How do I learn kanji

I have an entirely disappointing answer to this question: You'll have to figure out the answer on your own.

Yeah, I'll present a couple of options that I think you should give the most consideration, but the ultimate decision will lie with you.

I have this really nerdy looking pair of sunglasses. I call them "all of my life experiences," and they tint the world a certain hue. Other people have different pairs of these sunglasses on. We like to all put our sunglasses on, then argue about what colors things are.

↑ That pretty much sums up how I feel about kanji, and it explains why we get the following advice about learning kanji.

"The best way to learn kanji is by writing them." - Japanese Person #1

Japanese Person #1 (JP1) was forced to write kanji over and over again in school for fifteen years or so. Then they kept writing them in notes, grocery shopping lists, everything — all the time.

JP1 is very good at reading kanji now, though they might still suck at writing them 100% correctly.

You ask JP1, "How do I learn kanji?"

JP1 thinks: Uh, how did I learn kanji? Well, I wrote them a bunch. "You should write them," they say.

But did JP1 actually learn kanji by writing them, or did they learn them by seeing them on every sign, in every book, and on every food and drink item's label for 20+ years? If they learned kanji by writing them, why do they still kind of suck at writing them (in some cases), even though it feels totally natural to read them?

Maybe, just maybe, they didn't learn kanji by writing them. Maybe they learned kanji by

seeing them 2 million times or so.

"Don't even try to learn kanji. You never will. " - Japanese Person #2

Japanese Person #2 (JP2) also went through the excruciating process of learning kanji by rote memorization throughout their childhood. It was time-consuming, largely ineffective, and they still find that they mess up kanji from time to time. Now some gaijin (=foreigner) rolls up asking how to learn kanji in the span of a few months or years? Forget about it.

People who give this advice — or discouragement, rather — are imagining that you will use the same ineffective study methods that they were forced to use. Doing so, yeah, it would take a very long time to learn kanji... probably...

There is an other side to JP2's answer, I think, which is the apparent desire that some Japanese people have to perpetuate the myth that their language and culture is inaccessible to outsiders.

Isolationism has a long history in Japan, and its remnants can be seen today. It's one reason that, despite a very real population crisis (=too many old people and not enough babies), so many Japanese citizens do not like the idea of allowing millions of foreigners to enter the country and support their aging population. "Nah, let's build robot nurses instead." I'm not saying that this is right or wrong, just that it exists.

People also want to feel that they have accomplished something. Since they were forced to learn kanji in such a time-consuming way, taught by teachers that told them kanji were hard, some Japanese people began to feel that they are special, that they belong to an exclusive group: Those that speak, read, and write Japanese.

Why, then, do tens of thousands of people pass the JLPT N1 test every single year?

"You should just learn the meanings first." - Foreign Person #1

We'll talk about this method a lot in the upcoming lectures, so I'll be brief. Some people

just learn the meanings of kanji first. Sometimes this is accomplished very quickly — less than 100 days, which is something like 2% of the time it is expected to take Japanese citizens.

For the rest of this course, this will be described as "the mnemonic method."

But some people hate using mnemonic systems (or at least the menu of mnemonic systems available to them), so the process feels like torture and they give up.

Conversely, they might have very limited amounts of time to devote to kanji studies per day, making the 2-4 month goal of learning them a bit unrealistic. So they get stuck working on kanji mnemonics for 6 months, 10 months, 2 years! And studying only the meanings of kanji for that long, without learning things that make you actually feel like you're making progress leads to frustration, so a lot of people quit. Then they go on reddit and talk about how stupid kanji mnemonic systems are.

In many cases, they recommend this next method...

"Learn everything at the same time — kanji meanings, readings, vocab, writing — everything!" - Foreign Person #2

I often hear people recommending this when they haven't even learned the kanji yet. I'm sorry, but that's like getting business advice from a homeless person. The troublesome bit is that it's hard to call this "bad advice." I mean, learning everything is a good thing, right?

Well, maybe. You don't need to learn HTML to build your first website. Knowing HTML is great, yeah, and it is certainly helpful. But if you got a giant book on HTML, you'd learn a lot of stuff that you don't need to get your first website online. Furthermore, most of the HTML you actually need to know in order to run your website most effectively could be covered in a single chapter.

Let's follow an example of "learning everything."

1. You come across the kanji 育 and think "I'm gonna learn that."

2. You look up the meaning: "bring up; grow up; raise; rear."

3. You learn the kunyomi, "そだ," and the onyomi, "いく."

4. You learn to write it:

5. You learn two common words containing this kanji: 育てる (そだてる // to raise; to bring up) and 教育 (きょういく // education; schooling).

6. You learn natural Japanese sentences using the words 育てる and 教育.

You're done!

Now tell me, did we waste any time here? I would argue that we have:

Why is it necessary to learn that "kunyomi = そだ" and "onyomi = いく" when we learn them in the vocabulary words, anyway?

Why did we learn to write the kanji if we never need to hand-write kanji or words, except in extremely rare cases? (Usually you will just type Japanese on a phone or PC.)

Why did we learn multiple meanings of the kanji when we could have more quickly just learned a single meaning (e.g. "bring up") and then learned variations of that meaning in context (i.e. using actual Japanese words)? (←This isn't a big deal with a kanji like 育, but it becomes problematic when dictionaries list 5-10 wildly different meanings for a single kanji. Learning a single meaning for a kanji also makes it easier for us to decipher words with multiple kanji when we encounter them. For example, when you see 教育, it is easy to remember if you think that "teach" [教] and "bring up" [育] combine to mean "education.")

If we leave out writing kanji, learning onyomi and kunyomi readings out of context, and trying to memorize multiple meanings at once, then I quite like the "learn everything" method... if you do it the write way. Our approach to this manner of studying will be referred to as "the organic method" for the remainder of this course.

Help, I'm confused!

Yeah, me too. This was all my roundabout way of saying:

💀 Be wary of advice you get regarding the best approach to learning kanji, Japanese, or pretty much anything. Everyone is biased, including us nerds at NihongoShark.

💀 You will have a very hard time convincing me that learning onyomi and kunyomi readings in isolation is not a massive waste of time.

💀 If you are not averse to using mnemonics to master kanji, it can be helpful to learn the meanings of kanji first, then you can learn the pronunciations of kanji by learning vocab after that. Learning vocab will be a lot easier, faster, and less stressful if you learn the meanings of kanji first.

💀 If you don't like using mnemonics or don't want to wait to start learning vocabulary words, just jump straight into vocab. You'll learn the meanings and pronunciations of kanji eventually, as long as you keep exposing yourself to written Japanese consistently over a long period of time. (You can also use the mnemonic and organic methods simultaneously.)

💀 Only learn to write kanji if you happen to enjoy writing them. Don't expect this to improve your reading comprehension much, though.

I'll talk more about our options for learning kanji in the next lecture.

Note: I was saying "Japanese Person" and "Foreign Person" in the quotes above, but I'm just generalizing based on personal experience. Individual opinions and advice will vary from person to person... obviously...