is a beginner's trap), but man, saying you don't have to learn Kanji to understand Japanese is like saying you don't have to learn to draw to be an artist. Not only because it is a basic tool of the language, but because it is the single, most gratifying thing of learning Japanese! I am happy for discovering the unending pleasure of writing ideograms, and it is the reason why I value Japanese over any other language I learn. I know he admits the importance of Kanji in the description, but I my core message is, you should strive to enjoy ideograms, and avoid the "slacker" attitude which, I think, in the long run hinders the actual enjoyment of the Japanese learning process.
There's a difference between learning the language efficiently/effectively and a "slacker" attitude. The point he's making is that you naturally learn kanji through learning vocabulary. Studying individual kanji by themselves can be a massive inefficient time sink if you take it too far and can even be harmful. By learning vocabulary, you need to necessarily learn the kanji for each vocabulary in its specific instance - and then the more vocabulary you learn that share the same kanji, you'll naturally learn everything you need to learn about the kanji anyway and you'll recognize how they're used. A bit of kanji writing practice here and there is fine and productive if you need to get a character and how it looks to stick in your mind, but getting too bogged down in memorizing readings and trying to rely too much on that memorization (rather than acquired vocab w/ same kanji) to guess readings when you encounter them later is just... simply quite unproductive imho. And you absolutely don't have to sacrifice appreciating kanji by having a more effective way to learn the language.
He’s click-baiting and potentially misleading lots of people who won’t take the time to read his pinned comment. I know two people who learned to speak Japanese without studying kanji, and they struggle to read text without furigana.
@@天鵬-z2k Eh, I think his main message is clear enough (that you primarily should learn kanji through vocab - not that you should only learn words with just romaji/hiragana or something like that). And I feel like it's a good message/cause, as too many JP learners get trapped by too much time sunk into kanji learning and neglecting actually learning the language because of it. I mean, I've barely spent any time at all on specifically targeted kanji study (aside from knowing some Chinese prior), but 2 years into learning and I can read a good amount of Japanese just fine (including plenty of words that include kanji which were new to me initially, ones I never learned from Chinese).
@@天鵬-z2k That anecdote does not imply anything about learning kanji vs learning words. What if I said someone learned to read Japanese perfectly but they didn't watch Japanese cooking shows and their pronunciation isn't good? By the same logic, that means you NEED to watch cooking shows to speak Japanese. (I assume you don't believe that). You are clearly already assuming that studying kanji = learning to read, but that is the topic of contention.
This was really reassuring to hear. When I was in college, I decided to study Japanese for a year to fulfill a language credit I needed for graduation. I'd never really been interested in learning another language before, and when I was forced to take Spanish in High School I almost failed out of my classes several times. Since I had the option to choose which language I could take this time though, it made learning another language way more fun. To my surprise, my first semester learning it went really smoothly. I always got high marks for having good pronunciation, vocabulary was very easy for me to pick up, the grammar wasn't too confusing for me, and while it took me some time to memorize hiragana and katakana I eventually was able to write each symbol out by heart. I was doing so well, my teacher recommended that I pursue studying the language as a minor for my degree since I was required to have one for my major at my school. But once the second semester rolled around and we started learning Kanji my confidence plummeted. Suddenly a lot of the reading comprehension questions became very difficult for me to follow, and keeping track of each new kanji symbol we'd learn was considerably more difficult for me than when we learned hiragana and katakana. I think for me it was just that since a lot of Kanji uses several brush strokes, and the symbols are generally a bit more complex, I really struggled to memorize them. Like you said, they can also several different meanings, and sometimes there's just no other explanation than "that's how it is." Sadly, I never kept up with the language after that year and if I were to go back to learn it I'd probably need to start from scratch since I'm very rusty on it. But I think I'd be able to push through if I approached it using your suggestion next time I sit down to study it.
I've been using the Kanji Study app to learn them. The paid version, which I acquired from not very legal means, is quite complete. I started a few weeks ago and can already recognize all N5 and plenty of N4 kanji. It's a very detailed app, which even allows you to add your own mnemonics and edit the information on each kanji. Mnemonics are the way to go. Learning to write them from memory is of course harder.
After a few years of studying Japanese, I came to the same conclusion as this video. However, I feel like there can be a distinction made between studying kanji and practicing kanji. That is, I still find it worthwhile to practice writing and recognizing kanji, to reinforce the memory of what I have already learned through vocabulary. What do you think?
I already know some Chinese, and it’s very interesting to start learning Japanese, my current knowledge of Chinese Kanjis helps me to understand the meaning most of the time, but I still need to learn a new pronunciation for them, this video gives me a really good piece of advice, Thanks! 🙏
Hard disagree. It's useful to study kanji because it'll at least make it easier to look up words you don't know, if you know at least one of the readings. Instead of having to trace the kanji in google translate's handwriting feature every time just to be able to copy and paste into a dictionary.
I've been struggling to understand the "system" behind Kanji for the reasons you mention. Things like stroke order and radicals make sense but even with multiple readings the kanji can still represent a word that uses none of them. Is there a point where the On/Kun-yomi readings are useful to know or am I right in thinking that better recognition of kanji comes with understanding of the context it is used in rather than running through the different reading combinations until it makes sense? (Just subscribed last night, love the channel already).
If you learn many vocabularies you had to remember kanjis anyway. My recommendation is that you learn words and remember the kanji that is used in the word. I don’t think remembering kanji for the sake of learning Japanese is a good idea. I mentioned my idea on other comments you can take a look. If you learnt 10000 words, you would know almost all the kanji that are used commonly.
@@kanamenaito Forgive the late reply but thank you so much for the quick reply yourself. Would you say it's worthwhile learning radicals in the early stages of getting comfortable with Kanji or is best to just start building the vocabulary regardless? (Not to say that either can't be done at the same time..)
Idk man. I just started working on kanji an have learned a ton of vocabulary because of it. And vocabulary means nothing when you have to read a wall of kanji.
learning 15k+ kanji combinations that make up the vocab without knowing the underlying 2k or so basic kanji as at least a hint for the reading / meaning, or to help with memorization by mnemonics made up from the individual kanji, seems to me like it would actually waste more time in the long run sure, you can't just learn 'kanji' as in the meaning of each symbol, you need to separately learn the reading and meaning of each vocab word too, but theres no reason to not know the basic meaning and kun / on reading of individual kanji, in my 1 year of daily studying i noticed constantly how you are able to predict the meaning / reading of new vocab pretty often from just knowing the kanji themselves (but of course not always) also the title of the video makes it seem like you want people to only know hiragana and katakana which obviously isnt the point of the video. by learning kanji most people mean learning to read words written in kanji, not just learning individual kanji not trying to hate or anything, just throwing in my 2 cents on how my studies have felt so far :)
this is the great issue, I feel, in learning Japanese. A great tool for adding to your list of vocabulary is going to be the written word. "learn vocabulary" you say, but from whom if not the printed word..? And of course the printed words involve kanji. I find, whilst reading, that furigana over the kanji is great but seeing it there all the time means one learns less.. so I am trying to build my own (web) pages that when one mouses over a (sequence) of kanji the furigana is displayed. So I can can read the text yet get the quick help I need to learn/remind myself of a Kanji's meaning. Whether the text is someone else's or my own - I believe writing your OWN story is a great way to learn because 1) you will write the things your are most likely to say (repeatedly to people) and 2) when you re-read it to yourself you know the story so you more easily remember the meanings.
You may want to check out Yomichan or a similar browser extension. It will look up words for you and show you the pronunciation and meaning. It won't do these things automatically, you need to hold down Shift and hover over the word, so you can try recalling things yourself, then verify it with a lookup.
True. I’m Chinese n I can read/write all the kanjis, BUT they r pronounced differently in Japanese n some have completely diff meanings. so I still have to learn them as new vocab. Altho the familiarity def helps.
Absolutely agree with this. I also tell Thai learners trying not to memorize the tone sign when reading, just learn the vocabulary streightaway. It's the way the natives actually learn their language.
Basically, you can compare this to studying English syllable-by-syllable (which is something you DON'T do in English) Like for example, LET'S JUST SAY the word "impossible" is made up of 2 kanji (just placeholders), "im" (不）and "possible" (可). Usually, you learn this English word by seeing, hearing or reading it. You aren't studying "im" and "possible" separately. But if you're studying kanji ALONE, you're basically just doing that. For example, let's say you studied "im" (不) from "impossible" (不可) alone, well, you know it's a negative marker for the word "possible" (可), but a negative marker is also utilized in other words, and yes, in different spellings. 不逆 - ir-reversible (ir (不) serves as a negative marker here) 不勇- un-nerving (un (不) serves as a negative marker here) 不続 - discontinued (dis (不) serves as a negative marker here) Now, same as Japanese to English, you'd be confused if whether 不 is supposed to be read as "im" or "ir" or "un" or "dis", unlike if you just learned full words (aka vocab), the sound will instantly click to you the moment you see the mixture of kanji. Like the videos' example with 心地 (kokochi), which is an irregular reading. This is applicable to English too. Knowing that "believe" and "able" = believable, where the E disappears, you will struggle to determine whether the E stays or disappears IF you learned them separately. Same as "pronounce" and "pronunciation", where the 'o' disappears. Oh, and did you think you could escape from silent words? Japanese also has silent terms. 風 (kaze) which means wind, and 風邪 (kaze) which means influenza (common cold) both only make use of 風's sound, completely defying the sound of 邪 (yokoshima). Seriously, learn vocabulary.
Languages have always been spoken. Writing systems came later. Trying to create a perfect representation of sound in a shape is what’s difficult. So, learn words (how they sound), then how to read them, then how to write them. Not the other way. Really good point of advice in this video!
Wanikani is an excellent solution to this problem. For each Kanji you learn the most common reading(s) and then you learn specific vocabulary words using those kanji with their own readings. So you'll learn the kanji 日 simply as ひ. But then in vocabulary you'll learn items such as 今日 (きょう), 日 (にち), and 日本 (にほん)
I feel like wanikani has the same problem. When you learn one reading, it’s hard to memorize words that have different readings compared to just studying vocabulary
@@SuperSomieStuff wanikani teaches you the rules tho too. you learn radicals. you learn the onyomi & kunyomi readings of a kanji. a kanji standing alone to make up a vocabulary word mostly uses the kunyomi reading. jukugo words will mostly use the onyomi reading of the 2 kanji. wani kani teaches vocab & how to predict a reading if you ever come across a vocab word you don’t know. i’ve only done 3 levels so far but they make kanji seem not so scary.
This was an insightful video, it confirmed my suspicions after working through a significant amount of the Duolingo course and the free section of wanikani. I feel like the basic kanji are good to learn but ultimately you need to learn the matching vocab which is why both systems suck sometimes, wanikani more than Duolingo I think. Sometimes Duolingo just keeps asking you to match the kanji to the pronunciation without telling you the meaning until much later which SUCKS!
I feel like the best approach is learning vocab and THEN learning kanji, like you already know the kanji from words and you just solidify that knowledge with their real meanings and possible readings
if you learn enough vocab, you will naturally learn the "meanings" of the kanji though. also all the readings. only you wont have wasted so much time learning something u get for free along side thousands of vocabulary.
But unfortunately many people don't realize that. They always just wanted Japan to give up kanji so it would be easier for them to learn, which is really like arrogance😅
hello what do you think about nihongo shark system or kanji damage in which you should learn ONLY meanings of kanjis so that you can easily memorize words afterwards?
Here is the reason why I think you should learn vocabulary before you learn kanji(or learn kanji with vocabulary).
I recommend you to learn vocabulary, or in other words, learn sounds of words before learning kanji is because SOUNDS ARE THE FOUNDATION AND FRAMEWORK OF A LANGUAGE. No child aquire language by learning writing system. Everyone learns writing system after they acquire spoken language.
Let's take a look at how Japanese kids start learning kanji. According to Ministry of Education, first graders learn 80 kanjis a year, second graders 160, third 200, fourth 200, fifth 185, sixth 181. They learn in total of 1026 kanjis. Those kids, who already had acquired the language, start their kanji leraning at the age of 7, they learn in total of 1026 kanjis in 6 years. SIX YEARS! And there are 2136 common kanjis(常用漢字), so they only learn a half of common kanjis in 6 years. They spend another three years in 中学校 to learn rest of the common kanjis. But those are kanjis that are "required to teach in the school", not that we all know all the common kanjis when we became adults, in fact there are many Japanese adults who cannot write many common kanjis, even those who don't reognize some of it.
So what is the optimal strategy of acquisition of Japanese for foreign learners. Should you start learning kanji from the beginning? Of course, if you are interested in kanji system, you can just start studying it, there are people who knows kanjis but who cannot speak the language. But if your goal is to acquire Japanese language, my suggestion is you should learn vocabulary first. Fun about language learning lies in "now I can talk!" After you learn all those boring basics of a language, when you realize "oh I can now communicate using the language I'm studying", that is when you feel really happy and feel motivated to study more. Apart from knowledge about basic grammars, it is vocabulary that brings you that feeling "now I can communicate". That is also how child acquire their language, they build up their vocabulary everyday, it is not that they learn vocabulary by learning kanji and put them together like building blocks.
And also, there are two thousands common kanjis that takes Japanese kids 9 years to learn, how long does it take you to memorize them all?
I'm not saying that you shouldn't study kanji at all. My point is, your kanji learning should be on foundation of vocabulary. You learn vocabulary, sounds of the words by hiragana (or katakana), then you can learn the kanji that is used in the word. Or if you really hate learning kanji, if you can't bring yourself to memorize kanjis, then you can ignore kanji first and try concentrating in studying words first. It is fun to learn words, because the more you remember, the more you can actually communicate. That's where the joy of language learning lies.
Of course, you need to remember kanji to pass JLPT exam, you need to recognize kanji to read Japanese text, so you will need to study kanji eventually. But the most important thing in language learning is "continuation" "never give up". Language learning is a long process, takes months, years to feel the improvement. If you think kanji studying is boring and you want to quit studying Japanese because of it, you can quit studying kanji for now and concentrate in studying words. You can acquire Japanese without studying kanji. There are many foreigners who speak Japanese fluently but haven't studies kanji. And also, it is MUCH EASIER to study kanji AFTER you have Japanese basics, build "sense" of Japanese（語感）. That is how Japanese people themselves learn Kanji, we all learnt kanji after we acquired the language.
If you like studying kanji and that is your motivation, or if you are talented in learning kanji, then yeah, go for it. But if you feel bored in the process of memorizing all the strokes of complicated characters before you even have any sense of the language, you can quit doing it and use your time on more useful and practical thing, learn vocabulary.
Thank you for saying this! There are so many people who say that to learn Japanese you should start by learning the writing system. It has never made any sense to me. You can't read and write in a language until you have acquired the language. Thank you for explaining it so well!
First, this argument is a complete non sequitur from what you say in the video, but even that aside, you seem to assume that "communication" and interaction means exclusively oral communication. It does not. Actually living in the country and interacting in any meaningful sense with the words around you requires some ability to interpret the writing. Interacting with Japanese people via text or indeed precisely the type of writing you JUST USED YOURSELF (i.e. 「ごかん」じゃなくて「語感」) can be just as "enjoyable" and just as meaningful for real communication. If people want to live freely and function independently in Japan, they will need some ability to do that, not just "for the JLPT," but to achieve their own goals. As someone who has taught people and seen the transition from not understanding any of the writing around them to being able to understand what's written, I can assure you that there is also great joy in having a whole world that was inaccessible to you open up. Calling that "impractical" presumes that people's only interaction with Japanese will be oral. Why make that presumption? Why assume that we will forever remain on the outside of the country, never needing to interact in any meaningful way with the written word?
More importantly, though, you seem to assume that learning one thing is *opposed* to learning another. That's just not true. Memorizing vocabulary in isolation can be very difficult. To use your (fallacious) reasoning, do you have any idea how many words an average 10-year-old knows in their first language? It's hard to estimate, but even conservative estimates are in the 10,000s of words. Even if we just limited it to the most frequent words, it's still a very large amount of memorization, and relying on sound alone--especially when those sounds themselves are difficult for people to hear (e.g. ここ、公庫、国庫、高校、国交・・・)--is a very daunting task. Thinking of kanji as *support* for vocabulary learning--in other words, as something that mutually reinforces learning--is much more helpful.
First and second language learning are very different processes, with very different constraints, input conditions, and goals. I would suggest you consider them and the goals of second language learners more carefully before proselytizing incoherent advice.
i completely agree with what you said. the guy above is spewing out nonsense
thank you
Nope, deaf people learn language without sounds. For me, reading the Japanese is 1.decoding the word without actually voicing it, 2. remembering local Chinese reading, which is Japanese. That is, recognizing a word and voicing a local reading, when needed. It works well with dialects and other languages. For example, I remember the wrong reading of English words as a primary (Latin), and a local reading which is used to voice the word, it may be different in different places, and have some stupid rules, which I don't have to remember.
You are absolutely wrong about learning with vocabulary - I once wasted my time doing that and had to re-learn things by looking for their actual meaning. Most vocabularies don't explain the meaning of a particular word, and list close matches, which are not the same as the meaning of the word, except those international terms.
i remember talking to a native japanese speaker about my struggles with kanji and the response i got was "dont worry if you mess it up, we mess it up all the time. as long as you have the right feeling its all good" and that made me so motivated to keep learning
Also I like to remember that japanese take 18 years to learn the joyo Kanji (technically 12 years but still)
I agree I been learning Japanese by watching anime and it works but while kanji is not big priority I am taking small steps to learn it because I intend to but I do agree vocabulary is more important
the right kokochi
It’s a waste of time to learn a writing system that has so many symbols for few phonetic concepts. It’s ridiculously inefficient. Why, when leaning words in Japanese can be a rewarding experience like in English, where almost every word means something different. I’ll never learn kanji, because I value my time better than to learn 4000 symbols for 400 words.
@@kentozapater8972
If you ever watch Japanese TV, you will see there are popular shows which have a few celebrities ('idols' in Japanese) being tested on the meaning of kanjis. Or, the other way round, being tested on how to write a kanji when given the reading and the meaning.
So Japanese people find it quite normal for anyone not understanding kanji, or not being able to write them correctly. In fact they find it hilarious! Because they make the same mistakes!
This is the truth. People get scared when they realize they have to memorize thousands of kanji. But the real grind is vocabulary. It will take so long to acumulate vocabulary, that you can relax about "learning all kanji in 3 months".
Exactly! I've never had a single moment where I've been unable to read something because I didn't know the kanji. You never know a vocab word but not the kanji, it just doesn't happen. And when you have tens of thousands of vocab words, wasting time trying to combat a problem that doesn't exist is just foolish.
Unless you learned by listening immersion. Picking up vocab was effortless but I can barely read past elementary school level. So depending on individual circumstances, there can definitely be value in studying kanji themselves.
@@niwa_s The point of the video is to show why you should learn kanji WITH vocabulary. Learning kanji in a vacuum or vocabulary without kanji is not very useful, as you have demonstrated.
@@SonarHD The point of my comment is that everyone is not starting out in a vacuum. They don't enter a classroom having been exposed to literally zero Japanese ever. As a result, what is or isn't a good strategy heavily depends on the individual's starting point.
People having picked up a bunch of vocab and even grammar through consuming anime, dramas, panel shows etc. isn't going to be all that rare. It's very common for a learner's listening, speaking, reading and writing skills to be all over the place in general. So yeah, rigidly studying kanji would be a waste of time for many people; for others, it's exactly what they need. I'm not saying this video is wrong, just missing some nuance.
@@niwa_s Even if you know what a bunch of words sound like, what use would learning Kanji by themselves have without a connection to words? It’s basically what people who learn Kanji in isolation do, and that’s why they aren’t able to read Japanese properly (as the video demonstrates). Surely that’s not what you’re saying would be beneficial for some people, because I don’t think learning Kanji in isolation would be beneficial for anyone regardless of what level they are or how they started learning Japanese.
I love how blunt this guy is, idk if he's trying to be funny but it's making me laugh lmao
Right?! I love how straightforward he is. 😊
@@AdamRana He's just logical and honest. Everyone learns how to speak first. Even westerners learn some variation of latin alphabet, few years after they say mama or papa. I've learned some Japanese words just by watching anime with english subs. And English isn't my native language. Sometimes you will get the meaning just out of context of given situation. When you see some guards startled by something and shouting "Dare da?" it has to be "Who's there?". There's no other way. Especially when situation occurs few times and each time you hear same thing.
Just as he said vocab is the basis for any form of communication. Pity some don't give jidai geki, or anime credit it deserves. You can learn some nice stuff as well. Like: korose, shine, konoyaro, baka, chikusho. Kenpachi from Bleach taught me meaning behind tsugi and tatakau for example.
But the real bonus is that Japanese pronunciation and Polish pronunciation are very alike, which makes it easy for me to write down what I hear.
1:45 😂😂😂
I agree that kanji should be learned in vocabularies. As a Chinese native speaker, I can understand or at least guess the meaning of kanji words, and this indeed makes reading Japanese texts much easier for me. But the greatest disadvantage is that it also makes remembering the pronunciation much slower for me, and for the longest of time I cannot associate kanji words with their pronunciation (especially when it's not Onyomi). To illustrate, it's like I know 今日 means "today" when I see the kanji, and I know きょう is "today" when I hear it, but I cannot associate 今日 with きょう. Of course this does not happen for a simple word like this, but it still tortures me, and I'm still trying to improve 🥲
中华文化圈学日语都有汉字的优势。不过我认为台湾人不应该称自己为Chinese...
@@casercaser6413 When I say Chinese I mean the language not nationality. PRC does not have monopoly of the language. I have no intention or desire to be Chinese national & will never do in the future.
@@casercaser6413 我的母语是华文，不应该叫自己华人吗?
I mean some kanji have just been associated with already existing Japanese words either because it was used in Chinese or because the meaning seemed close enough...
海月kurage (which can also be read as kaigetsu, but it changes its meaning)
静寂 shijima (seijaku or jōjaku are also possible)
鶏冠 tosaka (keikan is also accepted)
大人 otona (can also be read as daijin or dainin, but the meaning changes)
As you have probably noticed kaigetsu, seijaku/jōjaku, keikan, daijin/dainin are closer to the Chinese pronunciation but the combinations are so many that it is often impossible to predict how the kanji will be pronounced
Umi/kai+tsuki/getsu = kurage
Shizuka/sei/jō+sabishii/jaku= shijima
Niwatori/kei+kan = tosaka
Ookii/dai+hito/jin/nin = otona
You can just say Mandarin instead of Chinese for clarification 😂
As a professional Japanese-to-English translator for the past 30+ years I can tell you that kanji are the least of your problems if you aspire to read Japanese. This is because you can simply look them up in a kanji dictionary. And if you look them up often enough you remember them. The far greater challenge is understanding what the sentence says. One technique that can help you learn to read is to find a short newspaper article about a topic or incident you've already read about in English, and then see if you can read it in Japanese. Still, even after all these years I still come across sentences that pose major problems, sentences that I have to walk away from and come back to before it makes sense.
As far as 'learning the kanji' goes, forget about it. You learn the kanji you need to know to do whatever you're doing and don't worry too much about all the rest.
On the bright side, conversational Japanese is comparatively easy if you memorize some vocabulary, mainly because you don't need to use much grammar when speaking.
Yeah i remember when i was studying for the level 2 exam, i would get destroyed by the reading comprehension. Sentences wouldn't mean what i thought they mean. The feeling that came along with that after a while shredded my confidence and motivation. Congratulations to you for your accomplishments in translating texts.
One thing that bugs me in reading Japanese is seeing a kana word and not being sure whether it's original kana or a kanji being emphasized...
I would love to know why Jaapanese evolved the way it did.
@@neelroy2918 Good question. Because their language expresses their perception the world? I often find myself wondering if they even see the world the same way I do. Too, as an island nation, they've been largely uninfluenced by outsiders for most of the past 2,000 plus years.
@@jiyushugi1085 thanks. You might like ted video "how language shapes how we think"
I spent some time learning the "meaning" of a bunch of Kanji and radicals. But I've never bothered with learning the "readings" - how they "sound". But knowing the "meaning" has helped me to recognize words faster, and to remember them. As for the difficulty of matching "readings" to actual pronunciation.. wait till you start looking at people's names! There's a reason Japanese bank accounts have the names recorded in katakana..
Well said, so you learned kanji?
Acording to him, you failed XD
Nanori is atrocious
@@alexhenson not really. Learning the radicals is like learning hiragana
I do the same thing, it help you remember vocab so much faster
@@alexhenson I did the same. Just the radicals and the meanings. It makes it much easier when learning vocab, because a lot of kanji look alike. 滅 and 減 for example. I never confuse them when I see them in context, though because by learning the radicals and meanings I've trained my brain to distinguish between them. Now all I have to do is learn the readings in-context, which is what he is describing
As a Chinese speaker, writing kanji is very easy for us. But sometimes it’s also very hard for us to know how to pronounce each kanji, because there is no any rule in Japanese kanji system, you need to memorize it by each vocabulary instead of each character. By contrast, you need you memorize each pronunciation of each Chinese character if you’re learning Chinese. And that’s the difference between Chinese characters and Japanese characters 😂
Does the characters have more than one reading in chinese?
@@davibergamin5943 In Chinese, normally one character corresponds to only one syllable.
Like 天気 in Japanese, this is a typical word which conforms to the feature that I mentioned above.
天 corresponds to “ten” (it is “tien” in Chinese )
気 corresponds to “ki” (it is “chi” in Chinese )
From above, you can see that it conforms the feature of one character one syllable. That’s how normally Chinese works
However, 車(kuruma) is a character with poly syllable, this is not working in Chinese.
(We call 車 as “che”, it is still one syllable)
Every chinese words only have 1 pronounciation, only some have more than one such as
得(dé) or 得 (dei)
The difficult part of learning Chinese is recognizing the word, not how to pronounce them, they’re very easy to pronounce because each letter only have 1 reading, unlike Japanese with multiple.
(This doesn’t mean I think Chinese is easier as JapaneseI)
Theres a rule of how to guess onyomi reading of a kanji, but the rule is quiet complicated and difficult to understand
Exactly! But knowing Chinese is definitely a plus especially when you're skimming through some long Japanese text with lots kanji in it, you can get the meaning pretty fast, since you know their meaning even without knowing their correct pronunciation.
I still find it easier to learn kanji vocabulary by learning how to draw the kanji. Since a lot of the kanji's are similar, knowing each component help me identify each of them(I am currently around N3) although you should just learn the main idea or meaning of the kanji instead of learning all reading. For example you should remember 小 as a meaning of something small. then you can just learn 2 words with different reading like 小さい・小学生 and you will already know most of the important forms, meaning and reading of the kanji
I'm same level as you, and I totally agree with you !! 頑張りましょう!💪🏻
@the only god that's why you also learn hiragana, katakana, and use source...... I thought that I made it obvious that you need to learn the pitch accent of the word as well as the kana reading but mb
@the only god yeah America is shit so glad I don't live there. And you need more than just passive income to learn a language. (You wont learn just by living in Japan for example) Listening, reading and talking practice is a part of the things you need to do. The process to learn Japanese is actually easy but long. 1.Kanji 2.Vocab 3.grammar 4.income and outcome. I quite know how to learn new languages. For example, English is not my main language. Also, pitch accent is important but is not really the priority. ESPECIALLY if you don't have much time to study each day. I have been studying Japanese for 2 years and I can start to understand Jdrama, podcast, anime, I can write Japanese, I started to talk recently. Also, I am not quite sure of the reason you replied to me
@@emmaleprovostlestrade6116 お互いに一緒に励みましょう！
@Gordon Chi about 2 years studying daily for 2h
The best feeling when learning Japanese is seeing a new word and being able to correctly guess the reading because of many different instances where the kanji are used.
Feels like I am slowly progressing even if I don't notice it when studying daily.
there are no financial nor social benefits for me to learn Japanese, yet somehow i feel very relieved when i'm able to recognize a Japanese word, it's like having superpowers lol
@@rattlemespoons577 ofc ofc
I can do the exact same thing without the kanji.
Learning the kanji 使い helped me a lot i see it everywhere and understand what they mean
Can't relate cause I'm learning Chinese. The best feeling is being able to read 1,000 year old Epics, in pure 漢字.
Of course, by learning vocab, you do still ultimately learn the kanji. The difference is you actually learn them in various contexts that are actually practically used. Learning Japanese got so much more fun when I stopped trying to learn the individual kanji.
i am very beginner, in fact i haven't even mastered kana yet, but my understanding is that when i start learning kanji I'll be also expanding my vocabulary, could u please elaborate further on this subject and inform me whether my appoach is wrong!!
@@naser1109 I'm no native but I'll try to make some suggestions based on my own learning experiences! The bulk of Japanese words consist of either a kanji combined with kana, or they're made up out of several kanji. Of course there are plenty of single-kanji words too but there are a lot that are _not_ so I'd recommend focusing on actual vocabulary, so that you become able to read the words in sentences in a natural way. Of course I do think that there are a lot of common basic kanji that _are_ worth learning by themselves (mainly the N5 and N4 ones), but one issue that the video mentions too is that there are a TON of ways to read them and you don't really want to get stuck trying to learn every single meaning and pronunciation about each kanji that way. It's not fun at all, demotivating, and it doesn't really stand up to just learning the actual words. A lot of kanji are reused between similar words so over time you'll start recognizing them anyway. Actually, it's a good idea to look up a few common words that use the kanji that you want to learn and learn those words, so that you have several words you can now associate the kanji to.
Once you do get started with kanji + kanji vocab, I would suggest also finding ways to learn to recognize the shapes more quickly, since most kanji are made up from the same basic shapes (radicals) that can really speed up your recognition of the kanji. Just find a way to keep it at least a little fun. 😊
In short, maybe start by learning the basic N5 and N4 kanji by themselves but don't bother with every single reading, and learn two or three actual words that actually use each of those kanji.
Oh, and good luck! Don't get discouraged! がんばれ！！
@@naser1109 That was a lot of text but I forgot something fundamental: is your main focus to learn to speak and listen, or is it to read? For me, reading was more important which is where my suggestions were coming from. But if speaking and listening are more important, you can learn vocabulary entirely by sound and/or kana. Dictionaries will have the pronunciation of all words available in kana too, after all.
@@DaVince21 ありがとうございました that was very helpful, because i had the wrong idea about kanji it seems, my main goal is to understand Japanese not necessary t0 speak it or write it. however, learning kana has helped me to check the pronunciation of some words accurately so it was useful.
the reason why i got all hyped and interested in kanji is that it seems very easy to memorize, for instance when i see the word 日本語 i can immediately recognize its meaning , also when i see the word 日本人 i know its pronauciation and meaning, so i thought by memorizing and learning kanji japanese will be easier but i guess you cant have the honey without the sting.
@@naser1109 Oh knowing kanji is definitely worthwhile but again I would primarily consider them to be elements of words rather than just words. It DOES help you understand new words that reuse kanji you've seen before, just like in your example! Just make sure to focus on the actual useful and practical bits of kanji, I suppose I was trying to say in a roundabout way.
I'm so glad I saw this video! More people need to see this. Kanji readings are imprisoning new learners with their vast amounts of possible pronunciations, but the truth is that vocabulary is more important than any of that! I learned so much more from this video than I may have learned in 3 days of memorizing readings. Great video!
You just learn the kanji in combination, they can't hold random pronunciations, they make sense in context with other words, as it happens with Chinese today: people learn the array of characters per word, not word per hanzi. You can notice this with kung fu style names.
Japanese student who studied abroad here; while I do agree that the primary way you should study kanji should be by vocabulary, I also believe that it is worth studying the kanji for their radical and at least the common onyomi for it studied in schools. Yes, 心地 and other jukujikun and ateji often do not line up with the official readings; that’s to be expected given how languages evolve.
However, these are the exception rather than the rule. Being able to determine the radical of a kanji will allow you to look it up and the compound word you seek in a traditional Japanese dictionary with ease, way better than fumbling through a phonetic dictionary without the correct reading, and knowing the common onyomi for kanji will generally allow you to parse together a reading that’s either correct, or at the very least understandable to a native speaker.
Totally understand the frustration, but hang in there everyone! :D
But the thing is, you learn the on'yomi just from learning a vocab with on'yomi. I never had to study that the on'yomi for 改 was かい, I just inherently knew it once I learned the words 改善 and 改革. That's been the case for every kanji I've ever encountered.
@@aloysiusdevadanderabercrombie8 that's fine but I think you'll often mistake kanji for ones that look similar to what you already know, or you won't recognize kanji you know in new words sometimes. That was my experience trying to just learn by reading and looking up vocabulary, kanji fell by the wayside and I had to recognize the full word. Studying kanji instead, I know both meaning and pronunciation even for new words 🤷 Aside from really easy and distinct ones, it's too slow to learn them incidentally if you like books.
@@CaptainWumbo I personally don't find that to be the case. Sure, that happens on occasion, but it's not nearly frequent enough to outweigh the amount of vocab I could learn in the time it would take me to learn the kanji separately
Where I disagree most strongly with the video is that kanji provides an invaluable built-in set of vocabulary you can study via the kun readings. They *are* words unto themselves! And what's better is that kanji provide a basic lesson plan you can use for building your vocabulary, rather than having to hunt everything down or simply hoping to run into everything you need in the wild.
As far as on readings are concerned, it's true that there are several options for a lot of characters, but the fact is that certain ones are *far* more common than others, especially when you get into contexts such as Buddhist vocabulary. Knowing the readings allows you to make an educated guess, and in the cases where you are wrong you take the lesson, remember it for next time, and keep going.
What you mean by "kanji for their radical" What is Kanji radical refers to?
2:58 I've read an article that advised "learn the vocabulary to know the Kanji". not vice versa.
This is really revealing and relaxing to know. I was getting frustrated because I couldn’t remember every sound of every kanji but I can remember easily vocabulary
I think the best way to learn kanji is combining vocabulary's learning (giving a lot of importance to sound, indeed) and kanji's studying.
This video already talked about the importance of learning vocabulary. So, instead, I am going to talk about finding a good strategy in kanji's learning. There are many ways to study kanji (some of them are based on mnemonics, which is not really convenient to me, and I hate writing kanji dozens of times). Here is my personal strategy: first, learning the most basic kanji that are used to create more complex kanji, and then those new composed kanji will eventually be parts of more complex kanji. The most basic and important kanji I learned to handwrite first are those which are parts of those "class" I created (this list is not complete, of course), knowing that many of them are pictograms (and a few others are ideograms):
- 7 days of the week: the 5 Chinese elements (火 (fire), 水 (water), 木 (wood), 金 (gold, metal), 土 (earth, soil)), the sun (日) and the moon (月).
- human body (and animal body or animal parts): 目 (eye), 耳 (ear), 口 (mouth), 舌 (tongue), 首 (neck, head; and I would add 頁 which are the same origin and meaning at first), 身 (body), 手 (hand), 足 (foot), 爪 (nail, claw), 骨 (bone - particularily the upper part 冎 (skull)), 毛 (hair, fur), 角 (horn), 羽 (feather, wing), 牙 (fang), 皮 (skin), 革 (leather, and I would add that one as well: 韋), 肉 (meat), 牛 (cow),...
- living things (animals (and creatures of mythology), plants and human beings): 馬 (horse), 鳥 (bird), 犬 (dog), 羊 (sheep), 鹿 (deer), 虫 (insect), 魚 (fish), 貝 (shellfish), 豚 (pig - particularily the left part 豕), 亀 (turtle), 虎 (tiger), 兎 (rabbit), 象 (elephant), 龍/竜 (dragon), 鬼 (Oni), 竹 (bamboo), 豆 (bean), 米 (rice), 人 (person), 女 (woman), 子 (child), 方 (person), 母 (mother), 父 (father), 我 (I, weapon)...
- nature: 山 (mountain), 雨 (rain), 川 (river), 石 (stone), 谷 (valley), 光 (light), 地 (earth, particularily the right part 也), 天 (sky), 空 (void, sky), 穴 (hole), 夕 (evening), 玉 (pearl)...
- human creations: 刀 (katana, knife), 寺 (temple), 車 (wheel, car), 皿 (plate), 糸 (thread), 井 (well), 戸 (door), 工 (craft), 門 (door), 田 (rice field), 衣 (clothes), 矛 (pike), 弓 (bow), 矢 (arrow), 斤 (axe), 物 (thing), 台 (pedestal), 殳 (pike), 書 (particularily the upper part 𦘒 (writing brush)), 巾 (towel), 里 (village), 作 (particularily the right part 乍), 文 (phrase, text)...
- abstract concepts: 事 (thing, fact), 本 (origin), 元 (origin), 末 (end), 未 (not yet), 心 (heart), 力 (strength), 欠 (lack), 又 (again), 気 (spirit, mind, air), 臣 (servant), 辰 (dragon in Chinese Zodiac), 良 (good), 可 (acceptable), 大 (big), 小 (small), 少 (a few), 今 (now), 年 (year), 字 (character, letter), 其 (that), 比, 寸 (length), 尺 (distance), 北 (north), 西 (west), 東 (east), 南 (south), 上 (up), 下 (down), 半 (half), 発 (departure), 中 (inside), 白 (white), 赤 (red), 青 (blue), 束 (bunch), 早 (already), 間 (space, interval, gap), 一 (one), 二 (two), 三 (three), 五 (five), 十 (ten)...
- actions, feelings, states: 言 (say), 食 (eat), 示 (show), 辛 (spicy), 行 (go), 止 (stop), 申 (say), 会 (meet), 合 (join), 見 (see), 立 (stand), 生 (life), 死 (death), 亡 (death), 有 (existence), 無 (nothing, no, nil), 買 (buy), 売 (sell), 比 (compare), 甘 (sweet), 化 (transformation), 走 (run), 干 (dried)...
By understanding perfectly their shape (so that I can write those kanji without hesitation), I am able to learn (and even handwrite) much more complex kanji very easily, and those ones helps me to learn and handwrite easily other more complex kanji. For example:
- 五 (five) + 口 (mouth) = 吾 ("I", "me"), and 言 (say) + 吾 ("I") = 語 (language, talk, with the same pronunciation ゴ as 吾 which is a phono-semantic kanji whose pronunciation is itself based on the pronunciation of 五).
- 羊 (sheep) + 我 ("I") = 義 (morality), and 言 (say) + 義 (morality) = 議 (discussion, deliberation, with the same pronunciation ギ as 義 because it is a phono-semantic kanji).
But be warned that this study is just a part of kanji's learning, because, like said in this video, it is essential to learn vocabulary, in real context (reading, speaking, listening, writing), so that it helps you to give more sense to those kanji. And it is by learning new vocabulary that we learn new (and rare) readings on some kanji.
loved this comment omg
Blud pasted a textbook in yt comment sections
Oh, so kanji is low-key like Korean? Reason why I ask that is because hangul follows that same exact formula of combining 2 different characters/letters to form a word, except, when you think about it, hangul is like LEGO pieces of some sort
I wish there was a way to favorite or bookmark comments.
Thank you for the tips!🙏🏻
I’ve been struggling with Kanjis lately, the more I learn, the more easier to forget too..
Learning vocabulary helps you to recognize the kanjis used in the word you’ve learnt. “I know this kanji! This is the kanji used in the word I know!”
@@kanamenaito I love when this happens! Like the moment I realized 勉強「べんきょう」 had the kanji for 強い 「つよい」in it, which helped me recognize BOTH words more easily from then on. It's extremely hard to remember the meanings of individual kanji in a vacuum, but realizing benkyou is essentially "strive (to be) strong" and tsuyoi is "strong" gives you a practical association that solidifies their meaning in your mind.
1:26 is xiǎo xuéshēng. You're welcome
If you cant read it in Japanese, then don't
- some chinese guy
Actually learning kanji is the most fun and satisfying part of learning Japanese for me 😀
Nerd... 🤓 ;)
@Nnbveh Masala quite the opposite actually 😆
for me too
@@sonomute i bet you are wanksta
Me too, but in the future, when I have time
This was an excellent video -- funny, informative, and helpful. Thanks for making it!
When I first tried learning Japanese, I tried learning exclusively through vocabulary. But I found out I can't remember kanji characters just by learning a word associated with them. I need to study the character (and its components) first and associate a meaning with it, so that it sticks in my memory. Only then can I actually recognize the character while reading. I'm guessing this is due to the complexity of many kanji characters.
I get that - but you could learn that via single-kanji verbs or nouns, or learning other words with the same kanji as well
@@lennartvandervelden1093 I can learn the word meaning and reading, but I won’t recognize the kanji characters used for the word (and therefore won’t recognize the word) unless I specifically study the characters (as in the looks and composition of them)
Yeah, that's how I learned Japanese. Just memorized the words.
I mean, eventually you start recognizing the characters and associating them with certain meanings and sounds so you can kinda guess what a word you don't know is supposed to be, sometimes, but like you said, the are no rules and some words just make no sense.
Exactly. It's so much easier to just learn vocab. Every benefit people ascribe to learning kanji on their own has been ones I still get just learning vocab. Had I tried studying kanji in isolation, I just would have gave myself way more extra work for absolutely no gain.
This is what I do. Just learn the vocabulary and you will know how to pronounce the words. You would never be able to distinguish between “日本” and “本日” if you didn’t know what the words actually meant.
@Soyel Nanori are nonstandard half the time anyways. Just learning the common names and the ways they're most commonly spelled is enough. If someone has a weirdly spelled or weirdly read name you're going to have to ask them anyways
KAZUSA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This makes me feel so much better about my struggling to study the kanji. I started getting quite confused when the app I use would throw two kanji-sound questions at me in a row where both have one of the same sounds. I think I'll still try to remember know the rough meaning of kanji but ignore the sounds, since my sense of it is that kanji are somewhat like how English uses foriegn roots to make compound meanings. Bi-cycle, helico-pter, etc. Even in English we have the problem of one meaning that has multiple roots, like how "tetra" and "quad" both mean four.
0:12 lesson learned: never try to write kanjis fast
You just saved me so much time with this Japanese lesson. I thought that I had to master all of Kanji to be able to be fluent in speaking and reading in the Japanese language, but you are right. Being able to have vocabulary match up to specific Kanji will help my Japanese language speaking and reading ability. I've subscribed to your channel because I still have a lot to learn and you're a very good teacher. Thank you.
When I started I couldn't see kanji basically, it just looked like random lines. Learning radicals and basic kanji (just the meaning, no sound) really helped me remember vocab way faster and easier.
Yeah, but I'd still suggest learning kanji in the context of vocab, not as s standalone thing
I just came back two days ago from a trip to Japan. I'm glad I concentrated on learning grammar and pronunciation rather than kanji only. I was able to communicate with Japanese people and spoke only Japanese about 90% of the time. One thing I love is how they will use hiragana in train stations and on trams (presumably for kids) so I can sound out the kanji. I will continue to learn kanji but also focus on the main thing for me, which is spoken Japanese. In fact, learning the vocabulary has actually made it easier for me to learn the kanji. A good example is "restroom," which in romaji is "o te arai." When I started seeing "arai" in other contexts, I realized it's the word for washing, so when I learned the word for laundry, "sentaku," I spotted that same kanji. 🙂 I agree with the author that learning vocabulary first (like Japanese kids do when they grow up, even before they can read) is crucial.
I just started learning Japanese a few weeks ago and just started with kanji.
I am so glad I saw this video just now, I was trying to learn all the readings instead of just the meaning.
Thank you, I will not study the kanji's meaning + simply words that have that kanji.
I think this is still useful, since it may help visualize the word by knowing which kanji it consists of, like "sometimes" which is Time and Repeater (Time twice), which makes sense.
And since Time is Toki, it thus is TokiDoki (Because of the damn thing that I don't recall)
But kanji are my favorite part of japanese! I love learning them!
Plus, knowing the meaning of them helps tremendously when in Japan. I also know vocabulary made up of the Kanji that I know (which is why I know their common readings as well), but the meaning is really what makes the difference when in Japan (as an introvert who doesn't necessarily want to speak to anyone and just wants to find their way around).
this is good if you're not really trying to become fluent and able to understand native speech. maybe an enlightened tourist level
The idea is that you pick them up through vocabulary as opposed to studying them individually. This includes their meaning.
@@humanbean3 Extactly, considering a majority of spots cater to English translation on signs and such, its so easy for your eyes to read them compared to Kanji. Whereas if say, there was no English announcement or wording on a train indicating stations, I'd have to learn them.
@@RockoStarrYou Thing is, the kun readings *are* words unto themselves. This is a false dichotomy, and relying on ateji words to say "you can never know how to read a word in Japanese" is utterly disingenuous. It's like saying you can never know how to conjugate verbs in a European language because irregular verbs exist.
@@kaji_sensei I'm not sure what you're trying to say in relation to my comment.
this is great relief. I appreciate you for making this vid man!
I take time every day to read manga or light novel in Japanese, at least one chapter a day. It was really hard in the beginning, especially since I had to go back to my resources almost every sentence to check the meaning and/or reading of a word, but pushing through I really noticed a difference in my understanding of the language. I think the best way to learn kanji is definitely to read as much as possible
do you know any good websites to read manga in japanese?
i noticed that on panels i have seen on twitter that are in japanese have the hiragana next to the kanji in smaller writing so that might help with my vocab
@@yadugu Bro, there's a ton out there! Look for ''Raw manga'' on google. You'll find websites with mange straight from Japan that hasn't been translated. The hiragana next to the kanji are called ''furigana'' which are there because a lot of the people reading manga are still young.
kaname prolly the most helpful guy ever i've been putting off continuing to learn jp because i was (and still am) so confused about the onyomi and kunyomi
In two words. LEARN VOCABULARY!!!
Hajimete! Awesome and so precise, thank you for that perspective :)
One of the words that made me realize this was 大人. Kanji are very easy but it's still not だいじん but おとな. 😄 It still gives me a good feeling to know the basic onyomi and kunyomi but yeah, learning vocabulary is key, too. Don't learn vocabulary exclusively, try finding sentences in which they are used. Even better for saving them to your brain.
I really like the WaniKani approach. I'm using it after about a year or so of study, and it's really solidifying a lot of the vocab that I've learned. It also pairs learning the kanji with vocabulary of multiple readings right after. Doing vocab with kanji together has been the best for my long term acquisition. Learning the Kanji helps me recognize and remember the characters when used in vocabulary, and sometimes the reverse is true. I'll remember a kanji from a word that also uses it, which will help me figure out the word I'm stuck on.
Oh my gosh, yes! I try to find similarities or hints to guess the meaning of the kanji but I'm usually wrong and none of the pronunciation I've tried to guess are correct 😅.
So, now I'm at the point where I see some kanji and I know the English translation, but don't know the Japanese pronunciation lol. I'll take that as a positive though since it means the kanji are starting to mean something to me and not just random pictures anymore
I have this problem, I know what it means but can't pronounce it
Really good advice!
If you anyone wants to jump into kanji and you're dedicated you can make stories for each kanji (look up mnemonics and heisig's remembering the kanji) to help you remember one meaning for the kanji and use a flashcard program. it's still a huge investment but I think it's worth it if you really want to improve your ability to read.
It helped me when I was trying to read light novels. I could infer what a lot of the words meant based on the kanji without having to look them up.
Upper beginner here almost finishing joyo 2136 rrtk kanji studying. The reason why Kanji studying is important is so you can distinguish Kanji so easily. I was once tested by my Japanese friend and I confused 歩 and 走 in a sentence, and that is when I am still not halfway through studying 2000 kanji.
Memorizing meanings also help me acquire vocab faster since I already have the gist created by the kanji meaning.
I also encounter unknown kanji like 濡れる (wet) but I can immediately tell its components (water, demand) and make a story mnemonics, (in a wet weather, the demand of water goes down).
However I think that you get the readings naturally, as you learn words. While immersing, i think kanji and kanji combination words became easy to remember because of studying kanji.
Still, immersion/learning vocab is more important, and more significant part. But I don't think Kanji studying is not important. Most efficient kanji study is if you associate it with learning words.
Hello! Professional language teacher here and resident of Japan for 30 plus years. I completely agree with you. Whenever people ask me how to learn Japanese I tell them to forget kanji etc. in the beginning and learn vocabulary, concentrating on listening and speaking. I am still not great at the writing system myself even after all these years, but I am more than conversational and this makes my life here enjoyable and successful. That being said I am still learning and I find your videos very helpful. Every time I watch one, I learn something new.
Thank you!
i think of "learning kanji" as learming the general concept each kanji represents, since kanji are concept characters, not pronunciation characters. So when i learned kanji, i learned their meanings, and didn't bother with the readings since those always felt disconnected from the kanji
Because of that, i expected this video to be about not learning the meaning of kanji, which seemed a strange recommendation, as knowing the meaning of all the Jyōyō kanji has allowed me to understand about 80% of kanji-heavy sentences already, and has also made learning all the specific words i am now studying to learn easier
its a waste of time IMO. i just learn vocab and after about a year, have naturally learned a lot of the kanji's "meaning", but also the bonus of knowing like 4k words and can enjoy native media.
For me i view it as just writing practice because i want to be able to write quickly. But in terms of learning every reading i never got it, to me its almost like learning to roots of all the english words to be able to recognize the words better-its a good skill to have but not one that a person who doesnt know the basics should focus on.
@@jebbushu711 i think it can be useful if you do it at the beginning for maybe like 1 month, just to get familiar with all the kanji parts, but doing that for many months and/or years is really silly IMO.
@@humanbean3 It’s all a matter of learning preference. I find it quite helpful for me personally to spend some time familiarizing myself with kanji one by one, as it reinforces kanji-heavy vocabulary and general understanding in a way I don’t get by just reviewing vocabulary or reading, and offers a great way to expose myself to some vocabulary associated with a kanji that themselves get reinforced in reading. what works and what doesn’t w language learning isn’t at all a one-size-fits-all affair
it also helps that I just particularly enjoy kanji and writing, so sitting down for 45 minutes or so to deeply learn 3 kanji at a time has just become a part of my routine that works for me.
@@yeen4204 I understand, and i actually did that for a while too. I just think it's a waste of time to do that for very long. some people do it for up to a year or many years. I just want people to know there's a different way that actually has benefits.
That's really good advice. I only realized the same idea from trial and error of ironically studying kanji with wanikani. I realized that by learning vocabulary through wanikani, I was progressing and understanding a lot more, a lot faster. And incidentally also learning kanji, building intuitions, etc.
I definitely think learning the meanings of the kanji and then just learning the readings naturally through vocab is the best approach
why waste your time learning some english made "meaning" to single kanji though? you can skip that entire process and just learn the words and learn the "meaning" naturally through actual japanese vocab.
@@humanbean3 you're not skipping anything by doing that. You still have to learn the meanings and doing so in English first is quicker and makes memorizing vocab and readings easier since you'll already have a database built in your brain you can reference. It's like saying "why do vocab flash cards", yeah you could technically just learn naturally through immersion only but there's literally this free hack you can do to force your brain to learn quicker so why not take it.
@@mrhockeyplayer909 you don't have to learn the "meanings' of single kanji seperately. just learn words and those meanings come naturally. also the "meanings" are basically just the kunyomi of the kanji
@@mrhockeyplayer909 If you know 予報 means "forecast" and 予測 means "estimate" and 予期 means "expectation", then you will know 予 means something like "prior estimate" in any compound it's in. If you know 泳ぐ means "to swim" and 水泳 means "swimming" then you know 泳 means "swim". If you know 気温 means "temperature of the air" and 温度 means "temperature of objects" and 体温 means "body temperature" then you know 温 means "temperature". There is absolutely no reason to waste time learning these kanji on their own when you _already will need to learn these vocab words_, because once you do learn the vocab words, you will know the reading and meaning of the kanji.
@@aloysiusdevadanderabercrombie8 If you already know 温 means temperature/warmth and 体 means body, the first time you come across 体温 you'll instantly be able to understand the word and your brain will have an "aha" moment where you realize "oh that's the combination of body and temperature to make 'body temperature'" which makes memorizing that new vocab word way easier.
I'm not claiming you can't learn the meanings of the kanji naturally through vocab, I literally said that will happen automatically. I'm saying it's quicker and actively aids you in learning new vocab/readings to drill the kanji meanings directly while learning vocab at the same time.
you got yourself a new sub.... thank you so much I am starting to learn and I have no idea where to start, I am more and more comfortable reading and writing kanas but still don't know where to go from there and you make my life easier thanks a lot
I've found it difficult enough to memorize readings that I mostly don't do it. However, it is very helpful to learn a meaning for each kanji by labeling them with an appropriate English keyword. It helps the vocab stick a lot faster, and you can guess meanings of new words quickly. Also, a kanji will often have the same on'yomi reading across different compound words, so noting the reading can make learning new vocab with that kanji faster. I would also note that words like kokochi are in my experience quite an exception to the rule - usually readings are not obscured in this way apart from very common words that become exceptions due to their frequent use.
I love you. Clear basic explanation exactly what I needed to encourage me
I think learning the shapes of kanji is extremely important for reading (duh). And the best way to remember the shapes is to understand how they are constructed, by writing them by hand (muscle memory helps).
Then the shape becomes an anchor for the words you read to gradually get attached to.
I found studying readings helps because it's like Latin and Greek roots for English. It gives you an educated guess as to the meaning and the pronunciation, even if it's not always perfect. It also helps normalize seeing kanji as they are. Kokochi as the reading takes the koko from kokoro and takes the chi. So knowing those readings helped give an educated guess and a way to help cement the actual reading of the word.
You also don't need to know all of the readings for a kanji, just knowing the most common is all that's needed.
Its still less efficent than learning kanji through vocabulary directly.
I laughed so hard at the "Why ? There is no why, that's the way it is. There's a word and someone decided to use these two characters" becasue it's SO TRUE. I realized in my 3rd year of learning Japanese there isn't much point into learning all the readings for each kanji and then learning to piece em together. It's just better to learn kanji and compounds as vocabulary because you're essentially killing two birds with one stone. People see that Japanese has 2k or more kanji and think of it separate from vocab (which is much higher) and then get scared, but when you stop thinking of them as separate things then it isn't so bad.
Thank you very much. Its a great advice.
My favourite example is 今日, meaning today. Written with the Kanji for now (ima) and day (hi,bi,nichi,ka, maybe some more). But you pronounce today as kyou. If you learn a Kanji, learn all the possible combinations as well. Makes learning easier.
This made me very motivated again after studying for a long time. Recognizing most of them is enough! ありがとうございます
Yes, learning kanji via vocabulary is probably most effective and understandable way unless you’re studying some one-in-a-lifetime use kanji.
For me the first kanji i learned was 大 from 大鳳 read as tai, then when i actually started to study Japanese i learned 大き, same kanji similar meaning but now you actually read it as oo and then we have 大学, again with similar meaning but now you read it as dai.
Thus by learning three words and seeing all of them have 大 in beginning we learned three readings for this kanji
Me too. I never learned each reading of kanji, only knew it through the words that contained them
You nailed it. I was in many many different Japanese classes in college and was usually the best speaker in my classes because I learned through immersion and vocabulary mostly. There were always other students who boasted that they “knew” hundreds or thousands of kanji but they could barely form a sentence or construct an argument in Japanese. I sometimes broke down and “studied” kanji for tests but I usually gave up after a while with the meaninglessness of it. I started reading novels in Japanese and kanji did trip me up (especially with name readings) but I challenged myself to just finish and not get hung up on the kanji readings but more so the general meaning. I felt more connected to Japanese by taking this approach and seeing your examples written out really make me think if I had started off learning all the readings for a kanji first, I would have given up on Japanese way before becoming fluent.
idk, i've heard this advice many times, but it didn't work for me at all. several times i tried to learn vocabulary without knowledge of kanji and each time on the third-fifth day i already was too overwhelmed. instead, i spent about two months learning the basic 500 kanji, and then moved to vocab. knowing the meanings of kanji helped me memorize words much faster.
This is the best advice I've ever heard; I wish someone had told me this a lot earlier in my quest to learn Japanese. For a long time, I used kanji as a kind of cheat to the meaning of something...but over time it became clear that I simply did not know enough Japanese words. I was looking at "pictures" and thinking in English. My focus now is on building Japanese vocabulary (in the context of sentences or larger passages, of course).
I just started learning Japanese and Kanji just seem such a scary thing to learn, so I decided to ignore them for now and start by learning Kana and some basic sentences. This video assures me, that I made the right decision.
@youknowkbbaby Furigana means writing Kanji as Kana?
Now I understand it. It's more logical for us to start with vocabulary. I should take notes of your vid next time I try to learn (and master) Japanese! どうもありがとうございます!
As a Chinese native speaker, learning Kanji is pure pain, because I keep reading it the Chinese way. But the upside is I can still understand what it means without even knowing how to pronounce the character
I always heard people say Chinese people had an advantage or had it easier with Japanese, but all the actual Chinese comments (here and in other places) seem to have this same story. Chinese sounds like a nightmare to learn on its own, too. Both the writing, and the tones for speaking. English sounds like a pain because of its dumb and inconsistent rules, but Chinese sounds way harder. At least with English you can sound out words even if you don't know them, and through that, even without help or looking it up, seeing it enough times you can learn through context just as you would with listening. And the sound is a very good reminder for what the word sounds like, because it's just... right there to get from nothing, lol.
As a Japanese native speaker, yeah I understand some or many Chinese characters without studying, but some words and characters differ from the kanji vocabulary. Of course Chinese pronunciation is hell for the Japanese 😂 However, after learning English pronunciation, it becomes a little less difficult (but it's difficult still)
一緒に勉強頑張りましょうね!
I love this channel so much after two views. You are the Japanese version of cure dolly in my mind. Your approach makes some of the most difficult concepts actually feel approachable
Yes trying to memorize readings of individual kanji is mostly pointless unless it is a word by itself. Studying vocabulary is much more important.
However, if you absolutely must learn to read (and also maybe write) kanji the fastest way is to use an approach that teaches the kanji by order of radicals and memorizing only their meaning rather than their pronunciations (such as Heisig's "remembering the kanji"). This "by the radicals" approach slowly builds simple kanji like 口 and 木 into more complex kanji. You're much less likely to mistake similar looking kanji if you're more aware of all the building blocks that go into them. Trying to learn kanji in the order of how frequently they appear or how Japanese children learn them in school is not very efficient if your goal is to be able to recognize at least all the ~2000 commonly used kanji. To reiterate, this is if you want to do it quickly. It's more of an intermediate/advanced strategy for filling in the gaps in your kanji knowledge, but if you're really serious I'd recommend it because the quicker you get comfortable with kanji the quicker you can start reading higher level material which will really boost your acquisition rate. Understanding the meanings of the kanji also helps you guess at a word's meaning without seeing it before.
Im glad thats the method I always used. I thought I might as well learn words & their respectice kanji as I learn vocabulary. What happens now is that when I find a new pairing that contain some kanji of other words I immediately can think of possible readings for the word. Its not always correct but many times it is.
100% I’ve said this for so long. Learning readings on their own is just useless. If you learn them in words you’ll not only learn a lot of vocabulary but you’ll also start to get a feel for which readings might be used and when.
You just saved me so many hours of my life Thank you so much! This makes perfect sense
I use Heisig technique to learn core meaning of each kanji and how to write it. But only writing and meaning, no reading. And also I learn new vocab and connect it to the kanjis I already know
Great one. Vocabulary is the most important thing when learning a language indeed. Even if your grammar is bad, you'll be able to communicate and understand things if your vocabulary is huge.
Kokochi may be one (albeit of many) exceptions, but that doesn't mean that there aren't "rules" that will help you figure out vocab you haven't encountered if you know the individual kanji. It may also help you discern the meaning from it's parts. So, much of the time, knowing the kanji and the rules about which readings to use under what circumstance can help you learn and remember faster. *but sure, you shouldn't learn kanji in isolation and expect that it will make you fluent. Relevant Vocab must follow soon after.
Japanese: 40 different combinations
Chinese: xiao xue sheng, take it or leave it
This is sooo true. I started out learning all important readings, "meanings" and radicals of every Kanji I learned. By doing this I realized how little I actually learned from this. It didn't really help me read except for letting me make a good guess and the "meanings" don't really help you either. It can sometimes be very interesting like 花火 for example. "Flower-Fire" is a beautiful description of firework but if you didn't already know what that means you probably wouldn't have understood it anyways. And there are waaaaay harder examples like "Leave + Come"... 出来る
So yeah, after realizing how flawed my learning technique was, I did a 180° and stopped learning Kanji individually entirely. Now I only learn them in vocabulary
How do you say it in hiragana?
@@Blizzard_likes-yixiandppp
花火 - はなび
出来る - できる
But you could also just look that up on jisho or use rikai-kun if you're on PC
Thank you for your honest advice. I couldn't agree more. I came to this conclusion myself. Thank you for confirming my thoughts. People ask me how to speak English, l say learn new words as, without words you can't express yourself.
A bit exaggerated here but basically I agree. Always learn Kanji in context!
Thank you very much for the great advice kanami san, i was scared from kanji but it will become easier if we start from vocabulary
I do agree that it is better to learn Kanji with vocabulary (and that learning the possible readings of each Kanji is a beginner's trap), but man, saying you don't have to learn Kanji to understand Japanese is like saying you don't have to learn to draw to be an artist. Not only because it is a basic tool of the language, but because it is the single, most gratifying thing of learning Japanese! I am happy for discovering the unending pleasure of writing ideograms, and it is the reason why I value Japanese over any other language I learn.
I know he admits the importance of Kanji in the description, but I my core message is, you should strive to enjoy ideograms, and avoid the "slacker" attitude which, I think, in the long run hinders the actual enjoyment of the Japanese learning process.
There's a difference between learning the language efficiently/effectively and a "slacker" attitude. The point he's making is that you naturally learn kanji through learning vocabulary. Studying individual kanji by themselves can be a massive inefficient time sink if you take it too far and can even be harmful. By learning vocabulary, you need to necessarily learn the kanji for each vocabulary in its specific instance - and then the more vocabulary you learn that share the same kanji, you'll naturally learn everything you need to learn about the kanji anyway and you'll recognize how they're used. A bit of kanji writing practice here and there is fine and productive if you need to get a character and how it looks to stick in your mind, but getting too bogged down in memorizing readings and trying to rely too much on that memorization (rather than acquired vocab w/ same kanji) to guess readings when you encounter them later is just... simply quite unproductive imho. And you absolutely don't have to sacrifice appreciating kanji by having a more effective way to learn the language.
He’s click-baiting and potentially misleading lots of people who won’t take the time to read his pinned comment. I know two people who learned to speak Japanese without studying kanji, and they struggle to read text without furigana.
@@天鵬-z2k Eh, I think his main message is clear enough (that you primarily should learn kanji through vocab - not that you should only learn words with just romaji/hiragana or something like that). And I feel like it's a good message/cause, as too many JP learners get trapped by too much time sunk into kanji learning and neglecting actually learning the language because of it.
I mean, I've barely spent any time at all on specifically targeted kanji study (aside from knowing some Chinese prior), but 2 years into learning and I can read a good amount of Japanese just fine (including plenty of words that include kanji which were new to me initially, ones I never learned from Chinese).
@@天鵬-z2k That anecdote does not imply anything about learning kanji vs learning words. What if I said someone learned to read Japanese perfectly but they didn't watch Japanese cooking shows and their pronunciation isn't good? By the same logic, that means you NEED to watch cooking shows to speak Japanese. (I assume you don't believe that). You are clearly already assuming that studying kanji = learning to read, but that is the topic of contention.
Think about cough, though, rough, through... don't memorize all the "readings" for "ough". Just learn the words. 😊
This was really reassuring to hear. When I was in college, I decided to study Japanese for a year to fulfill a language credit I needed for graduation. I'd never really been interested in learning another language before, and when I was forced to take Spanish in High School I almost failed out of my classes several times. Since I had the option to choose which language I could take this time though, it made learning another language way more fun. To my surprise, my first semester learning it went really smoothly. I always got high marks for having good pronunciation, vocabulary was very easy for me to pick up, the grammar wasn't too confusing for me, and while it took me some time to memorize hiragana and katakana I eventually was able to write each symbol out by heart. I was doing so well, my teacher recommended that I pursue studying the language as a minor for my degree since I was required to have one for my major at my school. But once the second semester rolled around and we started learning Kanji my confidence plummeted. Suddenly a lot of the reading comprehension questions became very difficult for me to follow, and keeping track of each new kanji symbol we'd learn was considerably more difficult for me than when we learned hiragana and katakana. I think for me it was just that since a lot of Kanji uses several brush strokes, and the symbols are generally a bit more complex, I really struggled to memorize them. Like you said, they can also several different meanings, and sometimes there's just no other explanation than "that's how it is."
Sadly, I never kept up with the language after that year and if I were to go back to learn it I'd probably need to start from scratch since I'm very rusty on it. But I think I'd be able to push through if I approached it using your suggestion next time I sit down to study it.
I've been using the Kanji Study app to learn them. The paid version, which I acquired from not very legal means, is quite complete. I started a few weeks ago and can already recognize all N5 and plenty of N4 kanji. It's a very detailed app, which even allows you to add your own mnemonics and edit the information on each kanji. Mnemonics are the way to go. Learning to write them from memory is of course harder.
Thanks for the video, I truly appreciate it!
After a few years of studying Japanese, I came to the same conclusion as this video. However, I feel like there can be a distinction made between studying kanji and practicing kanji. That is, I still find it worthwhile to practice writing and recognizing kanji, to reinforce the memory of what I have already learned through vocabulary. What do you think?
it's very good if you can write them from memory. almost pointless to copy them painstakingly, though.
thanks bro, i thought it's a sarcastic video. what you said really is going to change my learning process
YOU DO HAVE TO STUDY KANJI!!!!
Via the mechanism of learning vocabulary.
I already know some Chinese, and it’s very interesting to start learning Japanese, my current knowledge of Chinese Kanjis helps me to understand the meaning most of the time, but I still need to learn a new pronunciation for them, this video gives me a really good piece of advice, Thanks! 🙏
Hard disagree. It's useful to study kanji because it'll at least make it easier to look up words you don't know, if you know at least one of the readings. Instead of having to trace the kanji in google translate's handwriting feature every time just to be able to copy and paste into a dictionary.
すっごく助かります! このアドバイス
ありがとうございます。
I've been struggling to understand the "system" behind Kanji for the reasons you mention. Things like stroke order and radicals make sense but even with multiple readings the kanji can still represent a word that uses none of them. Is there a point where the On/Kun-yomi readings are useful to know or am I right in thinking that better recognition of kanji comes with understanding of the context it is used in rather than running through the different reading combinations until it makes sense?
(Just subscribed last night, love the channel already).
If you learn many vocabularies you had to remember kanjis anyway. My recommendation is that you learn words and remember the kanji that is used in the word. I don’t think remembering kanji for the sake of learning Japanese is a good idea. I mentioned my idea on other comments you can take a look. If you learnt 10000 words, you would know almost all the kanji that are used commonly.
@@kanamenaito Forgive the late reply but thank you so much for the quick reply yourself. Would you say it's worthwhile learning radicals in the early stages of getting comfortable with Kanji or is best to just start building the vocabulary regardless? (Not to say that either can't be done at the same time..)
Me, Learning Italian and Russian: This will be very useful
Idk man. I just started working on kanji an have learned a ton of vocabulary because of it. And vocabulary means nothing when you have to read a wall of kanji.
This was actually a very helpful wakeup call for me! Thank you Naito sensei
learning 15k+ kanji combinations that make up the vocab without knowing the underlying 2k or so basic kanji as at least a hint for the reading / meaning, or to help with memorization by mnemonics made up from the individual kanji, seems to me like it would actually waste more time in the long run
sure, you can't just learn 'kanji' as in the meaning of each symbol, you need to separately learn the reading and meaning of each vocab word too, but theres no reason to not know the basic meaning and kun / on reading of individual kanji, in my 1 year of daily studying i noticed constantly how you are able to predict the meaning / reading of new vocab pretty often from just knowing the kanji themselves (but of course not always)
also the title of the video makes it seem like you want people to only know hiragana and katakana which obviously isnt the point of the video. by learning kanji most people mean learning to read words written in kanji, not just learning individual kanji
not trying to hate or anything, just throwing in my 2 cents on how my studies have felt so far :)
Man, where did you was all these years. I wasted so much time!
(Very nice vid, makes you laugh and you learn something...)
this is the great issue, I feel, in learning Japanese. A great tool for adding to your list of vocabulary is going to be the written word. "learn vocabulary" you say, but from whom if not the printed word..? And of course the printed words involve kanji. I find, whilst reading, that furigana over the kanji is great but seeing it there all the time means one learns less.. so I am trying to build my own (web) pages that when one mouses over a (sequence) of kanji the furigana is displayed. So I can can read the text yet get the quick help I need to learn/remind myself of a Kanji's meaning. Whether the text is someone else's or my own - I believe writing your OWN story is a great way to learn because 1) you will write the things your are most likely to say (repeatedly to people) and 2) when you re-read it to yourself you know the story so you more easily remember the meanings.
You may want to check out Yomichan or a similar browser extension. It will look up words for you and show you the pronunciation and meaning. It won't do these things automatically, you need to hold down Shift and hover over the word, so you can try recalling things yourself, then verify it with a lookup.
True. I’m Chinese n I can read/write all the kanjis, BUT they r pronounced differently in Japanese n some have completely diff meanings. so I still have to learn them as new vocab. Altho the familiarity def helps.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS ADVICE.
IT IS COMMON SENSE AND IT NEVER CLICKED TO ME!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
WHERE WERE YOU 2 YEARS AGO!??!!?
I was in jail.
Just kidding. I was teaching Japanese in Chinese.
Haha
Absolutely agree with this. I also tell Thai learners trying not to memorize the tone sign when reading, just learn the vocabulary streightaway. It's the way the natives actually learn their language.
Basically, you can compare this to studying English syllable-by-syllable (which is something you DON'T do in English)
Like for example, LET'S JUST SAY the word "impossible" is made up of 2 kanji (just placeholders), "im" (不）and "possible" (可). Usually, you learn this English word by seeing, hearing or reading it. You aren't studying "im" and "possible" separately.
But if you're studying kanji ALONE, you're basically just doing that.
For example, let's say you studied "im" (不) from "impossible" (不可) alone, well, you know it's a negative marker for the word "possible" (可), but a negative marker is also utilized in other words, and yes, in different spellings.
不逆 - ir-reversible (ir (不) serves as a negative marker here)
不勇- un-nerving (un (不) serves as a negative marker here)
不続 - discontinued (dis (不) serves as a negative marker here)
Now, same as Japanese to English, you'd be confused if whether 不 is supposed to be read as "im" or "ir" or "un" or "dis", unlike if you just learned full words (aka vocab), the sound will instantly click to you the moment you see the mixture of kanji.
Like the videos' example with 心地 (kokochi), which is an irregular reading. This is applicable to English too. Knowing that "believe" and "able" = believable, where the E disappears, you will struggle to determine whether the E stays or disappears IF you learned them separately. Same as "pronounce" and "pronunciation", where the 'o' disappears.
Oh, and did you think you could escape from silent words? Japanese also has silent terms. 風 (kaze) which means wind, and 風邪 (kaze) which means influenza (common cold) both only make use of 風's sound, completely defying the sound of 邪 (yokoshima). Seriously, learn vocabulary.
Kafu kafu
可不 可不
Yes kafu is a cevio ai with a cute voice
Languages have always been spoken. Writing systems came later. Trying to create a perfect representation of sound in a shape is what’s difficult. So, learn words (how they sound), then how to read them, then how to write them. Not the other way. Really good point of advice in this video!
Wanikani is an excellent solution to this problem. For each Kanji you learn the most common reading(s) and then you learn specific vocabulary words using those kanji with their own readings. So you'll learn the kanji 日 simply as ひ. But then in vocabulary you'll learn items such as 今日 (きょう), 日 (にち), and 日本 (にほん)
is that better than RTK? I hear so many people suggest RTK over Wanikani
@@PikaPower131313 seems like RTK is for learning the kanji, not for learning the language.
I feel like wanikani has the same problem. When you learn one reading, it’s hard to memorize words that have different readings compared to just studying vocabulary
@@SuperSomieStuff wanikani teaches you the rules tho too. you learn radicals. you learn the onyomi & kunyomi readings of a kanji. a kanji standing alone to make up a vocabulary word mostly uses the kunyomi reading. jukugo words will mostly use the onyomi reading of the 2 kanji. wani kani teaches vocab & how to predict a reading if you ever come across a vocab word you don’t know. i’ve only done 3 levels so far but they make kanji seem not so scary.
This was an insightful video, it confirmed my suspicions after working through a significant amount of the Duolingo course and the free section of wanikani. I feel like the basic kanji are good to learn but ultimately you need to learn the matching vocab which is why both systems suck sometimes, wanikani more than Duolingo I think. Sometimes Duolingo just keeps asking you to match the kanji to the pronunciation without telling you the meaning until much later which SUCKS!
I feel like the best approach is learning vocab and THEN learning kanji, like you already know the kanji from words and you just solidify that knowledge with their real meanings and possible readings
if you learn enough vocab, you will naturally learn the "meanings" of the kanji though. also all the readings. only you wont have wasted so much time learning something u get for free along side thousands of vocabulary.
But unfortunately many people don't realize that. They always just wanted Japan to give up kanji so it would be easier for them to learn, which is really like arrogance😅
Dude’s ideas are truly eye opening. 😮
hello what do you think about nihongo shark system or kanji damage in which you should learn ONLY meanings of kanjis so that you can easily memorize words afterwards?
If kanji helps you to memorize words then I think that’s great.