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Post by Jade on Oct 7, 2013 7:07:37 GMT
For quick questions and answers relating to Japanese study☆
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Jacob
Junior Member
練習して、がんばりますね！
Posts: 95 
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Post by Jacob on Oct 12, 2013 21:17:01 GMT
Kinda an unrelated point but I am the same person that was じぇいこぶ on the old forum! I love this btw!
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Post by LittleGaijin on Oct 12, 2013 21:55:50 GMT
Kinda an unrelated point but I am the same person that was じぇいこぶ on the old forum! I love this btw! Thank you so much for re-joining the new site, Jacob! I was really hoping you would join!!  And I'm really glad you like the new forums! ★ |
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Jacob
Junior Member
練習して、がんばりますね！
Posts: 95
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Post by Jacob on Oct 13, 2013 14:43:37 GMT
Kinda an unrelated point but I am the same person that was じぇいこぶ on the old forum! I love this btw! Thank you so much for re-joining the new site, Jacob! I was really hoping you would join!! And I'm really glad you like the new forums! ★ Hahahha. No problem, I always will support your new things! I just hadn't had a chance during the week, OMG my homework was crazy. But it paid off, because I have the weekend almost free! |
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lee
New Member
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Post by lee on Oct 19, 2013 0:13:06 GMT
Anyone have questions yet? ._.
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Post by MidoriAbby on Oct 21, 2013 22:57:49 GMT
lee that's up to you guys to come up with ANY question about Japanese language you may have. Confusion? Question about translation? question about grammar or kanji? Anything. ^^ Also other members can answer the questions not just staff, in fact we encourage it. So basically if anyone has questions put them here and then others can give you feedback if they know.
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Post by naitorii on Oct 21, 2013 23:12:41 GMT
Well, yeah, I have one. What's the best way to learn kanji and how many should you learn to start, and which?
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Post by MidoriAbby on Oct 22, 2013 0:45:17 GMT
naitorii good question! First of all, kanji is something to be learned after you finish learning hiragana and katakana, no exceptions. Otherwise it just gets confusing. There are around 2500 kanji that are commonly used that you need to know, which sounds like a huge number but all Japanese people learn them between the grades of first grade and twelfth grade. I try to make my goal around 100 a year, which is actually less than I want to do but is realistic. There are a few books that are REALLY good that give you a good intro to it in the order of importance My favorite is Tuttle's Japanese Kanji and Kana, I got it used for a reasonable price on amazon. Here is a link to one of the sellers (theres probably cheaper ones out there somewhere) just so you can see it www.amazon.com/Japanese-Kanji-Kana-Complete-Writing/dp/4805311169Even if you can't get it for less than 30 dollars, it is so so worth it, I love this book. The other book series I like is called Kanji de Manga. It explains 80 kanji per book, and there are 6 books. Each page goes over a kanji, the readings, stroke order, meaning, and common vocab that uses it, along with a fun manga strip using the kanji and some space to practice writing it.
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Post by Bokusenou on Oct 22, 2013 0:50:27 GMT
Well, yeah, I have one. What's the best way to learn kanji and how many should you learn to start, and which? I used Remembering the Kanji with the web app here. That was best for me, but there isn't one way which is best for everyone, so be sure to test out a lot of things and see what works best for you. |
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Post by naitorii on Oct 22, 2013 0:58:47 GMT
naitorii good question! First of all, kanji is something to be learned after you finish learning hiragana and katakana, no exceptions. Otherwise it just gets confusing. There are around 2500 kanji that are commonly used that you need to know, which sounds like a huge number but all Japanese people learn them between the grades of first grade and twelfth grade. I try to make my goal around 100 a year, which is actually less than I want to do but is realistic. There are a few books that are REALLY good that give you a good intro to it in the order of importance My favorite is Tuttle's Japanese Kanji and Kana, I got it used for a reasonable price on amazon. Here is a link to one of the sellers (theres probably cheaper ones out there somewhere) just so you can see it www.amazon.com/Japanese-Kanji-Kana-Complete-Writing/dp/4805311169Even if you can't get it for less than 30 dollars, it is so so worth it, I love this book. The other book series I like is called Kanji de Manga. It explains 80 kanji per book, and there are 6 books. Each page goes over a kanji, the readings, stroke order, meaning, and common vocab that uses it, along with a fun manga strip using the kanji and some space to practice writing it. I did my kana 5 a day but when I do kanji, which is rare, only when I have a whole day with nothing to do, I do 20 or so. I want to focus on learning all the jouyou(I'm weird like that) before I go back to vocabulary. I don't know if this is the best method but it suits me. There are many like it but this one is mine. |
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Post by MidoriAbby on Oct 22, 2013 11:51:04 GMT
＠Naitorii
I think learning Kanji and vocab goes hand in hand, you remember kanji for the purpose of being able to read kanji, and it's the best way to make it stick. Lots of books have all the jouyou and vocabulary it is used in.
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Post by Jembru on Oct 23, 2013 4:18:21 GMT
If that method makes sense to you, then please don't let me put you off, but this came up again for me recently. An old schoolfriend of my partner , JP, came out of the woodwork recently and surprised us both by telling us he's studying Japanese. We met up with him and offered to help him any way we can. He said he hasn't started trying to speak or make sentences yet, because he just wants to focus on reading kanji. He isn't the first person I've come across who had this kind of attitude and it confuses me so much.
As I told JP's friend, the Japanese can speak the language fluently before they can read kanji. Sure, their vocabulary increases as they study, but they're conversational when they're starting out wry kanji. For me, and those like me who started out in romaji and had a decent vocabulary before starting kanji, the experience of studying these characters and seeing how they relate to the words we've been using in our sentence, surely feels more like what the Japanese must feel when learning. You'll never get that any other way.
More than anything though, for me at least, it makes so much more sense to speak before you can read. I am fully capable of asking, 'what does this say?' in Japanese. However, I'd have a harder job conveying my needs to natives, if I couldn't make sentences, or understand the grammar of what I was reading. It's just logical to me.
I guess for some, the lure of being able to point to a bunch of kanji and say to their friends, 'that reads, 'blue dragon noodles' with pride, is too much. That's the only value of kanji first, that I can possibly imagine. ^^
Just my thoughts, but as you can see, it's something I feel pretty strongly about.
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Post by LittleGaijin on Oct 23, 2013 22:22:41 GMT
naitorii I agree with Abby. The way I learned my Kanji is through vocab, and although that's the non-tradition/lazy approach to learning Kanji―it works! Learning Kanji the traditional way (which is learning Kanji by itself, one after another, and all the kun/on readings) is more efficient, since you'd be able to "read" (make educated guesses) when confronted by a written word in Japanese that you didn't know beforehand... but, if you learn your Kanji through vocab―like I did―you might still be able to do this, but it'll take some time and A LOT of vocabulary. I tried writing something about this to you before, but it was really hard to explain! I hope you can make sense of any of this! I'm planning an article about my methods for learning Kanji on the Homepage (someday), so look out for it! I may explain it better on there if you're interested!
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Post by Jembru on Oct 24, 2013 13:28:33 GMT
naitorii I agree with Abby. The way I learned my Kanji is through vocab, and although that's the non-tradition/lazy approach to learning Kanji―it works! Learning Kanji the traditional way (which is learning Kanji by itself, one after another, and all the kun/on readings) is more efficient, since you'd be able to "read" (make educated guesses) when confronted by a written word in Japanese that you didn't know beforehand... but, if you learn your Kanji through vocab―like I did―you might still be able to do this, but it'll take some time and A LOT of vocabulary. I tried writing something about this to you before, but it was really hard to explain! I hope you can make sense of any of this! I'm planning an article about my methods for learning Kanji on the Homepage (someday), so look out for it! I may explain it better on there if you're interested! I don't think it's that rare, is it? I mean, it's not how students taking official courses learn, but it's definitely how I did and surely if two of us learnt this way (midori? is it three of us?), it can't be too unusual. It has advantages and disadvantages I think. It means you can learn kanji in a more absorptive way, so can focus on other things, but you're right in that it can take much longer to learn all the various readings. However, I don't believe learning the 'old fashioned way' makes reading unknown words any easier. There isn't really a rule of thumb that dictates how you read a kanji in a word it appears in (and of course, there are some that have more than one possible reading, just look at 明日 and 昨日, or how do you prefer to read 家 when you see it as noun?), you just have to know the word. So while knowing the meanings of kanji lets you guess the meaning, it won't tell you for sure, how to say an unknown compound you're seeing for the first time. The main problem with learning the way I have, is that you learn them by sight, the way we learn English (and is the rasoen we can raed Egnsilh eevn wehn the letetrs are all meixd up). So while someone who studied the conventional way, might look at the kanji one at a time and look at all the components, thinking about what they mean separately before moving onto the compound meaning, those who learnt by simply using the language may not pay so much attention to the details and take the words as a whole. To explain what I am saying, imagine someone were to chat to me in Skype and wrote the following: 最返、ポケモンゲームを員って斬しい進北系を兒た！I might not notice right away that this was using the wrong kanji and because of the context, just go ahead and assume this says 最近、ポケモンを買って新しい進化系を見た！ Okay, that's a bit of an exaggerated example and I probably WOULD spot something was amiss if it were to that extent, but you get my point hopefully. What I've recently started doing, is going back over the kanji I already know and adding compounds of words I already knew, but couldn't read or write, and that uses a reading I didn't previously know. I've added them to anki (as if I don't have enough to do on anki ^^). This seems pretty useful for helping me to remember different readings without working too hard ^^. |
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Post by MidoriAbby on Oct 24, 2013 21:43:20 GMT
Oh gosh, I literally had to read that first sentence three times to register that it was a mistake because my brain kind of switched in the right kanji. Just like when we sometimes don't catch English misspellings... I actually am encouraged by that, it means I'm looking at kanji more like a native. ^^
Yeah, I definitely think learning kanji seperately from vocab doesn't even work that efficiently at all; you have to have a way to remember it, and the whole point is to be able to USE it, which is where vocab comes in;
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