i Teach You the Kanji Real Good_ Schultz's Japanese _ Page

page漢字　i teach you the kanji real good: schultz's Japanese

http://www.hellodamage.com/kanjidicks/main.htm (1 of 41) [9/30/2008 9:01:32 PM]

schultz's terrible kanji help page

i teach you the kanji real good.

introductionON YOMI MNEMONICS

To help bring order to the chaos that is Kanji, I set it up so that each onyomi corresponds to a single keyword. so whenever you study a kanji pronounced "kou," the mnemonic story for that

introduction -

the part about kanji. why it's hard, and how to learn it.

my method of study - tips and tricks

the textbook itself. . . - read this last.

http://www.hellodamage.com/kanjidicks/all.htm



I didn’t understand that, used correctly, the “extra shit” would help make kanji learning easier.

Here is a main thing: Japanese IS pretty hard, but half the problems are the way it is taught. You’d think that foreigners would teach it better, because native speakers are generally oblivious to the inconsistencies of their language. But foreigners are fucking the fuck up on this one. Hey, Blue-eyes: you can’t teach Japanese like you’d teach German. You can’t teach kanji without radicals. You can’t teach synonyms by giving them all the same English definition. You can’t teach verbs without including the damn prepositions! Next time you, the reader, are going batshit about how arbitrary or complex Japanese is, take time and think that maybe the

kanji will always use "colon." -- but whenever you study a kanji pronounced "ko," the stories for THOSE kanji will always use "kodomo" (the Japanese word for child).

so, if you are looking at a kanji such as 　エ , and you are wracking your brain, saying, "damn, is the onyomi long-vowel "KOU" or short-vowel "KO"?" . . . then you can remember the story ("colin powell has a crafty colon") and then you will know it is long-vowel KOU!

but, there is a catch: your soul. no really, i'm just kidding. Your soul died long ago.

an - Ann Coulter, naturally.

atsu - ought to

ba- barber

baku - back to the future.

bai - buy some pot for mom, she has glaucoma

ben - benny hill

bi - you be illing.

BO - the Japanese word for mother (母), which is pronounced bo.

BOU- BOWLing is fun even if you don't like the Big Lebowski

bu - boo.! because it is scary.

bun- bunny. Of course.

byou - B.O. (body odor).

When I got my first stack of kanji cards I was like, “WTF??? C’mon guys.” See, I thought it would just have the kanji on the front and the meaning on the back, but instead there was like this deluge of data: Kanji number, dictionary number, meaning, onyomi, examples, radicals, stroke order, even something called the “Sunshine computer dictionary graphemes” . .. WITH NO EXPLANATION OF WHY IT WOULD HELP ME TO LEARN ANY OF IT. Rather than solving the mysteries of kanji, all these little fiddly bits of no-context information just added to the confusion.

I just got overwhelmed and gave up. I was like, “Jesus, what is this shit? Do I NEED all this?? Fuck, learning 1,000 kanji is hard enough WITHOUT LEARNING ALL OF THIS OTHER, ONYOMI, STROKE ORDER, wwjdic NUMBER,SHIT. Whose side are these kanji-teaching-motherfuckers on, anyway?!?”



textbook is making it complex. The difference between kanji textbook that makes you go “WTF” and one that makes you go “Awww yeahhh” is this: a method. A good study method asks the obvious questions about kanji: “How is it pronounced?” “Why does it look that way?” “How is it different from that other guy over there?” “Do I really need this one?”. The method would put its arm around your shoulders and say, “Look, kid, I’m going to teach you a tool that you can use to answer this question.” The method would take the chaos of kanji and make it rational, by pointing out hidden similarities and unwritten rules behind kanji. It would give you a very solid foundation, a sort of ABCs of kanji, so that when you get to more complex ones you are not confused. And the method would have plenty of yo mama jokes.

And that is exactly what I set out to do : to write the kind of kanji book I would have wanted when I was just starting! Something that answers the questions that exasperate average students, tackles topics that are for some reason not found in regular textbooks, gives tips to speed up your study, and that deals with the common mistakes beginners make. By means of dick jokes. So far, all kanji books have been written by people that are language experts and professors. It turns out that professors are the people least-qualified to teach kanji. (well, second only to Japanese people). Why? Here’s why: By the time some dude gets a PhD. In Japanese, he has totally forgotten the basic problems that drive students crazy. He’s all into the 2,000 year old etemological roots of “cow” instead of remembering that ‘cow’ looks exactly like ‘noon’ and what a pain that is. He’s forgotten that kids who are still working on “car” (車)　and “big”　(大） can’t necessarily see their relationship to collision (衝) and nature (然). He’s forgotten that students waste a lot of time learning pronunciations for kanji that are never, in practice, used. That is why I am the ideal person to write the kanji books -- I still suck!!! Although I have the experience to be a teacher, I am still learning and making mistakes just like you guys, so I know can tell you, “Don’t do this dumbass thing that I did!” And more importantly, explain the reason why.

My system has three parts.

To begin with, I looked for patterns in my errors- which was easy because I had a fairly large sample. It turns out that, Instead of me making 1,000,000 different mistakes, I had been making the same 12 mistakes over and over again with hundreds of different kanjis ? and what does that mean? It

chi - usually, "cheese mmmm. "

but sometimes also the Japanese word for blood(血), which is pronounced CHI

chiku -- chicks. groovy ones. with bellbottoms and ironed hair.

CHO - choke

CHOU - comedian Margaret Cho.

CHU - kiss

CHUU- chew

dai - die, die my darling!

Dan - speaking of die, die . . . .Glen DANzig

den - dentists do it in the chair.

Don- Don Quixote, naturally!

DO- don't

DOU - homer simpson says this.

doku - don't cook.

ei -- the catchphrase of '70s icon Arthur Fonzarelli

en - enjoy

fuku - the Japanese word for clothes (服), which is pronounced fuku.



means means that there were about a dozen simple rules which I had not been taught ?So why did my textbooks, dictionaries, and flash-cards not have names for these rules? And why did they not have solutions? Bullshit !! So I set out to make a set of warnings for situations that come up often. For instance: duplicates, weird prepositions, kanji that are only used with one other specific kanji, radicals that hint at the pronunciation of the kanji, kanjis that are, in real life, usually written as hiragana, and words that are only read, but not said aloud.

The second thing I did was, I talked with two computer-programmer guys who were basically mathematicians applying their knowledge to linguistics. Neither man had ever met the other, nor read the other’s work, but they both said the same thing: the most logical, efficient way to study was going from simple-to-complex. Learn the simplest radicals first, and then combine the bits you already know to make some kanji. Then take THOSE kanji and combine THEM with the bits you know, to make some MORE kanji. So, every step of the way, you are taking stuff you already know and just adding like one more little piece. Sometimes, you’ll be able to learn 12 new kanjis . . . just by adding one 2-line radical to bits you already know! Both guys had the same idea, and both wondered why there was no book or flashcard on the market that used it.

The third thing I did was, I cheated.

What I mean is, I looked at the flashcards, textbooks, and dictionaries, and I started crossing shit out. I deleted every out-dated, too-formal, useless, over-specialized, word I could. See, by the time I started writing this book, I’d been living in japan for about 5 years, so I had a pretty good idea of what was useful and what wasn’t. I’d spent literally 100 hours learning words that ‘looked cool’ and then never using them. I took out all the bullshit weird words that only show up on tests. I gouged out all the stuff you’ll only need if you are coming to japan to study cooking or geology. I excised all the alternate onyomis that only are used with one word. I ruthlessly smote anything you’d only say at a corporate workplace.

I’m not writing a dictionary here ? dictionaries are all-inclusive. I’m not trying to tell you every single way to use a word, just the basics. My method is not for people who are trying to get a job at Mitsubishi, or trying to pass a masters degree in Japanese literature. It’s for average people who maybe have a job or a life or a bunch of college, and can only study an hour a day. I’m one of those people! So I looked back at all the stuff I studied over the

ga - got

gaku - got cool

gai - he's an allright guy - for a holocaust-denier.

gan - GHANDI!!!!!

ge - get up!

geki - GET KEYED UP

gei - gay.

gen - say that again and so help me God. . .

gi - geese

GO - five

GOU - go to the store and get Mommy some pills.

gon - she's gone to the liqour store.

gun - gun, duh.

gu -the Japanese ONYOMI for tool (具), which is pronounced gu.

guu - pile of green goo.

gyou- GET YO ass out of here.

hai -- yes!

haku - hack apart

han - Han Solo!!!



past 5 years that was not helpful to me, and got the fuck rid of it, so you don’t have to waste YOUR time.

Don’t be fooled by my hype, though: even with my awesome system of jaw-dropping logic, kanji is still a motherfucker. You’ll study 12 months and still not be able to read a newspaper. You’ll contend with maddening exceptions, inconsistencies, kanji that mean one thing by themselves, another thing when paired with a second kanji, and nothing at all when converted into a radical. You’ll encounter pernicious kanji that mutate and change shape; that look nothing like what they mean, and of course over 100 kanji with the same exact pronunciation!! (Kou, to be precise). And on top of all that, should you complain, you’ll have to deal with your Japanese friends who are quick to remind you that English is even worse!

one -first I explain basic facts about kanji like their history and junk. two -then I explain how to use my system. Also,all the short-cuts and , unique challenges, and hidden patterns in kanji that I discovered. Also, common noob mistakes and now to avoid them. three ? uh, oh yeah . . .the actual 2,000 kanjis. Them!

hatsu - hats are wonderful

hei - hate

hin - i guess "him" is the closest word.

hitsu -- hits. of acid.

HO- the Japanese onyomi for unicycle ( ), which is pronounced ho.

HOU-your mama

HYO- there is, far as i know, NO short-vowel "hyo" sound.

HYOU- the Japanese ONyomi for expression (表), which is pronounced hyou

I - i think that you have a disease which you are ashamed of.

iki - ewww, that's icky.

ji - JESUS christ, Kanji is hard.

jin - GIN and tonic

JO- WOMAN(女)

JOU- JOE stalin

JU- the Japanese ONyomi for recieve(受), which is pronounced ju.

JUU- Jews invented monotheism! And psychology, communism, and sarcasm too!

jitsu - ju jitsu

Anyway, the book is split into three parts:

SECTION ONE: SOME SHIT ABOUT

THE ACTUAL




radicals are the smallest units . they are like letters. several radicals compose a kanji. Nobody agrees how many radicals there are, but let’s say around 150. kanji are single words. There’s over 5,000 of them, but most of them are only used in people’s names. You only need to know around 2,000 to read a newspaper.

jukugo are compound words. ? several kanji compose a jukugo. (think of the English words like “butt pirate”, “can opener,” “douche bag” or “hat rack”). Some jukugo also have hiragana in them (in that case, the hiragana are called OKURIGANA). (you need to know that because they affect the pronunciation of the jukugo)

I’ll go on about these 3 in unrelenting detail later. For now, just kick it. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RADICALS AND KANJI?

1 ) BEHOLD! guys like , and are what I call ABSOLUTE radicals. They are never kanjis on their own, only parts of kanjis. They don’t have kunyomis Or onyomis. They don’t have any meaning, except what I made up! And, they are combined to form KANJIS.

ka - car

kaku - cocks!!!! Droopy ones!!!

katsu - cats!!!!

kai - kites are fun to fly. . . .after you have learned every single kanji.

kan - Ghengis Khan

Ken - KEN lay of Enron fame.

ketsu - KETCHUP

ki - mnemonics are the KEY to remembering whatever KEEP this in mind.

also, sometimes keep, as in "KEEP on memorizing shit. "

kin - your KINfolk. I don’t cotton to them.

KO- KODOMO (子供)

KOU - colon. cocaine. sometimes Colon Powell.

i know my "System of super duper logic" calls for only one keyword per onyomi. but fuck, there is like 100 words called KOU, and it just got! so! boring! with merely the one colon sitting there.

kon - corn on the cob.

koku - the Japanese ONyomi for country (国), which is pronounced koku,

KU- KUchi, mouth

KUU-cool

kun - racoon

LANGUAGE:

1: BASIC PARTS OF THE SYSTEM OF KANJI; introducing the radical / kanji / jukugo in that order



2 ) Then there are what I call SWELL RADICALS; they don’t have kun- or on-yomis, they are never kanjis by themselves, but they DO HAVE MEANING.

For example is associated with sickness. It is used in maybe 10 kanjis, and all those kanjis have to do with sickness. again, BEHOLD. 痛 ? hurts ,病 - sick , 疲 - get tired, 痢 ? diarrhea, 症 - symptom …and so on.

3 ) ALL KANJIS, even complex ones can be radicals- if they wind up inside a bigger kanji! For instance, water and tree are kanjis when you use ‘em by themselves ：水　木 but radicals when you stuff ‘em inside another kanji ：海　洋　泳、　森　杢　材 Often, these simple-kanji-which-are-used-in-bigger-kanji are SWELL RADICALS. Kanjis with a tree in them have to do with wooden things, kanjis with fire in them are obviously about fire, etc.

2: DISPELLING THE 2 MOST PERNICIOUS MYTHS ABOUT KANJI!

It’s like, what if some ESL guy pointed at the word “fire” and asked you, “What does ‘r’ mean? What does ‘e’ mean?”

“It means . . . . it , uh. . .. it…”

Then he points to the word “fighter” and asks you, “Why is the ‘r’ at the

KYO - the Japanese ONyomi for giant huge just insanely big ( 巨), which is pronounced kyo,

KYOU - the Japanese word for today (今日) , which is pronounced kyou,

gai - he's an allright guy for a holocaust-denier.

gan - GHANDI!!!!!

gen - say that again and so help me God. . .

gon - she's gone to the liqour store.

Gatsu - GATS what rappers talk about when they are angry or just bored.

Getsu - GET TO the store and get me some pills!! Mommy’s got a headache, you little brat!

Gotsu- you’ve GOT TO stop eating marbles

GO- the Japanese ONyomi for noon (午)

GOU- go straight to hell, you douchebag!!

mai - i hate myself and i want to die

mei - may. you may be able to read German one day.

MO -more money more problems.

MOU- Momar kadaffy

moku - also, sometimes the Japanese ONyomi for thursday (月曜日）which is pronounced moku

mon- monk.

mu - a cow

Students always say, “Why does 'country'(風)　 have 'insect' (虫) in it? why does 'muscle' (筋) have 'bamboo' (竹) in it? why does god damn sake (酒) have 'west' (西) in it?”



end? Why isn’t it in the beginning?”

“because mind your own business is why!!!”

This is not a ‘Japanese is crazy’ problem. Nor is it a ‘noobs are dumb’ problem. This is a problem because Japanese teachers and textbooks suck.

Teachers and textbooks do nothing to dispel these 2 myths; MYTH 1) kanji/radicals look like the things they represent, and MYTH 2) radicals have meaning.

That’s not merely wrong, it makes kanji feel very foreign and illogical, when in fact kanji is really the same as English. I’m talking about this:

Radicals/kanji/jukugo = letters/words/compound words

On the other hand, if that same ESL guy shows you the word “fire-fighter,” and asks “what does ‘fire’ mean? what does ‘fighter’ mean?” then you can answer easily. Not only that, but once he knows what ‘fire’ and ‘fighter’ mean, he can easily guess what a fire-fighter is. And, the good news is that kanji is just the same. Jukugo (compound words) are very logical that way.

I will try to explain this with ANOTHER HISTORICAL TANGENT: In the beginning, Chinese dudes wrote pictographs - pictures that looked like the things they represented. The drawback was that writing a paragraph took as much time as drawing a comic book, because IT WAS DRAWING A

nan - the wonderful bread from india

nen - also, sometimes the Japanese word for year (年）which is pronounced nen

ni - vince neil

NOU- no way!

NYU = there IS no short-vowel "nyu" so don't worry about it.

NYUU- new and improved mnemonics are what makes

ra - the sun god

rai - lightning

raku- lock (with a thick Japanese accent, naturally) ? lock up all your valuables

rei -ray smuckles, bitches! also, raygun!

ren - MC REN, bitches!! you can KIZZ his black AZZ.

ri - bruce Lee, of course!

rin - a ring, is what i was supposed to give my wife on our wedding day. (i gave her some waffles)

ritsu -retool

RO- road

ROU-things in a row

roku- rock and roll.

See, it hurts your head to even think about questions like that in English . . . and yet when it comes to Japanese, gaijin students can spend years asking nothing BUT those types of questions.

So let me say it again: kanji aren’t supposed to look like the things they represent, and radicals have no more meaning than ABC.

Think about it like this: if kanji really DID ‘look like the things’, you’d have to memorize 2,000 drawings that had nothing in common. But with radicals, you got to do is learn around 150 standard shapes and you can draw and read almost all kanji ? and this is not just good luck, it was intentional.



COMIC BOOK.. So they (who? Sages, motherfucker, sages! Who else?) simplified the pictographs into what we now call Kanji. How? Step one: They chose 150 or so RADICALS as their building blocks. Step 2: any pictograph that was too hard, they said, “OK, what radical does the top part most closely resemble? What radical does the left part most closely resemble?” and so on.

For example, the old, complicated kanji for country is . And the current kanji for country is 国。 (I chose this example because the simplification is pretty recent - most of your Japanese friends can still read the “old” version. Even KINOKUNIYA uses the old version in its name!).

But try looking at it from the point of view of the sages: they didn’t have computers, they got bad arthritis, and they had to draw these crazy hard pictographs all damn day. So one of the sages, in his wisdom, said “OK, fuck this! Can’t we swap the center bit for a simpler radical?” And the other sage replied, “Dood, if you drink enough sake the center bit looks kind of like 　玉 .” And the first sage was like, “Man you are just high as hell, but it’s late and I got mad poems to write about seasons and shit, so yeah, let’s just say kuni is now officially 国 and call it a day.”

So that is how that went down.

So, the bad news is that country(国) has nothing to do with the meaning of balls ( 玉 ), or the meaning of box (口)The good news is that IT DOESN’T MATTER. What matters is that if you’ve learned about the balls and box radicals, you can use them to ‘spell’ country: The same way that you learned the alphabet so that you could read English.

“But Schultzzz,” you ask: “If radicals don’t have meanings, why do you give

rui - ruin.

RYU- there IS NO short-vowel RYU.

RYUU - re-use

RYO- vacation

RYOU- re-order.

ryoku- reoccur. Sorry that is the best I could do.

sa- i saw what you did with that bear.

sai - SIGH with despair

san- SANTA claus

saku -- you're all on my nut sac

sei - say that one more time and I will bank you

sen - send it straight to hell!

setsu - i SAID TO him , "setsu!" is what i said to him.

sha - I SHAll return.

shin - shining.

SHO- the Japanese ONyomi for write (書）which is pronounced sho

SHOU-show me that you love me.

shoku - shocking!!!

SHU- the Japanese ONyomi for hand (手）which is pronounced shu

SHUU - SHOES

Now, from the point of view of someone studying Japanese, this is retarded because a) the radical they used means ‘jewel,’ ? a jewel in a box? what does that have to do with a country? and b) the simplified国looks almost the same as the kanji for treasure;　宝 .



them names like ‘mountain’ and ‘speculum’ and ‘fire’? Why do you need mnemonics at all?” Those are not meanings, they’re arbitrary keywords. And English has mnemonics too, to help you spell right ? “I before E except after C, or if your daddy’s GAY with the NEIGHBOR from around the WAY.”

3: THE TERRIBLE SECRET OF KANJI!!!!! Check out these two groups of kanjis:

Group one: 履ー歯―紫　顔― 僕　―鼻

group two: 丹―　屯－斤　－杉　－后

which do you think are college-level words?

Here’s the answer: 履　ー　put on pants 歯―　tooth 紫　－ purple 猿― monkey 顔― face 僕－ｍｅ聞　－ｌｉｓｔｅｎ鼻 ?nose

丹―　ａ　ｃｏｌｏｒ　ｃａｌｌｅｄ　‘ｃｉｎｎａｂａｒ，’　ｗｈｉｃｈ　ｉ　ｄｉｄｎ‘ｔ　ｅｖｅｎ　ｋｎｏｗ　Ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ　ｅｖｅｎ　ｈａｄ　ａ　ｗｏｒｄ　ｆｏｒ　ｔｈａｔ　ｃｏｌｏｒ．屯－　ａ　ｇａｒｒｉｓｏｎ　ｏｆ　ｔｒｏｏｐｓ

shuku - i shook hands with your dad.

shutsu -- elmer fudd SHOOTS a wabbit.

SO - the Japanese ONyomi for run (走）which is pronounced so

SOU- so much

soku -- socks are useful

SU- the Japanese word for nest (巣）which is pronounced su

SUU- Susan

sui - sweet

tai - tie up a guy and make him your gimp

ta- tatas!!! they are a southern word for boobies!!

taku - talk to

tei - take me to your leader

teki - the Japanese word for enemy (敵）which is pronounced teki

TO - the Japanese ONyomi for pupil (徒）which is pronounced to

TOU- big toe

toku - inhale marijuana.

TSU- there IS NO short-vowel tsu.

TSUU- to (i.e. go to the room)



斤　－　ｕｎｉｔ　ｏｆ　ｍｅａｓｕｒｅｍｅｎｔ　ｏｎｌｙ　ｕｓｅｄ　ｗｉｔｈ　ｂｒｅａｄ　ｌｏａｖｅｓ杉　－　ａ　ｃｅｒｔａｉｎ　ｋｉｎｄ　ｏｆ　ｃｅｄａｒ后―　ｄｏｗａｇｅｒ　ｅｍｐｅｒｅｓｓ、ａ　ｗｏｒｄ　ｏｎｌｙ　ｕｓｅｄ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｃｏｕｒｔ．

. . . .THE TERRIBLE SECRET IS: THERE IS ALMOST NO CONNECTION BETWEEN HOW USEFUL A KANJI IS AND HOW COMPLEX IT IS

Put another way ? kanji with easy meanings are often hard to read, and kanji with obscure meanings can be really simple to read, but you’ll never use them. If you’re teaching a normal language, like German, or even a pretty illogical language like English, you’ll start with ‘kid words’ and then work up to ‘adult words.’ But you can’t do that with kanji! Or rather, you CAN teach that way, but then you start new students off with hellaciously complex kanji, and then 3 years later , when you’re teaching more specialized words, THEN you teach them simple kanjis. Dumb! To add insult to injury. . . .after the hapless students bust ass learning common-but-complex kanjis like 館 and 裂 . . . a year later, they’ll learn less-used kanjis like 官 and 　列 . . . WHICH ARE COMPONENTS OF 館 and 裂 ! And the students say, “DAMN! Why didn’t you teach me官 and 　列first!?! Then learning the complex ones (which are made out of the simple ones) would have been easy!”

That’s why people generally agree that gaijin learn kanji best if they learn simplest-to-most-complex.

The simple-to-complex method might seem like a waste of time when you are learning words like 竹 (bamboo) and complex abstractions like 云　 (meaning variously, myself, vague, or an obsolete form of “to say”). You might grumble, “dude, I don’t yell out “Bamboo!!” on a daily basis, why do I need this?” But in fact, in Japan you need “bamboo” in order to say box “ 箱 ” or even laugh “笑う ! “ and you need 云 to say simple words like cloud 雲。 Learning 云 beforehand makes learning 雲 way less painful.

HOW I SOLVE THIS PROBLEM; my system is backwards compatible. That is to say, if you need to know a complex kanji RIGHT NOW, you can look it up, and right under the kanji it’ll tell you all the radicals in the kanji. Not just one radical in the upper ? left hand corner like most kanji books. It’ll list the components of EVERY PART of the kanji, and tell you what page of the book

u - urusai!!!

wa - christopher walken

yaku - a hairy smelly YAK

YO- yoyo

YOU- yodel

YU- the Japanese ONyomi for freedom (由）which is pronounced yu

YUU- you are reading some real science right now

zan -- ZOMbies

zai -- xylophone

zen -- zen monks

ZO - zorro

ZOU - the Japanese word for elephant (象）which is pronounced zou



all the radicals are on. Then you go and study the radicals, and then BOOM, you’re ready to learn the complex word, and it’ll be easy. So that’s how I get the best parts of both the simple-to-complex method and the kids-words-to-adult-words method.

4 : RADICALS -the most overlooked toolRadicals are the little simple drawings that kanji are made up of. Ｓｏｕｌ（塊）、ｇｒａｖｅ　（墓）、ａｎｄ　　ｐｌａｃｅ（地）　ａｌｌ　ｈａｖｅ　ｔｈｅ　ｓａｍｅ　ｒａｄｉｃａｌ：　ｅａｒｔｈ　（土）ｂｒｉｇｈｔ（明），　ｗａｒｍ　（温），　ａｎｄ　Ｓｐｒｉｎｇ　（春）　ａｌｌ　ｈａｖｅ，　ａｍｏｎｇ　ｏｔｈｅｒ　ｔｈｉｎｇｓ，　ｔｈｅ　ｒａｄｉｃａｌ　ｆｏｒ　ｓｕｎ　（日）。　

Japanese are strange because, unlike Chinese, Japanese are only conscious of maybe 10% of the radicals they’re using. For example: if you show this 暖 to your Japanese friends, they might insist it has only one radical (日). So what is the other 90% of it?? 9 random chicken-scratch lines? This despite the fact that the upper-right part appears ? exactly the same shape and position ? in over 10 other kanji. And the lower right part appears in even more kanji. “Oh, but that’s not a radical!” whatever, kid. Some of us don’t have 12 years to learn kanji.

And you know who is even weirder than Japanese? Stupid effing foreigners!! Because, like I said, every foreign kanji book I have read copies the

In other words, radicals re the ABCs of kanji. You combine them in different ways to make words. This might seem like such a ‘DUHHH’ obvious statement, but in fact, I ain’t even seen ONE JAPANESE TEXTBOOK YET that actually uses radicals like abcs. They’ll teach you like the one radical in the upper-left corner of the kanji and then say, “OK you’re on your own, hoss!” That’s like trying to teach some ESL kid how to read the word “rotunda” by telling her “OK, you got your “t” a little while later there’s an “a” and oops gotta go, learn that and 10 more words by tomorrow!”



Japanese method. like ‘I had to learn it the hard way, so should you!” So I had to make my OWN method of studying kanji, which gives names to all the radicals. To be precise: If the exact same pattern of lines is used in 3 or more kanjis, I went ahead and decided, ‘ok that’s a radical,’ I made up a name for it, and I list it in my kanji dictionary right next to the “real” kanjis. In other words, in my system, not only does every part of 暖 have a name, but by the time we get to暖, you will already have LEARNED all the parts, and so learning暖 will be easy!

“But Schultzzz, doesn’t that mean you’re giving me even more crap to learn? What makes you think I have the time?” OK, good question. I used to think that, too! It took me a long time to realize that, rather than saving time by “skipping” the radicals, I was actually WASTING my time, like the ESL student studying “CAT” without knowing her ABCS ? she’s gotta learn the letter C all over again, for “CATAPULT” , “CARTHATGE,” “CATEMARAN,” “CARAMBA,” and 1,000 other “c-words.” If that don’t convince you, here’s another reason: Radicals are, by definition, really simple shapes ? most are only 2 or 3 lines.

2) some of these radicals , such as are used in dozens of different kanjis. If you hadn’t learned the radical, you’d have to memorize those

dozens of kanji line-by-line . .. . learning the same pattern over and over and over again. With my method, every time that pattern shows up, I’ll let you know ? “hey, it’s that guy again! His name is ‘cave’ and you already know him!” I’m taking something chaotic and making it rational.

now, imagine you’d started by learning ten, then learned rice field. those are

I’ve given every radical an English keyword? the keyword has nothing to do with the ‘meaning’ of the radical (most radicals don’t HAVE meanings). Every time I introduce a new kanji, I’ll list all its radicals by their keywords, to help you remember that, for instance, 　ｂｕｌｌｅｔ　（弾）　is made of 　ｂｏｗ　（弓）ｐｌｕｓ　ｓｉｍｐｌｅ　（単）．　．　．ａｎｄ　ｓｉｍｐｌｅ　ｉｓ　ｍａｄｅ　ｕｐ　ｏｆ　ｒｉｃｅ　ｆｉｅｌｄ　（田）　ｐｌｕｓ　ｔｅｎ（十）！



some simple motherfuckers. But if you learn them you can learn ‘simple,’ really fast. And bow isn’t much problem because it looks like a damn bow. So if you ALREADY KNEW all of those, learning bullet is really not such a big problem.

5 ; KANJI, BITCH!So each kanji is made of radicals, and you’re sick of hearing about it. Fine. but that is not all there is to it, lazybones. each kanji has hella ATTRIBUTES. here they are:

Book number ? for use in backtracking

English keyword. Each kanji AND/OR radical corresponds to one English keyword. (two if it’s a JERK, of which more later). So once you learn that kanji/radical, every time you encounter it in the future (as part of a jukugo, say, or part of a more complex kanji) it’ll always have the same English keyword, which will help you remember the jukugo/more complex kanji. (“OH! That’s where I ‘ve seen that thing before!”)

Onyomi ? the, er, “Chinese” pronunciation of the kanji. (about as Chinese as Chop Suey and the phrase “Wing Wong,” but I digress) Unlike other teachers, I teach the onyomi as just another radical ? one that makes a sound, instead of a mark on the page. Kanji may have 5 or 6 kun-yomis, and they may be part of dozens of jukugo, but they only have one (ish) onyomi- the way that they only have one bottom or top radical. and there may be 100 other kanjis with the same onyomi, the same way there are a hundred kanjis with a water or tree radical. So that’s why it makes more sense to teach them together. Oh and plus when I started studying, I didn’t learn ON yomis for the first year, which caused some problems for me. The fuckin’ teachers, they never came out and said in plain English “you need these for compound words!!” I figured the onyomi was some optional , formal thing, like sonkeigo, stroke order, or flower arrangement. Anyway.

a lot of textbooks and flashcards list 2 onyomis or even 3 onyomis per kanji! but usually the kanji in question uses　onyomi #1 90% of the time, and only uses onyomi #2 with one specific jukugo.



we don't play that. we'll only list the top 1 onyomi, and if a jukugo has a strange, exceptional pronunciation, we'll warn you.

Radicals ? every single part of the kanji is identified here, with links back to the entries for those radicals, so if the kanji is confusing, you can go back and review the radicals one by one. And now the kanji should be (a little) easier.

stroke # - I don’t know who still give a shit, what with the internet and all. but fuck it, here’s stroke order.

5b - more shit about how to PRONOUNCE KANJI:

BRIEF HISTORICAL-CONTEXT RANT When the Japanese, um, borrowed kanji from China, they got it wrong. There’s no other way to say it. According to Google, the shit came over in the 5th century, because Japanese traders needed to communicate with their Korean and Chinese counterparts. This decision to force the square peg of chinese characters in the round hole of the existing japanese language leads to some really janky situations, like 150 words all having the same on-yomi.

on-yomis, of course, come from Chinese. but Chinese has tones, and Japanese doesn't. whichever seafaring trader decided to import kanji to

story ? a mnemonic, usually about your (adoptive) mother, which ties the meaning of the kanji, its on-yomi, and its radicals all together in one sentence. Or two. Why do I pick on your moms so much? Maybe because the more annoying something is, the more it gets stuck in your head ? like a bad pop song or a commercial with Carrot Top. Also, the bitch owes me bail money.

Kunyomi and Onyomi mean, respectively “of the meaning,” and, “of the sound.” Probably you already know that, so maybe skip over this part.



Japan obviously couldn’t speak Chinese! He was like, “It all sounds like KOU, SHOU, wing, wong, whatever. it’s all gibberish ? let’s import something we don’t understand!” and the Japanese land-lubbers for some reason were heard to reply, “Here is a whole new vocabulary that adds nothing to our existing language, and which can’t be understood by Chinese either! OK, we’ll learn it, but only if we can keep our existing language, so now we have to learn twice as many words for shit we already knew how to say!” and the seafaring traders were like, “OK deal.”

here is how it works: SOLO kanjis (i.e. 水、日、大きい、辛い.) use the kunyomi. JUKUGO (i.e. 種類、　漢字、　哲学、etc.) use the onyomi. HOWEVER jukugo which have hiragana in ‘em (i.e. 手取り早い、人当たり、　あざ笑う） use the kunyomi. The Japanese have a word for these hiragana letters that dangle off of the ends of jukugo: OKURIGANA. PROPER NOUNS use the kunyomi . . .usually.

666; JUKUGO; 4 ) Here is some good news for you; compound words are the MOST LOGICAL part of kanji, (way more logical than English). Even if you never seen the compound word before in your life, if you know the component kanjis, you can easily guess both the pronunciation AND the meaning! It’s just like English, in a way ? the letters that make up words don’t have meanings, but words combine to make compound words in a logical way.

Why bother including jukugo at all? Isn’t just learning 2000 kanji hard enough?? Well, yes and no. 2000 is more than enough for your first go-round! In the beginning, set a goal of, say X amount of kanji. On your first go-round, don’t even look at the jukugo. Just try to associate the kanji with its meaning and its component radicals; if you can do that you are rad. Once you can do that, THEN you can go back and start to look at the jukugos. At that point they stop being a confusing burden, and they turn into a great way to cash in on your newfound knowledge- deepening your familiarity with the kanji while learning new words.



4 benefits of studying jukugo:

TO COVER THE VARIETY OF MEANINGS: many kanji have several different meanings ? sometimes the meanings are totally unrelated! Some kanjis mean one thing by themselves, and another thing as a prefix, and yet another thing when used in a jukugo. Including a bunch of example jukugo is a way to show all the different meanings and uses for the kanji ? it helps you get a handle on some of the more nebulous ones.

LEARNING THROUGH REPITITION: Some students find that repetition helps them learn, so if you are reading the jukugo, and you say to yourself, “sho-KUN, sho-NIN, sho-KOU, sho-BUTT, sho-ASS. . .” . . . Then that kind of drums it into your head that this guy is pronounced SHO.

APPLYING WHAT YOU JUST LEARNED TO INCREASE YOUR VOCABULARY: I include examples so that you can expand your vocabulary by applying the kanji you just learned But, unlike certain other kanji textbooks or flashcards, ALL the jukugo here are totally basic useful words. (or are tagged with a big “A” if not so useful) . these are all (I hope) words you’ll learn ANYWAY in your first 2 years of study, and ? and learning those compound words is way easier if you just memorized the component kanjis yesterday!

THE BREAKTHROUGH POINT Maybe it’s just me, but after one learns, say, 500 kanjis, you have a breakthrough. It goes like this; you are peering nervously at some unfamiliar new jukugo and you go, “Wait a fuckin’ second here, buddy ? I know the first half of that already!” Or, “wait a fuckin’ second here, hombre ? I know the second half of that already!” You start to be able to use kanjis you learned months ago, and apply them to new words. And if you know both halves of a jukugo, you can pretty easily guess the meaning, even if it’s a jukugo you’ve never seen before.

MY JUKUGOS INCLUDE HOW TO USE IT, WHICH MOST BOOKS DON’T; Also, unlike other textbooks/cards: I did my best to include the MOST COMMON PARTICLES with all the verbs and adjectives. Most verbs are used with “wo”, but some, such as “iku” are only used with “ni / e” and others, such as “iu” or “naku” are only used with “to”. And this just fucks up so many foreigners. Because there is absolutely no pattern ? the particles are arbitrary and case-by-case. It’s like, “Why don’t you douchebags just teach



the particle as if it were part of the verb?!?” Most teachers would respond like this : “that would be terribly irresponsible, because any one particle will only apply 90% of the time ? there will always be some weird, wacky situation where you’d use another particle instead.” Well, balls to that, I say. If no one told me that “to” went with “iu” I would use the wrong particle 90% of the time! It seems like it is common sense to be right 90% of the time, even if it means being wrong the other 11%. So, I make no claims that this book’s particles are perfect for every occasion ? I’m just claiming that they’re the most commonly used particles with those verbs in a peacetime setting.

It would be rad if I could include the meaning-keywords for both kanjis of all jukugos, which would help you remember them, and also include example sentences. This is not going to happen.

But I WILL include contextual information : is this word childish? Formal ? read in newspapers but not spoken? Is it always used literally, or also figuratively? You know, I’ll try to answer common-sense questions that the average person has about useage.

Even the word “kanji” ITSELF has like 3 separate readings!

Ok, so English is as guilty as any language.

7: SYNONYMS AND HOMOPHONES

All languages have synonyms. Some people say that synonyms lend variety and shades of nuance to a language, keeping it colorful and alive. I am not one of those people. True, a lot of synonyms have nuance, but half of them are deadwood, layabout words who nobody has the heart to take out back and put the fuck down. I’m talking about synonyms that have the exact same shade and nuance as other words, but are only used in certain arbitrary cliches and phrases. . . .phrases where using the other synonym sounds unnatural. (EXAMPLES IN ENGLISH)



But Japanese is even worse, because they got two whole other categories of pernicious, time-wasting synonyms:

About 2 out of 3 times, either the kun yomi or the corresponding jukugo is totally fuckin’ useless. I will tell you that. In cases where both are used, I’ll try to explain the difference, in order to justify you spending the time learning both.

TWO: KANJI DUPLICATES When the Japanese imported the Kanji, they had a problem: even after assigning each Japanese word to a Kanji, they still had hella kanji left over. Apparently they decided to take words with 2 or 3 nuances and ASSIGN EACH NUANCE TO A DIFFERENT KANJI, WHILE KEEPING THE KUN YOMI AND GENERAL MEANING THE SAME. This is shameful, but there is nothing to be done about it now. The most famous examples are the 3 katais, the 3 hakarus, and the 3 tsutomerus.

Every beginning student has the same dazed look on their face when they look at their kanji dictionary and see three separate kanjis under the heading for ‘hard.’ “Fuck! Why is Japanese designed to drive me insane? What did I ever do to them?? I just wanted to watch fucking Naruto!”

Now ask yourself this: why do e/j textbooks identify all 3 of those kanjis as ‘hard’ TO BEGIN WITH?? Wouldn’t it be simpler if they identified them as, say, ‘hard,’ ‘firm,’ and ‘throbbing’? Once again, it’s not a problem with Japanese, it’s a problem with how it’s taught.

ONE: KUN/ON DUPLICATES: Many kanjis (THINK OF EXAMPLES) have a kun yomi AND a jukugo which seem to mean the EXACT SAME THING.- Like, half the kanjis. even E/J dictionaries don’t explain the nuances. Which leads to 1,000 irritated, burned-out Japanese students kneading their brows and muttering, “WTF? Do I need both? Which should I study? Why are they wasting my time with these endless synonyms?”

Basically duplicates fall into 3 categories, and each category has its own solution.



One: drastically different contexts: Some, like KIKU, it’s easy to tell when to use XXX and when to use YYY.: Kiku means ‘listen to’ and kiku means ‘ask someone about.’

Two: hella nuances. These guys are used to describe the same action, but they put a different feeling on it.

three: case-by-case. Others, like the katai brothers, even Japanese people have no idea why it is 3 kanjis: they all mean exactly the same thing, yet you have to use specific kanjis when you use specific idioms ? it’s totally arbitrary. Good news about this is: 80% of the time they wind up using ZZZZ. So in cases where it’s utterly fucked, I’ll resort to statistics to help you find the synonym least likely to get you laughed at.

SOLUTION:

whether it’s an “English style synonym,” “kun/on dupe,” or “kanji dupe,” I will assign each kanji a UNIQUE ENGLISH KEYWORD. Because English has so many crappy synonyms, I’ll pit them against the Japanese ones: two wrongs DO make a right. Problem solved! “but wait,” you say, “unique keywords help me tell the duplicates apart, but what about nuances of useage?” good question. I promise I will bug and bug my Japanese friends until they divulge the difference between ALL duplicate pairs!! And I will print all the answers for you!

SECTION TWO ; HOW TO USE THIS

BOOK



1 : WHAT THIS BOOK DOES AND DON’T DO; IS THIS REALLY THE SYSTEM FOR YOU?THIS book is not a dictionary, or even a complete kanji manual. most flashcards are small ? so they give the most common definition, but no context. Like the card for 　亡　will give a kun-reading of　な＊い、(to go away) but it won’t tell you that ない is never used that way! it’s only used as part of the phrase 　亡くなる、and then it will also not tell you that 亡くなる (to pass away, to die) is usually written in hiragana anyway, so who cares. So, through no fault of your own, you’ll write an email to your Japanese pen-pal saying, “私のボールペンが亡い“　 and your pen-pal will be like, ‘why did his ballpoint pen die?”

Bottom line ? sometimes it’s not enough to just say ‘here is the english word which is the equivalent of the Japanese word.’ Because the nearest English equivalent is the same for 3 Japanese words! So, at times like that, you gotta explain the specific real-life situations when Japanese people only use word A and never use word B. half the time it turns out that they aren’t even

Dictionaries, on the other hand, give you TOO MUCH information: look up ‘reciept,’ and you’ll see: Uketori 受け取り、ryoushuu,領収、ryoushuushuu,領収証、　juryoushou, 受領書 AND Juryoushuu　受領証。　But which word do Japanese people actually use when they go to the store? None! They sayレシット (RISHI-TO)!! They print totally useless nuances and wild exceptions, right next to everyday nuances. Just look at an English-English dictionary if you don’t believe me.



close to the same meaning ? it is the ENGLISH WORD that has too broad of a meaning. So again, it’s not a “Nihongo is fucked” problem, it’s a “how people teach Nihongo is fucked” problem.

XXXXX I NEED TO EXPLAIN THIS BETTETR. Show 3 words with similar meanings, and how just linking them to the equivalent English words is insufficient to tell them apart.

1 --My system is made for self-study : hence this long-ass introduction! Most kanji cards or kanji books I’ve seen don’t really explain how to use the information they’re giving, or give much context for the grammatical rules. The lady at the bookstore said, “That’s because they’re for use in class, and the publisher is counting on the teacher to explain how to use the books.” You don’t need a teacher to help use this. In fact a teacher would probably just interfere, by teaching you the wrong way. (see #2)

Also, just to be fucked, I don’t teach stroke order or how to write. Even Japanese kids nowadays can’t write kanji. 3 -- My system is made for people who want to read books and magazines, not for people who are trying to pass a test : the Japanese Language tests (much like the feared TOEIC) make you learn a bunch of useless stuff, just to pass the test. I don’t fuck around with that; I just teach useful shit.

2 ? it’s for people who might be working a day job, or who are busy and can only spend an hour or 2 per day on this. That’s why I only try to teach the most useful stuff to save you time. I omit rarely-used onyomi, kunyomi, as well as obsolete or too-formal kanjis. I try to give you a basic vocab to read comics, newspapers, and books, not corporate reports or ancient scrolls or the dadblasted JLPT. (examples of retarded kanjis in JOYO or JLPT vocab lists)

4 -- My system is made for people who already know hiragana and katakana.

5 : it’s made for people who are studying grammar and vocabulary separately from kanji: rememberTHE TERRIBLE SECRET OF KANJI? there’s no relation between how basic the meaning is and how hard to draw/



The kanji in this book were chosen by taking the two most common sets of kanji used by students: the JLPT kanji, levels 1-4 (these are used to study for the Japanese Proficiency Test), and the JOYO kanji (which are the 2,000-ish kanji that Japanese students have to memorize in high school). I combined them (naturally there was a lot of overlap) and then I threw out all the bullshit ones where the meaning sounds like a crossword puzzle clue (‘deep sea lifeform’ or ‘17th century sulphur refining component’).

Study the kanji in order ? like I said 100 times, I start with the simplest kanji and combine them to make more complex ones. Everytime I introduce a new primary kanji or a new radical, I’ll announce it with a little icon of a Japanese flag. The Japanese flag means “OK, I’VE RUN OUT OF COMBINATIONS OF OLD SHIT, HERE IS SOME NEW SHIT.” …And once you learn the new primary kanji or new radical, then I’ll combine that with EVERYTHING YOU ALREADY LEARNED and see if any new kanji pop up. You can then study those new kanji ? it’ll be simple (ish) because it’s just the one little new thing plus a variety of old familiar ones. If you forgot some of the old ones (for shame!), there’s a ‘ingredients list’ below every kanji that will tell you what all the parts are, and where to find them in the book.

You’ll be tempted to skip one-star kanji, or kanji that are sidekicks, or words marked (A) for “amari tsukawanai.” Go ahead!

remember a kanji is. So, grammar textbooks go from kids-to-adult words, whereas I’m going from simple-to-complex kanjis. Since almost all schools already teach kanji separately, I figure this will not inconvenience you too much.

1B; WHAT I DO ABOUT GRAMMAR: this isn’t a grammar book, but I do want to teach one thing: particles. を is the default particle- the one all verbs use unless otherwise specified. But certain verbs always use different particles: へ行く。　に成る。　と言う。　one of the most common noob mistakes is going　　　を言う . . .and it’s not the student’s fault. it’s not even Japanese’s fault (although it is pretty



Recently, some textbooks/flashcards have started teaching the particle “NA” together with na-keioshis. This is rad. But ! If you’re just saying a one-word exclamation, you don’t say the ‘na’. If you for instance just say “kirei!” you don’t say the ‘na’ because you’re not connecting ‘kirei’ to another word. or if you say ‘hen da!’ you don’t need ‘na.’

Anyone can turn a verb into a noun by putting “NO” at the end of it ? just like English verbs get turned into gerunds by adding “-ing.” but there’s another way of turning verbs into nouns, which only applies to certain set phrases or idioms- you can’t use it anytime you like. For instance:

itamu (to hurt) becomes itami (pain) tanoshimu (to have fun) becomes tanoshimi (fun!) hanasu (to talk) becomes hanashi (a story) and so on. what’s going on is that the dictionary form which always ends in a U-sound (xxx-mu or xxx-su or xxx-ru, etc.) turns into a ?I sound (-mi, -shi, -ri). Also, verbs turn into nouns or even adjectives in combination with other words: nozomu (to wish for or aspire to) combines with takai (tall) to form TAKANOZOMI (overambitious)

this is important for two reasons: 1) once you know about this phenomenon, you can recognize the noun-forms of verbs in this book, even if I didn’t write the noun-forms down. 2) usually with these gerund-plus-other-kanji jukugos, one of the kanjis will be written as hiragana, while the other one will be written as kanji. I have no idea why that is.

illogical) it’s the fault of how Japanese is taught. If the weird particle almost always goes with the verb, why not teach them together? I mean, duh. So I put particles in. Now, they might not always be 100% appropriate. There will always be some weird situation where you say “ga” instead or something. But I’d rather teach the particle that’s used 90% of the time, than have you go round saying “wo” and being wrong 90% of the time.



Remember mnemonics from school? “Every Good Boy Gets Fudge,” or “My Dear Aunt Sally,” or even that notorious paedophile, one Mr. “Roy G. Biv”?

Well, each kanji has a mnemonic sentence, or ‘story.’ and this is where the keywords come into play: I’ll give you a mnemonic for each kanji ,and that mnemonic ties together the keywords for all the radicals, the on-yomi, and also the meaning of the kanji.

Most students AND kanji books use slipshod, random metaphors in their mnemonics- if the same radical shows up in 3 different kanjis, they’ll give it 3 different keywords, or none at all! “on that kanji, this radical is a fish that the fisherman catches. But on this kanji, he’s next to a flower so I’m calling him a flowerpot.”

I used to do that too, and it got hella confusing. So I one-upped the other textbooks AGAIN by making each kanji AND each radical correspond to one English keyword. This makes the mnemonic system kind of rational and easy to use: you don’t waste time trying to remember which metaphor you are using for a given radical.

Another problem with existing kanji books is they don’t teach you how to memorize the on-yomis. I solve this by treating the on-yomis as just another radical! That is to say, they are just another component of a kanji, albeit an audio one. So, each on-yomi ALSO corresponds to one English keyword, and the onyomis ALSO are used in the same mnemonic sentences alongside the radicals.

2 - MY METHOD OF MNEMONICS.

Unlike other teachers, I teach the onyomi as just another radical ? one that makes a sound, instead of a mark on the page. Kanji may have 5 or 6 kun-yomis, and they may be part of dozens of jukugo, but they only have one (ish) onyomi- the way that they only have one bottom or top radical. and there may be 100 other kanjis with the same onyomi, the same way there are a hundred kanjis with a water or tree radical. So that’s why it makes more sense to teach them together. Oh and plus when I started studying, I



Even though their meaning is very basic, those five kanjis are all really complex to read or write, and they have almost no radicals in common - if you learn the first word in the series ( 寒い ) you have exactly zero information about how to draw the next term in the series (暖かい　). Retarded! To make matters even worse, if you’re a drunk like me, most of the time, you’ll forget the radicals before you ever encounter another kanji which uses that radical! So then you have to painstakingly re-learn it.

What I did, was first, I arranged all the kanjis from simple to complex. I did this by starting with the simplest kanji ever. Once I have taught you 10 or so kanjis/radicals, I can start combining them to form new and more complex kanji. ? which it ain’t so scary, because you already know the parts. Sometimes just by teaching you one new radical, and combining it with ones you already know, there are like 10 or 15 kanjis which result. That means a) you get hella practice learning the one new radical, because all those 10-15 kanjis are using it, and b) if you already know 100 kanji, and then you learn one ? simple- little ? radical, you can combine that with the first 100, to learn 10 new kanjis without having to learn any new strokes at all!! In fact, in my system, MOST of the time, when you move on to ‘the next kanji,’ it’s just re-arrangements of stuff you know with NO new lines.

Only when all the combinations of new-radical-plus-kanji-you-already-knew are exhausted . . .only then do I introduce a new radical. And the process repeats. This way, there’s an order or logic to it.

Here is an example of how useful radicals are: 露 (outdoors)!!! It looks like a huge bunch of chicken scratch, doesn’t it? that is a 21 stroke character .Trying to memorize where to put each of the

didn’t learn ON yomis for the first year, which caused some problems for me. The fuckin’ teachers, they never came out and said in plain English “you need these for compound words!!” I figured the onyomi was some optional , formal thing, like sonkeigo, stroke order, or flower arrangement. Anyway.

A third problem of most kanji books is that they teach kanji grouped according to subject. For example, a typical book will put these in the same chapter: 寒い　暖かい　涼しい　熱い　温かい, because they all have to do with temperature. It’s that old ‘teach kids words first’ approach. That approach makes sense if you’re teaching Deutsch or Swahili or Thai, but for kanji? HELLS NAW!



21 strokes is a huge depressing pain, and then trying to memorize the strokes for ALL 2000 KANJI makes you even more depressed, until you just wish Flanders was dead. BUT, if you have been learning radicals instead of 21 random chicken scratches, you see only 3 parts: rain 雨 , foot 足 , and each 各。 These three radicals are combined into the one character for outdoor. Not only that, if you have learned those 3 radicals, you can use them to help figure out dozens of other kanjis too! 雲　霜　雪　雷、　踊　路　踏、　客　落　格 , and so on. Each kanji builds on the one before it. There are those that think that kanji stories should be personal, and that making them up yourself is going to provide an intimate connection which facilitates learning. But, ? the thought of 1,000 students spending 2,000 hours making up 3,000 stories each, and then forgetting them all after they learn/give the fuck up on Japanese, is just sad to me. ? Who has the time to make up 2,000 stories? Why not just get right to the learning? ? The Japanese schools use standardized stories, and last time I checked, Japanese people speak Japanese ok. Plus the most important reason : By making up the stories myself, I can UNLEASH THE LOGIC!!! What I mean is, I can provide a framework where each radical corresponds to one

particular English keyword. So if this guy here: is called wheat in the story for "handy"(利) , it’ll be called wheat in the stories for all these kanjis as well: 橋稚秘程私秒移称 !! That makes the stories easier to remember, since you don’t have to waste

time trying to recall which name or metaphor you were using for .

3-- KANJI TAGS-(the big one!)



finally, remember back in the introduction when I mentioned how I found a dozen simple tricks to overcome common kanji problems? A dozen concepts that tie together seemingly unrelated kanji and make sense of them? You probably thought I was just talking out of my ass. But no ? I would never joke about my own ass. I was serious ? I’ll explain all the terms I use in my system right here: once you read this next part, not only will you know more about fuckin’ kanji than most teachers, you’ll also be able to read my kanji dictionary and understand what the fuck I am saying. Then all you have to do is learn 2.000 kanjis ,6,000 vocabulary words, learn an upside-down system of grammar, forget what sunlight and laughter and sleep were about. . . and then you can start writing your own anime fan-fiction! In Nihongo this time!

But either way, all the tags are unique to this system.

Every time I put a kanji into the dictionary, I first compare it to a list of 29 things- and if it matches any of the 29 I tag it with the appropriate label. most of the tags are WARNINGS ? they are about irrational, only-in-japanese , quirky things that confuse and trip up even advanced students. By putting a warning tag on the kanji, it says, “watch out! weird shit !!” On the other hand, some of the tags are tips and tricks that exploit some hidden symmetries of kanji to help you learn the kanji easier.

Usefulness rating ? this is the answer to the question everyone wants to know: “Do I really need this one???” No professional teacher is going to give you an honest answer : they want you to pass the test, which has a bunch of retarded kanji on it that you’ll never use after you pass it. Plus, most smart people will give some unsatisfying answer like, “Well, what do you mean by ‘need?’ You’ll need to read all of them eventually, it depends on what you’re reading!” I don’t like nuanced, mature answers like this. I prefer the old-fashioned ‘From one-to-five stars’ method. Maybe you think you can skip the ones. Don’t try it, smarty. I already cut out around 300 kanji from the joyo and JLPT sets. That means there are ALMOST NO bullshit kanji in this book. You need the ones. You just don’t need them as much as the 2s. Also, you’ll be tempted to only study the 5s first, and then work your way down to the 4s, and so on. This may or may not work ? like I said before, a lot of the really useful words (the 5s) are also totally complex kanji that are hard to learn. you can learn them faster if you know the simpler kanji



KANJI TAGS:

jerk kanjis have several different meanings SOLO. Or they might mean one thing SOLO and another thing in all of their JUKUGOs. I.E. HIKU / TAMA (BULLER)

SIDEKICK : this is another very distinct feature of Japanese: kanji that are only used in combination with another, more useful kanji. They’re the sidekick of the useful kanji, used to make one specific jukugo ? but you have to learn them anyway because that jukugo is a very common word. This used to drive me CRAZY~~~!!!! I was like, “fuck!!!!! Why I gotta learn this if it’s only used in one word?? If I go to the trouble of learning this bastard I should be able to use it in 10 words!”

The good news is, it turns out you don’t need to learn sidekicks. once you learned the OTHER, more USEFUL kanji of the jukugo, make a flash-card of the jukugo, and that’s it. Just study the sidekick in the context of the jukugo.

sometimes a word will be listed as a sidekick, but there will be like 3 jukugos. Did I fuck up? Probably. Or maybe there’s one 2-kanji jukugo plus 2 jukugos which contain the same shorter jukugo.

already.

JERK KANJIS / JERK RADICALS: the kanji has 2 (or more!) meanings, that are totally unrelated. That’s why it is a JERK. And you can’t ignore one meaning ? both meanings are useful, otherwise I would have cut one out. Jerk radicals mean one thing when used as a SOLO kanji, and another thing when used as a radical.

TOTAL COCK ? this is even worse than a jerk. It might have 3 kunyomis and be part of 10 jukugo, which all mean the same thing. but here’s the catch: nobody ever uses the kunyomis or those jukugo. the ONLY time the Total Cock kanji is used, is with a word that has a totally different meaning, or a totally different pronunciation, from all the other words of the kanji.



PREFIX and SUFFIX - this is just like English prefixes and suffixes. But you can’t put in front/behind any damn word, it’s not allowed. However, when it comes to READING Japanese, you’ll see them in dozens of different contexts. I’ll typically list only 1 or 2 of the most common.

FUCKED ROOTS - They say that kanji can be used as a ‘window into the past,’ where we can see the opinions of the ancient society that made them. However, in today’s politically correct times, that window to the past is often as embarrassing as watching old cartoons with Sambos in them. This is evident in kanji like okusan ? literally ‘back of the house person,’ or ‘???’

BETABETA ? beta-beta in Japanese means “clingy” as in “needy boyfriend.” betabeta kanji are almost never used solo. Which is rad because it means you don’t need to study their kunyomis. Who else tells you this kind of shit????

SOLO ? solo kanji are almost never used in jukugo. I mean, if you look it up in your dictionary, you’ll find like 20 jukugo with that kanji, but you’ll never use them, so don’t fuck with them. usually you can get away with not learning the onyomi of a SOLO kanji.

PRIMARY KANJI - this is exactly what it sounds like - a kanji that can’t be broken down into radicals. naturally, primary kanji are often radicals of other kanji!

ABUNAI ? abunai means ‘dangerous!’ Abunai kanji fall into 3 types: one ? it’s a discrimination word. two ? it’s a word that might start a fight three ? it’s a word that will make Japanese giggle at you. I deliberately don’t tell you which type of ABUNAI the kanji is because I want you to ask your Japanese teacher.

ILL PAIR: yet another only-in-japanese type of problem. every language has 1,000 synonyms to drive foreigners crazy, but Japanese up the ante by having synonyms where the kanji physically look as similar as their meanings! 　“Hey, they mean almost the same thing, why don’t we make them look almost identical too?? Haha!!!”



猥- obscene / 獣 - beast

嘘 ? lie　／　噂 - rumor

少　小

原　源

像　象

室　ｒｏｏｍ　／　屋　ｓｈｏｐ

哀　衰

合―　　会う；

儀　義

熟　塾

腸　　腹

震　振るう

激 - intense / 極 ? extreme

摸 ? pattern　／　模 - model

傾　- incline　／　偏　- lean or be predisposed to

ｅ救　求める

SARC ? Some people say Japanese don’t “get sarcasm,” because they don’t understand the “I’ll say the opposite of what I mean and it never stops being funny” concept. Japanese sarcasm tends towards subtle irony ,and can be pretty rewarding if you can determine that a joke has, in fact, been made. To help you pick up on the difference between eastern and western sarcasm, I’ve tagged some of the better / more obvious examples.



DUPE - aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh another only-in-Japanese irritation: the DUPLICATE. that means, two (or more!!!) kanji that have the same kunyomi, and even the same meaning. It’s like when they imported the kanji from China, Chinese had too many words so the Japanese had some kanji left over. “Dude! We got a lot of Japanese words with 2 or 3 nuances to ‘em. Let’s assign the leftover kanji to the different nuances of our words!” “Yeah, that will help clear up a lot of the misunderstandings we have in spoken Japanese.” “or else we could just speak very directly and to the point?” “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, Toshio-san, you’re a funny motherfucker!”

LAZY : some kanji have the same on and kun yomis. I say that is not nearly difficult or inefficient enough ? why did they pass up a perfectly good chance to mess with foreigners’ minds? they must have felt lazy.

BOOBOO; this warming means that the word is usually mistranslated in textbooks or dictionaries. I don’t want you to sound like a noob, so I give this warning and try to clear up the misconception.

(NUBI) - a kunyomi which never used by itself- only used in certain phrases. It makes more sense to just teach the phrases, otherwise you’ll use the kunyomi all willy-nilly and sound like a noob.

ABSOLUTE RADICAL: any kanji can theoretically be a radical in a bigger kanji, but ABSOLUTE RADICALS are only ever radicals. (to make matters confusing, some absolute radicals are composed of other, smaller ab-rads. don’t think about this. just proceed)

MY MEANING; sometimes when a radical doesn’t have a meaning, I’ll just go ahead and make up one. I tag these rads with “MY MEANING” so you don’t have a frustrating conversation with your Japanese friend about “The hell-

KUN YOMI TAGS:

RADICAL TAGS:

MUTANT RADICAL; some very common PRIMARY KANJI change shape when they are used as radicals. they tend to get squished and simplified. These simplified, squished versions are MUTANT RADICALS.



bunny radical.” “What?”

STRONG RAD: Strong radicals are good because they help you guess the on-yomis of kanji. If most of the kanji featuring that radical all have the same on-yomi, I say that radical is STRONG. note that I said ‘most,’ not ‘all.’ STRONG RADICALS are things like 士 (shi) and (KEN) and 中 (chuu). If you see a kanji with 士 in it, most likely the onyomi will be SHI.

One more thing: SWELL RADICALS are usually on the left side, STRONG RADICALS are usually located on the right side of a kanji. So if you are stumped by a new (or, heh, forgotten) kanji, check the right-side radical for clues of its on-yomi.

SAME ON: this means that the kanji’s on-yomi is the same on-yomi as one of the radicals in it (usually a STRONG RADICAL). So if you’re like me and always forget on-yomis, you can use the SAME ON warnings to strengthen the association between certain radicals and certain on-yomis.

NP (newspaper word) All languages have a very formal version ? even English: (“Your Honour, if it please the court to introduce the writ of habeas corpus?” “Indubitably my good chap!”) But as usual, Japanese has to take a common linguistic phenomenon and bug it out until it’s totally incomprehsnsible to foreigners. In this case of nihongo-buggin’, in ADDITION to the formal Japanese (used only when talking to the Boss) , there’s a WHOLE NOTHER SET OF WORDS which are used in very every-day settings ? announcements on the loudspeakers of train stations, television news reports, newspapers, etc. ? some of these words are the most common and useful in Japanese, and yet most people will never ever say them. They’re only HEARD WORDS. or READ WORDS. I call these words NEWSPAPER WORDS, although they might be better called ANNOUNCEMENT WORDS. A common noob mistake is when a foreigner ? having just learned the words ? says them out loud. She figured that since they describe

SWELL RAD: if most kanji featuring a given radical have similar meanings, I’ll tag that radical with a SWELL tag. That means that if you can’t guess the meaning of a kanji, but you remember that one of the radicals is SWELL, you can guess the meaning based on that.

JUKUGO / KUN TAGS:



common things like trains leaving the station, they must be useful. ha! Everyone giggles at that kind of noob. I am trying to spare you the indignity, and that is why I tag all the NP words with NP.

I would say that you can get by in society without ever learning formal Japanese, but you definitely need to know NEWSPAPER WORDS if you ever want to catch a train or read an article about your step-mom skipping bail. To make matters even worse, most every NEWSPAPER WORD has a more casual equivalent that regular folks use, and you gotta learn those too!

NEOLOGISM: Remember how people always laugh at the French because they outlawed the word “hamburger,” and they don’t say ‘email,’ they gotta say, ‘XXXXX?’ When an English word gets popular, they stone cold invent a French version, rather than polluting their language with outside terms? Well, back in the pre WWII days, Japan did the same thing. Today if they want to import a new word, they’ll use katakana. but back in the Tojo days, speaking the words of inferior mongrels was pretty gauche. What they’d do was, break the foreign compound word down into its basic parts, then find the kanji which corresponded to those parts, and make a new Japanese word ? a NEOLOGISM. of course, these ‘pure’ words were written in Chinese, but whatever. When have racists ever made sense?

OBSOLETE ? a medieval word rarely used anymore. but sometimes we need obsolete kanji because , as a radical, they are still used in a lot of kanji.

ON KEYWORD - this one is a problem that’s actually my fault. You know how I treat on-yomis as a kind of radical , and assign each of them one English keyword to use in mnemonics? well, some of the ONyomi s got Japanese keywords.

You know how lots of onyomis got long-vowel and short-vowel versions? like SHU vs. SHUU, or KO vs. KOU? I personally have a really hard time keeping them straight. And how am I supposed to tell you 2 English keywords for basically the same sound? Am I supposed to say something like,“OK, think of SHOE for SHU, and SHOO like ‘scram!’ for SHUU.” Oh hell no, that is too confusing.

Well, in an effort to help you tell long-vowel ONyomis apart from short-vowel ONyomis, I decided to use Japanese for all the short-vowel ONyomi keywords, and English for their (far more common) long-vowel counterparts.



So if you remember the mnemonic for a word, you’ll automatically remember whether it’s long- or short- vowel!

Anyway, the first time you encounter a short-vowel ON such as SHU, or TO, or KO, I’ll post this “ON KEYWORD” alert, and tell you, “From now on, any time you meet a new kanji with this same short-vowel ON, I want you to think of this kanji!” and that’s what ‘on keyword.’ means! It is not a part of my system I am proud of, but it’s less confusing than anything else I could dream up.

OK, there are 2 parts of the sometimes-hiragana-sometimes-kanji phenomenon that are rational: 1 -if a kanji is written as kana in one jukogo, it’ll probably be written as kana in all the jukugos. 2 - DUPLICATE kanji kunyomis tend to be written as hiragana, because even Japanese people bum out on how complex duplicates are.

AMARI - amari in Japanese means ‘not very often’ or ‘not very much.’ AMARI words aren’t that useful, but I didn’t feel comfortable cutting them out of the dick altogether. Unless you’re planning to live in Japan forever, you can skip these.

FUCKED PRONUNCIATION - my immature way of letting you know the pronunciation of a jukugo is an exception to the rule.

FP don't neccesairly mean that the current kanji is pronounced wrong - it could be the other kanji in the jukugo.

KANA - another only-in-Japanese headache: many kanj are sometimes written in hiragana. That is to say, ALL of them CAN be written in hiragana. But some of them are 99% of the time written in hiragana ? like ???????????????????. I don’t even bother writing these in the book. But then there are others that are hiragana 66% of the time, but you still need to know the kanji because of the other 33%. And then there are literally hundreds of jukugo where the first kanji is kanji but the second kanji is always hiragana. or vice versa. what the hell is up with that?

It’s irritating, I know: make up your minds, guys!! Anyway, when a word is usually written in hiragana, I give it the KANA tag.



KUNKUN - like I said before, we use the on-yomi for jukugo. Unless there’s okurigana. But there’s always some jukugo that use KUNyomis, even though there are no okurigana. These are exceptions to the rule, and I tag them KUNKUN. This is my way of saying, “no, you’re not crazy, this word is actually pronounced the wrong way. it’s not your fault.”

KUN ON ? same deal. jukugo which mix kun and on yomis.

4 : HOW TO TELL SIMILAR LOOKING KANJI APART:1) if you know the meaning of both X and Y, but can’t figure out which one is right in front of you, concentrate on the one radical that is DIFFERENT between them. That is all. No matter how complicated X and Y are, you know there’s one little part that’s different, and that is all you have to know.

The good news is, using my “additive method,” most of the lookalike problems solve themselves. . .but ONLY IF YOU MEMORIZED THE MNEMONICS.

Also, stories are the easiest way to tell similar-looking kanji apart. for example, overcome (克） looks a lot like inform (告）. they even have the same ONyomi (koku)! but overcome is composed of the kanji for ten　(十) + the kanji for "older brother" (兄)　, whereas inform is composed of

hurl ( )+ mouth (口） . if , thanks to the stories that go with each kanji, have their radicals memorized, it's hella easy to tell them apart. in other words, 　克　looks 90% identical to 告, but the story "ten older brothers" sounds very different from "hurl a mouth."!!!! So for this reason I am going to include the stories with my kanji cards.

PN - PROPER NOUN - this kanji is often used in names of people or places. Proper nouns in Japanese usually but not always take the kun reading.



In the cases where the look-alikes are not near each other in the dictionary, I have written a warning: “don’t mistake this guy for that guy!” and then I have written a whole separate set of mini-mnemonics that just concentrate on the one radical that is different between X and Y. But here is a warning: DON’T USE THESE MNEMONICS UNLESS YOU HAVE TROUBLE TELLING X FROM Y. Otherwise it is too much information: you will go, “Hey, those DO look alike! I didn’t think so before, but now that you mention it. . .” and then you will be more confused than you were before you read it. Don’t mess with those LOOKALIKE bits, unless you are really in trouble with those kanji.

First, and this is obvious ? check the context. If you can’t remember if it’s kanji A or kanji B, the context should help you. For example, “Fuck, ‘eternity’ looks like ‘swim’! I can never tell those bastards apart. Wait ? this sentence is about the ocean. Ok, I guess it’s ‘swim’ then.”

If that don’t help, say all the radicals’ keywords aloud a few times ? maybe that’ll make the mnemonic pop up in your memory.

Where possible, I have also put look-alikes next to each other in the dictionary. This is not to confuse you ? this is so you can compare them easily. I think that similar-looking guys should be taught together, because mostly when I mistake X for Y, it is because I have not seen Y in a long time and I forgot how it is different from X! so by putting them together it avoids this problem. Rock on, me.

LESSON 5 : MORE TIPS AND TRICKS BLUFFING : GUESSING THE MEANING OR PRONUNCIATION OF KANJIS THAT YOU TOTALLY FORGOT WHAT THE FUCK IT IS



Draw the kanji! ? this also sometimes knocks the memory loose.

if you're trying to read a jukugo and get stuck on one of the kanji, try to think of another jukugo that uses that same kanji. Not only is this an effective way to remember, if you can remember, that’s one of the best moments of studying Japanese :"AHA! so THAT'S where i know this fucker from!!"

Remember ? if there’s okurigana, you gotta use the kunyomi!

Check for ‘swell radicals’ ? radicals that actually DO have meaning.

If you’re having trouble finding it in your dictionary, try these tricks: If you’re looking under the ON yomis and it ain’t there, try looking under the KUN yomis. If the jukugo is long, and you can’t find it in the dictionary, maybe it’s two words. Try just looking up the first 2 kanji. If the first kanji is a common prefix such as, 無　不　反、 then try looking up the word without the prefix. If you can’t remember whether the ON has a short vowel or a long vowel, try remembering the mnemonic ? the English keyword for the short vowel is gonna be different than for the long vowel. If you have absolutely no clue what the ON yomi is ? ask yourself, does the right-side radical look like the right-side radical of another kanji that you DO know? maybe it’s a ‘strong radical’ - maybe it has the same ON yomi as that other kanji.

If nothing else works, chances are you got a ‘ten ten and maru’ problem on your sweaty little hands. ‘ten ten’ are the two little dots that change HO to BO or change KA to GA or SHA to JA. Maru is the little circle that changes HO to PO or HE to PE. These never go on the first kanji in a jukugo. Usually they go on the first syllable of the second kanji. My first teacher explained them this way: “Japanese people invented them because to pronounce the words in a regular way would be too difficult.” I think the whole class laughed at her, although maybe I just wanted them all to have laughed at her. Difficult? God forbid that Japanese would ever be THAT. Let’s invent 20 whole new phonemes to cut down on the difficulty, sure! Then let’s apply those 20 new phonemes at arbitrary places! Anyway, long story short, if you can’t find a word in the dictionary, try changing the first syllable of the second kanji to a ten-ten or a maru and see what happens.



6 - HOW TO STUDY REAL GOOD, BESIDES JUST READING THE BOOK

If you DO have to crack open your dictionary, don’t just nod, “aha!” and keep reading. No no no. You need to write the kanji down like 10 times while saying the mnemonic. If you don’t have time, at least make a list of “kanji I fucked up on while reading this book” so you can study them later.

? write the information from this book on flash-cards. Personally I’m only putting this on the internet because it’s free for you and free for me. But if you’re like me, trying to study on the internet, with porn and youtube only a click away, is just futile. Cards are the way to go, because they’re tiny. you can whip ‘em out and study in line at the bank, at a red light, waiting for the bus, or whenever you got nothing else going on. I even study with my cards when I am in a traffic jam on the freeway, although I don’t recommend it. ? Yeah, make cards for the radicals too, lazybones! ? Put numbers on the cards, so you can keep them in the order I so laboriously constructed. ? If you are writing a card for, say, 郡 , leave space on it for other kanji you mix up with 郡。 Later when you fuck up and confuse 群 with 郡 , you can write “it’s NOT 群 !!” in the corner and be reminded of that. ? When you are learning a new word, draw it a bunch while repeating the radicals of the kanji. All gritting your teeth and muttering, “earth, rifle, mouth, plate. . . earth, rifle, mouth, plate…” over and over. And then write it some more while saying the mnemonic. That way, tomorrow when you already forgot what the kanji means, if you squint at it and say the names of the radicals, the story should theoretically just pop into your head.!! “earth. . . rifle. .. mouth. . pl?SALT!!! THAT’S FUCKIN’ SALT!! 塩！！“　 and then the cute guy next to you in line at the bank will all look at you like,



FOR INDIVIDUAL KANJIS;

Take a blank study-card, and write the kanji on one side. Then write down the (arbitrary, meaningless) keywords on the other side, then write the mnemonic sentence that combines the keywords with the meaning of the kanji.

“who is this fucking spaz??” but that is your problem, not mine. ? when it comes to jukugos, like I said 10 times before ? use the same method you used on kanji: instead of ‘radical a plus radical b equals kanji c’ it’s ‘kanji a plus kanji b equals jukugo c’. . . in other words, write down the jukugo AND write down the English keywords of the individual kanjis on the other side of the card, and make up a mnemonic that includes the keywords and the meanings. This method has 2 more benefits. one, even if you forget what the jukugo means, if you remember the keywords of the individual kanjis, you can usually guess the jukugo meaning. two, if you remember the mnemonic of the individual kanjis, you should be able to remember the onyomi too, since that is part of the mnemonic ? and with the on-yomis you can use your dictionary! For some kanji (particularly those where their jukugos use KUN readings instead of ON readings, like they’re supposed to - such as 名　ＯＲ　物) I always get the KUN and ON readings mixed up . I get stuck in one of those awful “OK, it’s the oppoaiste of what I think it is. But now I think it’s the opposite of THAT,. . .crap!” brain-freezes. Anyway if you get stuck like that, here’s an easy tip: learn kun and on together in the same order - as if it was one big word. that's one strategy. to keep from getting them mixed up. of course this trick doesn’t work all the time: some words have like 4 kun yomis. But here’s another thing: once you learn a kanji ON separate from the KUN, it’s reeealy hard to re-learn it again as one-big-word. So if you want to take the one-big-word approach, you should start early. good news! The method of learning kanji that I’ll teach you - you can use the same process to study jukugo! Radical A + Radical B = Kanji C. Kanji C + Kanji D = Jukugo E.

for JUKUGO CARDS: take a blank study- card and write the compound word on one side. then write down the meanings of the individual kanji on the other side, and make up a mnemonic sentence that combines the meanings of the kanji with the meaning of the jukugo!



APPENDICKS:

ONE - ALL THE ON-YOMI KEYWORDS TWO - RADICALS AND PRIMARY KANJI IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE THREE - DUPLICATE KANJI FOUR -ATTRIBUTES AND TAGS

FIVE -SAMPLE FLASHCARDS

? ? write me. like all things on the internet, this is a continual work-in-progress. I'm working alone, doing this in my non-existent spare time, so there will doubtless be 100 mistakes. if you spot one, please let me know. 　Especially if there are 2 kanjis that you keep mixing up, tell me so i can add them to the list of "hard-to-tell-apart DMW dudes." or if there's a kanji that is not listed. Or if you are some kind of HTML/JAVA genius that likes a challenge, contact me and we can try turning this into a real web-page.

click here to go to the actual dictionary!


Miscellaneous Concepts: Mastering Japanese Kanji - 7 Guerilla Tactics

Monday, October 29, 2007

Mastering Japanese Kanji - 7 Guerilla TacticsMastering Japanese Kanji - 7 Guerilla Tactics

The adoption in around the 6th century CE of kanji by the Japanese

from Chinese emissaries was a blessing for the Japanese language

since it was the first time the language appeared in written form. At

the same time, the act was destined to seem like a curse for the

thousands of non-native Japanese speakers who have tried their hand

at learning kanji. Simply put: mastering kanji is hard!

To the brain of the typical Westerner who has been raised on an

alphabet-based Indo-European language like English, Spanish, or

German, the prospect of learning and mastering kanji presents a

special challenge. Each kanji is a pictograph, ideograph or phono-

semiotic (ouch!) character and can consist of up to twenty individual

strokes which need to be drawn in a particular order. Most kanji have

three or more possible pronunciations and must be used in

combination with one or more other kanji just to form a single word.

So, where does one start on the road toward mastery? Rather than

repeat for you the conventional wisdom about mastering kanji, I will

share with you seven tactics I learned as a veteran kanji studier.

In my case, I needed all the help I could get: after four years of

university study of Japanese, I was still a kanji novice. The secrets I

share with you here are the hard-won knowledge that helped me to

pass Level 1 (most difficult) of the Japanese Language Proficiency

http://patism66.blogspot.com/2007/10/mastering-japanese-kanji-7-guerilla.html (1 of 4) [9/30/2008 9:23:44 PM]

http://patism66.blogspot.com/2007/10/mastering-japanese-kanji-7-guerilla.html

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Test (JLPT) after just 15 months of self-study while working a full

time job. And, the beauty of it is: you can use them right where you

are RIGHT NOW to master kanji.

Tactic #1: Ignore the conventional study order:

Sure, start with the first 100 to 200 of the 1945 jouyou (common use)

kanji until you get your feet wet. But then, dive right into the hard

ones whenever you come across them, no matter how unfamiliar.

This may seem like a harder road to tread initially, but the time you

save in not having to distinguish between the kanji on your study list

and those you are saving for later means more time and energy you

can devote to studying.

Tactic #2: Parts is parts:

Learn first the meaning of 20 or 30 of the most commonly-occurring

of the 214 radicals (i.e., basic building blocks of kanji) found on the

front, inside cover of any kanji dictionary to become familiar with

the majority of the kanji you encounter. Once you do, you will reap

the rewards as you start to see each new kanji as a puzzle to be

deciphered. You will recognize the individual components of the new

kanji right away. This process is called "chunking" and goes like this:

learning three, five-stroke components of a kanji is much easier than

trying to remember fifteen individual strokes. Know the parts and

the rest will be just a matter of putting the pieces together.

Tactic #3: Jump right into the hard stuff:

This refers specifically to the study of the written word rather than



individual kanji. Even if you are a beginner, go ahead and read a bit

of advanced text every day (newspapers, books, etc. ). This method

is great for becoming familiar with the most common kanji

combinations as they occur in their natural environments. By doing

this, each seemingly foreign configuration of strokes will quickly

become second-nature to you.

Tactic #4: Read aloud:

There are three major aspects to mastering a kanji: recognizing its

structure/shape, knowing what it means, and being able to

pronounce it correctly. A hugely efficient way of studying is to read

aloud whenever possible. Reading kanji aloud is a great way to kill

three birds (learning structure/shape, meaning, and sound) with one,

big, noisy stone.

Tactic #5: Take your time in choosing your favorite learning

materials:

One or more of any number of characteristics of a given kanji

dictionary or study guide (e.g., font type/size, look-and-feel of the

binding, cover design, paper quality: even the author photo or the

smell of the ink) can affect whether you want to read more or just

put it down and watch the Discovery Channel instead. Pay attention

to your first impressions: if a book was recommended by a friend as

"the best ever" but you just do not seem to click with it, boldly cast

it aside and move on. You will be rewarded by much better retention

if you study using the materials with which you feel most



comfortable.

Tactic #6: Utilize multiple sources of the written word:

Science tells us that our brains are "plastic" in that the connections

between our brain cells actually become stronger and more plentiful

when we are exposed to new stimuli. Thus, be sure to expose

yourself to the countless ways that kanji are represented in written

form: books, newspapers, magazines, manga, street signs, legal

texts, your sewage bill (if you live in Japan), cereal boxes - you name

it! You will be rewarded with a quick advance in the rate of your

kanji retention.

Tactic #7: Avoid getting hung up on the stubborn ones:

Set aside as special cases those kanji that you just cannot seem to

make stick in your mind rather than keeping them as a part of your

regular study routine. Doing so yields two powerful benefits. First,

you can start feeling good again about the kanji you are learning just

fine (thank you very much) and thereby maintain a steady pace as

you review them in groups. Second, by singling out the troublemakers

you make a special point to study them on their own terms and for

what they are, thereby actually increasing your speed of mastery.

So, buck convention and get on the road to becoming a kanji master!

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i Teach You the Kanji Real Good_ Schultz's Japanese _ Page

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