Beginning to read in Japanese
I am learning Japanese, but have trouble remembering all the Kanji and the different ways of reading them.
So I thought, I better get reading. However, I cannot decipher many words yet.
I wanted to ask, how I could best learn the Kanji with all their readings, so that I might be able to understand something written and some audio (like movies / podcasts) ....
Search from various English teachers...
Answers · 10
4
I would recommend to start reading children books. Furigana is given, this will help you recognize the reading! The more you get familiar with this, you can gradually increase the level of the books you read.
3
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/index.html
That's a news web page for children. All the kanji has furigana and difficult words have simple (japanese) definitions. There is also a community on reddit where people post and discuss their translations of the articles:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NHKEasyNews
2
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/blog/2014/06/23/you-cant-learn-kanji/
As of the writing part (stroke order): Every kanji is built up by smaller pieces (radicals). All of these radicals has a certain stroke order. There are 214 of these. I'm not sure if you've noticed but when writing kanjis, you always start on the top or left and move towards the right. Top>left>right.
You will notice the pattern as you go.
As for learning the readings, don't even think about it. As it 8x the workload for basically nothing than what might be a wild guess. And many of them has 4 or more readings.
Good luck!
2
Try a website like www.wanikani.com
2
I like the Japanese Graded Readers published by ASK. They are a bit pricey, though, but the kanji all have furigana.. If you have a tablet you can get apps with simple stories, both paid (from White Rabbit, for iOS) and free (Yomiage, iOS and Android).
If you want to learn kanji systematically, there are various methods but they all take a lot of time. I'm now using wanikani.com, it takes me about an hour/day but I have learned about 1000 kanji with it in months. Cost: $10/month.
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