Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm just curious as to what everyone's methods are, and how they're working for you.

The starting point for my kanji study is Essential Kanji by P.G. O'Neill. Every day I copy 20-30 kanji into a notebook with the various readings, meanings, and a simple story to help me remember them.

After kanji are in the notebook I review them by playing games. One of my favorites is one I play with my 2 year old.

I try to write the kanji from memory on a whiteboard, if I can't or get it wrong then I have to copy the entire entry from my notebook. Then I explain it to my son (not that he understands lol) and hand him the board. He wipes it off for me and I start over.

The game is only fun because my son gets so excited about it. He repeats the meaning of each one, and just loves to erase the board. Its adorable. ^.^

My method used White Rabbit Press's Kanji Flashcards for one main reason: the sample words on each card. Here's what I would do:

1)Create a stack of, say, 15 cards. Write the kanji down, then write down and repeat all of the sample words on the card. Just go through them once that day.

2)The next day, take your stack and shuffle, back-side up. Look at the meaning printed on the back and try to write the kanji from memory. If successful, then try to read all of the sample words and give their meanings from memory. If you can't remember the Kanji, then treat it like a new card again. If you get one of the words wrong, just write those words down and say their readings and meanings aloud.

3)Any cards you get the character and all of the sample words' meanings right, put in a review pile for whenever you have time to quiz yourself on characters you already know. Replenish your new card stack with new cards until you have 15 again, writing down all of the new cards' characters and sample words.

This served me REALLY well when I was doing it every day, and I still remember a lot of the kanji from them even after not looking at them for a few months. This does require a time commitment, though. Probably a good 45 minutes a day, at least. My stacks were actually more like 25 or 30 and I was spending a couple hours a day on them and got through a good 700 of them over the course of a summer.

Hoboy.

I'm cheating a little, me thinks.

I'm mostly relying on what I picked up from dictionary/2 kanji books and what my Jap. word processor suggests.

The processor is called NJStar.. so far, out of the 70/100 kanji I more or less know (in combinations, etc), I only really can write 10 from memory. I find that with bad handwriting, and little reason to write by hand.. I stick to big fonts, on the computer. I read/type faster than I write by hand. Bad, Byouki, badddd!

What I really wish I had was someone who either had a tablet, or had little fear of snail mail, so I could swap little messages (with all kanji with kana or roumaji beside it, just to start off), and get my skillz up a little more. I've been pressing a friend in Australia to send me some Nihongo with his letters.. but, it takes the guy almost a year to send mail as is.

Bah--!

I may not be studyin Kanj yet, but the best way is to use as many of your sense as possible.

To see: looking at the character.
To hear: read it aloud to yourself in a mirror or have someone say them to you.
To feel: That would translate to writing it/ getting used to the flow of the character.
To taste: This many sound weird, but have someone blindfold you and have them give you thing that are sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, salty, hot (by spice), hot (my temperature, just feel the outside), cold (by temperature, just feel the oustide), and whatever else you can come up with.
To smell: similar to taste (if you have a sensitive nose.)

Do this may help you with memory recognition... like people who walk into a kitchen and say, "My mother used to cook apple pie." Hope that helps.

This might get confusing to new learners so I am putting in this warning as a disclaimer that some of this might go over some heads.

There are actually 6 types of kanji. Sometimes this can help with understanding meaning and/or remembering them. The first four types are especially helpful the last two are a bit more difficult.
1) 象形文字　（しょうけいもじ） pictograms/hieroglyphics. These are kanji in which at one point in time it actually looked like what it means. Some of these are rather unchanged over the centuries. such as, 田　（た、だ）　which is the kanji for 'rice field' and 木　（もく、き）　the kanji for 'tree' or 'wood'.　

2)指事文字　（しじもじ） simple ideograms. These kanji depict meaning more directly as they embody ideas and/or concepts. Such as, 上　（うえ, じゅう） meaning 'above' as the smaller mark is above the base mark. Likewise 下　（した）　or 'below' where the smaller mark is below the base mark.

3) 会意文字　（かいいもじ）　compound ideograms. These kanji take the previous two and either combine them or replicate them to further enhance meaning. For example, if you replicate 木 two or three times you get 林　（はやし）　'woods' and 森　（もり）　'forest'.

4)形声文字　（けいせいもじ）　radical phonetic. These can be a bit tricky but can also be amazingly easy to understand. These kanji are compounds like the previous example but both or all kanji are actually a map for meaning and how to say it. The left part of the kanji will hold the meaning while the right part is the phonetic (how to say or pronounce). For example, in the kanji 汁　（じゅう）, the left part is a 水　（すい） or 'water' radical (meaning), while the right part 十　（じゅう）　known as the number ten, tells you how to say it. With these you have to be careful though because in modern Japanese there can be multiple ways how to say a kanji. Which brings us to number five.

5)転注文字　（てんちゅうもじ） derivative characters. This simply means there are more than one way to say this character and further more more than one meaning. Like 楽　（らく、がく、たの）. This kanji can mean 'fun' (楽しい、たのしい）. It can also mean 'ease; comfort' (楽、らく）. Alot of modern Japanese Kanji follow this pattern but there is hope still! Usually, kanji follow the on/kun readings. おんよみ (Chinese reading) are usually used when two kanji are put together （音楽、おんがく）　and くんよみ (Japanese reading) are usually used when kanji is coupled with hiragana like 楽しい is. As an additional note, onyomi is usually written in katakana in a kanji dictionary, where as kunyomi are written in hiragana. This helps to remember the previous tip. *^_^*

6) 仮借文字 （かしゃもじ） the translation for this phrase is a little tricky but the best way to say it is 'fake borrowed characters'. This is not usually used...ever. but it is quite a novelty to know. These kanji are not used for any meaning purpose whatsoever but used solely for phonetic purposes. For example:
愛　等部有　
あいらぶゆう
(If you say this out loud you will probably understand before I explain)
The sounds you get from this is 'ahee rahbu you' or if you think about it in English 'I love you'
Like I said this in not usually ever used with kanji because katakana does this almost exclusively. アイラブユウ would have the same effect essentially.


I hope this helped someone, somewhere. If you are fuzzy on these and want to know more, please ask questions! If not...sorry if I confused anyone.

いいえ。よろこんで！だれか手伝えるといいんですね。

先学期は最後の日本語の授業を取った日本語の言語でした。英語が全然話せなかったから、とっても難しかったけど、本当にすごく面白かったです。その授業から、自分の日本語の文法が上手になって、日本語の文法とか文を作り方とかのためなあたらしい考える方法が行わされました。

大学では七年間勉強した。

Yeah, writing them with my own hand helps a lot. Lately I've been fortunate enough to be reading a lot of raw manga, picking through my dictionary, and then getting a chance to use that vocabulary in speech (even in writing letters to my schools and such) so I think my kanji capacity has increased quite a bit. Once I stop using them I'll have to go back to grinding, though -_-

エルさんすごいな～