The Ultimate Guide to Learning Kanji for Beginners

Hi my name is Misa. The kanji mi in my name Misa means beautiful. And what's your name? Tom. T-O-M. What does that mean? Twin? Interesting. But what about the individual alphabets? Does T mean anything? Does O symbolize anything? Did your parents use the letter M because it had some meaning? Hey guys. It's been a long time but I am back. I mean I've been active on twitch so if you've been following my streams then hi again. Thank you. Today I'm going to share tips and techniques to learn kanji effectively. Get ready to unlock the secrets of mastering kanji. Anyway I hope you got the joke I made at the beginning of the video. What a joke. I think a lot of Japanese people enjoy talking about the meanings of their names. For example in the anime series Bleach the meaning of the protagonist's name Ichigo is kind of important. In the series I think there were a few encounters where people thought his name meant strawberries because without seeing how the name is written in kanji the name Ichigo can mean a few things. Most Japanese people would think of strawberry when we hear the word Ichigo. Ichigo strawberry is written in this kanji but the protagonist Ichigo's name is written differently like this. The first kanji means one and the second kanji means to protect. So his name actually means to protect one thing, to protect one person. Anyway to explain my joke, Japanese has three different writing systems. First we have hiragana. Hiragana looks like these. If you see a script with curvy strokes they are probably hiragana. By the way if you haven't learned hiragana yet you might want to do that first before getting into this kanji chaotic journey. Hiragana is super useful when we cannot remember how to write kanji because hiragana is so much easier to memorize and there are way too many kanji even for Japanese native speakers. So sometimes we forget how to write certain kanji and then we can use hiragana. It is true, I'm not joking. The main purpose of hiragana is to use for grammatical functions. So we write particles like wa ga o in hiragana and we also have something called okurigana. Don't worry about remembering the special terms unless you're a language nerd like me. Verbs or adjectives are usually written in a combination of kanji and hiragana. For example to go in Japanese is iku. The first letter is kanji, it means to go and the second letter is a hiragana. So a verb can consist of a kanji and hiragana like two different scripts and it might seem weird but you'll get used to it and what happens usually is that we conjugate this hiragana part to negate for example. So if you want to say I will not go you say ikanai. See the kanji remains the same but the hiragana or the correct term is okurigana changes. So that's good to remember. We have hiragana the curvy cute ones and kanji we borrowed from Chinese. Kanji literally means Chinese alphabet, Chinese characters. So we borrowed Chinese characters but we ended up adding our own readings so it's a mess. So when learning kanji you have to learn the Chinese reading on'yomi. On'yomi is the Chinese reading of the kanji or at least we tried our best to mimic the sound and kind of failed and kun'yomi is the Japanese reading of the kanji. So they are the readings that Japanese people came up with like we gotta be original somehow. So if you see a word like this the word consists of two kanji and only kanji. They can be more than two kanji but these words are called compound nouns and these kanji usually use the on'yomi Chinese readings but if you see a word like this a kanji with hiragana attached to it this kanji probably uses the kun'yomi Japanese readings. So we have hiragana kanji and katakana. Katakana looks more angular so if you see a script with straight lines then they're probably katakana and katakana is used to transcribe foreign words or borrowed words. So for example coffee is written like this and as you see very angular. But today we're going to talk about kanji and maybe kanji already sounds intimidating and overwhelming but kanji can be fun trust me. For example jellyfish in Japanese is kurage and unfortunately we usually write names of plants or animals in katakana. In academic context names of plants and animals are almost always written in katakana even if they are not foreign words um it's just what people decided okay. If you're just texting for example you can write the names of animals or plants in hiragana or kanji if they are available. If the kanji is common enough we use that instead. So we write dog, inu, cat, neko in kanji almost always but for example jellyfish is usually written in katakana but the weird thing is there is also the kanji version of the word kurage jellyfish. You can write the word kurage jellyfish in kanji like this. The first kanji means ocean or sea, the so sea moon the moon in the ocean. I think it's very very poetic jellyfish kind of does look like the moon in the ocean right. Although people don't really use this kanji to write the word jellyfish I think it's fun to remember and it's just you know you can use it for haiku for example something fancy. So it is very beautiful but bad news is these kanji do not usually have the readings kurage. These kind of readings are called again you do not have to remember this term. Most Japanese people don't know it but yeah sometimes we assign kanji to words that do not correspond to normal on'yomi or kun'yomi so normal readings but it's good to remember that you will probably encounter some words with weird kanji readings. For example kyou is a very common word kyou which means today. You write the word kyou like this. The first kanji means now current and the second kanji means which turns into the meaning today. Kind of makes sense but the reading kyou is not really related to the standard readings of the individual kanji. So the kun'yomi of the first kanji is and the on'yomi of the kanji is I mean yeah kind of similar but not really right and the kun'yomi of the second kanji day is means so many. First you should remember the reading hi and the on'yomi of the second kanji is right so there's no u or anything. We already had the word kyou as today and then we were like let's assign some kanji to the word kyou and we chose the kanji that has the right meanings. Another example is otona. Otona means adult and this is the kanji. The first kanji means big and the second kanji means person. So big person meaning adult makes sense right but the readings don't really make sense. If you look up each kanji in the dictionary you'd not find the readings otona if you look up the kanji separately. So the first letter o of the word otona is not really related to the kun'yomi o big. There was already the word otona in ancient Japan and they just assigned the kanji big and person because adults are big people. So yeah you will see some words that don't follow the standard readings but you know it's still fun. For example centipede is mukade in Japanese. Again we usually write the name of living things, creatures, animals in katakana right. So mukade is usually written in katakana but we can also use the kanji 100 legs. You might see that sometimes in books. Another interesting one again kind of useless to remember but it's fun is a mole. The animal we say mogura. The word probably is originated from the verb moguru to go under but the kanji assigned to the word mole mogura is earth and dragon. So earth dragon. Pretty cool huh. The origin of the kanji is not super clear but people think that surface runways that moles create kind of look like a dragon. Now finally I'm going to provide you with tips on how to memorize kanji. Are you a visual learner or an auditory learner? Visual learners tend to learn best by seeing images. Anyway whether you are an auditory learner or visual learner repetition is the key. Yes unfortunately you will have to make time for learning kanji and yeah consistently learning practicing kanji is important. Have you guys tried using flashcards? I highly recommend incorporating flashcards and spaced repetition into your study routine. Spaced repetition is a memory technique where you review material at optimal intervals and the intervals are increased gradually. And to implement flashcards and spaced repetition I suggest you this app mochi mochi. Yeah the name itself is so cute. Mochi means rice cake. Mochi mochi is the onomatopoeia for chewy or springy things when you eat. Yeah rice cake that's so the texture of rice cake is mochi mochi. The mochi mochi app has this feature called the golden time and it's based on spaced repetition. It will basically learn your learning pattern, learning speed and it will remind you when to review certain words or kanji. And this app is organized very well. There are several categories and you can choose to learn the kanji for JLPT N4, JLPT N5. You can also learn vocabulary for a specific topic. So you want to learn kanji and vocabulary about moving then there is a category for that. If you specifically want to learn the vocabulary related to work for example then there is a category for that. Kaisha, office and you can learn kanji and vocabulary related to work. The flashcards used on mochi mochi apps have images so it's great for visual learners and there is also audio on this app so you can hear how the words are pronounced. Mochi mochi apps also show the levels of memorization. When learning kanji it's really important to set a goal and also track your progress. Definitely check out the app. You can download the app for free. So the first technique you can try especially if you're a visual learner. Try color coding. Assign colors to different radicals or parts of the kanji. What are radicals? Radicals or bushu in Japanese are the building blocks of kanji. Radicals are the parts that make up the whole kanji. A kanji can consist of multiple elements so it's really like building a lego. You know if your house is cluttered like mine, don't look, you'd love it. If you love lego you'd love kanji because it's like building a lego castle. Radicals are like lego bricks. They come in various shapes, forms and sizes too and you know each lego brick has a meaning right? I'm joking. Each radical has a as well. For example this kanji yasumu is the verb to rest. Yasumu. So we use the kun'yomi Japanese reading for this verb yasumu because of the hiragana. Anyway this kanji means rest. Let's look at the components of this kanji. This is the radical that means person. Like I said a radical is like a building block but this radical does originate from another kanji person hito but it's shaped a little bit different to be used as a radical and this building block is the kanji meaning tree. So this kanji to rest is made of two parts. The radical that means person and the other part that means tree. So this symbolizes a person leaning against a tree and resting. So kanji is really like a story. I did not just come up with this story. Kanji has a meaning. Not all kanji but a lot of them were created based on a picture or symbol. Anyway this radical that means person comes up a lot. It's used in a lot of other kanji. For example the kanji for body is very similar to the kanji to rest. You just add a line. It has the radical person right. We call it ninben by the way. So what you can do is color code different radicals. So you can assign a color to this radical and categorize them. We really do use radicals to categorize kanji in dictionary as well. So if you want to look up certain kanji but you don't know how to read it we check the radicals and see where the kanji is. So even if you're not a messy person like me instead you are very organized you'd love radicals. You'd love kanji. Does this radical spark joy? Then color code it. Instead of color coding radicals or elements of the kanji you can also circle them. So I talked about this in my kanji learning series but when Japanese people try to learn a difficult kanji we don't always try to memorize every part of the kanji because it's way too difficult. What we do is we memorize the most important part like we focus on the part that stands out the most and is different from other kanji. So a lot of different kanji share the same radicals. So once you learn enough radicals you can kind of see the pattern but there will always be a difference right like differences between a terrace and body. They are very similar so in order to differentiate them you can circle the part that is different to make sure that you remember the difference. So when I had to learn kanji yes I also had to suffer like you are suffering now. So when I was trying to learn a difficult kanji I just circled a part of it. You can actually circle any component it doesn't have to be a radical. You can also make two circles for one kanji if the kanji is really complicated. For example this one I would circle here and here and just focus on those parts. Trust me they really help. And the visual associations help as well. So you can try this technique by using the color that corresponds to the meaning. For example you're trying to learn the kanji tree, forest, nature. You write those kanji or you circle elements of those kanji with a green pen. If you're learning kanji like water, ocean you can write the kanji or highlight the kanji with a blue marker, a blue pen. But you don't have to rely on colors. If you cannot differentiate colors for example you can doodle so you can draw. It doesn't have to be good right you can draw some grass next to the kanji grass. Another tip for visual learners is to learn stroke orders. Personally I don't think it's so important to learn the correct stroke orders because trust me a lot of Japanese people don't use the correct stroke orders. You know we try, we learn it at school but at the end of the day in exams teachers cannot tell if you used the correct kanji stroke orders or not. But for example if you're into calligraphy and you want to practice shodo then I think it's worth it. But it's important to think what your goal is. So are you trying to learn kanji because you want to use kanji for your art or are you simply learning kanji so you can just read Japanese? Prioritizing is not a bad thing. Your goal is to speak Japanese fluently then stroke orders really don't matter. If your goal is to be able to write and read really beautifully then yeah go for it. It also depends on the time you have. For example if you're trying to learn Japanese as quickly as possible then I cannot recommend you to learn stroke orders of every kanji. But don't let me discourage you from learning the correct stroke orders. If you find it fun go for it. I'm not stopping you. I'm not going to criticize you for learning the correct way. I'm just saying if you want to save some time and want to for example pass JLPT and 3 for your job then yeah you can always learn the correct stroke orders later. All right so the tips I just shared with you cannot be for everyone. Some people might find writing kanji boring or just not helpful and that's okay. You might be more of an auditory learner so you learn better by hearing words or listening to podcasts for example. If you're an auditory learner you can obviously read the readings out loud and yeah that's kind of obvious but you can also describe the kanji out loud. So instead of circling the radical person you can say okay this radical means person and it does look like the legs of a stick figure and the right part does look like a tree I guess. If you are the sort of person who enjoys podcasts you'd be surprised how much you learn from listening to yourself. You can even record it but you can just say it out loud and it helps even a little bit. You don't have to do this for every kanji right? Even if you're an auditory learner it doesn't mean you cannot learn a simple kanji by looking at them. You can do this for more difficult kanji. So for example you want to learn the kanji block you can describe the kanji. So this kanji block has four squares and lines are coming out of those boxes. Oh wait that kanji means village and then there are four tiny lines underneath the village. Okay at the beginning you might think that sounds like a lot of work and you have to describe each kanji. It would take so much time but actually learning a kanji is going to take a while anyway so try it out. This method might not be for you but it might work for one of you. I hope it does and we're gonna talk about how to learn readings. So you can try to learn every reading of each kanji but I highly recommend you to learn those readings through context. So don't just try to memorize the reading of a single kanji but it's best to learn it as a word. So be it a compound noun or a verb it's best to learn in the context. So learn a sentence but for this sentence you will learn the word sensei. You learn that the first kanji's onyomi is sen and the second kanji's reading is se. And then you will see another word for example seito which means student and then you realize that's the same se and then later you might come across the verb to live to be alive and then you realize oh this kanji has another reading so the onyomi of the kanji is and the kuniyomi is i and the verb is ikiru. So yeah it's okay not to learn everything at the same time. It's gonna take a while. Kanji learning is supposed to be a journey of discovery even if you feel like you're stuck or you're not improving that is not true. Look at the progress, look at how much you've improved, how much you've learned. Even learning a new kanji a day or just reviewing the same kanji is enough. Learning kanji should not be a competition between you and other people so do not pay attention to how fast other people are learning but people learn at a different pace. You take your time, you do your best and the app can help you determine how fast you learn things. Some people may have more time than you, some people may be blessed with a great teacher or they may be living with a Japanese person which helps. Everyone is different so you just give your best at your own pace and also learning should be fun. If you get burnt out from learning all the JLPT requirements maybe take a look at interesting kanji etymology. I'm pretty sure the kanji for jellyfish wouldn't be in JLPT but it's fun. It's just fun to realize that there is a writing system that is so creative and it let people describe jellyfish as the moon in the ocean. Sometimes it's okay to take a break and appreciate you know the beauty of the I have to pass JLPT by next year you know. Relax. Setting goals and aiming high are not bad but setting realistic goals is more important. Can you actually achieve learning 10 000 kanji in a month? Yeah maybe if you don't sleep and don't cook, don't do something healthy. Yeah maybe you can do it but you'll be so burnt out. Don't do that. Set realistic goals. Goals that you actually believe you can achieve. Alright that's it for today. Thank you so much for watching this video and I'd like to thank mochi mochi for sponsoring this video again. If you have video requests then let me know. Also check out my discord server. Currently my discord server is exclusive to patrons and twitch subscribers. I host events where people can practice their Japanese and I help them and also there are channels where I answer your questions so check them out. Also if you are interested in gaming I stream a lot on twitch and I have gaming channels so check them out. If you can subscribe to all my three channels then I love you thank you Anyway check out the mochi mochi app and see you guys soon. More videos coming up.