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For most people who are suffering the pain of memorizing Kanji, the amount of characters is terrifying and makes you feel desperate for any shortcuts you can find.  I will tell you straight up that learning Kanji is not easy.  Chances are good you will spend most of your energy on Kanji while learning Japanese.  Don’t worry, I will give you some good tips to shortcut your Kanji learning, so when you try to read a Japanese newspaper or Manga next time, you won’t feel totally lost and confused.

Tactic #1: Ignore the old learning order

The first step is to get familiar with the first 100 to 200 Kanji which are commonly used in Japanese, so that you can get started.  But what you should do next is to learn the advanced kanji as you see them or encounter them when you try to read something in Japanese, and do not worry about how uncommon they are.  This can be difficult at first, but you save time by omitting the procedure of distinguishing (Oh, that one is “advanced.”  I’ll come back to that one when I’m ready for it.), so you can save your time and energy.

Tactic #2: Notice the small things:

Of the 214 radicals, there are 20 or 30 ones used extremely frequently, learn them with a dictionary and you will learn a large part of Kanji.  You will become quick at recognizing new kanji with less effort.  You will start to understand what a Kanji means simply by looking at the basic radicals that it is made up of.   You can call it chunking, and you will find learning 3-5 radicals takes less effort then memorizing 15 Kanji.  Piecing the radicals together to make new meanings and words is the next step.

Tactic #3: Get the tough stuff out of the way first

I’m talking about written Kanji here.  You should try to take the time to read something in Japanese each day to improve your Japanese.  This will help you learn the conventional combinations of Kanji and their everyday uses.  Your Japanese will be more natural after doing this process for awhile.

Tactic #4: Speak Japanese out loud :

Identifying the word, knowing what it refers to, and correct pronunciation are the 3 essentials in learning Kanji.  Reading aloud when you can helps a lot. If you read aloud, you handle the three key components at the same time.

Learning Kanji is not easy, but it is not that hard either.  Follow my advice, and your learning speed will increase.

If you liked this article and want to apply these tips for Kanji, check out Learning Kanji and Rocket Languages Japanese

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