It is so pleasant to listen to George talking! Everything he says makes sense. It is very reassuring to know that you can fully trust someone and that you can draw upon his experience and knowledge! It is so powerful. Thank you George!
hell no!!! you are crazy man. He said it right, you should get the book because their series always give you extra work. Thanks to that i'm able to work on my korean alot, which i really need
@@deniwastaken I think it’s definitely possible to learn all the kanji. I was raised a Chinese mandarin speaker, so our entire writing system is using kanji. There’s about 50,000 something Chinese characters, and you need to know at least 3,4 thousand to get by. I know around 5,000, and I really don’t think 2000 is impossible to achieve
I'm japanese and your explanation on pitch in speaking japanese is so correct. We have 47 prefectures and each prefecture has its own original pitch and accent and we can understand what we talk each other if it's not ridiculously uncommon and rare dialect.
I use "Remembering the Kanji" anki to supplement my Kanji learning. I find when I learn a Kanji character it makes more sense to me if I have learned the English meaning beforehand in RTK. So yes by itself RTK is pointless but as a supplement I find it quite useful.
I used RTK when I was in a similar situation to the author. New in Japan with no Japanese knowledge. People forget how the book came about. Way back when, the author arrived to work at a Japanese university and was sent on a language course which he hated so he skipped class, did loads of research and then taught himself nearly two thousand kanji in a matter of weeks. His motivation was to put himself on par with Chinese students who started learning Japanese from scratch, but already knew the kanji. He got into a lot of trouble for this, but eventually convinced his Japanese colleagues that he really did know what all those kanji meant. Other people wanted to use his method so he wrote it all out neatly and made copies. Demand grew and eventually the first book emerged. When critics pointed out that he could neither speak or read Japanese he asked to be put in a situation where he was with Japanese kids instead of in a language school. The speaking and eventual fluency (including reading and writing) came by immersion in Japanese life.
I got this book only a fortnight ago and already Kanji make a million times more sense. I'm actually inspired to continue my Japanese again. It's more interesting like finding a secret new level in a game. Thanks sensei
Great teaching. 蚕食means "silkworm eats". Silkworms devour mulberry leaves slowly. It normally means slow, secretive encroachment. Chinese has the exact same expression.
Wow, I am so glad I scrolled down and saw this comment- when I saw that word- 蚕食, it made no sense to me how it could possibly mean "encroachment" (because I knew the kanji 蚕 (which, interestingly enough, was easy to memorize since it consists of 天 and 虫 together (~"heavenly insect"= "silkworm") and also the kanji 食, but seeing them together simply made me think of "silkworm food" and I was confused...but now I see how it relates based on your explanation- you have provided me a way to remember it- 謝謝！
And i always have the feeling that you don't understand RTK. I mean yes, just learning RTK doesnt take you anywhere in your japanese studies, thats totally true. Okay you can understand some things in japan, like what toilets are for woman and which one are for the men, that's useful lol But RTK teaches you the writing and the meaning of all kanjis in a rather short time. If you're not lazy it can be done in 3 months, even if you are lazy it can be done in half a year. And then you basically now the meaning and writing of every kanji. Now with this knowledge, learning the readings in context is much more easy. You already know the kanjis, so attaching the learned readin for it (in context, thats important) is much more simple. I tried learning the kanjis without RTK in context with words, but even after repeating and repeating, i still forgot the kanjis. They just wouldn't stick in my mind and i couldn't write them from memory. What am i supposed to do in these situations? Write every kanji over 100 times? RTK fixed all these problems for me. What most of us do when learning kanji is the really hard way, just like japanese school kids. But japanese school kids have one thing that we doesnt have: the already speak fluent japanese before learning kanji. So even the hard way is easier for them than for us. And it still takes them over 10 years of school. Hell no, we can get fluent in japanese with all the kanji and stuff in 2-3 years.
I agree, I love RTK alongside my studies and it’s the perfect way for my memory. It’s good to have options for those who don’t like it, but I feel he’s bashing RTK just because it’s his biggest competition... I love all the free resources on the JFZ site/channel, and maybe if I was starting out now I would have chosen to start with his books, but I feel that the books are meant more for casual learners and that’s completely okay. To me JFZ isn’t a competition to Genki, Minna no Nihingo, etc. It’s an alternative for those who won’t benefit from those books, and the Kanji From Zero isn’t an alternative to RTK it’s an addition to JFZ. I know people who love the JFZ books though, they obviously work for those who study that way. I’ll stick to my RTK though.
Totally agree with you! I just learned of RTK last month! and I ordered it as soon as I heard of it. :) IT is a fantastic tool! background story of me, I began to learn Japanese back in the early 2000's, when I was going to college, I enjoyed it. BUT! the damn kanji scared me, I pretty much stopped learning the language after 2005. I did kept hearing it around, I am from Los Angeles so you run into lots of Japanese speakers, so I never forgot the basic stuff or the writing. Well then, this year I gave myself a personal goal to study Japanese again and to really get into studying it. I made this personal goal because of Kobe Bryant and his untimely passing, it scared me that he was just 4 years older than me and died out of no where. SO! now I am keeping this goal and I am going to try my best to learn Japanese and battle through the kanji. As for RTK, amazing! that just learning that the Chinese primitive forms of voice+number five+mouth=five senses is pretty much the Kanji form of "go"/language. I would've never realized that on my own! let alone! if we take out the primitive form of voice out of that kanji, you get "iu" to talk... again! I would've never figured that out on my own. It is all thanks to RTK. As a visual learner, breaking apart the Kanji in that manner really makes sense in my brain. I need to see the kanji/Chinese writing get visually created in my mind. RTK has been a god send for me. :)
Idk man matt vs japan changed how he recommends people do rtk because people learned the kanji so fast that they would end up forgetting them. So now he recommends you learn the lazy kanji so you can read asap and then do a follow-up doing rtk the right way.
I've always favored learning words with their kanji. The meaning of the kanji tend to relate to the words they're in, and if the word is just one kanji and nothing else, it's really easy. Plus you learn only the readings that you need to know. There are some kanji that have waaaay too many readings (like 上 for example) so it's easier to learn them on a word-by-word basis rather than guessing which reading is right. When I make flashcards for studying, I write the word with any kanji it normally has and no furigana or other reading aid. I do add a sound file just in case I forget how to read it, but I usually don't need it after a couple times through. Once I can recognize a word and remember what it means and how to say it, then I practice writing each unique kanji in the set of words I'm working on. Since I already know which ones go into each word, that makes writing the words correctly easy as well. Of course, most of the time I can just type things out, so I'm still debating if it's really necessary to learn how to handwrite words. But I think it's better to be able to and not have to than to have to and not be able to. Anyway, my point is learning kanji specifically has always felt like a waste of time to me. Just learn them with the words so you focus on the ones you need and don't have to worry about the ones you don't.
@@theofit Not OP, but I do something similar. I use Anki flashcards. I have 5 flashcards per word. Here's how I would do 犬 (dog) 1. Front: What does this mean? recording of word Back: picture of an dog "dog" recording 犬 いぬ Goal for this card: think of an image of a dog (The back is the same for all cards) 2. What does this mean? 犬 Goal: think of an image of a dog 3. What's the reading for 犬? Text box for typing the answer (いぬ) Goal: correctly type "いぬ" 4. How do you spell this? Recording Text box for answer (犬) Goal: correctly type "犬" 5. What's the word for this? Picture of a dog "Dog" Goal: say out loud "いぬ"
I am truly grateful for what you do for us George. Taking all this time writing books and making videos to help us learn a new language--and you make it fun for us! I got the Kanji From Zero book a couple weeks ago, and I'm gonna start looking into some simple kanji seeing as though I just finished the first JFZ book today. The second JFZ book arrived today as well :) Once again, thank you so much George!
10 mins in and you are such a great teacher! i have jfz books and bought kfz 1 in advance too and im so excited to dive in. I have genki too to mix in my learning but your teaching approach works better for me if i had to pick one! i feel like im actually learning real foundations as opposed to being bombarded with just so many informations and not knowing how to use them properly. and thank you for your videos you are an awesome teacher!
George, I officially finished the Japanese from zero book 1! and am about 50 pages into Japanese from zero book 2! (second lesson). I have been flipping back and forth in both kanji from zero and Japanese from zero book 2. It's been working out really well! ! ! I use hello talk too to talk to native speakers and i have been told my writing and grammar skills are improving.Thank you so much for creating the kanji from zero series, and the japanese from zero series! (hoping to get into book 3 in the next couple months).
I've been watching the JFZ video series, and heard about this series on the 3rd book playlist. I am thinking about buying the books, so I have been watching all the videos so far. Great work man you are helping many people learn.
OMG!!! Thank you so much for explaining kunyomi vs onyomi. I am working in JFZ1 and have learned more in a week than the years I've been practicing. Thank you!!!!
Glad to hear you say we shouldn’t worry about accent! 😂 it’s so true though, when speaking with foreigners in English I never criticize their accent-I am usually just impressed with their English! I’m halfway through Japanese from Zero Book 1, I think I’ll order the kanji book too 👍🏻 !
Yeeeeah! Just got the first kanji from zero. It starts you off on days of the week (which is where I am at the moment. [I'm hopping around all the books doing what I can first. Sorry this is a wall of text. I'm super excited.] Absolutely love the kanji from zero book. It's easier to read when it's not in romaji. Started off with learning hiragana and katakana with a phone app and received Japanese from zero 1 and 2 and the romaji made it a tad bit more difficult lol. Anyway absolutely love it. Can't wait for the next kanji from zero books. ありがとうございます ジョージ先生 ( I really hope I got that right. Sorry, too excited to learn kanji
I'm Learning 6 new kanji per day, along with an occasional grammar lesson ( my grammar is as advanced as JFZ4 takes you, so pretty decent ). I try to learn at least 3 readings of the Kanji and make 10 sentences with it ( so about 60 sentences and 18 readings ), overall I spent about 2 hours everyday learning Japanese. I also practice quite a lot in my Japanese class, Hello talk, and listening to podcasts when I work out. I don't know if my plan is good, but hopefully by the end of 2019, I'll be able to read at least 1000 Kanji. Japanese is my fourth language so I'm also on my way towards becoming a Polyglot.
@@zkaine7083 Wow, I just saw this, and it has been a while. My response here will be a bit more elaborate than you were perhaps expecting. Rereading my comment made me realize how naive I was, a bit of a recap. I finished all the JFZ books and also went on to study from a couple of Genki books, I memorized around 1200 Kanji in total, and went on my first trip to Japan (大阪) right before the pandemic started. I felt pretty comfortable reading Japanese manga, but I could not for the life of me hold a decent conversation, it felt like I could never get my point across, even though I was able to understand, if not outright, contextually, pretty much every word being spoken to me, I just never felt comfortable talking to other Japanese people that didn't know at least a bit of English, or Spanish, or French, or German ( yeah I started learning German around this time, my girlfriend was german, and love is a powerful motivator ) at this point life got in the way, I started university and began working part-time, because of this I had relatively little time to study Japanese, or anything else for that matter, I'm finishing my degree in Applied Physics this winter. The last time I sat down and studied Japanese grammar was about 2 and a half years ago, and I was not anywhere near fluent then, I think to become fluent, it's necessary to have the need to speak the language, as supposed to just a want. I would say though if you are perhaps beginning this journey, or maybe already have, that it is completely worth it, and whilst I wasn't able to reach fluency, I was able to read a ton of books, and meet a ton of people that I wouldn't have met otherwise. A year ago or so I went to a conference in 東京 with some of my colleagues from a laboratory I performed some research in, and I was basically their guide for the entire duration of the trip, and even though my Japanese was trash, they still held me in incredibly high regard, and even though I don't work there anymore, they always shoot me an invitation to join them anytime they have a conference in Japan. Hope you found this interesting.
@@bmartinez7173 This is great insight to what it can do for you though for sure & I really appreciate your response back about it all. I just started two months back learning & its great to know what is definitely needed to become fluent with s0eaking instead of just a basic understanding & contextualization. I really appreciate this response & congratulations on nearly finishing the degree!
I'm currently studying kanji using the Hesig method and I just want throw inn my two cents. I don't think it is necessary to focus on the readings when you're first learning kanji. It just slows you down. Learning to recognize the kanji characters is far more important imo. Once you're able to do that, you can learn the readings with vocabulary. The main reason why I like this method is because it's FAST. I can recognize 100+ kanji on sight thanks to mnemonics. This is with ONE week of study. Note that I do not say I KNOW 100+ kanji. That will take some time yet. But seeing words which consist of kanji that I recognize is such a good feeling. I came across this word the other day: 初見. I didn't know how it was pronounced but I could guess at the meaning. Sure enough, it was しょけん which means, 'Seeing for the first time.' (according to Jisho.org.) Of course, I don't expect every word to be this straightforward. But my point is that When you learn readings of kanji in context, i'e through vocabulary. They tend to stick with you.
Ryu K - Imagine learning English by looking at the pattern of letters. You learn a few hundred patterns without knowing how to say the pattern. I think the Heisig method has value, and that value is different for each individual. For you it seems to work. But the thing is the majority of students goals when learning Japanese is to speak it. Not just recognize meanings of the symbols Japanese uses. I know people who have succeeded with multiple approaches. I think the people who succeed in one approach would do just as well in the other approach because they are dedicated to the process. I am personally not a fan of the Heisig method since I learned with my own method. And you will probably always be a fan of Heisig since it is what you used. For either of us to agree that Heisig is good / bad would be similar to me or you denouncing our religion. Human nature :-)
Ryu K, Same. I don't know how some people can learn new words that contain some ''weird symbols'' that they don't even recognize or having a hard time to distingvish one kanji from another. Just in case someone else might read it. Different people, have different goals. For example, I wanted to be able to read and watch movies/tv shows in English (success there). As the result - horrible accent and quit limited writing skills... English grammar and tons of ''unnecessary'' stuff in a sentence don't help my case. Thank god, Japanese for some reason is suprisingly similar to Russian. Anyway, I'm learning Japanese for fun and in case of a success my goal is the same. Being able to read manga and maybe to watch some anime.
Well, the huge difference is that you have something to sell people. So, of course you're going to say the Heisig method is bad. You have a financial interest in making people think the Heisig method is bad, which it's not. The Heisig method works with Japanese because the Kanji are pictographs.
thanks George for your hard work on these books, i am a subscriber to your online lessons, and just placed my order for kanji from zero, I have been studying kanji using other methods which are working for me , but you can never have too much learning material. Once again keep up the good work.
Rtk is not meant for remembering the pronunciations of the Kanji. The real advantage of rtk is that you can get it done in a couple of months rather than years, and you can start learning vocabulary with Kanji much sooner(rather than using furigana). Rtk allows you to learn the meaning of upwards of 20 Kanji a day. Even 40 if you want. Then later when learning vocabulary, you see the Kanji and it helps to not only remember the vocabulary, but it helps you learn the readings gradually. Here's an example. The word for healthy, lively etc, 元気(genki) is a lot easier to remember if you know the Kanji. I can remember that the Kanji that make up genki are beginning and spirit. I now know that the first Kanji,元can be read as gen and 気 can be read as ki and so on. And later on when I run into a word like 天気(weather) I see 気 and I draw a parallel and figure that that may be pronounced ki. So I look it up and sure enough, the word is tenki. And now I know that the Kanji for heavans can be pronounced ten. This provides, in my opinion a much more natural way to learn vocabulary. However the method is not perfect. This is why I always recommend to learn vocabulary along with the Kanji, to not only reinforce the retention of the Kanji, but to learn the readings that the book does not teach you.
nahh the standard way is better than that you still get to draw associations AND you dont have to waste time learning the pronunciation and meaning separately
One thing to note is that the word 和語 originated from China/ it was created from borrowed elements from Chinese. 和語 is also known as Sino-Japanese words. The original term is 大和言葉 and this word was inherited from "Old Japanese". 大和言葉 is a word that describes itself (it is a word describing non-borrowed Japanese words while it is one itself) and words like these are called autological words.
Hello George, I don't know if someone has already told you that in Kanji from zero book on p.34 in the Kanji matching task there is a typo. The Kanji for the number "one" is matched with the hiragana "itsu". If you already knew this.. well then i just wasted a minute of both of our time and I'm sorry for it haha. Best regards Lars Hoffmann P.S. Your book is amazing. It is so much fun to study with it.
I have to say your video quality is AMAZING since you upgraded cameras. It was pretty good before, but the new one is just crazy crisp. And the content is still great, of course!
I agree the first book in the Remembering the Kanji trilogy is a bit strange in its method of wanting to teach you to associate a unique meaning to each Kanji and without any readings to accompany them. For that reason, you'll probably hear a number of people tell you to skip the first volume entirely. Maybe they're right, but I don't think the first book is entirely without merit. I do like the ordering of the Kanji used in the books. The Kanji are mostly grouped in such a way that Kanji that share the same "primitives" (I've also heard them go by the term "graphemes" elsewhere, but I prefer thinking of them as "radicals") are grouped together. The basic premise of the first half of the first book is that the author gives you his own example story/mnemonic involving the radicals for each Kanji and for the second half of the book you're gradually given less hints and encouraged to come up with your own stories to really make them your own. The second and third books, on the other hand, do provide a reading and example compund and order them a bit differently: radicals that always give a certain pronunciation when present in a Kanji, radicals that do so with one exception, Kanji that have no Chinese reading, and everything else that's too exceptional. If anything, RTK ordering does make for a good distinction between similar looking Kanji (KanjiDamage is similar). About the only other lists are Jouyou, JLPT, and newspaper frequency. Oh, by the way, I got a copy of Kanji From Zero Vol. 1 and I like it so far. There was one book I got once, Kanji Power, that was sort of a similar workbook, but that guy's book was like JLPT5/4 level Kanji only and not Jouyou-based and he never made another book after that one. So I'm looking forward to seeing this particular series going to completion in a timely manner (but of course not as much as I want to see Japanese From Zero 5).
Hey George I love your videos! I've been using them for two years and went to go see my Japanese girlfriend for the first time a week ago in Tokyo. Thank you for creating the videos and I hope you never stop
I love learning from your videos - I learn so much more and it all makes sense to me. I did buy that "remembering the kanji" and while I did learn the first, I dunno, fifty or so - it was driving me crazy because I would turn around and try to find out the japanese word since really, I want to learn Japanese - so yes, your criticism of that method is absolutely valid. I am looking forward to the arrival of Kanji from Zero Book one ;) In defense of the dead language Latin (and your daughter) the reason for learning Latin for most (not all) is that it is the language of science. New scientific terms, specific species names for animals and plants, and many other specific science and medical terms are latin based. So a basic knowledge of latin goes a long way if you decide later to say...study biology, or medicine, or pharmacology. Just saying...not trying to be a smart ass.
Sensei , ur Chanel is really helpful.I am Russian and currently study Japanese , I could not find even in my native language the good source that helps me to understand some important things in Japanese ..but your explanations works for me ,Thanks a lot !
I like Kanji because you can kind of guess meaning of sentence without actually reading it. But knowing Kanji without it's reading is pointless indeed.
Personally I find kanjis to be unnecessary. Sure, they can give you that meaning instantly instead of writing it. But there's a huge amount of them and not even japanese learn all of them. In most languages you only need some letters to convey points, and most of these letters can be reused without recurring to special characters to make those same points. Thus while kanjis save a huge amount of space and considering the huge amount of unique characters they can get confusing sometimes. I would've preferred if they added another way to simplify their wording like some gramatical rules or rules depending on context.
@assholemon I just love Kanji. Kanji symbolized Japan to me. and Kanji works for centuries and millions of people are able to use it. No need to change it just for bunch of lazy Kajkokujin :-) Is it more difficult than other writing systems? Yes, indeed, but its definitely more interesting to study it.
True, I'm using an app to learn them. I can see the benefits though (one being that tweets can have more info than western characters) and also I have to admit that it looks good.
Numian it's because heisig allows you to learn thousands of Kanji in a short amount of time, and how to write them. The entire premise of his book is to learn the characters separate from the reading actually makes learning Japanese faster (that's what heisig believes) Many people have had success because they chose to do it this way.
This series is going to be awesome!! I'll be picking up your book to go along with you and supplement my studies from Remembering The Kanji. Remembering The Kanji has been great for me but it is an unorthodox system and it's so sparse. Going through KFZ with you all in this series is going to be so much fun! I can't wait to learn more about the kanji. :)
13:52 This assumes your goal is being a fully literate Japanese speaker. If your goal is something as simple as simply being able to communicate with someone (verbally) in their native language without any plans whatsoever of needing literacy or being a part of the community at all then it's a complete waste of time. And I'm tired of having to pretend like my goal is not worth attaining because I won't be able to read, or sound like a native or whatever the hell else. As if I ever wanted to read in Japanese in the first place or pretend I'm as fluent as a native speaker when those aren't my goals.
I am going to buy your kanji from zero and also japanese from zero 1 and other series because i really learned a lot from you thank you so much and i will read your books thoroughly :)
I understand where you're coming from with RTK, but what most people don't understand is that it's not meant to be the end of your kanji study. First you learn to recognize the kanji, write it, start to become familiar with its meaning, then learn the readings in further study. For instance, I'd never seen the kanji for 'kana' that you showed, but before you even explained it, I knew the meaning was "provisional name" because RTK taught me to recognize them. It is incredibly, wonderfully helpful when trying to read in Japanese (traffic signs, advertisements, sign boards) to know the meaning of a word even if I don't know yet how to pronounce it. But this is NOT THE END of kanji study, it's just taking kanji study in blocks of learning, rather than learning everything in one hit. Kanji From Zero is breaking the kanji up into blocks of study, too - it's just breaking it up by number of kanji instead of the way RTK does, with readings - as you said - in the second book. It really is just a different method, that will end up with you in the exact same place. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. :)
@Alfredo Müller Etxeberria Yeah definitely, but if you want to memorise characters RTK is a clear answer to that. Actually understanding the rods on an intuitive level requires listening and reading
Makes sense if the Japanese people Don’t do it why should you. I was debating getting a 2500 book but I am getting this one. Please keep making vids and I will be looking out for book 2 in this series. Thanks.
I just always write with kanji when I can, not that complicated. It's never been hard for me. Also, I simultaneously learned Chinese but my Chinese is way better(because I've studied longer and half a year in China so far). I've learned Japanese for 1 year and Chinese for a year and a half and I can identify about 1100-1200 kanji/chinese characters.
For the past two or three months I've been slowly teaching myself Japanese with videos from this one TH-cam channel because the stuff she has is pretty informative but I've also been looking for other ways to learn as well so I don't have just one resource. I know how to string the words together pretty well and I know quite a few particles and such as well as some conjugation but I've been looking for more words and stuff like that so i can try to make better sentences. For now I'm probably just gonna keep going with those videos because they go at a pretty nice pace but I might try to get those books once i start learning more words.
As a fluent speaker of 4 languages, there are many things I agree with George and I just started to learn Japanese. I live in Peru and I so really wanted to buy all 5 George’s books, however shipping costa and the pack of 5 is more than 300 usd for me. So I’ve checked Amazon and kindle edition was 10 usd each book. I had my doubts is it good in Kindle and yes it is. So 2 weeks wait and 300 usd for physical copy vs 50 usd and you got it instantly? What are you guys waiting for?
cool, thank you for another free japanese learning series george! I hope you can fit a lot of example sentences in the episodes, I think It's really helpful to have several examples
The benefit of learning the kanji meanings without the Japanese is that you can remember them MUCH more easily. It’s the reason Chinese people can learn Japanese much more quickly than westerners can! They already know what the kanji mean they just have the learn the words. If you learn the English meanings of the kanji, you can match the words up as you learn them but when reading something in Japanese, you can actually understand what it says even if you don’t speak the language fluently! It’s also much harder to connect kanji to words you don’t know-you have to memorize both the foreign words and the foreign symbol. That’s why people like remembering the kanji. Chris Broad did a good video on it, it’s great for people who don’t have a photographic/visual memory.
Mate, you're amazing ! Starting with kanji and you're such a good help ! I've got your n°1 book, gonna get the 2nd one sooon. done with hiragana and katakana. I just needed a good teacher for kanji... .By the way, English is my second language, I'm french !
I have learnt all of the kanji in your first book previously (all of G1 ~90% of G2), but haven't really studied the vocab that use them apart from the words I learnt the kanji with. This video is amazing for usage examples and stuff like that. :D Would reccomend. I am gonna buy the book soon.
You have changed from the old days. You are now a Sensei worthy of great respect and admiration. Thanks for these and your dedication and thanks for taking us on this beautiful journey.
Private High School kids in my country learn Latin because they all want to get into medicine. I could see how it would be useful in learning medical terms later on. Paging Dr. Trombley......
thats so true about us reading english as blobs. We don't read the individual letters, we memorize the shape of the word, and we memorize the shape of the sentence. tahts the raosen you can sitll porably raed tihs wihtuot iusse eevn thhgou the splleing is msseed up. In that sense, kanji is probably easier to read than english.
Lol true. I've figured out a way it can relate to English. Kanji are like the words themselves (eg. Food, book, colour, etc.), Hiragana are like the particles (of, but, is, etc.) Katakana is like non English words or even names you'd write in italics (eg. Google, Apple, Laila, Timothy, etc.). Interesting, huh?
is that all of the teaching material and databases use the Italian alphabet. It is on my bucket list to make use of the English alphabet. I lot of countries around the Japan area use pitch to give the correct meaning to a word. The pitch can be picked by listening to the langue being spoken by a " native " because, it is difficult to write the pitch change with text. 🤔🙂
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Why didn't the other books in the Kanji from Zero series ever get released?
George! Please answer me why japanese leave out one kanji from an otherwise kanji-filled sentence! Even you did it here "明るい時にする仕事はサン職といいます。" We know from the context iimasu is 言います, so why leave it out? Sometimes I know its because the kanji is old, outdated or overly complicated and the writer seems to want to spare us the headache but 言 is a simple kanji. Why do this?? I NEED TO KNOW. Ok I'm calm now.
言います いいます Both are OK. For Japanese people, the impression is somewhat different. But it is difficult to explain the difference to non-Japanese Speakers.
Hello not sure if George has mentioned this in any of his other videos but I've just bought Kanji from Zero (even though I've studied japanese for a few years I've always struggled a bit with Kanji so I want to take a more structured approach) and I was just wondering if he encourages us to use any specific review schedule or spaced repetition method or whatever to follow along to increase retention of what we're learning. Thank you for your time.
Learning the kanji in a component order like Heisig's Remembering The Kanji is simply phenomenal. Like, even more than the mnemonics and stories that attempt to get the characters in your head through imagination, just having 一 give way to 口 then 目 then 貝 then 頁 then 頭 is so powerful for establishing writing patterns and recognition of radicals. It really is effective in that regard. (The mnemonics then assist even further...) Alas, you are correct overall. The fact that the book demands 2000+ characters' writing and approximate English meaning before learning a *single* word is just terrible. Many a poor soul have stopped in the 1000s and given up defeated with nothing practical to show for it. The foundation is amazing once gained. But the process of gaining... devoting months and months just doing one thing... and not a single word known. It's not "wrong", it's just too lopsided for most people. Almost no one uses the 2nd volume for readings, either, from my experience. It's not great. If only RTK mixed words in, perhaps in a companion workbook or something. As an alternative, there is the more recent "Kanji Learner's Course" by Andrew Conning. That does teach words. But the difficulty is high from the start, I'm afraid and isn't beginner friendly. (The kanji order is kind of harder to start.) Then there is Wani Kani, but that requires a subscription, and people complain a lot that it forces you to study arbitrarily slowly (probably to maximize those sweet subscription dollars). And from what I saw, Wanikani's mnemonics are pretty lame. That said, as long as someone can get to making real words with the kanji characters, a component order course of some kind is really intuitive if you have the kind of mind for pattern recognition. RTK is just a product of it's time: relatively unchanged since 1977, and other offerings have surpassed it in some ways. To anyone out there, at least consider the concept of growing character familiarity by shapes. If you can mitigate the issue of actually USING the characters and getting used to how they sound, this pattern recognition is super powerful. It's also good at helping you see the differences between similar looking characters. (Footnote: it sounds like the makers of this video maybe haven't even looked into why this style of study is effective. Since he said that he just learned something fundamental about what RTK does/doesn't do, I am not really sure that a rare non-recommendation is really warranted here. Do you even know enough to say one way or the other? Just because you hear that it doesn't include an aspect of the characters while everything else is being crammed? Are you sure you have a fundamental understanding of what the book is even trying to accomplish? ... That said, yes, RTK does come up short due to its sheer length of contextless presentation. Sigh. I wish it weren't so.)
An interesting thing that I learned about katakana... A couple of days ago i saw my Japanese friend writing in instagram ’’イマソラ” which confused me... because いま and そらare both Japanese words... But the explanation, that I received was that it was written in Katakana, because they don't have this "term" imasora.
Right now I am working my way through the Japanese From Zero 2 book. How many of the Japanese From Zero books would you recommend having completed before starting the Kanji From Zero series? I want to make sure I am able to understand all of the grammar and vocabulary you mention in this video.
Would be awesome, especially if it went along with the YesYapan.com website and used the same account, like many other do, where you buy one account and can use it on PC or the website or the app. That would be great
"Remembering the kanji or RTK" doesn't only teach the meaning of the kanji it also teaches the sound (in its second volume) it actually ingeniously divides the task of learning the kanji in two parts, first the meaning and writing, then the reading. The critique was not fair because you didn't know that it has a second part.
Yassine Lighto - I 100% know it has a second part. I think it should have taught sounds in the first part. I own a copy of RTK. This is why I know it doesn't teach the sounds in the first book. I also know that most people only buy book 1. I have access to Book Scan data on sales.
I'm sorry if you've already answered this question in another video but are you currently working on or planning to work on Kanji from Zero 2? Since I got your book I've learned 70 Kanji in only a few weeks and I spend every free minute studying with the book since I really like it and it's fun to work with. So I can't wait for volume 2.
I like your explanation and appreciate the time and effort you pot to make it so clear. As a Chinese, I have no problem in kanji at all, by the way tone in Chinese is important as a different tone always means a totally different word and meaning. But it is fun, that young Chinese generation now always make mistakes using wrong words with the same sound. The total reserve of the search engine function you mention. You are right, Japanese should be used in content. It is interesting, some kenji used in Japan have very hard to guess meaning in a Chinese user mind. 大丈夫in Chinese sense means big/great husband 丈夫or true male男人. He must say no problem quite a lot.
... I feel like サン職 probably could make sense in a science fiction setting. For example, the Andromeda series, when the crew goes to fix an artificial sun. What do you guys think?
what about creating an artificial sun? like when Vegeta did it when he first fought Goku. (technically it was an artificial moon, but that was as bright as a sun lol)
Great video and KFZ intro. Really look forward to this new series and I really wanna buy this book asap..your technique/reasonings sound very different than all others but makes total sense! (just like your JFZ). Wish I started with your KFZ instead of RTK+dictionary (which is pretty much teaching myself with a dictionary..since RTK is useless, except for using it as an order progression guide).
Hi George, I just bought your book KFZ but I'm not really sure how to use it? I could theoretically do a chapter per day, which would be learning (I think) 7 Kanji per day, which would mean I could learn 2100ish Kanji in a year (provided I continued to learn 7 a day after I finish the book). The only problem with this is that the hardest part to learning kanji is memorising the kunyomi/onyomi readings, and to do so I would have to learn multiple vocabulary words with each Kanji everyday, which would be very easy to forget if I progress too quickly. So I honestly have no idea what to do, if you could reply I would greatly appreciate it :) thanks for all the work you have put into making this book!
correct me if I'm wrong but I thought 'remembering the kanji' was supposed to be used by people who already learn kanji but having difficulty to actually remember how to write it ? because only that way that book would make sense
What about you reading and listening real Japanese to get the immersion in this book? And to read Japanese you need to learn the kanji and here we see why plowing throw the kanji makes sense. With both methods you learn the same things with different paths. So it is pretty ridiculous to say that you don't learn any context with any other method while you just learn it after you learned the kanji.
I really like you, I subscribed, I saw three Japanese from zero books at a book store and I really wanted to get them but I wanted your opinion, how should I start learning Japanese, I really want to learn the right ways and from watching your videos, I feel like I really trust you
Power up your Japanese on FromZero.com (lessons, quizzes, games, ask-a-teacher)
It is so pleasant to listen to George talking! Everything he says makes sense. It is very reassuring to know that you can fully trust someone and that you can draw upon his experience and knowledge! It is so powerful. Thank you George!
hell no!!! you are crazy man. He said it right, you should get the book because their series always give you extra work. Thanks to that i'm able to work on my korean alot, which i really need
@@deniwastaken Can I assume you now know all of the kanji since you have three years? Maybe you are amazing now?
@@deniwastaken I think it’s definitely possible to learn all the kanji. I was raised a Chinese mandarin speaker, so our entire writing system is using kanji. There’s about 50,000 something Chinese characters, and you need to know at least 3,4 thousand to get by. I know around 5,000, and I really don’t think 2000 is impossible to achieve
@@deniwastaken no ofc not. But I’m saying it’s possible to learn all the kanji Japanese people use, but not Chinese
@@deniwastaken I just think you were pretty rude.
I'm japanese and your explanation on pitch in speaking japanese is so correct. We have 47 prefectures and each prefecture has its own original pitch and accent and we can understand what we talk each other if it's not ridiculously uncommon and rare dialect.
yoimati hey i am shubham kakkar from india , i am learning japanese and maybe some day i will be able to visit Japan . I really loves it .
@@shubhamkakkar6365 Nobody asked
@@venomm4563 Don't be a little bitch
@@venomm4563 yea, don't be an ass.
@@venomm4563 nobody asked u either
YOUR IMPERSONATION OF THE OLD GUY WHO SAID 'YOKOMOJI' WAS FLIPPIN GOLD !!
I use "Remembering the Kanji" anki to supplement my Kanji learning. I find when I learn a Kanji character it makes more sense to me if I have learned the English meaning beforehand in RTK. So yes by itself RTK is pointless but as a supplement I find it quite useful.
I used RTK when I was in a similar situation to the author. New in Japan with no Japanese knowledge. People forget how the book came about.
Way back when, the author arrived to work at a Japanese university and was sent on a language course which he hated so he skipped class, did loads of research and then taught himself nearly two thousand kanji in a matter of weeks. His motivation was to put himself on par with Chinese students who started learning Japanese from scratch, but already knew the kanji. He got into a lot of trouble for this, but eventually convinced his Japanese colleagues that he really did know what all those kanji meant.
Other people wanted to use his method so he wrote it all out neatly and made copies. Demand grew and eventually the first book emerged.
When critics pointed out that he could neither speak or read Japanese he asked to be put in a situation where he was with Japanese kids instead of in a language school. The speaking and eventual fluency (including reading and writing) came by immersion in Japanese life.
I did a review after reading RTK here: th-cam.com/video/crvGrE14ZnU/w-d-xo.html
i like that you tell anecdotes along with your lessons :) it makes your discussion enjoyable. Thank you, george
I got this book only a fortnight ago and already Kanji make a million times more sense. I'm actually inspired to continue my Japanese again. It's more interesting like finding a secret new level in a game.
Thanks sensei
callum crane had you done some of his Japanese from zero books? And if so, how many books did you go trough?
I wish i could have found this channel earlier... George knows what he does! You da best man!
Great teaching. 蚕食means "silkworm eats". Silkworms devour mulberry leaves slowly. It normally means slow, secretive encroachment. Chinese has the exact same expression.
Wow, I am so glad I scrolled down and saw this comment- when I saw that word- 蚕食, it made no sense to me how it could possibly mean "encroachment" (because I knew the kanji 蚕 (which, interestingly enough, was easy to memorize since it consists of 天 and 虫 together (~"heavenly insect"= "silkworm") and also the kanji 食, but seeing them together simply made me think of "silkworm food" and I was confused...but now I see how it relates based on your explanation- you have provided me a way to remember it- 謝謝！
And i always have the feeling that you don't understand RTK.
I mean yes, just learning RTK doesnt take you anywhere in your japanese studies, thats totally true. Okay you can understand some things in japan, like what toilets are for woman and which one are for the men, that's useful lol
But RTK teaches you the writing and the meaning of all kanjis in a rather short time. If you're not lazy it can be done in 3 months, even if you are lazy it can be done in half a year. And then you basically now the meaning and writing of every kanji.
Now with this knowledge, learning the readings in context is much more easy. You already know the kanjis, so attaching the learned readin for it (in context, thats important) is much more simple. I tried learning the kanjis without RTK in context with words, but even after repeating and repeating, i still forgot the kanjis. They just wouldn't stick in my mind and i couldn't write them from memory. What am i supposed to do in these situations? Write every kanji over 100 times?
RTK fixed all these problems for me.
What most of us do when learning kanji is the really hard way, just like japanese school kids. But japanese school kids have one thing that we doesnt have: the already speak fluent japanese before learning kanji. So even the hard way is easier for them than for us. And it still takes them over 10 years of school. Hell no, we can get fluent in japanese with all the kanji and stuff in 2-3 years.
I agree, I love RTK alongside my studies and it’s the perfect way for my memory. It’s good to have options for those who don’t like it, but I feel he’s bashing RTK just because it’s his biggest competition... I love all the free resources on the JFZ site/channel, and maybe if I was starting out now I would have chosen to start with his books, but I feel that the books are meant more for casual learners and that’s completely okay. To me JFZ isn’t a competition to Genki, Minna no Nihingo, etc. It’s an alternative for those who won’t benefit from those books, and the Kanji From Zero isn’t an alternative to RTK it’s an addition to JFZ. I know people who love the JFZ books though, they obviously work for those who study that way.
I’ll stick to my RTK though.
Totally agree with you! I just learned of RTK last month! and I ordered it as soon as I heard of it. :) IT is a fantastic tool! background story of me, I began to learn Japanese back in the early 2000's, when I was going to college, I enjoyed it. BUT! the damn kanji scared me, I pretty much stopped learning the language after 2005. I did kept hearing it around, I am from Los Angeles so you run into lots of Japanese speakers, so I never forgot the basic stuff or the writing. Well then, this year I gave myself a personal goal to study Japanese again and to really get into studying it. I made this personal goal because of Kobe Bryant and his untimely passing, it scared me that he was just 4 years older than me and died out of no where. SO! now I am keeping this goal and I am going to try my best to learn Japanese and battle through the kanji. As for RTK, amazing! that just learning that the Chinese primitive forms of voice+number five+mouth=five senses is pretty much the Kanji form of "go"/language. I would've never realized that on my own! let alone! if we take out the primitive form of voice out of that kanji, you get "iu" to talk... again! I would've never figured that out on my own. It is all thanks to RTK. As a visual learner, breaking apart the Kanji in that manner really makes sense in my brain. I need to see the kanji/Chinese writing get visually created in my mind. RTK has been a god send for me. :)
カルマ [Karma] exactly! They already speak fluent Japanese. They aren’t trying to learn a random word and random collection of strokes at the same time!
Idk man matt vs japan changed how he recommends people do rtk because people learned the kanji so fast that they would end up forgetting them.
So now he recommends you learn the lazy kanji so you can read asap and then do a follow-up doing rtk the right way.
RTK means what?
I've always favored learning words with their kanji. The meaning of the kanji tend to relate to the words they're in, and if the word is just one kanji and nothing else, it's really easy. Plus you learn only the readings that you need to know. There are some kanji that have waaaay too many readings (like 上 for example) so it's easier to learn them on a word-by-word basis rather than guessing which reading is right. When I make flashcards for studying, I write the word with any kanji it normally has and no furigana or other reading aid. I do add a sound file just in case I forget how to read it, but I usually don't need it after a couple times through. Once I can recognize a word and remember what it means and how to say it, then I practice writing each unique kanji in the set of words I'm working on. Since I already know which ones go into each word, that makes writing the words correctly easy as well. Of course, most of the time I can just type things out, so I'm still debating if it's really necessary to learn how to handwrite words. But I think it's better to be able to and not have to than to have to and not be able to. Anyway, my point is learning kanji specifically has always felt like a waste of time to me. Just learn them with the words so you focus on the ones you need and don't have to worry about the ones you don't.
Interesting study point. I am always looking to be more efficient with my studying.. Can you type an example of a couple of flashcards you may have?
@@theofit
Not OP, but I do something similar. I use Anki flashcards. I have 5 flashcards per word. Here's how I would do 犬 (dog)
1. Front: What does this mean?
recording of word
Back: picture of an dog
"dog"
recording
犬
いぬ
Goal for this card: think of an image of a dog
(The back is the same for all cards)
2. What does this mean?
犬
Goal: think of an image of a dog
3. What's the reading for 犬?
Text box for typing the answer (いぬ)
Goal: correctly type "いぬ"
4. How do you spell this?
Recording
Text box for answer (犬)
Goal: correctly type "犬"
5. What's the word for this?
Picture of a dog
"Dog"
Goal: say out loud "いぬ"
I am truly grateful for what you do for us George. Taking all this time writing books and making videos to help us learn a new language--and you make it fun for us! I got the Kanji From Zero book a couple weeks ago, and I'm gonna start looking into some simple kanji seeing as though I just finished the first JFZ book today. The second JFZ book arrived today as well :)
Once again, thank you so much George!
10 mins in and you are such a great teacher! i have jfz books and bought kfz 1 in advance too and im so excited to dive in. I have genki too to mix in my learning but your teaching approach works better for me if i had to pick one! i feel like im actually learning real foundations as opposed to being bombarded with just so many informations and not knowing how to use them properly. and thank you for your videos you are an awesome teacher!
George, I officially finished the Japanese from zero book 1! and am about 50 pages into Japanese from zero book 2! (second lesson). I have been flipping back and forth in both kanji from zero and Japanese from zero book 2. It's been working out really well! ! ! I use hello talk too to talk to native speakers and i have been told my writing and grammar skills are improving.Thank you so much for creating the kanji from zero series, and the japanese from zero series! (hoping to get into book 3 in the next couple months).
Your English-Japanese accent is awesome. lol
Picked the book up recently, cant recommend it enough. Thanks George, you smashed it.
I've been watching the JFZ video series, and heard about this series on the 3rd book playlist. I am thinking about buying the books, so I have been watching all the videos so far. Great work man you are helping many people learn.
OMG!!! Thank you so much for explaining kunyomi vs onyomi. I am working in JFZ1 and have learned more in a week than the years I've been practicing. Thank you!!!!
Glad to hear you say we shouldn’t worry about accent! 😂 it’s so true though, when speaking with foreigners in English I never criticize their accent-I am usually just impressed with their English! I’m halfway through Japanese from Zero Book 1, I think I’ll order the kanji book too 👍🏻 !
Yeeeeah! Just got the first kanji from zero. It starts you off on days of the week (which is where I am at the moment. [I'm hopping around all the books doing what I can first. Sorry this is a wall of text. I'm super excited.] Absolutely love the kanji from zero book. It's easier to read when it's not in romaji. Started off with learning hiragana and katakana with a phone app and received Japanese from zero 1 and 2 and the romaji made it a tad bit more difficult lol. Anyway absolutely love it. Can't wait for the next kanji from zero books. ありがとうございます ジョージ先生 ( I really hope I got that right. Sorry, too excited to learn kanji
I use wanikani for my learning of Kanji, it is fantastic! But I definitely will be buying the whole series later, maybe around Christmas :3
Did you upgrade in the end, did it help? How is your progress going? Well, I hope!
So what you're saying is: in 20 years after you retire, your daughter will take over the channel and start the Latin from zero! series.
I'm Learning 6 new kanji per day, along with an occasional grammar lesson ( my grammar is as advanced as JFZ4 takes you, so pretty decent ). I try to learn at least 3 readings of the Kanji and make 10 sentences with it ( so about 60 sentences and 18 readings ), overall I spent about 2 hours everyday learning Japanese. I also practice quite a lot in my Japanese class, Hello talk, and listening to podcasts when I work out. I don't know if my plan is good, but hopefully by the end of 2019, I'll be able to read at least 1000 Kanji. Japanese is my fourth language so I'm also on my way towards becoming a Polyglot.
Did it work? Are you fluent?
@@jostafro4967 swrs! did it?
Man, we need to know how it has all faired for you through these past four years?
@@zkaine7083 Wow, I just saw this, and it has been a while. My response here will be a bit more elaborate than you were perhaps expecting. Rereading my comment made me realize how naive I was, a bit of a recap. I finished all the JFZ books and also went on to study from a couple of Genki books, I memorized around 1200 Kanji in total, and went on my first trip to Japan (大阪) right before the pandemic started. I felt pretty comfortable reading Japanese manga, but I could not for the life of me hold a decent conversation, it felt like I could never get my point across, even though I was able to understand, if not outright, contextually, pretty much every word being spoken to me, I just never felt comfortable talking to other Japanese people that didn't know at least a bit of English, or Spanish, or French, or German ( yeah I started learning German around this time, my girlfriend was german, and love is a powerful motivator ) at this point life got in the way, I started university and began working part-time, because of this I had relatively little time to study Japanese, or anything else for that matter, I'm finishing my degree in Applied Physics this winter. The last time I sat down and studied Japanese grammar was about 2 and a half years ago, and I was not anywhere near fluent then, I think to become fluent, it's necessary to have the need to speak the language, as supposed to just a want. I would say though if you are perhaps beginning this journey, or maybe already have, that it is completely worth it, and whilst I wasn't able to reach fluency, I was able to read a ton of books, and meet a ton of people that I wouldn't have met otherwise. A year ago or so I went to a conference in 東京 with some of my colleagues from a laboratory I performed some research in, and I was basically their guide for the entire duration of the trip, and even though my Japanese was trash, they still held me in incredibly high regard, and even though I don't work there anymore, they always shoot me an invitation to join them anytime they have a conference in Japan. Hope you found this interesting.
@@bmartinez7173 This is great insight to what it can do for you though for sure & I really appreciate your response back about it all. I just started two months back learning & its great to know what is definitely needed to become fluent with s0eaking instead of just a basic understanding & contextualization. I really appreciate this response & congratulations on nearly finishing the degree!
I just started going through this book! Perfect timing george! Thank you :D
Do you know if this book it s the same with Learn Japanese from zero books 3 and 4 ? Cuz those books have only kanji.
I'm currently studying kanji using the Hesig method and I just want throw inn my two cents. I don't think it is necessary to focus on the readings when you're first learning kanji. It just slows you down. Learning to recognize the kanji characters is far more important imo. Once you're able to do that, you can learn the readings with vocabulary.
The main reason why I like this method is because it's FAST. I can recognize 100+ kanji on sight thanks to mnemonics. This is with ONE week of study. Note that I do not say I KNOW 100+ kanji. That will take some time yet. But seeing words which consist of kanji that I recognize is such a good feeling.
I came across this word the other day: 初見. I didn't know how it was pronounced but I could guess at the meaning. Sure enough, it was しょけん which means, 'Seeing for the first time.' (according to Jisho.org.) Of course, I don't expect every word to be this straightforward. But my point is that When you learn readings of kanji in context, i'e through vocabulary. They tend to stick with you.
Ryu K - Imagine learning English by looking at the pattern of letters. You learn a few hundred patterns without knowing how to say the pattern. I think the Heisig method has value, and that value is different for each individual. For you it seems to work. But the thing is the majority of students goals when learning Japanese is to speak it. Not just recognize meanings of the symbols Japanese uses. I know people who have succeeded with multiple approaches. I think the people who succeed in one approach would do just as well in the other approach because they are dedicated to the process. I am personally not a fan of the Heisig method since I learned with my own method. And you will probably always be a fan of Heisig since it is what you used. For either of us to agree that Heisig is good / bad would be similar to me or you denouncing our religion. Human nature :-)
Ryu K, Same. I don't know how some people can learn new words that contain some ''weird symbols'' that they don't even recognize or having a hard time to distingvish one kanji from another.
Just in case someone else might read it. Different people, have different goals. For example, I wanted to be able to read and watch movies/tv shows in English (success there). As the result - horrible accent and quit limited writing skills... English grammar and tons of ''unnecessary'' stuff in a sentence don't help my case. Thank god, Japanese for some reason is suprisingly similar to Russian.
Anyway, I'm learning Japanese for fun and in case of a success my goal is the same. Being able to read manga and maybe to watch some anime.
Well, the huge difference is that you have something to sell people. So, of course you're going to say the Heisig method is bad. You have a financial interest in making people think the Heisig method is bad, which it's not. The Heisig method works with Japanese because the Kanji are pictographs.
I wish i have a friend like George 😅
His friends are fortunate.
thanks George for your hard work on these books, i am a subscriber to your online lessons, and just placed my order for kanji from zero, I have been studying kanji using other methods which are working for me , but you can never have too much learning material. Once again keep up the good work.
The segment about spacing was very Interesting, I didn't know the reasoning behind spaces being only after the particle until now.
most of my Japanese friends say I sound like a Japanese girl because I go up when I finish a sentence.
But I like that is a part of my aussie accent.
aLL AUSSIES ARE JAPANESE GIRLS CONFIRMED
@@default632 LMAO
Rtk is not meant for remembering the pronunciations of the Kanji. The real advantage of rtk is that you can get it done in a couple of months rather than years, and you can start learning vocabulary with Kanji much sooner(rather than using furigana). Rtk allows you to learn the meaning of upwards of 20 Kanji a day. Even 40 if you want. Then later when learning vocabulary, you see the Kanji and it helps to not only remember the vocabulary, but it helps you learn the readings gradually. Here's an example. The word for healthy, lively etc, 元気(genki) is a lot easier to remember if you know the Kanji. I can remember that the Kanji that make up genki are beginning and spirit. I now know that the first Kanji,元can be read as gen and 気 can be read as ki and so on. And later on when I run into a word like 天気(weather) I see 気 and I draw a parallel and figure that that may be pronounced ki. So I look it up and sure enough, the word is tenki. And now I know that the Kanji for heavans can be pronounced ten. This provides, in my opinion a much more natural way to learn vocabulary. However the method is not perfect. This is why I always recommend to learn vocabulary along with the Kanji, to not only reinforce the retention of the Kanji, but to learn the readings that the book does not teach you.
nahh the standard way is better than that you still get to draw associations AND you dont have to waste time learning the pronunciation and meaning separately
蚕食 - Silkworm + eat - the silkworms are devouring/spreading/encroaching. The visual mnemonic of worms slowly devouring their plants is helpful.
Thanks for writing this book, George! I've purchased it and almost done with it, just a couple more lessons to go. I look forward to the next volume!
One thing to note is that the word 和語 originated from China/ it was created from borrowed elements from Chinese. 和語 is also known as Sino-Japanese words. The original term is 大和言葉 and this word was inherited from "Old Japanese". 大和言葉 is a word that describes itself (it is a word describing non-borrowed Japanese words while it is one itself) and words like these are called autological words.
Hello George, I don't know if someone has already told you that in Kanji from zero book on p.34 in the Kanji matching task there is a typo. The Kanji for the number "one" is matched with the hiragana "itsu".
If you already knew this.. well then i just wasted a minute of both of our time and I'm sorry for it haha.
Best regards
Lars Hoffmann
P.S.
Your book is amazing. It is so much fun to study with it.
このビデオは素晴らしいと思います
ジョージさん、ありがとうございます
そう！このチャンネルはすごいだね。
All I could read was "thank you". 😂
I have to say your video quality is AMAZING since you upgraded cameras. It was pretty good before, but the new one is just crazy crisp. And the content is still great, of course!
I need this book in my life.
you're officially my favorite nihongo sensei :D NOW
I swear to god you’re one of the best teachers teaching for free
I agree the first book in the Remembering the Kanji trilogy is a bit strange in its method of wanting to teach you to associate a unique meaning to each Kanji and without any readings to accompany them. For that reason, you'll probably hear a number of people tell you to skip the first volume entirely. Maybe they're right, but I don't think the first book is entirely without merit. I do like the ordering of the Kanji used in the books. The Kanji are mostly grouped in such a way that Kanji that share the same "primitives" (I've also heard them go by the term "graphemes" elsewhere, but I prefer thinking of them as "radicals") are grouped together. The basic premise of the first half of the first book is that the author gives you his own example story/mnemonic involving the radicals for each Kanji and for the second half of the book you're gradually given less hints and encouraged to come up with your own stories to really make them your own. The second and third books, on the other hand, do provide a reading and example compund and order them a bit differently: radicals that always give a certain pronunciation when present in a Kanji, radicals that do so with one exception, Kanji that have no Chinese reading, and everything else that's too exceptional.
If anything, RTK ordering does make for a good distinction between similar looking Kanji (KanjiDamage is similar). About the only other lists are Jouyou, JLPT, and newspaper frequency.
Oh, by the way, I got a copy of Kanji From Zero Vol. 1 and I like it so far. There was one book I got once, Kanji Power, that was sort of a similar workbook, but that guy's book was like JLPT5/4 level Kanji only and not Jouyou-based and he never made another book after that one. So I'm looking forward to seeing this particular series going to completion in a timely manner (but of course not as much as I want to see Japanese From Zero 5).
Hey George I love your videos! I've been using them for two years and went to go see my Japanese girlfriend for the first time a week ago in Tokyo. Thank you for creating the videos and I hope you never stop
@6:15 I guess technically it's 5 writing systems as romaji has 'UPPER CASE' and 'lower case'. Still have to learn both.
I love learning from your videos - I learn so much more and it all makes sense to me. I did buy that "remembering the kanji" and while I did learn the first, I dunno, fifty or so - it was driving me crazy because I would turn around and try to find out the japanese word since really, I want to learn Japanese - so yes, your criticism of that method is absolutely valid. I am looking forward to the arrival of Kanji from Zero Book one ;)
In defense of the dead language Latin (and your daughter) the reason for learning Latin for most (not all) is that it is the language of science. New scientific terms, specific species names for animals and plants, and many other specific science and medical terms are latin based. So a basic knowledge of latin goes a long way if you decide later to say...study biology, or medicine, or pharmacology. Just saying...not trying to be a smart ass.
I really want to thank you that you give us motivation to learn! Thanks a lot
Now this was a very good episode. Really good series also, can't wait for me in the future.
15:50 holy shit he did the most cursed thing imaginable, he wrote grammar in katakana lmao
Sensei , ur Chanel is really helpful.I am Russian and currently study Japanese , I could not find even in my native language the good source that helps me to understand some important things in Japanese ..but your explanations works for me ,Thanks a lot !
I like Kanji because you can kind of guess meaning of sentence without actually reading it. But knowing Kanji without it's reading is pointless indeed.
I have been told Chinese people can still get a basic idea of a news story just by seeing the kanji that is used.
Personally I find kanjis to be unnecessary.
Sure, they can give you that meaning instantly instead of writing it. But there's a huge amount of them and not even japanese learn all of them. In most languages you only need some letters to convey points, and most of these letters can be reused without recurring to special characters to make those same points. Thus while kanjis save a huge amount of space and considering the huge amount of unique characters they can get confusing sometimes.
I would've preferred if they added another way to simplify their wording like some gramatical rules or rules depending on context.
@assholemon I just love Kanji. Kanji symbolized Japan to me. and Kanji works for centuries and millions of people are able to use it. No need to change it just for bunch of lazy Kajkokujin :-) Is it more difficult than other writing systems? Yes, indeed, but its definitely more interesting to study it.
True, I'm using an app to learn them. I can see the benefits though (one being that tweets can have more info than western characters) and also I have to admit that it looks good.
Numian it's because heisig allows you to learn thousands of Kanji in a short amount of time, and how to write them. The entire premise of his book is to learn the characters separate from the reading actually makes learning Japanese faster (that's what heisig believes) Many people have had success because they chose to do it this way.
This series is going to be awesome!!
I'll be picking up your book to go along with you and supplement my studies from Remembering The Kanji. Remembering The Kanji has been great for me but it is an unorthodox system and it's so sparse.
Going through KFZ with you all in this series is going to be so much fun! I can't wait to learn more about the kanji. :)
I bought the book as a Christmas gift for myself. I'm on chapter 6
13:52 This assumes your goal is being a fully literate Japanese speaker. If your goal is something as simple as simply being able to communicate with someone (verbally) in their native language without any plans whatsoever of needing literacy or being a part of the community at all then it's a complete waste of time. And I'm tired of having to pretend like my goal is not worth attaining because I won't be able to read, or sound like a native or whatever the hell else. As if I ever wanted to read in Japanese in the first place or pretend I'm as fluent as a native speaker when those aren't my goals.
I am going to buy your kanji from zero and also japanese from zero 1 and other series because i really learned a lot from you thank you so much and i will read your books thoroughly :)
I understand where you're coming from with RTK, but what most people don't understand is that it's not meant to be the end of your kanji study. First you learn to recognize the kanji, write it, start to become familiar with its meaning, then learn the readings in further study.
For instance, I'd never seen the kanji for 'kana' that you showed, but before you even explained it, I knew the meaning was "provisional name" because RTK taught me to recognize them. It is incredibly, wonderfully helpful when trying to read in Japanese (traffic signs, advertisements, sign boards) to know the meaning of a word even if I don't know yet how to pronounce it. But this is NOT THE END of kanji study, it's just taking kanji study in blocks of learning, rather than learning everything in one hit.
Kanji From Zero is breaking the kanji up into blocks of study, too - it's just breaking it up by number of kanji instead of the way RTK does, with readings - as you said - in the second book. It really is just a different method, that will end up with you in the exact same place. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. :)
"you can't just get one book and learn them all"
Heisig would like a word with you, he even addresses this in the introduction of RTK lol
@Alfredo Müller Etxeberria Yeah definitely, but if you want to memorise characters RTK is a clear answer to that. Actually understanding the rods on an intuitive level requires listening and reading
Thanks for making this video series! Your videos are awesome
Makes sense if the Japanese people Don’t do it why should you. I was debating getting a 2500 book but I am getting this one. Please keep making vids and I will be looking out for book 2 in this series. Thanks.
I just always write with kanji when I can, not that complicated. It's never been hard for me. Also, I simultaneously learned Chinese but my Chinese is way better(because I've studied longer and half a year in China so far). I've learned Japanese for 1 year and Chinese for a year and a half and I can identify about 1100-1200 kanji/chinese characters.
For the past two or three months I've been slowly teaching myself Japanese with videos from this one TH-cam channel because the stuff she has is pretty informative but I've also been looking for other ways to learn as well so I don't have just one resource. I know how to string the words together pretty well and I know quite a few particles and such as well as some conjugation but I've been looking for more words and stuff like that so i can try to make better sentences. For now I'm probably just gonna keep going with those videos because they go at a pretty nice pace but I might try to get those books once i start learning more words.
As a fluent speaker of 4 languages, there are many things I agree with George and I just started to learn Japanese. I live in Peru and I so really wanted to buy all 5 George’s books, however shipping costa and the pack of 5 is more than 300 usd for me. So I’ve checked Amazon and kindle edition was 10 usd each book. I had my doubts is it good in Kindle and yes it is. So 2 weeks wait and 300 usd for physical copy vs 50 usd and you got it instantly? What are you guys waiting for?
cool, thank you for another free japanese learning series george!
I hope you can fit a lot of example sentences in the episodes, I think It's really helpful to have several examples
I did not expect a rant about pitch accent xD
But thanks, I will think about it. :)
The benefit of learning the kanji meanings without the Japanese is that you can remember them MUCH more easily. It’s the reason Chinese people can learn Japanese much more quickly than westerners can! They already know what the kanji mean they just have the learn the words. If you learn the English meanings of the kanji, you can match the words up as you learn them but when reading something in Japanese, you can actually understand what it says even if you don’t speak the language fluently! It’s also much harder to connect kanji to words you don’t know-you have to memorize both the foreign words and the foreign symbol. That’s why people like remembering the kanji. Chris Broad did a good video on it, it’s great for people who don’t have a photographic/visual memory.
Mate, you're amazing ! Starting with kanji and you're such a good help ! I've got your n°1 book, gonna get the 2nd one sooon. done with hiragana and katakana. I just needed a good teacher for kanji... .By the way, English is my second language, I'm french !
I have learnt all of the kanji in your first book previously (all of G1 ~90% of G2), but haven't really studied the vocab that use them apart from the words I learnt the kanji with. This video is amazing for usage examples and stuff like that. :D Would reccomend. I am gonna buy the book soon.
What do you think about The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course? It's like Remembering the Kanji but it teaches you readings and vocab also.
Haha 😂 in French there's a food that sounds like 'shigo'
: gigot or gigot d'agneau which is a lamb leg
You have changed from the old days. You are now a Sensei worthy of great respect and admiration. Thanks for these and your dedication and thanks for taking us on this beautiful journey.
This video finally made me want to study kanji, Thanks!
Private High School kids in my country learn Latin because they all want to get into medicine. I could see how it would be useful in learning medical terms later on. Paging Dr. Trombley......
thats so true about us reading english as blobs. We don't read the individual letters, we memorize the shape of the word, and we memorize the shape of the sentence. tahts the raosen you can sitll porably raed tihs wihtuot iusse eevn thhgou the splleing is msseed up. In that sense, kanji is probably easier to read than english.
Lol true. I've figured out a way it can relate to English. Kanji are like the words themselves (eg. Food, book, colour, etc.), Hiragana are like the particles (of, but, is, etc.) Katakana is like non English words or even names you'd write in italics (eg. Google, Apple, Laila, Timothy, etc.). Interesting, huh?
is that all of the teaching material and databases use the Italian alphabet. It is on my bucket list to make use of the English alphabet.
I lot of countries around the Japan area use pitch to give the correct meaning to a word. The pitch can be picked by listening to the langue being spoken by a " native " because, it is difficult to write the pitch change with text. 🤔🙂
Why didn't the other books in the Kanji from Zero series ever get released?
George! Please answer me why japanese leave out one kanji from an otherwise kanji-filled sentence! Even you did it here "明るい時にする仕事はサン職といいます。" We know from the context iimasu is 言います, so why leave it out? Sometimes I know its because the kanji is old, outdated or overly complicated and the writer seems to want to spare us the headache but 言 is a simple kanji. Why do this?? I NEED TO KNOW. Ok I'm calm now.
言います いいます
Both are OK.
For Japanese people, the impression is somewhat different.
But it is difficult to explain the difference to non-Japanese Speakers.
Hello not sure if George has mentioned this in any of his other videos but I've just bought Kanji from Zero (even though I've studied japanese for a few years I've always struggled a bit with Kanji so I want to take a more structured approach) and I was just wondering if he encourages us to use any specific review schedule or spaced repetition method or whatever to follow along to increase retention of what we're learning. Thank you for your time.
Me *doesn't plan on learning Japanese* : Interesting
Learning the kanji in a component order like Heisig's Remembering The Kanji is simply phenomenal. Like, even more than the mnemonics and stories that attempt to get the characters in your head through imagination, just having 一 give way to 口 then 目 then 貝 then 頁 then 頭 is so powerful for establishing writing patterns and recognition of radicals. It really is effective in that regard. (The mnemonics then assist even further...)
Alas, you are correct overall. The fact that the book demands 2000+ characters' writing and approximate English meaning before learning a *single* word is just terrible. Many a poor soul have stopped in the 1000s and given up defeated with nothing practical to show for it. The foundation is amazing once gained. But the process of gaining... devoting months and months just doing one thing... and not a single word known. It's not "wrong", it's just too lopsided for most people. Almost no one uses the 2nd volume for readings, either, from my experience. It's not great.
If only RTK mixed words in, perhaps in a companion workbook or something. As an alternative, there is the more recent "Kanji Learner's Course" by Andrew Conning. That does teach words. But the difficulty is high from the start, I'm afraid and isn't beginner friendly. (The kanji order is kind of harder to start.) Then there is Wani Kani, but that requires a subscription, and people complain a lot that it forces you to study arbitrarily slowly (probably to maximize those sweet subscription dollars). And from what I saw, Wanikani's mnemonics are pretty lame.
That said, as long as someone can get to making real words with the kanji characters, a component order course of some kind is really intuitive if you have the kind of mind for pattern recognition. RTK is just a product of it's time: relatively unchanged since 1977, and other offerings have surpassed it in some ways.
To anyone out there, at least consider the concept of growing character familiarity by shapes. If you can mitigate the issue of actually USING the characters and getting used to how they sound, this pattern recognition is super powerful. It's also good at helping you see the differences between similar looking characters.
(Footnote: it sounds like the makers of this video maybe haven't even looked into why this style of study is effective. Since he said that he just learned something fundamental about what RTK does/doesn't do, I am not really sure that a rare non-recommendation is really warranted here. Do you even know enough to say one way or the other? Just because you hear that it doesn't include an aspect of the characters while everything else is being crammed? Are you sure you have a fundamental understanding of what the book is even trying to accomplish? ... That said, yes, RTK does come up short due to its sheer length of contextless presentation. Sigh. I wish it weren't so.)
An interesting thing that I learned about katakana... A couple of days ago i saw my Japanese friend writing in instagram ’’イマソラ” which confused me... because いま and そらare both Japanese words... But the explanation, that I received was that it was written in Katakana, because they don't have this "term" imasora.
So.... what does イマソラ mean? :P
From the looks of it on Google, it seems to be a Instagram thing of sort.
max heart yes, that is so! The present sky is the exact translation.
Right now I am working my way through the Japanese From Zero 2 book. How many of the Japanese From Zero books would you recommend having completed before starting the Kanji From Zero series? I want to make sure I am able to understand all of the grammar and vocabulary you mention in this video.
Becca Gee I asked him many times the same question .. Books 3 and 4 are about Kanji but so do Kanji from zero .. and i still didn't Find the answer ..
Hi!
We need kanji from zero 2 on Kindle, please!!!
lol omg i swear, you should do one video using only your funny voices. i burst out laughing with the old guy voice explaining romaji.
Please make an app
Would be awesome, especially if it went along with the YesYapan.com website and used the same account, like many other do, where you buy one account and can use it on PC or the website or the app. That would be great
"Remembering the kanji or RTK" doesn't only teach the meaning of the kanji it also teaches the sound (in its second volume) it actually ingeniously divides the task of learning the kanji in two parts, first the meaning and writing, then the reading. The critique was not fair because you didn't know that it has a second part.
Yassine Lighto - I 100% know it has a second part. I think it should have taught sounds in the first part. I own a copy of RTK. This is why I know it doesn't teach the sounds in the first book. I also know that most people only buy book 1. I have access to Book Scan data on sales.
I LOVE TO SMOKE THE KANJI.
The two zeros before 1 made me happy :D. Hope it' not a joke!
I'm sorry if you've already answered this question in another video but are you currently working on or planning to work on Kanji from Zero 2? Since I got your book I've learned 70 Kanji in only a few weeks and I spend every free minute studying with the book since I really like it and it's fun to work with. So I can't wait for volume 2.
thank God for folk like you! Arigatou!!
I like your explanation and appreciate the time and effort you pot to make it so clear. As a Chinese, I have no problem in kanji at all, by the way tone in Chinese is important as a different tone always means a totally different word and meaning. But it is fun, that young Chinese generation now always make mistakes using wrong words with the same sound. The total reserve of the search engine function you mention. You are right, Japanese should be used in content. It is interesting, some kenji used in Japan have very hard to guess meaning in a Chinese user mind. 大丈夫in Chinese sense means big/great husband 丈夫or true male男人. He must say no problem quite a lot.
... I feel like サン職 probably could make sense in a science fiction setting. For example, the Andromeda series, when the crew goes to fix an artificial sun. What do you guys think?
what about creating an artificial sun? like when Vegeta did it when he first fought Goku. (technically it was an artificial moon, but that was as bright as a sun lol)
When in Japanese from zero should I start this book?
Great video and KFZ intro. Really look forward to this new series and I really wanna buy this book asap..your technique/reasonings sound very different than all others but makes total sense! (just like your JFZ).
Wish I started with your KFZ instead of RTK+dictionary (which is pretty much teaching myself with a dictionary..since RTK is useless, except for using it as an order progression guide).
Hi George, I just bought your book KFZ but I'm not really sure how to use it? I could theoretically do a chapter per day, which would be learning (I think) 7 Kanji per day, which would mean I could learn 2100ish Kanji in a year (provided I continued to learn 7 a day after I finish the book). The only problem with this is that the hardest part to learning kanji is memorising the kunyomi/onyomi readings, and to do so I would have to learn multiple vocabulary words with each Kanji everyday, which would be very easy to forget if I progress too quickly. So I honestly have no idea what to do, if you could reply I would greatly appreciate it :) thanks for all the work you have put into making this book!
Borrow words from every language turn into homophone when it adapt to Japanese phonology
correct me if I'm wrong but I thought 'remembering the kanji' was supposed to be used by people who already learn kanji but having difficulty to actually remember how to write it ? because only that way that book would make sense
I just ordered your Kanji from Zero book. This is exactly what I was looking for!
とても良い紹介ビデオをありがとうございます！
What about you reading and listening real Japanese to get the immersion in this book? And to read Japanese you need to learn the kanji and here we see why plowing throw the kanji makes sense. With both methods you learn the same things with different paths. So it is pretty ridiculous to say that you don't learn any context with any other method while you just learn it after you learned the kanji.
Wonderful video. Very very good teacher! God bless you! Greetings from Brazil!
Why is it amazing listening to you
I'm am very new at Japanese and I might buy all the books you've got
I really like you, I subscribed, I saw three Japanese from zero books at a book store and I really wanted to get them but I wanted your opinion, how should I start learning Japanese, I really want to learn the right ways and from watching your videos, I feel like I really trust you