Kanji

[TokyoRoze]

Im not getting into kanji yet. But how long will it take to learn all those characters?

[clay]

I suggest starting the first 100 kanji as soon as you finish learning hiragana. Try to make kanji a hobby and you will have fun at it. If you can manage to learn the first 1000 kanji you will be able to read just about anything out there including some newspapers.

Kanji takes time to learn for English speakers, but make it fun!

[TokyoRoze]

How much time? and how do i make it fun!?

[jiro]

it might take quite a while. haha. its taking me a long while! haha. hmm... to have fun with it.... make some little things to help you remember them. haha. those are neat. and they work!

[jinksys]

Some think kanji makes japanese hard. But it actually makes it
easy! In english we have components (letters) which make up
larger units called words. In kanji there are also components which
come together to form kanjis, I believe they are called radicals.
Kanji arent random pictures, they have radicals that hint to their meaning,
just like english words have sections that contain meaning, like an "-ing ending,
or -ish" or "pre-".

Maybe clay can explain this better

[TokyoRoze]

Maybe, but i want to get the language down first.....

[hihlordjp]

TokyoRoze wrote:
Maybe, but i want to get the language down first.....

That's good, but, kanji is so integral to the language, it's best to be exposed to (and be inclined to like) it right away. I'm having fun learning kanji, actually. All my notebooks have kanji just about anywhere.

[Godzilla]

kanji can be fun if you let it and at times very difficult.

[Mukade]

TokyoRoze wrote:
Maybe, but i want to get the language down first.....

If you are really serious about learning Japanese, then you can never start learning Kanji too soon. It is very time consuming - after eight years of studying Japanese, I still don't know enough kanji (I don't think you ever do, really).

But I would agree with hihlordjp - the kanji are very integral to the language.

As far as HOW to learn them...well, everyone has a different learning style. Some people I've met said they learned by just writing them over and over and over...

Although that method really helped my penmanship, it did nothing for helping me remember individual kanji (at least not after I started learning 1000+ characters). How do you keep all those kanji differentiated in your mind just by writing them?

There are a couple of really good books out there, though, that offer some different methods.

One is Kenneth Henshall's "Guide to Remembering the Characters" (or something like that). He gives you the history of each character from its birth until its current form. I've known many people who claim this helped them remember the characters better (by giving them "life stories," as it were).

Another is James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji." This set of three books is a system that assigns stories to each of the kanji, but unlike Henshall, the stories are not confined to their actual histories (which can sometimes be very obscure and convoluted). I myself liked this system - it has you break each character down into its component parts and assign meaning to the parts. The character meaning is then derived by combining those component meanings together. (does that make sense?)

Anyway, I would say that if you only want to achieve a basic conversational level of Japanese, then you can probably forgoe the kanji.

But if you want to truly master the language, then you need to learn the kanji...

...and there's never a better time to start than now.

Good luck!

[Spaztick]

What I've read so far that's good for Kanji is "Read Japanese Today." It teaches the first 300 Kanji (which makes you about 1/3 literate) and makes the other's that you learn after that easier. I think this book is a good building block, but I'm speaking out of the limited experience I have. I'm up to 100+ kanji BTW, and can combine and pronounce all the kanji I've learned so far (minus some in family names).

[Tamai]

If you really like kanji, you can spend your life learning, there will always be something to be learned about them, reading, meaning, stroke order, radicals, compunds, curiosities, history ("etmologia", but I don't know how to say this in english)...

[sakura]

Actually, Japanese characters are the easiest thing to learn(in my opinion). It only took me 3 or 4 days to learn hiragana and It took like a few more days than that to learn katakana. Dont worry, I would get confused with some of the letters when I couldnt get them right when I was first learning but just have fun with it

[ben]

hey, what about katakana shouldnt you learn that too before kanji...?

[Omoidebanashi]

It teaches the first 300 Kanji (which makes you about 1/3 literate)

*Ahem* I know around 300 kanji, and can't say I'm anywhere near a third literate! I keep trying, though .

("etmologia", but I don't know how to say this in english)...

Actually, English does just say "etymology". Good that more than English and Japanese languages are represented here, I say!

[Omoidebanashi]

ben wrote:
hey, what about katakana shouldnt you learn that too before kanji...?

Learn them both as you go. You can't: learn kanji; then learn katakana; because you'd never get past learning Kanji! Remember: any language you learn you keep learning for the rest of your life - including your L1. Japanese people themselves keep learning Kanji, just like you might not yet know the meanings of "pluperfect" or "polysemy".