Honestly, as a Native English speaker, I think it's better to learn all parts of a single kanji from the get go, because only understanding the meaning of the word is halving the work, and in the end, you're doubling the time it will take to master it. I picked up Remembering the Kanji in preparation for learning the kanji (I honestly prefer beginner's Japanese Script from the teach yourself series by Helen Gilhooly), but what it really does is it puts you on a level equal to a Chinese student of Japanese who already understands most of the meanings but still has to learn the words and pronunciation. Initially it's probably better to focus on kanji that are easy to recognise and which come up frequently, such as 日, 本, 今, 大, 木, etc, and on words that are easy to recognise, such as 大丈夫 ( daijoubu, meaning "OK", "alright", "fine"). If you've got a deck with one four-kanji word in it, you're going to recognise it straight away simply because it's the only one with four kanji. It might be an idea to create decks based on the number of kanji in the words: a deck for one-kanji words, another for two-kanji words, another for three-kanji words, and so on. Obviously, kanji-only decks are only good for words that you already know well. There is a Jouyou version and a JLPT version they both quiz you on kanji at whatever grade you choose-but note that grade one is the easiest grade for Jouyou kanji but the hardest for JLPT kanji.įlashcards help you learn vocabulary and kanji. But I don't think you can fully grasp kanji without a good knowledge of the language and a large vocabulary-if there are 2,000 kanji, how many words do you need to know before you encounter each of them at least once? In the early stages I think we're pretty much obliged to compromise.Ī useful tool on the JPod101 website is the Kanji Quiz. So we mostly try to pick kanji up as we go along. Japanese children already have a huge vocabulary and knowledge of the language before they start learning kanji, whereas we foreigners are trying to learn kanji at the same time as we're learning the language. The method used to teach kanji to children in Japan is probably irrelevant to foreign students. I tend to think that such a method doesn't exist simply because if it did, we'd all have heard about it! At least, if such a method exists, I've never heard of it. Otherwise it's very hard to find any structured method for learning the kanji. You can read more about it in this Wikipedia article. Some people love it, others are less enthusiastic. One option is a book called "Remembering the Kanji" by James Heiseg. Sorry, I leapt to the wrong conclusion there! When you start tackling kanji, you'll find that the pronunciation is usually written in either hiragana or katakana, so the kana really are a prerequisite for learning kanji. If we take another kanji, 今 ( ima, meaning "current" or "right now"), and put them together to make 今日, you can probably work out what it means even if you have no idea how it's pronounced.īut the first job is to learn the kana. The kanji 日 represents "day" or "sun", and in 日曜日 the first 日 represents "sun" and the last one represents "day" (so the Japanese for Sunday is basically "sun-day"). Initially, it's probably best to tackle the kanji by learning them as part of a word rather than trying to learn each kanji (along with all its possible readings) one at a time. For example, today is Sunday, which is 日曜日 in kanji it's pronounced nichiyoubi with 日 being pronounced as nichi at the start of the word and bi at the end. Kanji are more like icons than letters in that they represent a concept, not a sound: most kanji have at least two different pronunciations, and often more. Kanji are chinese characters and it's generally reckoned that you need to know about 2,000 of them. Once you've learned the kana, you can make a start on kanji. There is a very good JPod101 video course on the kana called Kantan Kana. These two phonetic alphabets are called hiragana and katakana. The first stage of learning the Japanese writing system is the kana, which is made up of two phonetic alphabets. Kanji refers to part of the writing system, not all of it. 20004f48coverv05b.As you're a very recent beginner I'm wondering if you actually mean the whole Japanese writing system.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |