漢字独学 – How I learned Kanji

It has been over 20 years since I first started learning Japanese and the resources available today are more numerous and much better. Computers have improved language learning for all languages and it is much easier today to learn Japanese. For those reasons many of the ways, I learned Japanese are now outdated. One area that has not changed though is learning to write Japanese. How I learned Kanji will not be exactly the same as how you will but much will be the same.

The Importance of Kanji

Japanese has a complex writing system that requires time and effort to learn. Without knowing how to read the most common characters your whole language learning experience will be harder. If you grew up in Japan you would have learned Kanji starting from elementary school all the way to the end of middle school and would have lots of practice writing throughout high school. For anyone learning at home, our main source of study will be reading. The sooner you can read Kanji the quicker you will be able to learn vocabulary and the easier it will be.

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Learning Kanji Early will Make Learning Japanese Easier

When you read a word in Japanese often the meaning is obvious from the Kanji or you can make a pretty good guess. This makes learning words and reading easier since Kanji provides you with hints about the meaning. So after having spent a few months learning Japanese I decided to dedicate the next year to mastering Kanji. I did not only study Kanji but initially spent at least 70~80% over my learning time on it. I decided if I got this out of the way in the beginning I would be at an advantage.

First Learn the Radicals

I had a book that explained the source of Kanji, what the radicals meant and how they evolved. Radicals or in Japanese 部首(ぶしゅ）are the sub-parts that build up Kanji. It is helpful to learn to write just these individually which makes it easier and quicker to recognize Kanji.

Set up a Deadline to Master the Kanji

To learn Kanji I had a book that had over 1,000 characters. This is about the amount you will need for normal everyday usage in Japanese. I then decided I wanted to learn to read in a year and committed to learning 10 characters a day. Days I had more time I would try to get ahead and learn more characters. I finished before the year was up and for the remainder of the year studied other things in Japanese but I made it a point to review Kanji and continue to write every day.

Continue Reading Japanese

After the year was up I was not perfect but I could get by well enough to read native material. I began reading websites, newspapers, and any other native Japanese material I could find. I had a paper dictionary and a Japanese dictionary software installed on my computer. While reading I would look up whatever I did not know. Doing this I picked up more Kanji and learned more words.

Stroke Order

Learning the correct order to write Kanji seems tedious but it is actually important. I initially did learn about stroke order but ignored it for the most part. What that did was it made my characters look unbalanced. It also made it harder to write and remember characters since I didn’t have a set way of writing them. I did not like how my characters looked different from native Japanese people’s so I had to go back later and relearn. This was harder than if I would have learned it right the first time. One great resource I use to check stroke order is kakijun.jp. The website is in Japanese but you can paste a Kanji character in the search box in the top left, which says “検索”. From there select “アニメーション” from the drop-down menu next to the Kanji in the grid to see an animation of the character written. If you choose “コマ送り” you can stop the animation to see the character written stroke by stroke.

Forgetting Kanji

This is very common, especially now since most people use computers. Usually, when you learn to read Japanese that sticks with you but writing is something that you have to continue doing otherwise you will be surprised at how much you will forget. It is debatable at how important it is in today’s world to forget how to write characters but if you want to remember make sure to spend every once in a while to write something in Japanese.

If you want to learn more tips and information on learning Japanese you can check out some of my other posts here. Or if you want to learn more Japanese I reviewed a dictionary of grammar series which I personally recommend and use myself.

Reference

Ministry of Education List of Kanji Learned in School