Advice on learning Kanji.

[Ao Tzuki]

Yeah thts true

[hideko_san]

with heisig's book, i manage to learn 200 kanji a day, and reproduce 99% the next day, and next week....

XD at spaztick's sig

[Die]

200 kanji characters a day... You're so "smart" now aren't you?

[Daisuke]

hideko_san wrote:
with heisig's book, i manage to learn 200 kanji a day, and reproduce 99% the next day, and next week....

XD at spaztick's sig

I don't believe that... You can't remember them the next day.

[hideko_san]

actually, I do.... But, that is of course without pronunciations and just one meaning...

[Daisuke]

hideko_san wrote:
actually, I do.... But, that is of course without pronunciations and just one meaning...

Well, you can't write them all, you can maybe memorize them when you see them. And with 1 meaning and no pronouncations, you can't use it for anything anyways.

[hideko_san]

i can write them all, i think i know that more than you do.
I follow heisig's manoeuvre.
After that, then I can expand my knowledge of the kanji.
I think that knowing all of the readings is just waste of time, more important to know how to pronounce them in actual form.
One must know the readings when the compounds occur, not otherwise, could just screw with your mind, y'know.

[Daisuke]

Fine fine.. I won't dig in it anymore.. If you know 200 you dont know more than me.. sad.. Unless you mean that you learn 200 a day... Which i would never ever believe...

[mandolin]

fated wrote:
some of you tells me that kanji is easy some don't...
guess i should'nt underestimate kanji maybe it is really "that" hard ganbare to myself i'll be needing it waaaaaa!!!

I WON'T BE INTIMIDATED!!! :@

Well, it -isn't- hard, in the way that most people think it is.

Many people have the idea that compared to learning say... spanish or german or other roman-based languages, kanji is so alien, it must be extremely difficult.

It's not. They're words, you have to learn how to say them, but they're still words.

Learning any language is a long process, though, so that's why people are telling some of these others to slow down. I learned german for 2 years in high school. We didn't learn 300 words a day. Or 200... no, not even 50. It was approximately 25 words every other day (a day for practice, a day to quiz).

I have to agree with Daisuke in that I disbelieve the people who say they 'learned' multiple hundreds of kanji in a week or less. They must be missing something. I 'know' one meaning and no readings for lots of kanji, too. Hundreds. But I don't claim that makes me smart.

I still sit down and try to read a japanese website, or a manga, or even a children's book sometimes. And know what? I haven't a CLUE what it says. That's because the number of kanji I -actually know- is somewhere around 50.

Anyway. Summary:

Kanji isn't any harder to learn than words of other languages.

Learning any language is a slow process (for fluency)

Quality trumps quantity, I don't care what anyone else says. Whenever I feel cocky about how much I know, I try to go read something simple to remind myself how far I still have to go.

Mata ne!

[hideko_san]

Daisuke wrote:
Fine fine.. I won't dig in it anymore.. If you know 200 you dont know more than me.. sad.. Unless you mean that you learn 200 a day... Which i would never ever believe...

I don't care what you believe or not, but the only way to make the kanji stick, is to make really vivid stories, and make similar ones separate and make them not jump into each other.

But, hey 20 an hour, i'm just devoted, that's all. Kana and kanji first, then compounds, and then grammar and finally vocabulary.

[hideko_san]

ok, sorry, i just quizzed myself on the first 1000 kanji in heisig's book, i only managed to get it right 970 times. I gotta make the rest stick, and i gotta get a hang on those verbs. You're a verb master, aren't you daisuke?
Kan du være så snill og lave en oversikt over hvordan man skal bøye verb?
Takk, daisuke!

[randyrandy]

Wow Hideko San! (My mom's friend name is that ^^;) Just wondering, when you say Grammer, do you mean On, Kun readings? And stroke order? And english meaning? I study about 1-2 hours, maybe 3 but I can only learn around 5-10 Kanji per day (On, Kun, and everything else I know..)...

So far, this is my 13th day studying Kanji, I only know around 80-90!

[Kates]

hideko_san wrote:But, hey 20 an hour, i'm just devoted, that's all. Kana and kanji first, then compounds, and then grammar and finally vocabulary.:D

How are you going to manage to learn ANYTHING without learning vocabulary first...? O_o?

[b4d0m3n]

Posted on 06-10-2005 16:16
Posted on 06-10-2005 16:38

He quizzed himself in 24 minutes. On 1000 characters. Is that likely? Maybe. But obviously he doesn't know what vocabulary means, so we can mock him.

[hideko_san]

i started the quizzing before the first of these posts... i know what vocabulary means, i just don't know any japanese words...
and when I say grammar, i mean when to use "ga, wa, ni," etc. and other rules, that for example are listed here.