Mastering the Kanji - a how to guide

When it comes to any task of this magnitude, you first need the right attitude. What I mean by this is that if you come into this task believing you are going to fail, then you will. If you always believe you will be successful however, it's a cinch. What I'm hoping for here is to give you belief, because it's no extraordinary person that achieves this goal, anyone can do it, you must break away from the ridiculous limiting belief that only Japanese and Chinese people can use the Kanji with any degree of proficiency... anyone with a similar level of familiarity can do just the same.

I think one thing missing from the majority of guides like this is that learning must be fun, if it isn't fun why would you want to do it? You must make your learning (familiarization) of/with the Kanji and the Japanese language fun.

Before we begin on our magical journey to Kanji masterdom you need the right book... "Remembering the Kanji". With this book and the website site by Farbice Denis "reviewing the kanji" you will be following the same path I did. I would however like to advise you take a slightly improved route to mastery of the kanji. When I first set out on journey I used only the two above tools, I had no knowledge of things like SRS (spaced repetition software) programs.

SRS programs are basically digital flashcard programs that allow you to memorize masses of information in the shortest time possible... sound good? it is. I won't go into the deatils here but I will provide a link for further reading on the processes behind SRS. Suffice it to say you need an SRS program, if only for your sanity. The basic premise would be to implement the Heisig system (the system laid out in his remembering the kanji book) into said super memory program. And with that here are some recommendations for SRS software.

Anki (free download) - In my humble opinion the SRS program, the one I throughly recommend you try first.

Mnemosyne (free download) - Used to use this program, worth taking a look at.

Super-memo - The grandaddy of SRS, great but too involved plus its not free.

Ok, so once you have your SRS sorted, you'll want to add some flash cards.

The cards I recommend you add must be more than just single word questions, single words do very little to help out the language student, with an isolated word you get almost nothing except some vague meaning, or even worse 5 or 6 pretty varied meanings. If however you put that word into a sentence, you get so much more, you get the meaning (a clearly defined meaning, usually), you get some grammar, and you get the usage (how to use the word).

This is of course not something I have generated from scratch myself, this is a method/idea/concept was first theorized by the linguist Stephen Krashen. Then taken a further into a practical language learning method over at the "anti-moon.com" website, and also at "all japanese all the time.com" (a personal favorite of mine, just because of his writing style... some motivational stuff, well worth a look).

So, you might ask what in the world sentences has to do with learning Kanji, well, everything really, the kanji are just letters like these ones, they are the main components of the Japanese language, so everything about the Kanji is directly linked to the Japanese language(Chinese too of course!). If you want to truly master the Kanji, you must also master the Japanese language... if this sounds patronizing forgive me, this is just me clarifying that learning the Kanji is really just learning the Japanese language, and all things that go with it. Learning the Kanji without Japanese is like knowing the alphabet but having no language to use it with.

My personal choice with what direction to take after completing RTK (Remembering the Kanji) was to have a go at the Kanken (The Kanji Proficiency test). I started with level 8 of the test which requires knowledge of about 450 characters and words that could be used with them. I would say this level is worth having a go at after a few months of creating your flash cards. Of course you can buy the books which are the best way to study for the test because it prepares you for the kinds of questions you will face in the test. I won't say tests like the kanken or the JLPT (Japanese language proficiency test) are the right choice for everyone, but for me they worked, they provided motivation and some excellent material to be working with... Japanese Kanji questions by Japanese for Japanese.

I would also thoroughly recommend getting hold of a DS to help with your kanji studies, its a portable fun way to study the kanji, and its great practice for the kanken. Unfortunately the American Amazon site doesn't have such a great selection on Kanji DS games, so you'd be best going to the Japanese site. If you want the site in English look for the "in English" button in the top right. Entering the English "Kanken DS" into the search box will produce some results, but I recommend entering the Japanese to increase your options. "漢検DS".

Please, if you have any questions or comments on this hub, feel free to leave a message below.