What are kanji ?

Introduction

There's a lot to know about kanji, but I won't go into too much detail. 

I just want to give you basic information so that you have enough context to understand the different methods to learn kanji.

From wikipedia: Kanji (漢字) are the adopted logographic Chinese characters that are used in the Japanese writing system. They are used alongside the Japanese syllabic scripts hiragana and katakana.

Readings

Kanjis are characters borrowed from chinese. We usually divide they readings in two categories "On" and "Kun". "On" is the chinese reading, and "Kun" the japanese reading. 

Each kanji can have multiple On and Kun readings. That's why it's often recommended in your studies to only focus on the concept/meaning, and learn readings in the context of vocabulary.

Here's 私. It can be read わたし (watashi) or あたし (atashi).Same meaning: I or me; but different readings. あたし is usually more used by women than men if you're wondering.

Example

It can be confusing at first, but you are probably already familiar with the concept even if you don't realize it: Emoticons.

I ❤️ japanese from the bottom of my ❤️.

❤️ is written the same way but have different readings ("love" and "heart" in this exemple).

Radicals

Kanjis are made of small parts called radicals. 

明 : bright (日: sun + 月: moon)

Those radicals can be Kanjis themselves like 山 (mountain), 木 (tree), 火 (fire).

Most kanji have a radical to give meaning to the word, and another one to give the sound / reading. Which is why associating one meaning based on all the parts can be tricky sometimes.

So words that contain the radical and kanji 火 (fire) in them usually have something to do with fire: 火山 (volcano), 噴火 (eruption), 花火 (fireworks).

How many Kanji ?

From imabi.net: On average, Modern Japanese speakers can read and comprehend around 3,000 Kanji. Of these, 2,136 characters are designated as common-use characters by the Japanese Ministry of Education, which is meant as a literacy baseline as well as a list of characters for official government documentation. Thus, it should also be the goal of any Japanese learner to master these 'jōyō kanji' 常用漢字 .

How to pick a method to learn kanji ?

Which method is the best ?

This is an endless debate. When it comes to kanji there's a few aspects to them. They're usually assiociated with a concept or keyword, you have to know how to read (pronounce) them, which vocabulary they're used with, which ones are trully frequent and useful, and since they have common smaller parts, should you learn the smaller parts first ? Any method will prioritize or even disregard some aspect or another. I consider there isn't a best method because you'll have to balance all of this anyway, so I'll give you pros and cons of the most popular ones. Of course I'm biased, but I try to be objective.

The end goal.

Keep in mind that kanji are used to write words. The endgame is vocabulary. So unless you're studying kanji for the sake of it, learning kanji is a means to an end.

When learning kanji, most people focus on the keyword. I urge you to at least pay attention to the vocabulary examples to see how the kanji is used. In the long term, you're learning words not keywords.

Mnemonics

Since Kanji can be divided in smaller parts, a common method is to associate a keyword to a kanji and use its smaller parts to create a story that will help remember that kanji.

You can use other people's mnemonics or make up your own, or not use them at all, whatever suits your memorization better.

This method let's you learn those smaller parts in a progressive manner, making the process easier.

Readings

Learning Kanji's keywords only can be frustrating because by the end of it, you still don't know how to read a single word. 

Kanji can have different meanings, some of them can be really rare, and you don't even know wich reading is used when. Learning all the readings for all the kanji would be like learning all the definitions for everyword in the dictionary just in case they come up, before reading a single sentence. Not very effective. 

It's usually recommended to learn readings by learning vocabulary directly. You'll be able to notice the patterns of the same kanji being read the same in various words through repetitive exposure.

Production or Recognition

They are two ways to quizz your knowledge of kanji. You can either go from keyword to kanji (production) or kanji to keyword (recognition). Recognition is faster because you don't have to memorize in which order you draw the kanji, or drawing it. But doing this bit may help you remember it better.

The main methods

RTK - Production

What is it ?

Heisig's Remembering the Kanji or RTK for short. 

From the book "There are, of course, many things that the pages of this book will not do for you. You  will read nothing about how kanji combine to form compounds. Nor is anything said about  the various ways to pronounce the characters. Furthermore, all questions of grammatical  usage have been omitted. These are all matters that need specialized treatment in their own  right. Meantime, remembering the meaning and the writing of the kanji—perhaps the  single most difficult barrier to learning Japanese—can be greatly simplified if the two are  isolated and studied apart from everything else."

His method is to be able to write the kanji from the Keyword. It's probably the most popular book, even though most people use it the other way around. Remembering the keyword from the kanji.

Good

Writing by hand helps memorization. If you can write a kanji, you'll also be able to recognize it very well.

Bad

There are a lot of problems beyond the method with this book.

• Poor choices of keywords, especially for a non english native speaker

• Poor Kanji ordering

• There are also 191 in this book that are not part of the jōyō list (official "regular-use kanji")

• Writing is not as important in the digital age. It also takes longer to write a kanji than just recognize it. 

• Flawed execution. See below.

The problems with the RTK Method

Problem

The method is sound but in execution, RTK's lessons are flawed. The way he deconstructs kanji in his book (which is now in most anki decks) if full of errors.

He sometimes decompose kanji in order to fit his story instead of making the story based on the real components.

Since you're supposed to remember how to write a kanji based on that story, you might end up not writing the kanji properly. Defeating the whole purpose.

Example

笑 (Laugh). Rtk gives the following components: Bamboo . . . heavens. (⺮) + (天), but the second part is actually 夭 (calamity). The top stroke is different.

It may sound trivial but if you're method is to write kanji, strokes and strokes order does matter.

He also give the same components different names, and some components that are not the same, share the same name...

Solution

When creating a Kanji deck, I used at least 3 different resources to make sure the mistake was indeed from RTK. So you can find the "correct" components in the Kanji tab. It's not perfect either, but it's at least better.

RTK  - Recognition

What is it ?

Probably the most popular method. Those who tried KKLC (see below) usually thinks it's better, but it's also lesser known, so RTK ends up being recommended the most.

To ease the writing method, most people doing RTK usually focus on recognition of the kanji, still using the same break down technique.

With this method, you quizz yourself from kanji to keyword.

Good

Learn kanji faster. Since you know those keywords, you can understand words even if you don't know how to read them. Ex: if you know 王 (king) + 子 (child) you can figure out 王子 (Prince) by context.

Bad

By the end of it, you still don't know how to read any words, and since learning 2200 can take months, it slows down your progress.

Some learn readings with each kanji but that means at least doubling that time. And some kanji have various readings, some of them rarely used so...

KKLC - Recognition

What is it ?

Following RTK's method, Kodansha Kanji Learning Course (KKLC for short) improves on the execution.

Good

The order for learning kanji is more strict with components order, so smoother transition, although there isn't much difference.

While instructing not to learn readings, you do have vocabulary examples, themselves only containing kanji you already saw.

It's debatable bur the keywords are also better chose than RTK's with "smaller keywords" in addition to help you see how it can be used with different words.

Bad

Same cons as RTK, 2200 keywords to learn takes time.

The alternatives methods

RRTK - Recognition

What is it ?

RRTK means Recognition RTK. It's the same method, it just only covers the most frequently used 1,000 kanji, plus 250 additional characters and primitives to bridge the gap between kanji.

The RRTK order is included in my Kanji deck.

Good

There's no denying that 1000 is smaller than 2200, so it is faster to learn.

By focusing only on the most frequent kanji, you still learn the abitlity to deconstruct kanji but you move on sooner to vocabulary.

Bad

Whether we like it or not, the official list of jōyō kanji (meaning the most frequent / useful) is 2136. By focusing only those 1000, you leave more than half on the side.

If you do pick this method, maybe consider switching to vocabulary after RRTK, but finishing learning the rest at a smaller pace, as a side study.

Context - Vocabulary based on KKLC order

What is it ?

It's an Anki Deck I created. 

It follows KKLC order, but instead of learning the kanji, you directly learn a word that use the kanji. I narrowed the vocabulary down to the words used in JLPT 5 to 1 lists.

Good

Since kanji is made to learn vocabulary anyway, drop the middle man and learn vocabulary right away. The newly introduced kanji has all the information you want still present in the deck.

Remembering a kanji through a vocabulary example will be more useful than with a keyword.

Bad

When it comes to learning words, it's easier to see them in the context of the sentence. But at this point you'll also need grammar.

So the studies usually divide the whole in 3 different categories, kanji, grammar, and then sentences to learn vocabulary.

Kanji Pop up Dictionary

What is it ?

2 javascript files that you put in your collection.media folder for Anki. This make any kanji in any of your anki cards clickable.

Click on a kanji, and you will have a pop up window with all the information you need: RTK and KKLC keywords, Stories from Koohii and Wanikani, examples, readings, animated gif... Fully customizable as well.

See the tutorial for more details.

Good

It's all the information you need, in any context, in any order, which makes it the more flexible study version.

Bad

Well, it's just not a method of studying and more a tool that you can have at your disposal, to help you along the way.

Conclusion

Best approach

It's hard to look back and put myself in the shoes of someone who's never seen kanji before, but here's what I think I would do.

I'd go the KKLC recognition path and learns the first kanji really fast since they're pretty simple and easier to remember than vocabulary. After some time, I'll decrease the number of new kanji I learn everyday as I learn more and more vocabulary.

So rough number would look like this:

0001 - 0500: 15 new kanji a day, takes about a month.

0501 - 1100: 10 new kanji a day, takes about 2 months.

1100 - 2200: 5 new kanji a day. Takes about 6 months.

I think most people want to get rid of kanji study as fast as possible because it's not that fun, but after 3 months, when you get to 5 new kanji a day, it will take about 5 minutes max to review your 50 cards (5 new and 45 old kanji) in Anki. You'll be done before you get bored. Slow and steady wins the race.

Anki deck

There are a lot of Anki Decks out there. I tried to make the best possible one, meaning with the most content, but also flexible depending on what method you choose.

You can easily choose your order between RTK, RRTK or KKLC, plus RTK's component corrected, like mentionned above.

It contains different card style for recognition, writing and "memrise". 

I gave instruction within the cards so you can easily modify them even if you don't know html or css. Especially if you think there's too much information displayed, you can hide anything easily.

Link to the deck.