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Learning Japanese
DreamTactix:
150 kanji per day sounds like a lot more than most people would be able to feasibly do. If I were learning 10-15 per day and retaining everything including on-yomi and kun-yomi I'd be content
It takes maybe 2 weeks to learn hiragana and katakana to the point of total recall to the point of feeling natural. Kanji really becomes easier when you learn enough radicals to be able to piece them together.
While you can do self study like I did for almost 9 years, I have a feeling formalized classes would be a lot easier. Now that I am in college and actually taking Japanese courses it's simply solidified some grammar rules that I was somewhat unclear on. It's a lot easier to simply ask your instructor when you're unsure of how something works than to have to reverse engineer everything. You can, however, learn a lot of vocabulary on your own, and this is the part that I think immersion really helps on. The downside to taking classes so late into my studies is that the classes are mostly way below what I already know. The plus side however is that they make for easy As.
And I do agree that you don't really know a kanji unless you can write it. While there are a few that I can recognize that I can't remember all of the strokes, that number becomes less and less all the time. If you truly understand kanji you'll piece them together from their original radicals rather than try to tackle them as one piece.
Tatsujin:
--- Quote from: DreamTactix on May 31, 2009, 04:32:16 AM ---150 kanji per day sounds like a lot more than most people would be able to feasibly do. If I were learning 10-15 per day and retaining everything including on-yomi and kun-yomi I'd be content
It takes maybe 2 weeks to learn hiragana and katakana to the point of total recall to the point of feeling natural. Kanji really becomes easier when you learn enough radicals to be able to piece them together.
While you can do self study like I did for almost 9 years, I have a feeling formalized classes would be a lot easier. Now that I am in college and actually taking Japanese courses it's simply solidified some grammar rules that I was somewhat unclear on. It's a lot easier to simply ask your instructor when you're unsure of how something works than to have to reverse engineer everything. You can, however, learn a lot of vocabulary on your own, and this is the part that I think immersion really helps on. The downside to taking classes so late into my studies is that the classes are mostly way below what I already know. The plus side however is that they make for easy As.
And I do agree that you don't really know a kanji unless you can write it. While there are a few that I can recognize that I can't remember all of the strokes, that number becomes less and less all the time. If you truly understand kanji you'll piece them together from their original radicals rather than try to tackle them as one piece.
--- End quote ---
You can memorize Kanji by reading or writing or both. It really depends on the person. Some people learn stuff by looking at it, and others by writing/reading it, etc.
geoffreak:
The great thing about college is you know a LOT of people with varying skill sets. My university in particular has a specialty in gaming and I am friends with a lot of people who are in this program. One in particular I promised to come up with a good game idea for him to make.
Should I have him start a kanji learning RPG or is what is already out there good enough?
yellowtable:
--- Quote from: Tatsujin on May 31, 2009, 05:15:00 AM ---You can memorize Kanji by reading or writing or both. It really depends on the person. Some people learn stuff by looking at it, and others by writing/reading it, etc.
--- End quote ---
I'm not saying it's impossible, but reading them is a heck of a lot easier than writing. For example, I learnt the kanji for dream (yume, 夢) a few weeks ago, and I hadn't reviewed it. Because of this, whenever I started to read it, I had no problems. However, when it actually got down to testing how to write it, I had a vague picture of what it looked like, but couldn't write it. So despite learning it, and being able to read it no worries, I couldn't write it. I obviously did a few reviews, and now I can remember it with no problems.
This is why if you know any Chinese people who lived their youth overseas (I'd say Japanese, but the only Japanese people I know can't read kanji), they can normally read books and web pages fine. But they can usually only write a few hundred characters at maximum (unless their parents have told them to write, while they were overseas). While you can say that learning to read is a heck of a lot more important than writing, which is true, I don't think most people can learn to write the kanji by reading them alone.
--- Quote from: geoffreak on May 31, 2009, 06:45:44 PM ---The great thing about college is you know a LOT of people with varying skill sets. My university in particular has a specialty in gaming and I am friends with a lot of people who are in this program. One in particular I promised to come up with a good game idea for him to make.
Should I have him start a kanji learning RPG or is what is already out there good enough?
--- End quote ---
While that sounds like an awesome idea, there already is a large amount of software out there already made for kanji learning. If you use the Heisig method, the reviewing system at a site called 'reviewing the kanji' is all you will need. There is also Anki, which some people use instead. And there are even games where you can actually learn the Kanji from, like Slime Forest. I personally don't think it's very good, but I don't want to rubbish something, that someone has spent a lot of time working on.
psyren:
Can you tell the difference between 'dream' and 'step'?
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