Ways To Remember Japanese Characters
I was asked recently some ways to remember Japanese characters. Of course, the Japanese kanji are large in number and it’s quite a feat to remember all 1,945 government recommended joyo kanji. So, let’s go over some tips to help you out.
Probably the easiest way to remember new Japanese characters, or kanji, is not to write them out a hundreds times by rote, but rather to create some kind of clever story to remember all the elements. You can break down each kanji character in to its radicals and then analyze it that way piece by piece. You will find that some radicals easily fit into certain elements. For example, you might look at one radical as representing “person” and another radical as representing “water”. Then you can begin to create stories to help you remember the characters involving these various parts of the kanji.
I’ve found that the stranger and crazier the stories, the better. The more wild your imagination, the easier it will be to remember the story, and thus the kanji character. Not only do you remember all the characters from now on, but the process of making a story for each one is also a fun one.
However, along these lines of creating stories, you may want to do it in a systematic matter so everything stays organized and you can memorize the characters by their radical groups. A very good place to learn the characters systematically using this radical story system is written by James Hesig in his kanji books. You can find his books on amazon.com and I highly recommend them if you are interested in learning all 1,945 joyo kanji. His systematic approach definitely makes the overwhelming feat more manageable.
I hope this article has helped you! If you are serious about learning Japanese to a high level, then you would probably be interested in the book I’ve written that shows you the fastest way to fluency so you don’t waste any time.
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Easy Way To Learn Kanji Radicals
Learners of the Japanese language, especially the kanji, often find it helpful to learn the radicals that make up each kanji so that they can learn more complex kanji much quicker. So, what is the easiest way to learn these kanji radicals?
In my opinion, if you are truly interested in learning the kanji radicals in a systematic way, the best place to go to is the Heisig books. James Heisig came up with a clever systematic approach to learning all government recommended 1,945 joyo kanji. So, not only does he teach you the radicals that make up each kanji, but he also teaches you all the kanji themselves. His method depends mainly on introducing the kanji by their respective radicals and by using made up stories to remember the individual parts of each kanji.
This method works not only because it is systematic in its radical introduction approach but also because using clever stories to remember each part of the kanji is a great way of dissecting and memorizing the kanji for the long term.
Many people have reported great success using the Heisig method, so if you are interested, you may want to buy his book off of Amazon.com. Otherwise, you may find it hard to keep track of all the radicals and learn the kanji from them in an organized manner.
I hope this article has helped you. However, if you are interested in learning the Japanese language as quickly as possible, as well, you may be interested in my book. If you want the fastest method to learn a language so that you will become fluent in a foreign language in a matter of months, learn thousands of words without worrying about forgetting them, master grammar and do all of this in an enjoyable, painless manner then you need to read Learn That Language Now!
Japanese Alphabet
Hiragana is a phonetic alphabet consisting of 46 characters. Hiragana is used in the Japanese writing system to represent grammar and particles. For example, hiragana would be used to denote that a verb is in the past tense or not and so on. Some nouns are also written using hiragana.
Katakana is also a phonetic alphabet consisting of 46 characters. Katakana is used in the Japanese writing system to represent sounds and words from foreign languages. Additionally, katakana can be used instead of hiragana or katakana to denote stress on a particular word.
Kanji is a character set consisting of thousands of characters. The government has limited the characters to 1,945 kanji for daily use and calls this the “joyo” kanji set. Each kanji character has multiple readings depending on the other kanji it is paired up with or the word it is being used in. Kanji is perhaps the biggest obstacle for foreigners who wish to master Japanese. Kanji is necessary in order to read and write Japanese.
If you are interested in learning a language like Japanese, you may be interested in my book which teaches you the best way to approach learning and the fastest way to fluency.
If you want the fastest method to learn a language so that you will become fluent in a foreign language in a matter of months, learn thousands of words without worrying about forgetting them, master grammar and do all of this in an enjoyable, painless manner then you need to read Learn That Language Now!
The Best Way To Learn Japanese Written Language
You may be interested in learning how to read and write Japanese, that is, the three “alphabets” Japanese uses, hiragana, katakana and kanji. So, what is the best way to approach the Japanese written language?
As I said before, three “alphabets” make up Japanese. The first, hiragana, is used mostly for grammar denoting things like past tense or present tense. It is also used for the particles in Japanese. Katakana is often used for sounds and foreign words. Both Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic alphabet systems. Both alphabets have under 100 characters.
Kanji on the other hand is the beast that most Japanese learners have trouble with. In order to become “literate” in Japanese, you need to learn the government recommended 1,945 joyo kanji. Kanji, of course, is not phonetic and you need to learn the multiple readings for each character.
This may sound particularly difficult. Well, it is, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. You most likely do not need to learn all 1,945 kanji and furthermore, you probably don’t have to learn how to write them all. Since everyone uses computers these days, it is most important that you know how to recognize the important characters so that after you type in the Japanese sounds, you can select the correct characters on your screen.
In fact, many young Japanese these days have trouble with kanji themselves and often end up resorting to using their cell phones to look up characters if they happen to forget them and are away from a computer. So, don’t feel bad about kanji yourself.
Now, what is the best way to approach learning the written language of Japanese? First, you should learn hiragana and katakana. As I said before, they are both phonetic alphabets and each have less than 100 characters so they can be learned pretty quickly. Since they are used fairly often in Japanese, the are very important and you will be using them quite a bit.
So the real problem is kanji. In my opinion, the best way to approach the study of kanji is by repeated exposure. If you’re learning Japanese for the long term, you may be interested in a systematic approach like the Heisig method which teaches you kanji by introducing them through their smaller “radical” parts. Nonetheless, I think it’s important that you get repeated exposure to kanji in order to learn them quickly and efficiently.
The whole process of the best way to get repeated exposure is out of the scope of this article but I cover it in depth in my book which you may be interested in taking a look at if you are serious about learning the Japanese language or any foreign language for that matter. Suffice it to say, you should set up some system to review the kanji you come across.
I hope this article gave you some help in your pursuit of the written language in Japanese. If you want the fastest method to learn a language so that you will become fluent in a foreign language in a matter of months, learn thousands of words without worrying about forgetting them, master grammar and do all of this in an enjoyable, painless manner then you need to read Learn That Language Now!