How to Learn Kanji

0:00 Read, seriously
1:38 Skip writing
2:25 But learn stroke order
2:58 Learn words instead of individual kanji
3:49 Radicals are your friends
4:51 Mnemonics are also your friends
5:23 Simplified spaced repetition system for lazy people
7:50 Flashcards, I know you want to use them
9:05 People be flexing
9:25 Whatever works, works

[majinvegetak]

“Take a deep breath and tell yourself you’re reading this cute romantic manga for educational purposes, not because you don’t have any romance in real life” 😂😂 I love it

[Popapoya]

reading manga is helping me so much to read kanji even though it's so hard at the beggining. I remember it's takes me like 20 minutes just to finish 1 chapter when i start reading... but when i "read more" it's become easier and faster too ^^

[dermathze]

1:05 Detective Conan was the first manga I read in Japanese when I was more or less on the required level to understand it. I agree, it helped me immensely in learning kanji.

[吉岡ながと]

I actually learn Kanji by integrating writing in my routine. It is indeed an overkill, but I genuinely enjoy doing writing practices, and it helps me remember Kanjis faster and distinguish Kanjis with similar radicals.

[Lee-lmbn]

Yuta is right, there's no need to focus that much on writing Kanji. I'm majoring in Japanese for 6 semesters (about 4 years) now and early on the tutors put so much emphasis on writing every textbook Kanji at a perfect angle even tho some of my Japanese classmates can't write or remember the strokes at all. It is only necessary if you're into calligraphy or poetry.

[marcoschiemann]

Another advantage of reading is that you already have the Kanji and words sorted by relevance. It might bother you, that you already forgot the word 3 pages ago, but when it doesnt appear in the next 80 pages, it cannot be that important. And when it does, you have another free repitition, just like flash cards.

[Rizhiy]

8:35 Actually, by spending time on making flashcards yourself, you are focusing and repeatedly checking the word, which can be very beneficial. Sometimes, by the time you have finished with the flashcard you have already spend enough time focusing on it, to memorize it properly.

[LittleCave]

One resource that helps me with kanji, personally, is “The World of Kanji” by Alex Adler. It actually goes into detail of the origins of kanji, which I think could be helpful for those trying to come up with mnemonic devices and better visualize how a pictograph came to be a kanji. For example, 母 relates to “mother” when you realize that the kanji represents a pair of breasts for feeding a child. Or 行 relating to the verb “go” when it represents a four-way crossroad. Whenever I see these two kanji, I now know how to connect them to their meaning because of the context of how the kanji itself was created and changed over time. Try using this book in combination with your other methods to see if it can help!

[SwitchXP]

Yes thank you. After years of being led down the garden path by so much bad advice this is literally it. It feels bad at first but just pick a manga you love and take it one speech bubble at a time. It has helped me to an insane degree. No more coming up with lengthy mnemonics for every aspect of a Kanji and trying to revise it with flashcards. Just read. If you don't remember it, look it up. Trust that it's being reinforced. Keep reading. And gradually it improves. And it's actually enjoyable!

[speedwagoncito]

As someone who still struggles with learning Japanese years after I started, I'd like to thank you so much for this video!! It's so helpful! One of my biggest struggles is learning/remembering kanji. Years ago, I took some Japanese lessons where I live and the method they used to teach kanji was the traditional one (writing the kanji lots of times and trying to remember the readings and order of strokes without much context before somehow trying to apply all that to actual sentences). Needless to say I can hardly remember some of the kanjis from those lessons despite the hundreds of times I did those exercises of writing the same kanji over and over again. However, I did notice it's easier for me to remember kanjis through reading manga, texts, stories, etc, but I never thought this would be an actual valid or correct method to learn since I wasn't learning the meaning of the kanji itself, or it's different readings, or the stroke order, and always thought it was "incomplete" or something, so I'm really happy to know that's not the case!

[zach_zach]

i believe writing is important when you're still learning basics. Such as (He did x, y, z, because A-san told him W) When you can easily understand the structure, then reading becomes efficient. You just learn new words and different sentences for situations and you can actually start guessing meanings from the kanji.
Also I really can't remember anything unless I make notes. I often find myself remembering things from just the memory of writing it.
Everyone's different, but writing is important at the start for many. Oh also I remember the stroke order, but usually write in the wrong order, because it's faster.

[MuSicBlock]

3:02 I agree, this helped me a lot, because I was focused on learning individual kanji, which didn't quite pay off because I still didn't know how to read some vocabs. But then I thought: "What if I stop learning kanji and focus on vocab?" And I started with vocab, which not only helped me to learn the readings of a kanji, but also how to use them depending on the word.

[LOL-qrdy]

I opened this video ready to close it after the 10 first seconds. But you immediately started without any boring waste-of-time-introduction! Thanks man!

[nnoahg]

I typically enjoy reading but also writing down the books/articles I read. I take in the vocabulary I don't know and learn from that reading. It's so important to be able to do both in my opinion and it works best for me :)

[Lizard]

I love wanikani for the many reasons you listed. I use it on my work PC and never close it so I will always remember to look at it in my free time and pauses during work. I'm slowly learning kanji just with wanikani and trying to read visual novels (and VN-like games), specially those that are fully voiced. I feel so good when I recognize new kanji when doing this!

[iamyu]

One thing about learning Japanese that I really enjoy is the existence of radical. It’s so cool to learn new kanji and they make total sense right away because of the radicals it is made of.

[jamesn.]

When learning Mandarin back in primary school, we would have a text in a textbook full of short story style paragraphs, and at the end of each, we have questions about the text, and notes on the characters with multiple readings, we call these 多音多义字, how we would learn is this small table of such characters, and example words of each reading. And we would look up the dictionary for the meaning, write it down, and create sentences with them as an exercise. I found that even if the sentence creation is only done once or twice, the memory gets ingrained very quickly because of the method of using the dictionary.

Of course this is in the course of many years if you read through many characters and will end up with a comprehension thats sufficient for most of your daily use.

I am only a year into Japanese studies as a whole, but find the method above I utilised as a child very useful in learning Japanese kanji, and as such now am able to read through multiple kanji in song lyrics without needing the furigana. Of course the list is incomplete, but as Yuta said, its not a race :).

Enjoy your education journey! It lasts a lifetime:)

[thegrieverleon]

I've found that reading manga helps a lot with reading for me. For one, it's not just a wall of text but accompanied by visual elements that help with figuring out things like setting, situation, feeling and so on. It's also more fun and engaging, which makes me more likely to actually continue!
I've also benefitted a lot from reading my manga aloud and getting an extra "boost" so to say in my learning by having the audio as well. A minor thing that gives a lot!

[TheDeceptiveHero]

Frankly it’s quite simple: The best way to learn how to read is to read. The best way to learn how to write is to write. And the best way to learn how to speak is to speak.

[guignol]

to every piece of advice you gave i just said, “yes! yes! yes!”. i was especially happy to see the short “rolling” lists you recommend at 8:20 because that’s exactly how i’ve always taught myself languages and i’ve never seen the method talked about elsewhere.

but i disagree when you tell us not to write. it’s true that with intuitive “phonewriting” handwriting is becoming rare (and many japanese will tell you that if they can still recognize all the kanji they need they can handwrite fewer and fewer off the top of their head) but i’ve always sensed that there’s a mystical connection between hand and brain that helps you the same way speaking out loud does. when i’m trying to remember a kanji. miming writing it out really wakes my memory. handwriting kanji is also... soothing? satisfying? whichever, it’s a way to keep learning fun, which is the biggest key to not giving up. it may not be the best “return on investment” but you also stress learning in your own way at your own rate and i’ve always been convinced slow learning is best. after all, a native speaker doesn’t learn their language in 6 months or even 6 years, even after 60 they’re still progressing! 少しずつね。