Help me learn kanji without mnemonics

[Steve]

Hi, as some might know I am trying to learn Japanese and the big step ahead of me is those kanji.

Now I know there is lots of guides how to learn kanji, some even on these forums or the one guide by Aaeru.

But... they all use mnemonics to learn kanji and I know that for many people it is the fastest easiest way.

Well not for me, mnemonics never helped me with anything in any subject, not only languages. I learned English by thinking in English, working in English etc. I learned to understand the English words just like native English person, that is why I often have problems translating specific English word to Czech, I just know the English meaning and I have hard time remembering the Czech counterpart. Logical thinking with English helps me a lot, I never ever try to say something and first say it in Czech and then in English, it just isn't how my brain works.

Same with Mathematics, I was never good with remembering formulas, yet I was very good with math in class. I didn't have to remember all the formulas because I could get to the result my own way, I often had to explain the teacher how I got to that result, because she thought I used some cheat or whatever. I had some problems with derivative and integral formulas, because those are very hard without remembering, but I always had easy way with probability and statistics, because I didn't need any formula there, I just saw it in my brain.

Well to the point, I need a way to logically learn kanji, which means not by learning each one of them but by learning the rules of the kanji radicals. I know very little about this so I might be saying something stupid, but I noticed that some kanji use similar parts and only add different parts and that is how you can determine the meaning and/or reading.

The example where I noticed it would be with word 食べる (for eating etc) and wodf 飯 (for food) or the one I see more often ご飯 (which is often used in anime and VN as food)

The kanji used for meshi 飯 has the first part 食.

There the meaning for me is then ovbious and now I remember both of these kanji.

The other example I would give and I discovered later would be when googling Kagamine Rin, her family name is 鏡音

What I saw there was that the first kanji for mirror 鏡 has actually kanji for sound 音 on the right side with legs. Now I have no idea why is is there in mirror and that is what I want to learn. The first part is actually kanji used for gold Kin 金 or also Kane as I found out. And when I then look at the kun reading of this kanji, if it is the first kanji it is read as かな Kana so there is the KA for kagami.

Now its not explaining the meaning to me exactly but thats only from what I observed in the kanji details, with some good book or anything I believe I would get to the bottom of this and learn how to recognize and read it this way.

And that why I would like to ask you to share knowledge in this matter, is there any good literature where you can learn kanji using logic, not using mnemonics. Or is it only available for learning Chinese meanings? How do Japanese people learn kanji, I don't think they use mnemonics, don't they learn composing kanji using radicals?

And again please excuse any BS I said in the post, it is only from my own observing of these kanji and I have never read any documentation so I might be completely wrong about this.

It is just that I find it fascinating how it can be connected and that is actually how I learn everything in life, I never knew dates of significant historical events, yet I remember them relatively to other events and thus I was able to determine the actual date, I didn't learn vocabulary for other languages, I just learned the word without translating it to my native language. I never learned math formulas, I just learned how to get the result.

So please, help me learn Japanese by using what my brain is good for and avoiding my weak points.

[俊 (Jun)]

I feel with you man, I just don't get it when there were people who asked me "Do you think of the word in your own language first and then translate it in your head into the other language?" I don't know about others but imo that's not how using a language usually works, especially when you're already familiar with it. When you use your first language you don't have to translate anything, so why would you have to do that for your second language? Honestly I'd feel offended. XD

To try explain this concept: Let's say your native language is English; what does the noun "book" mean? My answer: book means book, nothing else, why do I have to explain what a book is?

The same can be applied to your secondary language, in this case let's say you ask yourself in Japanese: What does the word 母 mean? There are two things you can do: mother (translation to your first language) or just keep it at 母。You already know that 母 means 母 so there's no point in translating it. Even if the words "mother" or "father" didn't exist, you would still know that the female parent is your mom, and male parent is your dad, there just would be no word to directly specify who is who.

Simply said: "mother" and 「母」both mean and refer to the same thing.

... I'm not sure if I only made it more complicated or what. XD

Anyway,

It's true that there's a connection to many of the kanji, but I'm not sure if it's practical to learn kanji just from those.

There are some systems that let you see a bunch of the kanji with the same kind of strokes, number of strokes, etc. such as IME パッド that comes with the Japanese IME keyboard built into Windows (7).

You can see the different readings of the kanji by moving your mouse on top of them. Perhaps you'd find some connection I don't know of lol and use that to learn the kanji. XD

I don't actively study Japanese anymore since I learned the "basics", but these are some of the methods I recall having used or am still using:

1. English word > translate into kanji multiple times by writing it down

2. Hiragana > translate into kanji multiple times by writing it down

3. Reading lyrics of Japanese songs while playing the song and also put the words in a translator such as Babylon to see more details. It is also easier to remember the pronunciation of the kanji that way. (Helps with vocabulary, kanji, grammar)

4. Transliterating or translating lyrics of Japanese songs by own writing. (Helps with vocabulary, kanji, grammar)

5. Anime, manga, VNs, eroge and all sorts of media.

6. Kanji cards. (Kanji > English)

7. Daily use. (Reading, writing, searching, communicating whatever) Always have a translator at hand just in case and try not to ignore words you don't know. You'll start recognizing them better and faster as you progress.

8. Karaoke with either Romaji or Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji/Furigana. (Especially helps pronunciation and reading speed)

I did most of these things just for fun, and not that much either. But it still helped me a lot in the long run. ^^

[Steve]

Yep, IME pad is awesome.

And from the methods you listed I pretty much do them all except the cards.

I even have 5 tabs open in top of my browser tab list (I have vertical tabs) for just Japanese and translating in real time and then on the bottom part I have another 10 for other useful stuff like conjugation and such. (btw i have about 220 tabs in browser at once, 103 of them currently are in visual novel category xD) [tree style tabs addon for FF is awesome ]

I feel like I'm learning something every day but since I have the time, I would like to invest it to some program or book or guide.

I can experiment myself with kanji and learn few that way using IME pad or jisho.org just like I do now but I believe that there is some literature that uses that system to teach kanji and would help me read much faster

[Kygrykhon]

Same with Mathematics, I was never good with remembering formulas, yet I was very good with math in class. I didn't have to remember all the formulas because I could get to the result my own way, I often had to explain the teacher how I got to that result, because she thought I used some cheat or whatever.

Really know that feel, bro. They don't even believe that I'm smart at first.

Anyway I'll be following this topic. I agree that mnemonics isn't one of my stronger way of learning things (but yet again, language isn't my strong point either).

[Down]

Well, sadly the composed words usually make sense, but the radicals inside the kanji can or cannot (more often they don't) have any kind of relation with its meaning.

I recommend you read the first 3 'getting started' points at www.kanjidamage.com. I'm not sure the learning method on this site would suit you (especially since this guy's writing is a bit cringe-inducing) but the introduction has some useful general information about kanjis.

His take on learning kanjis IS based on the radicals, but it's still about memorizing stuff since the meaning of the radical usually is inexistant or has no link with the kanji itself.

I didn't really start learning kanjis myself but as someone who uses both memory and logical links to learn stuff, I'd say that trying to learn kanjis in a context (ie with actual sentences) would probably help you. That means of course reading a lot of stuff. The context will help you to figure out the meaning of the kanji and eventually after coming across it several times you'll end up knowing it.

[Steve]

Thanks for the kanjidamage, the first 3 steps seems useful, ill get to them after work.

And yeah, reading one kanji a lot makes it very easy to remember.

Problem then would be with kanji that I might see only once per game, yet is used in every game at least once.

But I guess I will remember even that after a while.

[minirop]

The example where I noticed it would be with word 食べる (for eating etc) and word 飯 (for food) or the one I see more often ご飯 (which is often used in anime and VN as food)

The kanji used for meshi 飯 has the first part 食.

that's the point : the radical.

there the key radical for the lexical field, and one (or several) others radicals, mostly for the pronunciation. for instance, 僕 (boku), with the 人 key, means "I/me". 撲 (boku), with the 手 key, means "to beat".

but some are quite "strange", like 肉 (niku meat) becoming 月 like in 肌 (hada skin, flesh), not to be confused with 月 (tsuki moon), i.e. 服 (fuku clothing)

if I remember some kanji it's because I read manga in Japanese (I'm learning too, so I don't understand what I'm reading, still a (more than) beginner).

Now I have no idea why is is there in mirror and that is what I want to learn.

that's useless. They chose names with the 音 kanji, but the other... 鏡 (kagami mirror) for the twins, 初 (hatsu ~beginning of) for Miku, 巡 (meguri turn around, patrol) for Luka, etc.

Many manga/games/whatever does that, for example, in Minami-ke, all the Minami characters have a season in their names :

Haruka and Haruo = Spring

Kana and Natsuki = Summer

Chiaki and Akira = Autumn

Touma = Winter

You can also note that they are "ordered" by their age (Haruka/Haruo are the oldest, and Chiaki/Touma and the youngest)

[Steve]

Thanks for useful tips everyone.

What I decided to do is get a better hold of grammar and start reading (some simple VN) and when I meet kanji I don't know, I will just learn it.

Any recommendation on simple short VN that is in japanese, preferably kinetic novel with some moe character or loli?

That doesn't use that many different kanji?

[Down]

I recommend you to check this google doc:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0Agk2IH0ZXhn7dDNmSW1BVFU5dVgyOHkzWjU4b2l2dkE

Also, iirc baka-tsuki rates the difficulty of light novels. Don't know about VNs though, but people here could probably help you =o

[Steve]

thanks for the link, from what you posted I might try Baldr Sky as the translation seems dead, and it also has protagonist with voice acting tag 2.3 (how much of that voice acting is there?).

However not as first one as I don't want to ruing the awesome story there with bad and slow translation, maybe Ill do that as second or third.

For first I was thinking about VN where even protagonist has a voice and is short at the same time.

Twinkle Crusaders has protag VA 2.0 so its probably not a lot, also it is extremely long, another one I will leave for when I know better because I really want to read that one when I understand.

what about this one? http://vndb.org/v776

it has voiced protag 3.0 so I count that as full?

Is it easy read?

or this? http://vndb.org/v415

OOOR actually what about this? http://vndb.org/v8435

its a loli game, those cannot be hard right right? xD

I mean half of the characters have name in kana, the title is in kana.

Please tell me this is easy read because now I want to read that xD

or this? http://vndb.org/v5244

it seems easy, name in kana, doesnt even use 花 like the sonohana games which is one of the kanji I already know xD

and TL seems to be in far future

+ its very short so it would only take me like 100 hours to read in japanese xD

another alternative could be http://vndb.org/v5158 , but I would have to find out who is the Trap and avoid xD (oh wait, protag is the trap, then its ok xD)

well this seems like all I was able to find that are not as long, protagonost with VA 3.0 and have some lolis

which one of them are easy and which are hard to read?

EDIT: actually maybe this as first: http://vndb.org/v10260

not much interested in the normal game as it is supposed to have rape but this looks alright xD And from the screens (after clicking to show nsfw xD) I was able to read 3 from 6 kanji there xD 1 is dare 誰 on one of the screens and the other 5 were in the one sentence xD

大きいおっぱいには夢と浪漫が詰まっている (ookii is easy and as a big fan of hoshimemo I know yume xD)

and after I looked up what is 浪漫(turned out to be romance novel - and actually the voice there would probably help me a lot as it is read as rouman) and 詰まる (as to be packed or full off) I was able to read it! And I guess translation would be that "dreams and romans are packed with big bearsts" or I guess possibly something like "big breasts are subject of dreams and romans a lot".

[Steve]

Turned out that annot player is so awesome for learning.

How it highlights words and endings and transcribes kanji!

(inside spoiler is screen of how I have it set up - it has loli boobs so you've been warned xD, I was thinking using widescreen monitor for this.)

I had that aggregator in case I can't read the kanji and I can't find it using lookup by radicals so I can copy it but I found out I can also copy the text from annot so I might close that and put there something useful.

[REtransInternational]

Taking a look at how the Chinese do it might be of interest to you, since that's where the Japanese took kanji from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification

I don't know Japanese, but having had a great deal of exposure to Chinese the past few years, even without attempting to learn it you start seeing particular characters often and begin to recognise them. E.g. 电子, 深圳 (copy-paste since I have no idea how to write them, either on the computer or manually.) This is different from being able to write the characters, but I'm saying that if you want to memorise then there's no substitute for exposure to lots and lots of Japanese.

[Steve]

Yea, I seem to notice that a lot since I started reading, I meet kanji for the first time and I try to remember it, not succeeding ofc on the first try. Then I meet it again and I am like.... "aaa I know this one" but can't imagine the meaning, then I meet it again and im like "oh come why don't I remember this?", then one more time and Im like "WTF, how did I forget again!" and then I meet it next time and I know it xD

[zoom909]

大きいおっぱいには夢と浪漫が詰まっている (ookii is easy and as a big fan of hoshimemo I know yume xD)

and after I looked up what is 浪漫(turned out to be romance novel - and actually the voice there would probably help me a lot as it is read as rouman) and 詰まる (as to be packed or full off) I was able to read it! And I guess translation would be that "dreams and romans are packed with big bearsts" or I guess possibly something like "big breasts are subject of dreams and romans a lot".

Actually, it's not "dreams and romans are packed WITH big breasts" it's dreams and romance are packed IN big breasts. Or, since big breasts is the Topic of the sentence, you could use "big breasts are stuffed full of dreams and romance" or something.

"Big breasts are subject of dreams and romans a lot" is just a wrong guess. Don't guess :-)

To understand VNs, it's actually the grammar that you can't live without. The computer can help you look up the kanji. But it can't understand the grammar, not really, not today's software anyway.

I'll also mention just in case anyone wants it: I made a tiny kanji review program that I'm using at odd moments. It's about 1000 kanji. It just shows you a little window with a kanji character and some multiple choices. You pick whether the quiz mode is onyomi, kunyomi, or meaning in English. If you click on the right choice, it just shows you another kanji. If you click on the wrong one, nothing happens until you click the right one. You can change the quiz mode at any time to give yourself a hint. That's all it does. I can't program anything real complicated...frankly I find anything other than "guess the number" a monumental challenge :-)

[Steve]

Actually, it's not "dreams and romans are packed WITH big breasts" it's dreams and romance are packed IN big breasts. Or, since big breasts is the Topic of the sentence, you could use "big breasts are stuffed full of dreams and romance" or something.

"Big breasts are subject of dreams and romans a lot" is just a wrong guess. Don't guess :-)

To understand VNs, it's actually the grammar that you can't live without. The computer can help you look up the kanji. But it can't understand the grammar, not really, not today's software anyway.

I'll also mention just in case anyone wants it: I made a tiny kanji review program that I'm using at odd moments. It's about 1000 kanji. It just shows you a little window with a kanji character and some multiple choices. You pick whether the quiz mode is onyomi, kunyomi, or meaning in English. If you click on the right choice, it just shows you another kanji. If you click on the wrong one, nothing happens until you click the right one. You can change the quiz mode at any time to give yourself a hint. That's all it does. I can't program anything real complicated...frankly I find anything other than "guess the number" a monumental challenge :-)

Wow thanks. Actually I understood that the big breasts has to be the topic and subject of the sentence as there was に (like the place of occurrence of how would you call it in English) and は and that's what confused me.

And I would more blame this on my bad translation of the verb, because that is for me one of the hardest things.

See I noticed lot of time in Japanese the verb changes the meaning from what I know as active sentence to passive sentence etc, its not only that, I can't really explain it much in English because I do not know the proper naming of the sentence particles in English (now I don't mean particle as a word class more like particle as particle of the sentence... well that didn't explain much xD)

Anyway the thing is the verb in Japanese has English translation that includes more words, like in this case for example it is 詰まる, jisho says "to be packed" and its making it even harder for me xD

What I mean there could even be a Japanese word for "to be included as the filling of" and I actually saw few example of something like this when reading some other verbs, sometimes English just doesn't have the words to explain the Japanese word easily.

And I know this is double true because when translating from Czech to English, there are also times when there just isn't a way to translate something to English to sound natural (btw you English people be glad you don't actually have it that complex like my language, High school is hell for everyone and not even I would be able to write an essay in Czech [and I learn it 21 years now] properly xD). Now I don't want to insult English or anything, just saying that the expression capabilities of English are really limited compared to other languages and therefore learning Japanese using English probably isn't the best idea for me xD But there are almost no guides in my language

The thing is I need to learn to feel in Japanese to understand it properly, translating in my head is not a good way for me to learn language because language is not only words being said differently, it is completely different way of thinking. So just like I learned to think and feel in English, I will need to do that with Japanese and it will probably take me some time. And its not gonna be as easy as English xD

Now I'm no expert on English but I tell you this, I would probably rather choose to write an essay in English than in my mother language Czech, and I would probably do less mistakes in the English one xD

Ok, I went off the rail a little, anyway thanks for pointing out the mistake, now I see it very clearly and I think next time I see those bastards like に there I will pay a lot more attention to it and understand it properly;)

[Snowtsuku]

I remember people in PD discussing something about a technique to learn kanji without really memorizing them. I forgot the name of that method -.-

[zoom909]

Wow thanks. Actually I understood that the big breasts has to be the topic and subject of the sentence as there was に (like the place of occurrence of how would you call it in English) and は and that's what confused me.

And I would more blame this on my bad translation of the verb, because that is for me one of the hardest things.

See I noticed lot of time in Japanese the verb changes the meaning from what I know as active sentence to passive sentence etc, its not only that, I can't really explain it much in English because I do not know the proper naming of the sentence particles in English (now I don't mean particle as a word class more like particle as particle of the sentence... well that didn't explain much xD)

Anyway the thing is the verb in Japanese has English translation that includes more words, like in this case for example it is 詰まる, jisho says "to be packed" and its making it even harder for me xD

What I mean there could even be a Japanese word for "to be included as the filling of" and I actually saw few example of something like this when reading some other verbs, sometimes English just doesn't have the words to explain the Japanese word easily.

The thing is I need to learn to feel in Japanese to understand it properly, translating in my head is not a good way for me to learn language because language is not only words being said differently, it is completely different way of thinking. So just like I learned to think and feel in English, I will need to do that with Japanese and it will probably take me some time. And its not gonna be as easy as English xD

Ok, I went off the rail a little, anyway thanks for pointing out the mistake, now I see it very clearly and I think next time I see those bastards like に there I will pay a lot more attention to it and understand it properly;)

Yep...you went off the rail all right :-)

But look, it's not really the verb you got wrong, because you knew it meant "be packed", which is roughly right. The problem is one of "big breasts are packed with dreams and romance" vs. "dreams and romance are packed with big breasts" means 2 completely different things! So besides "ni", "wa" and "ga" are also important markers here.

So let me try to pull it apart:

大きいおっぱい に は 夢と浪漫 が 詰まっている

In this sentence, the topic and subject are not the same.

The Topic is 大きいおっぱい に. The Subject is 夢と浪漫. The Verb applies to the Subject.

The topic is more of a concept, it's not really one of a the Parts of Speech. You could switch this sentence around in your mind if that helps you...simplify it to:

夢と浪漫が大きいおっぱいに詰まっている.

The basic meaning is the same.

Regarding thinking in the language, you just have to put up with that in the beginning. You kind of have to "bootstrap" yourself by initially thinking of things in terms of English roughly in order to get started, and by reading more and more you'll automatically start to get the "intuitive" meaning of the words in Japanese. Even if I could explain Japanese language in Japanese, which I can't, that would sort of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it. But Japanese-only dictionaries can do it, and you can start using those once you reach a higher level.

I remember people in PD discussing something about a technique to learn kanji without really memorizing them. I forgot the name of that method -.-

Magic.

[Steve]

Oh thanks zoom This actually helped me a lot

And yeah, I could use a bit of magic xD

[Tief Blau]

I recommend you to check this google doc:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0Agk2IH0ZXhn7dDNmSW1BVFU5dVgyOHkzWjU4b2l2dkE

Also, iirc baka-tsuki rates the difficulty of light novels. Don't know about VNs though, but people here could probably help you =o

Really wish I had seen this post before I went out and bought books...

I also hear that キノの旅 is a very good book to start with.

I don't really know about the availability of this book outside of the States, but I've found that Essential Japanese Grammar by Tanimori Sato can be very helpful if you are having a difficult time with particles.

It's basically split into an overview with basics, and then a small dictionary of particles and other nuances of the language. There are also 6 appendixes at the very end with longs lists of common verbs, nouns, and adjectives.

I remember people in PD discussing something about a technique to learn kanji without really memorizing them. I forgot the name of that method -.-

High Speaking/Listening skill + interpreting Furigana?

Oh thanks zoom :)/> This actually helped me a lot :)/>

And yeah, I could use a bit of magic xD

wwwjdic is a good dictionary.

I use to have a cheat sheet for Japanese (mostly grammar starting at intermediate level I think), I'll see if I can dig it up. If I can find it, I can send you a PM with the link if you want.