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[Vlog] Learning the Japanese Kanji 1

Blogs > FFGenerations
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FFGenerations
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
7088 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-04-29 13:20:43
April 29 2016 13:18 GMT
#1
Hi, I decided now is a good time to learn the Japanese language. I made a start with re-learning the Hiragana and Katakana and just entered day 4 of learning the 2000 Japanese Kanji. I videoed my morning revision.

The plan really is learn the Kanji and then afterwards progress to learning basic grammar and putting them into practice.

Adam Koebel (the Swan Song dungeon master) is also learning Japanese so I'm gonna check out some of his videos to chill to:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAmPx8nWedFXfpqJuuaUxcj2uLicdwf8O

People say you can learn the Kanji in 100 days if you use mnemonics and don't bother learning their readings at this stage. (I'm learning the readings - it's a big enough task to begin with that I might aswell get everything done with one pass)

Personally I'm not convinced mnemonics are that good for me, I get the feeling that they would ultimately add an extra layer of thinking and so slow me down. I use them when they occur naturally to me but I'm not gonna go out of my way to apply them when I can just "directly" learn things. I already do stuff like count on my fingers for basic math, so I don't want to end up thinking things like "the red frog eats icicles" 5 years down the line to remember something I could otherwise just know. We'll see how it pans out though as I get deeper into them.

I am pretty much a huge delinquent and this is like the most I've ever learnt anything (alongside my guitar) so its pretty cool for me. I hope to update again after the 8 day mark / finish learning the 1st grade ones (there are 80).

Another shit video but I need all the practice talking I can get ^_^



*****
Cool BW Music Vid - youtube.com/watch?v=W54nlqJ-Nx8 ~~~~~ ᕤ OYSTERS ᕤ CLAMS ᕤ AND ᕤ CUCKOLDS ᕤ ~~~~~~ ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ PUNCH HIM ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ
EmKey
Profile Joined December 2002
Korea (South)631 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-04-29 13:40:53
April 29 2016 13:39 GMT
#2
check out Remembering The Kanji by Heising. Great book for learning kanjis. It only teaches meanings without pronunciation and it uses mnemonics/stories.
불놀이야
c3rberUs
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Japan11286 Posts
April 29 2016 14:56 GMT
#3
Curious to see how it works for you. I am doing the hiragana/katakana -> grammar -> add vocabulary (consequently kanji) route. It just felt more natural to me but I don't believe in one-way-works-for-all so がんばれ!!!.

I did notice a few strokes were kinda off which felt weird watching. The right strokes (and order) help make Kanji look correct. You got most of the readings correct so good job so far (inu ftw)!

LOL at the end. And I think you forgot ん and ン
WriterMovie, 진영화 : "StarCraft will never die".
mooose
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Japan200 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-04-29 15:05:26
April 29 2016 15:02 GMT
#4
I found mnemonics really helpful when I started learning Kanji, but now I'm like 1000 in or whatever I find I don't really need them any more because I recognise most of the radicals and learning a new kanji just involves putting a few familiar pieces together.

I'm sure there's some really efficient ways to learn but I'm a grinder at heart so I'd rather spend my time actually studying than trying to figure out the optimal method. With that in mind, my advice to new people is just start and never give up. Realistically it's going to be quite a long time before you are able to read a page of Japanese text without looking loads of things up. The only way to get there is to keep on grinding.

When you say

The plan really is learn the Kanji and then afterwards progress to learning basic grammar


Do you mean learn all the kanji before starting on grammar? I don't really think that's a practical strategy if so. I'm quite single minded so I can see the appeal of focusing on one thing, getting it out the way and then moving onto something else; but I don't think you can really apply it to learning Japanese like that. Like I said, learning kanji is probably going to take quite a long time, and if throughout this whole period you don't know any Japanese grammar then you aren't going to be able to use anything you've learned. You will have to go through the grind of memorizing kanji without the reward of actually using Japanese.

Basically I think you should start learning some basic grammar too so you can actually practice using some of the kanji you've learned. Ideally find a way to start practising speaking and listening too.

Good luck though! Don't give up. You'll hit some walls along the way, but just keep going. Everyone's brain works differently so just keep trying things until you find a method that works for you.
www.teamyao.com @TeamYAO
FFGenerations
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
7088 Posts
April 29 2016 15:38 GMT
#5
On April 29 2016 22:39 EmKey wrote:
check out Remembering The Kanji by Heising. Great book for learning kanjis. It only teaches meanings without pronunciation and it uses mnemonics/stories.


Thanks i noticed this book but i haven't really bought into the mnemonics thing, i feel OK with just straight up learning them and adding my own incidental mnemonics as and when they come up. Maybe I'll feel differently if I start to struggle later


On April 29 2016 23:56 c3rberUs wrote:
I did notice a few strokes were kinda off which felt weird watching. The right strokes (and order) help make Kanji look correct. You got most of the readings correct so good job so far (inu ftw)!

LOL at the end. And I think you forgot ん and ン


Yeah I'm not bothering with stroke order, its waay too much to worry about for me IMO. Shit is hard enough. Maybe if I get a Japanese calligrapher idol waifu who refuses to marry me unless I learn my stroke orders I will reconsider. It'll get better over time once I am practicing reading actual text on the computer rather than just scrawling them to remember their shapes


On April 30 2016 00:02 mooose wrote:
Do you mean learn all the kanji before starting on grammar? I don't really think that's a practical strategy if so. I'm quite single minded so I can see the appeal of focusing on one thing, getting it out the way and then moving onto something else; but I don't think you can really apply it to learning Japanese like that. Like I said, learning kanji is probably going to take quite a long time, and if throughout this whole period you don't know any Japanese grammar then you aren't going to be able to use anything you've learned. You will have to go through the grind of memorizing kanji without the reward of actually using Japanese.

Basically I think you should start learning some basic grammar too so you can actually practice using some of the kanji you've learned. Ideally find a way to start practising speaking and listening too.

Good luck though! Don't give up. You'll hit some walls along the way, but just keep going. Everyone's brain works differently so just keep trying things until you find a method that works for you.


Yeah you're right, I will probably want to switch things up, like learn the 2nd grade kanji (looks like there's 160) then start making basic sentences and stuff for fun (and brag rights lol). Well anyways, the first milestone is getting the first 80 down, I've only got 4 days so I gotta get crackin :D
Cool BW Music Vid - youtube.com/watch?v=W54nlqJ-Nx8 ~~~~~ ᕤ OYSTERS ᕤ CLAMS ᕤ AND ᕤ CUCKOLDS ᕤ ~~~~~~ ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ PUNCH HIM ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ
Chef
Profile Blog Joined August 2005
10810 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-04-29 17:23:26
April 29 2016 17:22 GMT
#6
Why do you want to learn Japanese?

Why do you want to learn to READ Japanese?

I guess it doesn't matter. But I think you have to recognize that language is not about mental processing, it's about familiarity and habit. You see the character, you think the meaning and the sound of the word. There's no middle stage, oh this goes kind of like that, and this word goes in that order, and then I need to conjugate like this. It's literally all memorization, getting corrected as you speak, and slowly working away mistakes from over-generalizations, but not avoiding generalizations from the start since they are your greatest asset to communicating.

I think you can only get that sort of thing from a few hours of practice a day, which is why language is so hard to learn out of context. You can get to a point where you recognize and know the meanings of bits and pieces, but it doesn't come together without constant real use.


Specifically for memorizing writing, I found early on it was most helpful if the set of characters I was learning were in a real sentence. Learning them in the abstract was a good way to forget them quickly.
LEGEND!! LEGEND!!
tofucake
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
Hyrule19215 Posts
April 29 2016 20:32 GMT
#7
just fyi your stroke order is off a bit, typically on your 口 and 目.

http://kanji.sljfaq.org/kanjivg.html is a really handy site for getting stroke orders down
Liquipediaasante sana squash banana
FFGenerations
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
7088 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-04-29 20:57:28
April 29 2016 20:52 GMT
#8
Ya I'm (mostly) ignoring stroke order for now but thanks for the link
it looks cool seems to use a normal pen style instead of a goddamn paintbrush
Cool BW Music Vid - youtube.com/watch?v=W54nlqJ-Nx8 ~~~~~ ᕤ OYSTERS ᕤ CLAMS ᕤ AND ᕤ CUCKOLDS ᕤ ~~~~~~ ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ PUNCH HIM ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ
tofucake
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
Hyrule19215 Posts
April 29 2016 22:32 GMT
#9
because most people write pens, not paintbrushes.

But stroke order is important. People reading what you write will be like "this looks weird" if you do it wrong, and you don't write F by starting with the little horizontal line.
Liquipediaasante sana squash banana
FFGenerations
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
7088 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-04-30 11:54:34
April 30 2016 11:48 GMT
#10
just came across this website

http://www.kanjidamage.com/

he claims to have written a kanji learning list

1) in approximate order of usefulness and composition (radicals i think they're called?),
2) using crude language as mnemonics (like ...south park language lol)
3) with a focus on writings/readings that he thinks are useful in real life and excluding some non-useful ones

example:

http://www.kanjidamage.com/kanji/14-no-否

actually this example page was rated 2/5 and says that "no" = ina and make me confused whether to bother learning the chinese form "hi", so i would have to research this page a bit

its kinda enticing but i'll finish the 1st grade before trying to switch to it.....
Cool BW Music Vid - youtube.com/watch?v=W54nlqJ-Nx8 ~~~~~ ᕤ OYSTERS ᕤ CLAMS ᕤ AND ᕤ CUCKOLDS ᕤ ~~~~~~ ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ PUNCH HIM ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ
c3rberUs
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Japan11286 Posts
May 01 2016 01:08 GMT
#11
You don't need to switch so abruptly, I went the same route too when I started. I was like "stroke order? really? lol, it doesn't seem so important so i'm going to wing it". When I started writing, it looked like shit (my inner artist cried) so I checked how people do it and then realized that even alphabet characters are written with a stroke order.
WriterMovie, 진영화 : "StarCraft will never die".
FFGenerations
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
7088 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-05-01 23:57:21
May 01 2016 23:57 GMT
#12
ok this is pretty funny

youtu.be/4AOWrhgS4W4?t=118
Cool BW Music Vid - youtube.com/watch?v=W54nlqJ-Nx8 ~~~~~ ᕤ OYSTERS ᕤ CLAMS ᕤ AND ᕤ CUCKOLDS ᕤ ~~~~~~ ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ PUNCH HIM ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ
lichter
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
May 02 2016 02:23 GMT
#13
stroke order is important as you learn more complex words. remembering stroke order is also really effective in memorization, because sometimes you can't remember the root word or a portion of the word, but your muscle memory remembers the stroke order and you can figure it out from there. it can also help remembering similar words based on stroke order. seriously though, learn it the right way from the start
AdministratorYOU MUST HEED MY INSTRUCTIONS TAKE OFF YOUR THIIIINGS
FFGenerations
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
7088 Posts
May 02 2016 08:38 GMT
#14
that reason makes more sense to me, tnx
Cool BW Music Vid - youtube.com/watch?v=W54nlqJ-Nx8 ~~~~~ ᕤ OYSTERS ᕤ CLAMS ᕤ AND ᕤ CUCKOLDS ᕤ ~~~~~~ ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ PUNCH HIM ༼ ᕤ◕◡◕ ༽ᕤ
TwoTrickPony
Profile Blog Joined November 2015
30 Posts
May 06 2016 06:35 GMT
#15
you can also learn kanji radicals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_Japanese_kanji_radicals
in the beginning this won't seem super useful, but when you get to much denser kanji it helps a lot.
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