4 Under-The-Radar Methods To Memorize And Use Kanji Today

For many people including me, memorizing nearly 2000 Kanji in the Japanese language is a sort of torture. I’m not going to sugar-coat it, memorizing all 1945 of these little buggers is going to take some work. Chances are good you will spend most of your energy on learning Kanji while studying Japanese. But here I will show you some tips which will hopefully make things at least a little easier so that you can hold your own next time you pick up a Japanese newspaper.

Tactic #1: Ignore the old learning order

The first step is to get familiar with the first 100 to 200 Kanji which are commonly used in Japanese, so that you can get started. But the next step will be getting to know the difficult words the moment you see them, no matter how rarely they are used. At the very start, it will feel hard, but this approach will actually save you time and energy in the long run because you won’t constantly be deferring certain Kanji into the elusive “future.”

Tactic #2: Notice the small things:

Learn 20 or 30 radicals which occur most frequently in Kanji with a simple Kanji dictionary, and put the rest of the 214 radicals aside temporarily, then you will have a solid understanding of a good part of Kanji. You will become quick at recognizing new kanji with less effort. You can sort of figure out what a Kanji means by looking at the radicals. You can call it chunking, and you will find learning 3-5 radicals takes less effort then memorizing 15 Kanji. The next thing you should do is just to put the radicals together.

Tactic #3: Dive into the hard things first

This tactic focuses on the written Kanji. If you really want to get a good understanding of Japanese, take the time to try reading something in Japanese each and every day. Getting familiar with the way Japanese printed writing works will help you understand common applications of each Kanji you see. With a little practice you should be able to start picking up things naturally.

Tactic #4: Read out loud:

Identifying the word, knowing what it refers to, and correct pronunciation are the 3 essentials in learning Kanji. Reading aloud when you can helps a lot. Reading Kanji aloud is a great way to kill three birds (learning structure/shape, meaning, and sound) with one, big, noisy stone.

Kanji learning is tough, but you can manage it with some determination. Follow my advice, and your learning speed will increase.