Kanji advice

Kuroneko2525 April 8, 2020 5:17 am

I'm trying to learn Japanese (one of the reasons is that I wanna be less restricted with manga options) and I'm currently stuck on where to begin with Kanji. I'm familiar with Japanese grammar, but idk where to start with kanji. For those of you who studied Japanese, do you recommend learning the kanji characters straight up with both meanings or do you guys recommend learning the kanji radicals first?

Responses
    Chihiro_Komiya April 8, 2020 6:37 am

    Hi! I am a first year Japanese student, so I may not be the best for advice, but at least for the way Ive been learning, about each week I would learn how to write + the readings and meanings of about six new kanji and then learn one "recognition kanji" which I learned the reading, meaning, and appearance but not the stroke order. at the very beginning I started with the kanji of 1-5 and the one for day. I would recommend starting with the base kanjis before moving onto radicals, because if you know the bases you can basically play pictionary with the radicals and make stories for them which makes them easier to remember (for example the kanji for break, 休, can be thought of as a person (人) resting on a tree (木)). Also, it is important to remember the readings for each one and not just what it means! Another thing that has helped me learn is repeatedly writing it out, that way its appearance is drilled into the mind. This is also where stroke order is important because if you want to search a kanji you dont know yet it helps if you have an idea of the stroke order, and proper stroke order helps prevent the kanji from appearing funky. I hope this helps!