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Trouble with kanji on-readings? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| SFDL Newbie United States Joined 4612 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 10 30 April 2013 at 8:07am | IP Logged |
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I've tried many techniques for learning Japanese kanji and found that straight up
repetition and rote memorization to be both most effective and most enjoyable for me. I've tried sentence mining and found it much too structureless to keep me interested and not extremely frustrated, though I'll try picking it back up again when I have better grasps of the spoken language and at least a few hundred kanji under my belt. And I've tried several times to trudge through Heisig but I just find it mind-numbingly boring and unrewarding because of how useless what you're learning actually is except for making it easier to recognize that kanji but with no knowledge of anything about it. However, I'm having trouble with kanji on-readings. Being derived from Chinese readings of the kanji, the readings are all very short (being one syllable in Chinese), and I find I'm getting a lot of them confused. I have a much easier time with kun-readings both because they are longer and have more structure to remember, and also because they are more easily connected to actual vocabulary. Meanings, stroke order, and kun- readings I have little trouble with, but I spend probably a third of my time on those and the rest remembering the on-readings and I want to be more efficient with my time. What can I do to make remembering the on-readings easier? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5465 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 2 of 10 30 April 2013 at 9:56am | IP Logged |
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I would suggest learning the on-readings in frequently used compounds. It's much easier
to remember that 電話 means telephone and is read "den-wa", 電気 means "electricity" and is read "den-ki", and 電圧 means "voltage" and is read "den-atsu" than simply trying to remember that "den" is the on-reading of 電. Likewise with kanji having several readings, such as 生, you're more likely to remember 学生 as "gakusei", 芝生 as "shiba-fu", 一生 as "i-sshou", and so on than trying to remember the individual readings. Japanese place names are also useful in this respect. For example, 磐田 (Iwata), 野田 (Noda) and 田園調布 (Den'enchoufu) give you all the readings (on and kun) of 田. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| SFDL Newbie United States Joined 4612 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 10 30 April 2013 at 10:10am | IP Logged |
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I figured compounds would be one of my best bets, thanks for the advice.. Two things.
First, what is a good source of compounds that are useful and common? One of the books I'm using right now is 2000 Essential Kanji, and while I like the book, I've heard a lot of the compounds in it are really odd, archaic, or just so obscure that some native speakers didn't even recognize them. Second, how should I learn them? Along with the related kanji, or on their own? Right now I have my SRS cards made up so the meaning is on the front, and on the reverse is the kanji, its readings, and the kanji number from the book. Could it be more useful to learn by compound->reading and meaning, rather than meaning->compound and reading? Edited by SFDL on 30 April 2013 at 10:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| betelgeuzah Diglot Groupie Finland Joined 4402 days ago 51 posts - 82 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Japanese, Italian | Message 4 of 10 30 April 2013 at 3:24pm | IP Logged |
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I have learned to recognize most on and kun readings by drilling vocab (Core 6k deck in Anki).
I never studied the readings exclusively, but I did go through Heisig. I'm sure one can do this without Heisig under their belt, but it's going to be harder. I completely disagree about your comments related to Heisig method but that's not the topic here. Core 6k gives you 6000 most common words pulled from newspapers. Using a plug-in I can see that I have come across around 1500 kanji with 4300 words learned so far. While it was hard for me to recognize readings at first after the first 1000 or so words common patterns started to emerge. Now it's harder for me to recall the meaning of the word than it's readings. I definitely suggest against learning the readings in isolation, and for learning from word/compound to meaning and reading. That is because there are tons of synonyms that will confuse you. Edited by betelgeuzah on 30 April 2013 at 3:29pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| SFDL Newbie United States Joined 4612 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 10 30 April 2013 at 8:13pm | IP Logged |
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Yeah I do wish I could slog through Heisig because it would make the whole process
easier, but I just found it too boring and studying became a huge chore that I really did not enjoy, which in turn made it much harder. I wish that Heisig would give some example compounds (minus the reading) along with the kanji you learn so that you at least get some useful things you can recognize, this would probably help me get through all 2000 kanji. This is why I like the 2000 Essential Kanji book, it gives example compounds that only use kanji that have already been presented. If Heisig did this I'd love working through it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 6 of 10 02 May 2013 at 9:38pm | IP Logged |
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Well, just research the radical parts, the vast majority of them contains a phonetic component.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6660 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 7 of 10 03 May 2013 at 2:31pm | IP Logged |
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http://kanjidamage.com is a really good source on the usefulness of characters
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| SFDL Newbie United States Joined 4612 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 8 of 10 03 May 2013 at 10:40pm | IP Logged |
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Well that website certainly made me laugh, the pages that talk about how kanji work and
how the website displays them were interesting and pretty funny. Though the fact that they completely ignore stroke order kind of bugs me, I was always under the impression that it was very important for how the character looked (not that I could tell, but then I'm very new to it so I assumed it was my inexperience). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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