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How to learn kanji effectively and why people find it so hard + comparing with Chinese characters

Kanji is definetly hard to learn yet as someone who has studied Mandarin Chinese (simplified and traditional charecters / mainland China and Taiwan) I have never heard so many complaints for kanji as I have for Chinese. I find that interesting as Chinese charecters are clearly harder since they are used more but I think I know the reason why.

Chinese characters are essential and are used all the time; in Japanese there are 3 writing systems used and so people are more tempted to use the easier writing systems. Because of this, people tend to ignore kanji (especially as a beginner) instead of accepting it as part of the language, biting the bullet and learning it.

Of course I'm not saying kanji is easy, in fact even as someone who already knew a lot of Chinese characters before starting my Japanese studies, it was still very hard and often frustrating.

Now, for my tips:

*Note that these are just things I do or things I have found helpful. Everyone learns differently so don't take my words as gospel.

1.Never read a text that has charecters removed as that would not happen in real life; remember kanji is an essential part of Japanese that has to be learnt. When you don't know the meaning of a kanji, look it up (you may have to do it a few times in the future as well to properly remember it)

2.Make sure to look up the stroke order of every new kanji you come across. Also if you're interested, Japanese has different stroke order rules to Chinese which was hard for me to get used to at first. Plus, not every character has the same meaning in both languages and there are also Japanese-specific characters.

Examples:

Different stroke orders = 王，生，馬

Different characters (Japanese-specific)

Simplfied: 两 / 广

Traditional: 兩 / 廣

Japanese: 両 / 広

I use this website: (私) https://jisho.org/search/%20%23kanji%20%E7%A7%81

3.Learn the kanji in words as they come (don't try to memorise every pronounciation of the kanji and the associated words). For example, when learning the word for 'I' - you only have to remember 私 and the pronounciation in that context (wa-ta-shi) and not 無私 (for example) meaning 'selfless' where the pronounciation of 私 changes to 'shi'

And finally, enjoy the process. Kanji may be difficult but plays a massive role in Japanese culture and is used all the time. It's a beautiful writing system that actually makes it easier to read Japanese (as it takes up less space and the use of hiragana without any spaces as the alternative would be very annoying to read).

Good luck with your Japanese studying everyone! (and other languages if you are learning them)

#japanese #Japanese langblr #langblr #language learning #kanji #japanese learning