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Japanese: Help with Chinese characters

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12 messages over 2 pages: 1
shk00design
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4245 days ago

747 posts - 1123 votes 
Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin
Studies: French

 
 Message 9 of 12
25 November 2014 at 12:36am | IP Logged 
Personally I'm not a Japanese speaker. Regarding Chinese characters I'd go online and read Chinese new articles
online. It is getting uncommon for people to write something down on paper and a lot of what you do everyday is
recording reminder notes for your activities on your portable devices. I got my portable phones setup with
additional keyboards so that I can type my notes in both English & Chinese. I normally don't remember how to write
all the characters I read on news articles but I learn to recognize them.

In Chinese the pronunciation is simpler. A lot of times 2 characters that look similar will have the same sound
including the intonation. In Japanese this isn't always the case since some of the characters can have 2 or even 3
syllables. For the writing part you get into stroke order usually from up to down & left to right. Other than that for
reading a newspaper or any kind of text it is the matter of recognizing the characters and the only way to get them
into your head is by reading a lot.
1 person has voted this message useful



SevenSyndicate
Newbie
United States
Joined 3543 days ago

7 posts - 7 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 10 of 12
25 November 2014 at 6:58pm | IP Logged 
Thanks for all your help guys, I have some good ideas now. I am definitely going to look into the etymology thing, I have never thought of that.
1 person has voted this message useful



Xenops
Senior Member
United States
thexenops.deviantart
Joined 3626 days ago

112 posts - 158 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 11 of 12
25 November 2014 at 11:42pm | IP Logged 
I was looking at the Advice Forum to see if I can learn something, or even better, contribute by answering a question: and I found this thread and thought "oh boy oh boy!". :)

So what changed my learning strategy was this article here:

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.tofugu.com/2010/03/25 /the-5-biggest-mistakes-people-make-when-learning-kanji/&sa= U&ei=mQJ1VKiQGcqHsQTbyoGQCQ&ved=0CBQQFjAA&sig2=FTDJ0RpbC1UC9 4HYik2rKw&usg=AFQjCNFXAZkXgANCqu8ftXS6E3DQzJ9stg

The premise is that it's better to learn kanji by the radicals (the "alphabet" of kanji) than to learn each individual kanji stroke-by-stroke. The book I like best for this is "Let's Learn Kanji!" by Mitamura. Here is the link to the U.S. Amazon page:

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Learn -Kanji-Introduction-Components/dp/156836394X&sa=U&ei=cgR1VKr fCMbasATbjIJg&ved=0CB0QFjAA&sig2=dgxWjOSH1nggdUqlsoA48A&usg= AFQjCNGac0MeEGqrdH4v9mq2tApVzF8oVA

Also, I hand-write multiple times. I did change my strategy a little recently: one study indicated that material will last longer if you quiz yourself rather than review (I don't know the link). Thus, what I do it write out the radical, the Japanese name, and the English meaning (or Spanish meaning for more fun for me), and after a couple to times, I quiz myself. If I got 80% of all the information right, I move onto the next bunch of radicals. I go back and review the previous sections once in a while.

Also, if you ask a Japanese person how to spell a kanji, they will tell you radicals involved, so there's another benefit.
1 person has voted this message useful



kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4985 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 12 of 12
03 January 2015 at 7:19pm | IP Logged 
I would just be really really patient. The more you use the kanji the more you remember it. If you're not in
Japan though, you won't be getting tons of input and even after you know a kanji you may blank on it
occasionally. I think that's normal.

RTK might just not be the way to go for you. Before giving up, just to make sure you're doing the same
way that worked for me, I used an SRS app on my iPad. I would read a chapter in RTK, then go to my
iPad and do those same kanji that I had read about in the book. The deck I had downloaded had stories
already. Some good some not so good. This made it easier. I would change stories if I liked or keep them.

My deck was setup so I would see the keyword on side one, then draw the kanji. On side two I would see
the correct kanji and then the story that went along with it. So I was making myself produce the kanji and
not just passively recognizing it.

I did RTK for a while and sort of got through the whole book 1 but didn't SRS everything until I got 100%
mastery. I studied vocabulary flashcards that included the RTK meanings of the kanji on the deck. I used
that to re-enforce the meanings of the kanji. I think if I stayed on top of my RTK SRS deck it would have
been better but I didn't. However, just looking up the meaning of the kanji as needed I could remember my
old story then so. If you still can't remember your story even with the kanji and the kanji meaning in front of
you - well I don't know what to say.

Probably give RTK the boot. Just get a lot of pencils and paper and write each kanji 10,000 times or
whatever.


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