How to study Kanji - part 3

This is a third part of a number of posts on how to study Kanji.

The point I want to stress out in this part is: buy a text book on Kanji. If your goal is to master just a few hundred Kanji (maybe JLPT3 level) then I think you might manage without a good book. But if you are aiming for a higher level you really should get yourself a text book solely for studying Kanji.

I know that a text book costs money, while there are some useful websites which are for free. I will try to explain why I prefer a text book over web sites. There are basically 2 reasons: 1) you need a plan, a structure to master over 2000 Kanji, and 2) you need useful information about each Kanji. On both points I think that most web sites fail, while many text books succeed (at least to some degree).

First of all, as I wrote above, in order to be able to master over 2000 Kanji, you need a strategy, a plan, a structure. My experience with websites is that they contain just the Kanji, a huge amount of data without much thought behind how they are presented. Many of them also do not contain information on stroke orders, example vocabulary using the main readings, and small tests to check whether yourself. Texts books, on the other hand, ofto do contain such features.

The books I used were 漢字マスター 3 2級漢字1000 for JLPT2 Kanji, and later on the book from the same series for JLPT1 (which I could not find on Amazon, it can be found on ther ARC website here). Kanji in these books are more or less grouped according to meaning (for example, Kanji for emotions are together in one chapter). For each Kanji the stroke order is shown, allong with its readings, and example vocabulary.

Below are some books that might be helpful for your study of Kanji. Notice how I did NOT include the books using the Heisig method. I will explain later why I didn't...








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How to study Kanji - part 2

This is a second part of a number of posts on how to study Kanji.

I remember very well how overwhelmed I was when I decided to start studying Japanese: so many characters, so many different pronunciations. I remember I didn't even get why they needed different Kanji with identical pronunciations. Wouldn't things be much easier to use 1 Kanji for each pronunciations? These might be questions many people have at first.

I didn't even know where 1 Kanji stopped and another started. Now I can read books, novels, websites in Japanese with little help of a dictionary, and I should (according to my JLPT1 certificate) know more than 2000 Kanji...

The first book I bought on Kanji was "Let's Learn Kanji: An Introduction to Radicals, Components and 250 Very Basic Kanji". I have to admit I bought this book (and not another one) because this was all they had in the book shops where I lived. But, notice the title: in includes radicals and components. And, even though this is a book on learning Kanji, the word Kanji comes at the end, AFTER radicals and components.

I consider myself very lucky that I bought this book, along with my other first text book (Japanese for Busy People I). The reason is that it forced me to start my study with radicals and components, and not immediately with Kanji.

I have to admit (again) that I don't remember the exact difference between radicals and components. It seems I am not the only one, see wikipedia for the difference and confusion between radicals and components. The important thing is that I learned from the very start the kinds of radicals and their placement, and their meaning.

There are several types and placements of radicals. For example there are 偏 (Hen) type radicals which are positioned at the left of a Kanji (for example the 木 radical in 林, 板, 松, and so on). There are 脚 (Ashi) radicals which come at the bottom of Kanji (for example 心 in 志, 悪, 恩, and so on). Learning things like this helps you understand the construction of Kanji later on, and helps you remember them. Moreover, this is also the way Japanese themselves learn Kanji and also the way they use it to explain Kanji to each other.

Secondly, the meaning of the radicals can help you remember the meaning of Kanji containing them. See the example above for 木 in 松. 木 means "tree" , and 松 is "pine tree". I don't have to point out that a pine tree is a ... tree, do I? Likewise, a lot of words I can think of that have a meaning related to trees or wood tend to contain this 木 component: 植, 樹, 杉, 材, 棒, 桜, 桃, etc. Learn the meaning of radicals, and they will often give you a hint about the meaning of other Kanji. Not always, but often.

Finally, a thing that is often forgotten: components of Kanji can not only give you a hint about their meaning, but also about their pronunciation. An example: 高 has kun-yomi "taka(i)", and on-yomi "kou". Likewise, the on-yomi of 稿 (which contains 高) is "kou". 兆 "chou", and 挑 (which contains 兆) is also pronounced "chou". 義 "gi", and 議　儀 (which both contain 義) are both also pronounced "gi". This is not a coincidence: some Kanji contain components indicating their pronunciation.

There are the reasons why I recommend learning radicals and components BEFORE starting on Kanji. Studying Kanji requires a plan, a strategy, a systematic approach. Sure, you want to get started on "real" Kanji right away. But you didn't learn to run before you could walk, did you? Get the basics right first, get a firm foundation: learn radicals and components first. You will catch up with the impatient ones who started on Kanji immediately within a few weeks time, and leave them behind you forever.


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Book review: Preparatory Course for the Japanese Language Profiency Test

Note: Throughout this post I will use "JLPT" to refer to the "Japanese Language Proficiency Test".

These are 2 books I want to recommend: 実力アップ!日本語能力試験2級 文法編 and 実力アップ!日本語能力試験1級 文法編 (note: I could not find an English link for the second book). I would like to recommend the entire series of these books, but especially the ones focusing on grammar for the JLPT2 and JLPT1.

In fact, I am not exaggerating when I say that it was these two books on grammar that got me through the JLPT2 just 3 months after coming to Japan, and through the JLPT1 a year later.

Look, studying grammar is pretty boring (at least to me it is), isn't it? You learn some grammar, use it a few times in an exercise, and the next day you have forgotten all about it. At least for me, this is the truth. Moreover, many grammatical structures in Japanese look alike. An easy example is 「～てから」 and 「～たから」. Every student of the Japanese has confused these 2 a lot of times during his or her study, I am sure of it.

Wouldn't it be great if a book told you "do not confuse this with...", or "this looks similar to ..., but it differs here and here" ?

The 2 books I want to recommend here made things a bit easier. For a number of grammatical structures (focusing on what you need to know to pass each level of the JLPT), they give some example sentences, and shortly explain the meaning of the structure. They also give some structures with a similar meaning, even warn you for cases where you could confuse it with other structures which look the same but have a different meaning, and explain cases which often use the structures in question.

Here and there in the books there are short tests to check if you remembered what you learned.

I also love the size of these books: small enough to take one with you wherever you go. Small enough to read even in very crowded trains. I read these books on the train everyday in the months before the JLPTs, maybe just 20 minutes a day. That taught me more about Japanese grammar than the Japanese language classes I was taking at the time. Now I am still using them as a reference every now and then, or to refresh my memory.

I love this series of text books. In total I have bought 7 of them, covering grammar, reading, and Kanji drills. (There are also books for listening exercises, but these I didn't buy so I can' evaluate them.)

Strongly recommended.

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Book review: 絵でわかる日本語使い分け辞典1000

Today I want to review a book entitled: 絵でわかる日本語使い分け辞典1000, a dictionary of Japanese expressions.

I first knew about this book a couple of years ago when I was enrolled in a 6 months Japanese language course. One day one of our teachers used this book to introduce us to some expressions. I liked it pretty much so I bought it a couple of weeks later.

Let me tell you what I liked about this book. Normal text books contain mainly grammar and vocab, some texts, etc. but only little attention is paid to expressions. However, the Japanese language often uses expressions that you can't really understand from vocab alone (see some of my posts on Japanese expressions. It might not always be easy to guess the meaning of 鼻にかける without actually studying this phrase). This book on the other hand is filled with expressions and in that sense I think it is rather unique. A second point I liked is that for each expression there is also a small cartoon illustrating its meaning. A bit childish, you say? Might be, but it often helped me understand expressions without having to look them up in my electronic dictionary.

Don't you sometimes notice people using 「びっくりする」 every time they are surprised by something? Read this book and you will learn alternatives like 「仰天する」,「息をのむ」, or 「目を疑う」. Even if you read just 1 page a day this book will make your Japanese so much richer.

The book is loosely organized by time of the year. So, you are likely to find expressions used in the context of what is going on during each month of the year. For example, in the chapter for August some expressions are used in the context of the Obon vacation. At the back of the book there are some pages focusing on expressions concerning specific parts of the body, and animals.

Recommended.