“Take a deep breath and tell yourself you’re reading this cute romantic manga for educational purposes, not because you don’t have any romance in real life” 😂😂 I love it
reading manga is helping me so much to read kanji even though it's so hard at the beggining. I remember it's takes me like 20 minutes just to finish 1 chapter when i start reading... but when i "read more" it's become easier and faster too ^^
Do you need to know a good amount of vocabulary before reading manga? What do you do if you find a kanji but don't know its meaning? Do you look up the meaning?
@@ven1845 yes, usually manga are quite difficult to read, though plain romance may be easier, and depending on the target (usually shounen/kodomo) they also have furigana, so maybe 'reading' in itself is not a problem, understanding is the 'problem', they may often use not common words or yojijukugo, I should know all the jouyou kanji, but usually when I see kanji I don't know I just focus on learning the meaning of the word in which it appears and the reading of the kanji if it is common, sometimes in manga even 'usually kana' words are written in kanji if there is furigana, but I would not suggest to learn rare or almost unused kanji
@@shashankgupta7460 I tried to write the name of some sites multiple times, but apparently they are blocked(at least from the comment section), so I cannot write them here
Yuta is right, there's no need to focus that much on writing Kanji. I'm majoring in Japanese for 6 semesters (about 4 years) now and early on the tutors put so much emphasis on writing every textbook Kanji at a perfect angle even tho some of my Japanese classmates can't write or remember the strokes at all. It is only necessary if you're into calligraphy or poetry.
@@mikasaackermann5080 Some people enjoy handwritten Haiku (17-mora poem), it's also a type of calligraphy. But even then, you first need to know how to read Kanji to choose the right ones.
But what if you have to handwrite kanji, for example taking some short notes? I mean, we simply cannot write everything with keyboards right? So I still dont get why so many people dont have any problems in their daily life without being able to handwrite Kanji.
If it's not work-related you use Hiragana\ Katakana or very common Kanji. Nothing too complicated. That's why you should keep all the strokes in mind, you'll recall them quickly if necessary. The more you recognise them in daily life the better. I also use a "denshi- jisho", an electronic dictionary when working as a translator. ( They can be expensive tho)
@@Lee-lm2bn So Japanese students use hiragana/katakana or very common kanji to write their notes at school? (I mean older students like at high school or something)
I actually learn Kanji by integrating writing in my routine. It is indeed an overkill, but I genuinely enjoy doing writing practices, and it helps me remember Kanjis faster and distinguish Kanjis with similar radicals.
There's something about writing kanji that's just so satisfying. I feel like I get the same satisfaction out of doing geometry things with a compass and ruler.
Another advantage of reading is that you already have the Kanji and words sorted by relevance. It might bother you, that you already forgot the word 3 pages ago, but when it doesnt appear in the next 80 pages, it cannot be that important. And when it does, you have another free repitition, just like flash cards.
Agreed 100%, and another thing - what I've found is that if you try to use "store for review" systems. and go through those later, it doesn't really work. It works much better if you read and your brain automatically notices kanji it doesn't know, and more importantly, notices kanji it doesn't know but has seen before. At that point something curious happens - it absorbs the meaning (maybe not first time, but soon) when you get it or learn it. While "review" systems, with more conscious review/try-to-remember methods don't work very well at all. Another thing - as Yuta said in the middle of the video, using mnemonics to help remembering radicals helps in recognizing and remembering kanji and words. And also: From 09.00 and out.
One resource that helps me with kanji, personally, is “The World of Kanji” by Alex Adler. It actually goes into detail of the origins of kanji, which I think could be helpful for those trying to come up with mnemonic devices and better visualize how a pictograph came to be a kanji. For example, 母 relates to “mother” when you realize that the kanji represents a pair of breasts for feeding a child. Or 行 relating to the verb “go” when it represents a four-way crossroad. Whenever I see these two kanji, I now know how to connect them to their meaning because of the context of how the kanji itself was created and changed over time. Try using this book in combination with your other methods to see if it can help!
Ahh yes the arbitrary information that is not related whatsoever to reading kanji, amazing! I swear some go their entire life learning "mnemonics" instead of actually learning japanese lmao
@@kanireader Etymology isn’t arbitrary. It’s literally the study of word origin and how their meanings and writings change over time. Yes, mnemonics CAN be arbitrary, but if you base it on something that’s grounded in the formation of the word, it can be extremely helpful. In English, what’s a starfish? It’s kind of like a fish, and it’s shaped like a star. Not only that, understanding the origin of “star” can help with words like “asterisk”, “astronomy”, “disaster”, “stardom” and “stellar” while also providing cultural context of the language, such as how stars are seen as determiners of fate in European cultures. Is this etymological approach the only efficient and effective way to learn kanji? No. Is it an approach worth considering? About as much as other methods listed in the video and the comment section. If it works for you, it works. If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t. We’re all just sharing our methods and experiences to help others figure out what works best for them.
1:05 Detective Conan was the first manga I read in Japanese when I was more or less on the required level to understand it. I agree, it helped me immensely in learning kanji.
I used to watch Detective Conan regularly so i knew the common words and most of the lines which made reading the manga so much easier and i actually noticed that my reading and memory have gotten way better.
8:35 Actually, by spending time on making flashcards yourself, you are focusing and repeatedly checking the word, which can be very beneficial. Sometimes, by the time you have finished with the flashcard you have already spend enough time focusing on it, to memorize it properly.
Yes thank you. After years of being led down the garden path by so much bad advice this is literally it. It feels bad at first but just pick a manga you love and take it one speech bubble at a time. It has helped me to an insane degree. No more coming up with lengthy mnemonics for every aspect of a Kanji and trying to revise it with flashcards. Just read. If you don't remember it, look it up. Trust that it's being reinforced. Keep reading. And gradually it improves. And it's actually enjoyable!
i believe writing is important when you're still learning basics. Such as (He did x, y, z, because A-san told him W) When you can easily understand the structure, then reading becomes efficient. You just learn new words and different sentences for situations and you can actually start guessing meanings from the kanji. Also I really can't remember anything unless I make notes. I often find myself remembering things from just the memory of writing it. Everyone's different, but writing is important at the start for many. Oh also I remember the stroke order, but usually write in the wrong order, because it's faster.
The fact is that many Chinese don't necessarily know how to write Chinese characters, but they can recognize the characters as soon as they see them, so there's really no need to stress writing Chinese characters.
As someone who still struggles with learning Japanese years after I started, I'd like to thank you so much for this video!! It's so helpful! One of my biggest struggles is learning/remembering kanji. Years ago, I took some Japanese lessons where I live and the method they used to teach kanji was the traditional one (writing the kanji lots of times and trying to remember the readings and order of strokes without much context before somehow trying to apply all that to actual sentences). Needless to say I can hardly remember some of the kanjis from those lessons despite the hundreds of times I did those exercises of writing the same kanji over and over again. However, I did notice it's easier for me to remember kanjis through reading manga, texts, stories, etc, but I never thought this would be an actual valid or correct method to learn since I wasn't learning the meaning of the kanji itself, or it's different readings, or the stroke order, and always thought it was "incomplete" or something, so I'm really happy to know that's not the case!
Honestly, this applies to any language for me. It is easier to learn something with langauge when having an contact with the actual language than just with dry "learning materials". This is also the reason why I am barely knowing any French, despite learning it for 6 years.
Frankly it’s quite simple: The best way to learn how to read is to read. The best way to learn how to write is to write. And the best way to learn how to speak is to speak.
Except it isn't. You can't read if you don't understand the language AND the characters. You can't hand a book in a foreign language to anyone on Earth and have them learn to read by looking at it all the time. Doesn''t matter how much you stare at 私 you are never going to figure out that it means "watashi". You have to be taught that. And even if I teach you that, you still won't know what watashi means. You have to be taught that too. Nobody learns to reads before being basically fluent in that language already.
@@based9930 Knowing hiragana/katakana is sufficient for Japanese. The rest becomes obvious, because, even if there's no furigana, you can just look up the word.
I typically enjoy reading but also writing down the books/articles I read. I take in the vocabulary I don't know and learn from that reading. It's so important to be able to do both in my opinion and it works best for me :)
I've found that reading manga helps a lot with reading for me. For one, it's not just a wall of text but accompanied by visual elements that help with figuring out things like setting, situation, feeling and so on. It's also more fun and engaging, which makes me more likely to actually continue! I've also benefitted a lot from reading my manga aloud and getting an extra "boost" so to say in my learning by having the audio as well. A minor thing that gives a lot!
When learning Mandarin back in primary school, we would have a text in a textbook full of short story style paragraphs, and at the end of each, we have questions about the text, and notes on the characters with multiple readings, we call these 多音多义字, how we would learn is this small table of such characters, and example words of each reading. And we would look up the dictionary for the meaning, write it down, and create sentences with them as an exercise. I found that even if the sentence creation is only done once or twice, the memory gets ingrained very quickly because of the method of using the dictionary. Of course this is in the course of many years if you read through many characters and will end up with a comprehension thats sufficient for most of your daily use. I am only a year into Japanese studies as a whole, but find the method above I utilised as a child very useful in learning Japanese kanji, and as such now am able to read through multiple kanji in song lyrics without needing the furigana. Of course the list is incomplete, but as Yuta said, its not a race :). Enjoy your education journey! It lasts a lifetime:)
Hi, do you happen to be from Malaysia? Anyway, I feel learning Chinese gives us an unfair advantage because we only need to learn the pronunciations of words while the meanings of most words are the same as Chinese
@@yokelengleng hi yes! But would you say its unfair? Many things are, while structurally comprehensible with a Mandarin background, still not easy as you are essentially relearning how everything sounds like. It is easier, but not to say its a walk in the park
@@jamesn.5721 True.... I mean unfair in terms of understanding the meaning of most kanji compounds immediately and being able to write most of the kanji without learning stroke by stroke. However, we struggle with the pronunciation of kanji
@@jamesn.5721 Besides, I am currently studying Japanese in a Chinese majority secondary school. Our teacher said that it is very hard for Malay students to learn kanji stroke by stroke, therefore the kanji part in the exam is the killer for the Malay students. I believe our teacher must have saved lots of time teaching us as we don't have to waste time learning kanji stroke by stroke. Instead, we can immediately dive into Japanese grammar.
I opened this video ready to close it after the 10 first seconds. But you immediately started without any boring waste-of-time-introduction! Thanks man!
One thing about learning Japanese that I really enjoy is the existence of radical. It’s so cool to learn new kanji and they make total sense right away because of the radicals it is made of.
I love wanikani for the many reasons you listed. I use it on my work PC and never close it so I will always remember to look at it in my free time and pauses during work. I'm slowly learning kanji just with wanikani and trying to read visual novels (and VN-like games), specially those that are fully voiced. I feel so good when I recognize new kanji when doing this!
I used Wanikani while reading a lot and it worked perfectly. In the beginning I would read manga with furigana, then I went to manga without furigana and now I’m finally able to read light novels. It has really helped me achieve my goal of being able to read freely. Now I read a lot every day and I feel that I’m learning really fast
凄い助かりました、ゆたさん！いつも有り難いです。MattvsJapan made a video about writing out kanji and he is known among his Japanese friends for his amazing kanji knowledge. And he even admitted that it wasn't really worth learning to write them out, it's more of a party trick (that took sooo many hours to do) than an actual useful skill. As long as you know basic stroke order, even if you were living in Japan and had to fill out forms you can always look up the kanji for reference when filling it out. Unless you need to be able to handwrite kanji, There's very little reason to spend the time to learn to write them all out. 皆さん、お互いに頑張りましょう！
My experience with learning japanese is the following: I do 1h-2.5h of anki flashcards every day. That includes kanji and vocabulary with 2k6k deck. Then I watch about 1h of media in japanese and read doujinshi for 30 minutes. Rinse and repeat. I passed N3 after 10 months after starting this and am aiming for N1 by the end of this year. I will also start reading NHK easy articles every day. I did this during secondary school so I believe anyone can do this if they make it a habit.
Did you hit your goal of N1? Either way, that's some pretty fast learning and dedication. I nned dedication. I started a few months ago and then stopped after learning hiragana and katakana. For me it get's really difficult when starting to learn to learn kanji and words, but i don't want to just learn words without the kanji because most words aren't wrote out in hiragana so i lost motivation. I'm relearning hiragana and katakana since i forgot most of them, i recognize some but not all. Do you have any advice for starting to learn words/kanji and grammar? Like for example, is it worth going straight into reading after learning hiragana and katakana, or should i get a solid foundation in grammar and simple words, like N5 level words? The first thing i read will probably be yotsuba which is fairly simple, so should i jump right into reading and using a dictionary or should i use anki and an N5 deck or a V2K deck to learn some common words in manga and LN's first as well as a grammar deck? IK some of this may be covered in the video, but i basically don't know what sort of foundation i need before i try to learn while reading since learning grammar without knowing words is difficult, and learning words without knowing grammar is difficult as well since it's hard to understand sentences. TLDR; what type of foundation should one have before trying to read to learn kanji and vocab, is grammar enough or should i also learn some common N5 words first?
@@Xx0ME0xX my response may be a bit late to be helpful to you, but going straight into reading without learning some grammar and vocab will not help you at all. You're not going to get anything out of being able to read a string of characters if you don't know what any of them mean when put together. I'd say that knowing most of N5 is a good start to being able to read, since you'll understand basic sentences and clauses. You should also frequently try to listen as well
@@AkatsukiAyano I agree, you'll need to have some basic vocab and grammar knowledge before reading will get you anywhere. Same goes for listening, if you don't understand anything it isn't helpful at all. That's why William combines it with flashcards, especially in the first few months. Later, when you have gained a solid base, you can focus more on reading and listening.
I have colour-grapheme synaesthesia (共感覚) and make my own personalized flashcards. Mostly I make flashcards for words rather than individual kanji, and show the kanji colour as it appears in each word, since for me this is morphologically conditioned (varies with context). Also, for some common kanji with multiple readings I make a kanji card depicting the kanji in the multiple colours for the various different readings. This works for me! My vocab and reading has improved from non-existent to lower intermediate. A modest improvement, but it's enjoyable and I'm happy with it. 😊
I should clarify I'm not trying to learn to handwrite a huge number of kanji! Way too difficult! I'm just using the colours I perceive (through my synaesthesia) as a familiarisation device, to help me recognise kanji in context when reading, or when selecting the correct kanji from the predictive text on my phone!
This guide not only helps on learning kanji, I also do this when I study hiragana and katakana. The more I notice a character when reading, the more I remember it.
This reminds me of the time i was deep into learning kanji! So basically, I started getting interested in it because of Kuroko no Basket's character names. I went from learning the meaning of each kanji in their names, to learning the stroke orders, to learning the radicals, then the readings. Next thing I knew is that i saved several page links of kanji tables. But what made me retain it in my head and still do up to this day is when i create an original character, either for a fanfic or an original story (both of which i never wrote), and then think of i good name for the character. I would go on and research words, research names, research readings, combine syllables and stuff. It was very effective for me. I had an entire list of character names based off the numbers 1-10, and a bunch of other names saved in many different document files in my pc or phone. I literally bought a kanji dictionary just for this.
This is a really helpful video. I'm learning something new today. 1. Stroke order 2. Reading is definitely more effective than practice writing it until we learn each kanji. I never review the flashcards either. I will just read and look up if a kanji doesn't furigana.
I don’t bother with stroke order. I do generally stick to top to bottom and left to right direction but I don’t follow every order religiously. My kanji still end up looking the same. And most of the time I type kanji into a keyboard which generates the kanji sooo I don’t focus too much on writing kanji 😅
As an advance learner I have to say this is one of the best videos on learning kanji out there! I would also add on that watching things with Japanese subtitles is such a great way to learn. You practice listening and reading at the same time and you get to learn how the words are properly pronounced.
Absolutely perfect video. I love the way he explains everything compared to some of the other videos I’ve seen. Especially when he says don’t listen to the “Flexors”. There’s too much pressure when you’re of Japanese descent, to automatically know how to read all kanji. Saw the videos you’re like WTF are they talking about! But he keeps the explanations practical.
いい動画を作ってくれてありがとうゆた先生! Could you also do a video on tips for getting better at speaking? Im pretty confident in my listening and reading but when Im talking in Japanese I can only form short replies. I've been practicing a lot lately and feel myself getting better but I was hoping you'd have some good tips on speeding things up.
Yuta to the rescue on how I'm learning wrong, again lol. Thanks for the content! Your premium course has been great. I recommend it for everyone learning Japanese.
Reading really helps. I took Japanese classes where we just wrote Kanji, but then I went to Japan and took the train in Tokyo and then it suddenly all made sense to me. By reading the names of the stations in both Kanji and Hiragana remembered more Kanji's than if I would continue to write and write and write...
As someone who cant read any Kanji or Japanese or anything because just today i decided im going to try and learn. This video gave me a sense of calm as i was getting very overwhelmed by every other video i watched. Thank you.
Thank you for your video. I'm currently learning kanji, and I agree with almost everything you've said. I would like to make an argument for writing kanji in the beginning though. For me, and as you've alluded to it's different for everyone, writing has helped me to clarify some of the similar looking kanji (similar looking to me and perhaps Western eyes in general, perhaps not). Also, in my job as an English teacher, being able to clarify the difference between, "He/She is _____" related to occupation, and "He/She is _____" related to personality... it's a lot easier to write '職' next to the former, with my limited Japanese/limited ability to explain. I think writing helps me with recognition, because I can see the pieces/radicals more easily, but it took about two months to reach that point for me. I probably won't go back to that notebook, but I can duplicate the train schedule from memory... writing kanji, and then trying to pull it from memory and rewrite it the next day from memory helps me remember some of the basic shapes and the differences between them. For example, 夫 and 末 (not the best example, but off the top of my head... maybe 井and 丼). I think it's good to start writing kanji when learning, but maybe just not spend a ton of time focusing on it. For me, it also helps make what initially looked like more complicated kanji less complicated. For me, it has been helpful. Maybe it's as simple as having to look more carefully in order to get the parts right. Maybe it's something about muscle memory causing connections, and some complicated neuro-kinetic-optical phenomena I don't understand. Anyway, I wouldn't 'write' it off completely.
I love learning to read and write kanji regardless of how much time it takes, it makes me genuinely happy for some reason. It's probably the small moments of achievement I feel every time I manage to read and understand an entire Japanese sentence or gradually see my technique in brush strokes improve that make the characters look so beautiful. I really agree with the people who say Kanji is the ultimate form of art.
Regarding the "Skip writing" part, there's a book by James W. Heisig called "Remembering the Kanji". It can teach you to write kanji by hand (as well as remembering the basic idea of what a particular kanji is about) VERY fast. At the moment I'm learning 20 new kanji a day, and they actually stay in memory (not without the help of anki ofc, book elaborates on how to use it). 20 new kanji takes about 1.5 h a day (that includes revising old ones through anki as well as putting new ones there) I'm at 220 kanji, so I can't say much about the impact, but I do it because a) it's hella interesting, and I'm starting to see the meaning in a lot of previously unintelligible glyphs b) I hope it will make learning vocab tenfold easier, since I will be able to base my associations on kanji meanings. P.S. the book doesn't teach you anything about the pronunciations and I thinks it's great, because as you said in the next sections, it's better to learn words in this context OH yes, and it's basically a mnemonics book P.P.S. oh, I guess I'm one of these 'flexing people', well so be it xd
I took this route as well. It helps to recognize kanji when you're used to writing it, it sticks better to your brain because you've already encountered and deciphered its parts so that when you encounter it you are less lost I wouldn't recommend skipping writing
It gets hard to remember them after a while with the RTK method and some of his keywords are frustratingly bad. Like 召 being associated with the keyword 'seduce' when the first word you'll probably learn with it is 召し上がる which is honorific language for eating/drinking. It can be a nice scaffolding early on to make learning vocabulary easier when you're starting, but the only thing that really makes it stick longterm is learning Japanese words. I did all of RTK1 and found extreme diminishing utility by the time I had gone through about 1200 of them and think Heisig is full of it when he says you need to do all 2200 to get anything out of the book. If you're spending an hour and a half a day on RTK1 only 220 kanji in that is really extreme. The time commitment will get way worse the more you learn once you start getting up to 100+ reviews a day, especially when you follow Heisig's advice to write them. Do not do RTK in isolation, it's like spinning your wheels in mud and getting nowhere. You should be spending more time with the language than with RTK. Using RTK1 as a supplement to Genki is fine but if it's your main study it's a huge timesink for not nearly enough benefit IMO. RTK can also give a false sense of understanding kanji like meaning comes from the components when it most of the time really comes from just the radical. Eg like 銅 for copper. The radical is the 金 on the left which gives a vague meaning of some kind of metal in the kanji 銅. The way I remembered 銅 when doing RTK1 was 銅 = 金 + 同 = metal + same (同じ means same) and that "Copper wire is metal all at the same electric potential". But the real reason for the 同 in 銅 kanji is both 銅 and 同 have the on-yomi ドウ, eg the Chinese derived reading ドウ.
@@homerthompson416 I properly write every kanji only once. Maybe 2-3 times if I mess it up When I review them I have an option of either vaguely drawing them in air/on screen/on any surface with finger or not to write at all if can picture it in my imagination clearly enough this way reviewing is actually pretty fast and 100+ won't be an issue every day there two parts to my rtk: 1) reading the stories, making sense of them and actually writing new characters with paper and pencil 2) anki: creating 20 new cards for the 20 new kanji I just learned and then reviewing them and what is left from previous days
@@tolyacow Are you also studying Japanese though? Or just laser focused on kanji through RTK? I highly highly recommend using Genki 1 and 2 in parallel, or maybe the Minna no Nihongo books since they're also well regarded, so you're learning the most important grammar and vocabulary that will form the base from which you can start studying with native material like manga, games, anime, movies, etc. I do think RTK is much better for learning kanji than Genki's kanji sections are though. I ignored them since I was studying RTK1. I do promise RTK1 will get way harder when you're out of the honeymoon phase though and you're trying to write down a kanji you learned two months ago. Studying the language in parallel will help keep motivation up when RTK starts feeling like the veggies mom makes you eat so you can get dessert.
In my expirience it can be useful to write words you want to learn down on paper or flashcards even if you are not gonna use them. Because the act of writing the word down can already help to remember it better.
If this guy studied in a standard Japanese school, he practiced writing them too. As someone who reached professional translator level by doing a similar mix of reading and writing to what Japanese kids do, I’m deeply skeptical of his advice tbh.
It took me a while to read Japanese in Pokemon Shield and news articles. I read almost as fast as my English now just through practice. The same happened through my speaking. I started watching lots of TH-cam and live action shows with Japanese. Now whenever I speak to my conversation partner, she says I'm starting to sound way more natural. There's no trick. It's just exposure.
@@notequalto5179 You must be a very determined and disciplined learner. I am on my way there. When I am able to play my first Pokemon in Japanese I will come back here and post an update.
@@ceticobr definitely! It helps to be in a classroom environment with other students and teachers. And they had a program for meeting people for foreign exchange. Good luck on your studies!
@@notequalto5179 You were in a good situation indeed, but you are insane anyway! Thank you and good luck to you too. Have fun consuming awesome Japanese media.
I've personally found listening to japanese bands kinda helpful in learning kanji, as long as you're reading the lyrics while listening. With streaming sites like Spotify having lyrics on the ready, it makes accessing them quite easy. I should note that I'm also half-japanese myself and so I probably have a bit of a leg up in terms of fluency, but with not living in japan this has been a really helpful method to me.
I'm actually working as a manga translator Japanese→Spanish and I took the time to make my own list of every new word/phrase/refrain/slang/onomatopoeia I found that I didn't know when translating. It has helped me a lot to learn new things and now it's pages and pages long lol
Skipping writing and just reading is a sure way to start forgetting kanji and eventually mixing kanji with similar kanji, even Japanese are not immune to this, but it affects them to lesser extent because they've actually studied these characters hard as kids and written them thousands of times during their lifetimes. I can speak to this from my own experience, having studied all the jouyou kanji and some extra. When I was still studying kanji I was able to write any kanji I knew and if I glanced at a kanji I recognized, I was able to replicate it. I read and type Japanese daily, but not having to had to handwrite kanji for years I sometimes struggle to reproduce a kanji and even mix similar kanjis, especially if they're not frequently encountered in writing. Learning the parts (radicals and others) and writing them down each time and each time you combine them to new characters is essential for getting the feel for how the kanji are built. It also acts as a tool for focus, as visual and tactile engagement helps engage the pathways necessary for neuroplasticity, that is necessary for learning. About the radicals: not all recognizable repeating patterns in kanji qualify as radicals so radicals are a less useful definition for a learner, it's only useful for old fashioned dictionaries really. Looking up Heisig's Remembering the Kanji is probably still your best bet for learning kanji efficiently as an adult.
What especially gets me as a former ALT who got to see a little of how Japanese schools work is that Japanese kids THEMSELVES don’t only learn kanji by reading!!! They learn to write kanji the way we learn to write the alphabet AS WELL AS reading age-appropriate materials. I also think these TH-camrs need to understand that it’s not easy to find Japanese books in Western countries, especially at the level that beginners would benefit from. It was all well and good for me to get hold of kids’ books and then YA novels and manga when I lived in Japan, but here in New Zealand it’s so hard that when I took one of my translation exams, the English to [other languages] translators had to translate a passage out of a book but the person who assigned my Japanese to English translation text gave up on finding a Japanese book at an appropriate level and assigned me a totally different kind of text. I’d love to see the focus change from “you should read” to “here are some websites where you can access good reading materials”. (And if that was buried somewhere in this video, that’s not what I mean. I mean that it should be the focus of the video.)
I love this, thank you!! I am currently (slowly) playing a J-RPG game (Final Fantasy 7 Remake) and there is a lot of reading in it, I decided to switch the language to Japanese (audio and the text), so there is A LOT of reading!! I use a game script in Japanese too with a browser extension that highlights the kanji for the reading. I love this way because I get to have fun too. The word 仲間 was so easy to learn as the characters say it a lot as they're part of the same group. So every time I see or hear it I instantly know it. I never did well with flashcards and writing things down is tedious and boring.. That's why I much prefer methods like playing games, reading manga, or just passively listening to movies/shows I know the story of, no subtitles.
Thank you very for this helpful video:). I would only like to add that for all the people whose learning style is kinaesthetic (they need some body action to learn) writing things down and making notes is a very good method, even if they would discard the note immediately after producing it into the rubbish bin. Just the movements of their hand and a pen enhance their learning. For reviewing vocabulary l recommend doing it while walking, e.g. taking a step while reading each word.
Yes!! Also, Japanese children themselves practice writing kanji AS WELL AS reading age-appropriate stuff, so what I don’t want to see is people blaming themselves for not being able to learn kanji well when they’re not using all of the tools that native speakers use.
When I began learning japanese, I immediately started using kanji in all my writings. My friend called me stupid, cause why use kanji on a beginner level, when you can use kana until the time comes to learn kanji. But now I'm preparing for JLPT N4, and I already know some common kanji and words that include their readings. So the idea of being closer to actual japanese writing from the very beginning showed itself great in long-term
My wife teaches Japanese to non-Japanese children. She goes straight to Kanji (also learning kana of course), and the children have no issues with that. They absorb it easily, even at the beginner level they're at with the language itself. Her method appears to be much more effective than traditional step-by-step methods where all of childhood/teenager years are used to learn the stuff.
The weird thing is, I always found kanji incredibly tedious and unintuitive (and they are), but everytime I read Korean, which has probably the most intuitive and easy writing system ever, I'm starting to miss kanji because when I see 수, like in 수요일 (wednesday), it _could_ mean water, but I have to guess from context, unlike in Japanese where the 水 in 水曜日 is non-ambivalent.
This is solid advice for self teaching people. I am seriously learning Japanese for 1-2 years and this approach is basically how i do it. The only exception is i don’t read as much as i should. I mainly use anki to brute force kanji/vocabulary. But i managed to learn around 600-700 kanji so far according to the app. This lets me understand some basic phrases and signs. I hope i can get into reading more so i learn faster in the future.
I'm a non-Japanese Japanese teacher studying learning methods and kanji didactics and I agree and humbly disagree with a number of things in this video. Disagreements: *radicals* are not the building blocks of kanji as mentioned in various antiquated textbooks. "Radicals" are just a very old index system for dictionaries. Kanjis DO have components and there is compelling evidence that learning them along with the kanji is very helpful. => its better to learn meaning, form phonetic components, as described in the "Kanji Outlier Dictionary" , the "Etymological Dictionary of Han Chinese Characters" or “The World of Kanji”. Research shows that people who can recognize components are better at learning kanji. *writing* can be very helpful for SOME people. So if you are a person who always needs to write things down to remember them, then practicing writing is helpful for you. Various apps and even a bit of calligraphy can also be helpful if you enjoy it. => practice writing if it's useful for you, but don't spend too much time. *learning words instead of individual kanji* learning words in context of the kanji is absolutely helpful, in fact for some people it might even be the best method to learn words first and kanji later. This is how Japanese learn... but then they already know a lot of keywords before they learn how to write them in kanji, and they are surrounded by Japanese kanji all day. Still, it takes them 18 years to master all standard kanji... Westerns don't have that type of time or environment ^^ => learning keywords is key to learning kanji, but becoming aware of ONE or TWO common kanji readings for those key words is very helpful. Researchers have found that people who can associate a SOUND with a kanji are better at remembering them long term. => learning individualkanji meanings in the context of words and sentences helps at the intermediate and advanced level especially. Agreements: Context and reading usually helps! That is backed up by research, and it's been my experience as well. If you are lucky enough to go to Japan, one way to casually practice is to read street signs and ads. *if you've learned individual kanji it will be easier to remember new words and recognize known words in new contexts* Mnemonics and visual stories as in the WaniKani system or Heisig can be helpful, especially when combined with semantic and phonetic components as mentioned above. Some people need more "logical" structure, while others need more visuals and mnemonics - some combination of the two is probably best. Totally agree with SRS flashcards. I'd just add that Anki cards are more helpful for slowly learning individual kanji and that sentences with clozed deletion input are quite helpful. Something not mentioned: the order and structure of a kanji course is important! For more on that subject there is a PhD thesis by Dr. Simon Paxton entitled, "Tackling the Kanji Hurdle", which is fairly convincing. Basically: while the perfect kanji learning method is the method that works for you, structurally an optimal kanji course doesn't exist. Optimally you'd learn frequent words first or together with specific kanji, but kanji would be logically ordered in terms of frequent meaning and sound components. For instance, learning that the three dots on the right of 液、湿、汁 is the component for "water" and means "water" or "liquid" already helps a lot. At the same time, learning that the kanji 青 is pronounced せい (sei) helps you to learn all of these: 清, 靖, 精, 晴, 請, 情, 鯖, 静 because they are pronounced the same way. Of course in Japanese Kanji can have many readings, but in this way you can hit many birds with one stone. The best book in terms of structure and kanji order I know of is "The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course" by Dr. Andrew Conning of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. If you are looking to learn kanji systematically the best bet would be to do Genki 1 or Marugoto Rikai A1 first, then go through KKLC and learn kanji for words you've learned. Ignore the provided vocabulary at first. Brush through Outlier Kanji Dictionary and/or Etymological Dictionary of Han Chinese Characters to get a feeling for the structure. If you still need a mnemonic because the structure is confusing refer to KKLC, WaniKani or Heisig for mnemonics -. At least make an Anki card or modify an existing one with the Kanji on the front and one or two readings and vocabulary on the back. Then read a lot or watch short videos with Japanese subtitles. With all of this the most important thing to remember is not go get bogged down by a specific kanji or word. In a journey of 3000 kanji it's okay to ignore or brush by some steps, since you can always come back later or maybe even learn it by association. And have fun ^^ !
Manga was so crucial in learning Kanji, it helps train the eye to look for the context, which inadvertently helps in learning conversation. Also, it's been scientifically proven that Kanji Flexing is a cry for help, and just not a good look. Friends don't let other friends Kanji Flex💪
I wish I could've had this video when I started taking the plunge into learning kanji. I wasted so much time thinking I needed to learn each kanji on it's own, and ended up learning the 400 most common kanji before giving up learning Japanese for a while. Having come back from that now, I found that learning the kanji in the context of each new word I learn is so much better. I'm still not very far in my Japanese learning adventure, but so far I can agree with every point in this video. And again, I wish I could have had it back then and not wasted as much time. XD
Most people moving on to kanji will have just "learned" hiragana and katakana. Frankly, I do suggest just going down the radical list with as much effort as you put into your hiragana. According to wikipedia, which has a list, 51 of them are used in 75% of the everyday kanji. Just pretend this is the third set of "kana" you have to learn.
Thank you. Excellent tip. I found an Anki deck, but it was pretty lame. Fishook.a and fishook.b tell me exactly nothing. I want to learn the most common ones because, I'm lazy and 51 radicals for 75% of the meaning is a bargain.
Hehehe... I've been procrastinating learning kanji for...yearssss. Hiragana and katakana 👍 good enough but, I can only recognise family kanji characters and that...will change! Fighting 😤😆
to every piece of advice you gave i just said, “yes! yes! yes!”. i was especially happy to see the short “rolling” lists you recommend at 8:20 because that’s exactly how i’ve always taught myself languages and i’ve never seen the method talked about elsewhere. but i disagree when you tell us not to write. it’s true that with intuitive “phonewriting” handwriting is becoming rare (and many japanese will tell you that if they can still recognize all the kanji they need they can handwrite fewer and fewer off the top of their head) but i’ve always sensed that there’s a mystical connection between hand and brain that helps you the same way speaking out loud does. when i’m trying to remember a kanji. miming writing it out really wakes my memory. handwriting kanji is also... soothing? satisfying? whichever, it’s a way to keep learning fun, which is the biggest key to not giving up. it may not be the best “return on investment” but you also stress learning in your own way at your own rate and i’ve always been convinced slow learning is best. after all, a native speaker doesn’t learn their language in 6 months or even 6 years, even after 60 they’re still progressing! 少しずつね。
After 2 years of struggling with kanji, I literally figured out exactly all the things you mentioned!!! I spent hours and hours writing each kanji again and again, and trying to remember all of their pronunciation. It was a waste of time basically 😅 I recently started reading manga, and trying to learn words instead of individual kanji, and I can see a big difference! I hope your video will help other people to save time and learn much faster! 🙏💕みんな、頑張って!!
I managed to memorize the most common 2,000 kanji in just a couple months using spaced repetition software and looking up the character etymologies on wiktitionary. The SRS algorithm really works, but you need to put in X hours a day on it and stick with it.
@@takanara7 I'm sure it works for many people! But in my case it takes way too long, and I don't have that much time because I have full-time job and I am also a university student. Plus, I have dyslexia, so it takes more time for me to memorize something usually 😔 But thank you for your reply!! You are amazing for learning them in a few months!!
Wow I've been trying different methods and trying to see what works for me, and I've settled on doing almost exactly what you suggested. When learning a new word I focus on it for a while, write it down in notepad as well as the reading, meaning, sentence for context, then do something else for a few minutes. After a few minutes I've probably forgotten it so I go back an "re-learn" it and do it again. Then repeat that until I feel like I feel good about remembering it. And then review over the next few days. I felt just using Anki by itself was a little too quick for me, it would tell me that I was "done for the day" but I hadn't really committed it to my memory yet. (there might be a setting in there that I can tweak) I still love using Anki but I find also writing it down and doing it manually as well has really helped me with committing new things to memory. Really, the best advice I could give is don't just blindly follow a guide, try to really pay attention to how you feel when learning. Pay attention to what you feel works and doesn't work, and make adjustments. No two people are the same, it's up to you to learn how to learn, the best way for yourself!
The idea that memorizing kanji is boring might be true, but it's better than wading in against a sea of the unknown. I've tried 'reading' to learn kanji naturally, but it really is inefficient to learn this way. At the beginning in a given one hour session I'd learn maybe a few kanji, some contextual realities, and maybe get a few hints about grammar. After everything I've tried what worked for me was the following progressive combination: 0. Kana iphone app to initially learn Hiragana/Katakana and be able to draw them correctly. I wasn't able to do anything else until I finished this convincingly. 1. Begin Wanikani + Duolingo + TaeKim + Imabi (without resorting to romaji). Some people might find wanikani memorization 'boring' but it was indispensable for me to begin a rigorous systematic progression of knowledge starting from 0. Duolingo helped cement the Hiragana/Katakana, and progressively provides contextual, vocabulary, and grammatical challenges. In order to really meet the grammatical challenges, theoretical support from Tae Kim and Imabi was super useful. 2. Track your wanikani kanji knowledge relative to various sources of reading material with 'wkstats' and 'nihongo stats'. 3. Attempt to read sequentially more difficult material starting with children's books on youtube, progressing as you are comfortable with the vocabulary and grammar. 4. Practice listening to complicated phrases that you know you know all of the vocabulary for and training your real-time comprehension skill. Duolingo is often helpful for this, though there are some pronunciation/enunciation issues. Watching and rewatching TV shows has also been useful but only at this point of understanding. 5. Practice recording myself speaking Japanese phrase and listen to comparable recordings to identify where my pronunciations are off. Without all of these jenga pieces, I would be very far behind my current (admittedly still 下手) level of kanji knowledge. Once you get a foothold in japanese at this level then you can really start reading to learn new kanji through reading. Before you have that foothold I believe that reading to learn kanji is counterproductive at least for my learning style. $0.02
Hard agree about wading into a sea of the unknown. That method is so hyped up online but not only did I become a professional translator without doing it that way, Japanese kids themselves are formally taught kanji!
I personally like making physical flash cards. Read it, write it, say it, see it. The process of making physical flash cards takes longer but I find it makes me memorize much faster than had I typed it electronically.
I did a mix of that and reading stuff, and I will stand by it forever, especially since Japanese kids themselves have kanji lessons on top of reading age-appropriate stuff.
i happen to be one of the few "foreigners" who managed to pass the 1st level of the "KANJI KENTEI" test, and here's a hard truth: to learn something you HAVE to learn it: there are no miracles, and at the end of the day you have to invest time and effort into memorization of each kanji's readings, its correct stroke order, and then all the numerous compound words where that particular kanji is used: all the relevant info can be found on internet - one only has to commit themselves (if they are inclined to do so)
@@primecreator5257 why people climb on everest? yes, they may simply like mountain climbing. but everest itself is also the highest mountain, that not many people have conquered.
I know it’s controversial but I can highly recommend the Remembering the Kanji books by Heisig (RTK) I only did the first part of the series and skipped the second one with the readings and it helped me IMMENSELY with remembering vocabulary and it often helps me guessing the rough meaning of an unknown word with Kanji which ties in perfectly with Yutas first tip of reading. It does take a lot of time to work through the first book and get to a point where you actually remember most Kanji but if you can stick with it the reward is insane. Many people don’t like the method, it’s kind of hotly debated on the internet but I can honestly say to just give it a try. If it doesn’t work for you just stop
When did RTK become an issue? Jeez some people have time to get worked up about nothing. It’s a good book with a good method. He does sure like those bible stories though. But, the method is sound.
@@christopherluke9658 a lot of people seem to consider it a waste of time because you don’t learn any actual Japanese, just some keywords for Kanji - so I kind of get the sentiment of it being considered “a waste of time”. However, having worked through the first book and being able to recall most of the Kanji it’s SUCH a blessing and makes learning a lot easier for me.
Hmmm, I don't think it is controversial in how it teaches (which personally, I think is the best method for non-native people like myself). The controversy comes in when people discuss how to approach language learning. This usually goes like: "Learn everything in context!", "What good is a Kanji if you can't pronounce it or have a sample sentence to go with?". A lot of these biases come from a.) People that learned Japanese in a different (perhaps traditional) way b.) Japanese language instructors, where the focus is often on achieving "immediate" output. It is quite easy to imagine why people incorrectly dismiss Heisig: Would you rather have someone learn the basics of talking, 200 frequently used Kanji and their readings to make them as beginners "useful" OR someone spending 10 weeks mastering 2200 Kanji without knowing much more than their meaning through a bunch of stories? I know a lot of people would think the former as being more "productive" but honestly, regarding the latter, once you know all the Kanji, your rate of learning is boosted in a way which gives you more self-confidence. The long term gain is not appreciable and hence the mistaken "controversy". Personally, I find Heisig trains your "eye" to get accustomed to Kanji. And the writing becomes trivially easy. As a result, you can focus on pronunciation and reading much more easily.
@@christopherluke9658 Yeah its solid but I think using your own mnemonics or ones rooted in Japanese culture is better because learning language is also learning a cultural frame of mind. If you do Heisig's method exactly as is you end up trying to parse through two very different world views early on. Ultimately it's controversial because of large time investment, misuse (not using it alongside reading and listening), and its also possible to go without it entirely.
@@user-mm7bs6vl2u Heisig’s stories are too cringy. I use his book for radicals and keywords, after I just make some stories or look for stories in internet. I know about 400 kanji now and sometimes I understand a meaning of some sentences I can’t read them though. Some times I even already know kanji before see it in the book. If I see kanji many times in different sources I Google it, for example 聞く. I see it in Hollow Knight and know this word now but I have no Idea when I will see it in Heisig’s book.
I had my finger over the screen, ready to skip past the first 2 minutes of unnecessary intro, like every other video. Thanks for getting right into it!🎉
This is so true. When I was taking a Japanese course by a professional Japanese teacher we used newspapers. He had each person read out aloud. Years went by now I can truly appreciate that method
I've been learning Japanese on and off for about 12 years now and I always feel like I've made like no progress but then I'll look back at notes from like 2 years ago and I'm like... wow I _have_ actually progressed. Of those 12 only about the last 3 or 4 were spent trying to learn more kanji. I used to have this notepad document when I was a kid of Japanese translations from romaji to English; recently I upgraded to a word document that is 70% Japanese characters because it focuses on kanji and spelling moreso than translations. I also recently took a sort of Japanese placement test and I actually scored better on the kanji section than the vocabulary section so now I'm like... I should be focusing on learning more vocabulary xD I feel like I'm the only person that has learned this language completely out of order: I first learned grammar and sentence structure, then kana, then verbs, then kanji, then vocabulary
It's been on and off for 12 years for me as well, and I always feel like I know almost nothing haha, but then I realize that I do recognize a lot of words and I'm able to understand more than I thought. I just wish I'd studied more during these years lol.
Not everyone can skip writing. I have to write new words and kanji. No matter how many times I come across many words or kanji, if I don't take the time to write it until I know it, I'll never learn it. Besides I have friends who still like to write postcards.
Japanese kids don’t skip writing either. This advice is at best tailored to a particular type of brain, and I wish people wouldn’t treat it like the gospel.
"Tell yourself you are reading this cute romantic manga for educational purposes and not because you have no romance in real life.'' Why do you have to hurt me like this Yuta?
As someone who spent thousands of hours making a learn to read website, only to realize that all I really needed to do was have my daughter read to me - I can attest to everything Yuta is saying.... It was almost like a parody, every single thing he said not to do, I did, right down to ignoring stroke order which caught my off guard
I've been learning Japanese for years... since I was 11 and I'm 30 now.... and this is all very solid advice! taken me years to learn just this lol. I wish I knew this in the beginning. I almost gave up Japanese once due to how difficult it was and how fail the highschool/university system was in my country when I was learning. For example, a heavy focus of my university course was using 'keigo' when I could barely say anything other than my name in Japanese.
This came at the perfect time. I've been trying to use the Olly Richards method of learning Japanese by reading, though I've been taking a break and am now trying to get back into it (I even started playing Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney in Japanese as a start). I wonder, though. A major motivation of mine is to write stories (like, full novels) in Japanese. Any advice on that?
Just start writing, I guess. Do simple stories first, like you would for children. Whatever new things you picked up from reading, try including it in your next story.
"Read" Yuta says, and immediately shows 黒牢城. It definitely deserves its prize, but the book is probably the most difficult thing I've read so far. Great video though, I particularly applaud you having the guts to declare that note taking isn't always learning, which is so against the grain of what is considered an absolute truth in so many places. I wasted so much time on mandarin practicing things that never ended up mattering at all. Practice the things you want to use in the language! (which is almost never writing thanks to IME)
I don’t think making notes is a waste of time even if you never review them! I think it does help you to retain the information when you write it down, especially physically, but even if it’s digitally, it’s good practice in spelling the word and making sure you understood all the syllables correctly.
Currently reading サクラの降る町. I scan it, extract the characters with OCR and then I can easily check the words I don't know with Rikaikun. It was tough in the beginning but it gets much easier very fast. (Also knowing that sometimes a radical represents the reading of the kanji makes thing much easier.)
My focus is on learning how to identify kanji by radicals and stroke count. Things that trip me up are fancy fonts and variants of radicals. Sometimes if I'm stumped, it turns out that some radicals have very many strokes, 10 or more. I gather that kanji is listed 'alphabetically' by its main radical, though there can be several radicals in the kanji. The Jisho tool is good because you can track a kanji by any of its radical parts, and not just the dictionary radical. Lexilogos only tracks kanji by its main radical, not its parts. But Lexilogos also lists kanji by stroke order, e.g., all kanji with 12 strokes. Sometimes it can be tricky to figure out the correct stroke count, it's not always obvious what counts as one stroke or two strokes. Jisho will only list a single kanji by its radical, whereas Tangorin will list all the words that contain kanji containing a particular radical. I seem to be mentally retarded at oral comprehension. But many Japanese TH-camrs like to overlay transcriptions on their videos, which is fantastic for me. That's where I get most of my kanji practice. It's also interesting to note the differences between what they say and the transcription.. Actually being able to follow what my favorite TH-camrs are saying is very pleasant.
my personal tip, learn hiragana and katakana, then read and memorize vocabulary written in them. Thats a good base to at least recognize enough words to understand a little.
Once I'm finished with basic Japanese, I'm going to replay the MGS games in their native language. The codec calls taught me English, and it didn't even feel like I was studying at the time. After all, the best method to learn a language has always been through immersion of the target language.
In my case I actually find it very helpful to write the translated words down in my notebook, but together with image associated with the Japanese word's prounacation and its meaning. Not only it creates more connections in my brain for the particular word, but also consumes less time during the review - short glimpse of the image insead of reading the same sentence over and over again.
You're actually so funny lol I'm loving your videos! There are lots of people good at teaching japanese here on youtube but I'm drawn to your channel not only bc you're more clear, but also 'cause of your personality! You're great!
What I do is go to wiktionary and type in "Appendix:Chinese radical". It lists all the radicals and all the characters in every radical, and gives an in-depth listing of all the pronunciations and definitions of each character. Not just for Japanese, but for Chinese and even usually for Korean and Vietnamese.
This inspires me to really get into reading. I keep telling myself I'm not on a good enough level for it to be worth anything yet, but I think I'm long past that now. As far as writing goes though.. from experience it's one of the "depends" things. Writing was a big part of me learning English, and has been for learning Japanese. But I never wrote with the intention of reviewing my notes. The act of writing on paper itself is what makes a very notable difference in my memory. Whereas looking something up on a screen or taking a note on a keyboard usually has me forgetting the moment I move on. So I'll probably try reading something and write down every word I don't recognize. And if I see it again later and can't recall what it meant, I'll write it down again. Not to review, but for the visual/muscle memory because that's what seems to do it for me ^^
“Take a deep breath and tell yourself you’re reading this cute romantic manga for educational purposes, not because you don’t have any romance in real life” 😂😂 I love it
"How many of you guys still remeber this word" *pause* "It's tomodachi - friends" I hope our man Yuta isn't trying to insult us or something ;)
Same reaction
Sick burn.
I feel attacked. 😅
Ok but what if I admit to both??? XD
reading manga is helping me so much to read kanji even though it's so hard at the beggining. I remember it's takes me like 20 minutes just to finish 1 chapter when i start reading... but when i "read more" it's become easier and faster too ^^
Do you need to know a good amount of vocabulary before reading manga? What do you do if you find a kanji but don't know its meaning? Do you look up the meaning?
@@ven1845 yes, usually manga are quite difficult to read, though plain romance may be easier, and depending on the target (usually shounen/kodomo) they also have furigana, so maybe 'reading' in itself is not a problem, understanding is the 'problem', they may often use not common words or yojijukugo, I should know all the jouyou kanji, but usually when I see kanji I don't know I just focus on learning the meaning of the word in which it appears and the reading of the kanji if it is common, sometimes in manga even 'usually kana' words are written in kanji if there is furigana, but I would not suggest to learn rare or almost unused kanji
I am unable to find any manga in Japanese for free online. Is there a way?
@@shashankgupta7460 I tried to write the name of some sites multiple times, but apparently they are blocked(at least from the comment section), so I cannot write them here
I just instantly forget all the kanji right after I checked them in the dictionary
Yuta is right, there's no need to focus that much on writing Kanji. I'm majoring in Japanese for 6 semesters (about 4 years) now and early on the tutors put so much emphasis on writing every textbook Kanji at a perfect angle even tho some of my Japanese classmates can't write or remember the strokes at all. It is only necessary if you're into calligraphy or poetry.
Could you explain in how far writing kanji is important for poetry?
@@mikasaackermann5080 Some people enjoy handwritten Haiku (17-mora poem), it's also a type of calligraphy. But even then, you first need to know how to read Kanji to choose the right ones.
But what if you have to handwrite kanji, for example taking some short notes? I mean, we simply cannot write everything with keyboards right? So I still dont get why so many people dont have any problems in their daily life without being able to handwrite Kanji.
If it's not work-related you use Hiragana\ Katakana or very common Kanji. Nothing too complicated. That's why you should keep all the strokes in mind, you'll recall them quickly if necessary. The more you recognise them in daily life the better. I also use a "denshi- jisho", an electronic dictionary when working as a translator. ( They can be expensive tho)
@@Lee-lm2bn So Japanese students use hiragana/katakana or very common kanji to write their notes at school? (I mean older students like at high school or something)
I actually learn Kanji by integrating writing in my routine. It is indeed an overkill, but I genuinely enjoy doing writing practices, and it helps me remember Kanjis faster and distinguish Kanjis with similar radicals.
Same. The characters are much easier to remember if you're leaning how to write them!
writing kanji has been one of my favorite parts of learning japanese so far
nerdy but effective
I also practicing like this, once I can recognizing the radicals pattern I can easily recall what Kanji it is and how to make words out of it
There's something about writing kanji that's just so satisfying. I feel like I get the same satisfaction out of doing geometry things with a compass and ruler.
Another advantage of reading is that you already have the Kanji and words sorted by relevance. It might bother you, that you already forgot the word 3 pages ago, but when it doesnt appear in the next 80 pages, it cannot be that important. And when it does, you have another free repitition, just like flash cards.
needed to 'hear' this, thank u
Agreed 100%, and another thing - what I've found is that if you try to use "store for review" systems. and go through those later, it doesn't really work. It works much better if you read and your brain automatically notices kanji it doesn't know, and more importantly, notices kanji it doesn't know but has seen before. At that point something curious happens - it absorbs the meaning (maybe not first time, but soon) when you get it or learn it. While "review" systems, with more conscious review/try-to-remember methods don't work very well at all.
Another thing - as Yuta said in the middle of the video, using mnemonics to help remembering radicals helps in recognizing and remembering kanji and words. And also: From 09.00 and out.
One resource that helps me with kanji, personally, is “The World of Kanji” by Alex Adler. It actually goes into detail of the origins of kanji, which I think could be helpful for those trying to come up with mnemonic devices and better visualize how a pictograph came to be a kanji. For example, 母 relates to “mother” when you realize that the kanji represents a pair of breasts for feeding a child. Or 行 relating to the verb “go” when it represents a four-way crossroad. Whenever I see these two kanji, I now know how to connect them to their meaning because of the context of how the kanji itself was created and changed over time. Try using this book in combination with your other methods to see if it can help!
Cool! Thank you! Learning where kanji come from interests me a lot!
मुझे भी ऐसा ही लगा ।
Ahh yes the arbitrary information that is not related whatsoever to reading kanji, amazing! I swear some go their entire life learning "mnemonics" instead of actually learning japanese lmao
Based.
@@kanireader Etymology isn’t arbitrary. It’s literally the study of word origin and how their meanings and writings change over time. Yes, mnemonics CAN be arbitrary, but if you base it on something that’s grounded in the formation of the word, it can be extremely helpful. In English, what’s a starfish? It’s kind of like a fish, and it’s shaped like a star. Not only that, understanding the origin of “star” can help with words like “asterisk”, “astronomy”, “disaster”, “stardom” and “stellar” while also providing cultural context of the language, such as how stars are seen as determiners of fate in European cultures. Is this etymological approach the only efficient and effective way to learn kanji? No. Is it an approach worth considering? About as much as other methods listed in the video and the comment section. If it works for you, it works. If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t. We’re all just sharing our methods and experiences to help others figure out what works best for them.
1:05 Detective Conan was the first manga I read in Japanese when I was more or less on the required level to understand it. I agree, it helped me immensely in learning kanji.
Could you help me? I couldn't find a website for japanese manga, could you tell me where you have read it?
@@zeko12 I bought them digitally, but there are also free libraries online, obviously without the more popular titles though.
I used to watch Detective Conan regularly so i knew the common words and most of the lines which made reading the manga so much easier and i actually noticed that my reading and memory have gotten way better.
@反戦国家 It's "Tsuredure Children"
@反戦国家 徒然チルドレン (Tsuredure Children). The anime is really good as well.
8:35 Actually, by spending time on making flashcards yourself, you are focusing and repeatedly checking the word, which can be very beneficial. Sometimes, by the time you have finished with the flashcard you have already spend enough time focusing on it, to memorize it properly.
Yes thank you. After years of being led down the garden path by so much bad advice this is literally it. It feels bad at first but just pick a manga you love and take it one speech bubble at a time. It has helped me to an insane degree. No more coming up with lengthy mnemonics for every aspect of a Kanji and trying to revise it with flashcards. Just read. If you don't remember it, look it up. Trust that it's being reinforced. Keep reading. And gradually it improves. And it's actually enjoyable!
i believe writing is important when you're still learning basics. Such as (He did x, y, z, because A-san told him W) When you can easily understand the structure, then reading becomes efficient. You just learn new words and different sentences for situations and you can actually start guessing meanings from the kanji.
Also I really can't remember anything unless I make notes. I often find myself remembering things from just the memory of writing it.
Everyone's different, but writing is important at the start for many. Oh also I remember the stroke order, but usually write in the wrong order, because it's faster.
agreed.. i keep writing what i just learn a whole day. it helps me remember it faster
The fact is that many Chinese don't necessarily know how to write Chinese characters, but they can recognize the characters as soon as they see them, so there's really no need to stress writing Chinese characters.
As someone who still struggles with learning Japanese years after I started, I'd like to thank you so much for this video!! It's so helpful! One of my biggest struggles is learning/remembering kanji. Years ago, I took some Japanese lessons where I live and the method they used to teach kanji was the traditional one (writing the kanji lots of times and trying to remember the readings and order of strokes without much context before somehow trying to apply all that to actual sentences). Needless to say I can hardly remember some of the kanjis from those lessons despite the hundreds of times I did those exercises of writing the same kanji over and over again. However, I did notice it's easier for me to remember kanjis through reading manga, texts, stories, etc, but I never thought this would be an actual valid or correct method to learn since I wasn't learning the meaning of the kanji itself, or it's different readings, or the stroke order, and always thought it was "incomplete" or something, so I'm really happy to know that's not the case!
Honestly, this applies to any language for me.
It is easier to learn something with langauge when having an contact with the actual language than just with dry "learning materials".
This is also the reason why I am barely knowing any French, despite learning it for 6 years.
Frankly it’s quite simple: The best way to learn how to read is to read. The best way to learn how to write is to write. And the best way to learn how to speak is to speak.
Funny how that works!
But you can't speak if you don't understand first
Except it isn't. You can't read if you don't understand the language AND the characters. You can't hand a book in a foreign language to anyone on Earth and have them learn to read by looking at it all the time. Doesn''t matter how much you stare at 私 you are never going to figure out that it means "watashi". You have to be taught that. And even if I teach you that, you still won't know what watashi means. You have to be taught that too. Nobody learns to reads before being basically fluent in that language already.
@@carloscorona3143 you also can't read if you don't understand.
@@based9930 Knowing hiragana/katakana is sufficient for Japanese. The rest becomes obvious, because, even if there's no furigana, you can just look up the word.
I typically enjoy reading but also writing down the books/articles I read. I take in the vocabulary I don't know and learn from that reading. It's so important to be able to do both in my opinion and it works best for me :)
I've found that reading manga helps a lot with reading for me. For one, it's not just a wall of text but accompanied by visual elements that help with figuring out things like setting, situation, feeling and so on. It's also more fun and engaging, which makes me more likely to actually continue!
I've also benefitted a lot from reading my manga aloud and getting an extra "boost" so to say in my learning by having the audio as well. A minor thing that gives a lot!
I like this
Hey ! Can you tell me where do you read manga ? any app or Website ?
When learning Mandarin back in primary school, we would have a text in a textbook full of short story style paragraphs, and at the end of each, we have questions about the text, and notes on the characters with multiple readings, we call these 多音多义字, how we would learn is this small table of such characters, and example words of each reading. And we would look up the dictionary for the meaning, write it down, and create sentences with them as an exercise. I found that even if the sentence creation is only done once or twice, the memory gets ingrained very quickly because of the method of using the dictionary.
Of course this is in the course of many years if you read through many characters and will end up with a comprehension thats sufficient for most of your daily use.
I am only a year into Japanese studies as a whole, but find the method above I utilised as a child very useful in learning Japanese kanji, and as such now am able to read through multiple kanji in song lyrics without needing the furigana. Of course the list is incomplete, but as Yuta said, its not a race :).
Enjoy your education journey! It lasts a lifetime:)
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. This sounds like a really useful method for my learning style! ありがとうございます。頑張りましょう👍🏾
Hi, do you happen to be from Malaysia? Anyway, I feel learning Chinese gives us an unfair advantage because we only need to learn the pronunciations of words while the meanings of most words are the same as Chinese
@@yokelengleng hi yes! But would you say its unfair? Many things are, while structurally comprehensible with a Mandarin background, still not easy as you are essentially relearning how everything sounds like. It is easier, but not to say its a walk in the park
@@jamesn.5721 True.... I mean unfair in terms of understanding the meaning of most kanji compounds immediately and being able to write most of the kanji without learning stroke by stroke. However, we struggle with the pronunciation of kanji
@@jamesn.5721 Besides, I am currently studying Japanese in a Chinese majority secondary school. Our teacher said that it is very hard for Malay students to learn kanji stroke by stroke, therefore the kanji part in the exam is the killer for the Malay students. I believe our teacher must have saved lots of time teaching us as we don't have to waste time learning kanji stroke by stroke. Instead, we can immediately dive into Japanese grammar.
I opened this video ready to close it after the 10 first seconds. But you immediately started without any boring waste-of-time-introduction! Thanks man!
One thing about learning Japanese that I really enjoy is the existence of radical. It’s so cool to learn new kanji and they make total sense right away because of the radicals it is made of.
I love wanikani for the many reasons you listed. I use it on my work PC and never close it so I will always remember to look at it in my free time and pauses during work. I'm slowly learning kanji just with wanikani and trying to read visual novels (and VN-like games), specially those that are fully voiced. I feel so good when I recognize new kanji when doing this!
I used Wanikani while reading a lot and it worked perfectly. In the beginning I would read manga with furigana, then I went to manga without furigana and now I’m finally able to read light novels. It has really helped me achieve my goal of being able to read freely.
Now I read a lot every day and I feel that I’m learning really fast
@@ggman8216 Nice to hear. Learning kanji via wanikani as well. Good luck in your learning journey guys!
I’m also using wanikani, great idea! I might try it 😂
I love waninaki. My dopamine deprived brain craves it.
凄い助かりました、ゆたさん！いつも有り難いです。MattvsJapan made a video about writing out kanji and he is known among his Japanese friends for his amazing kanji knowledge. And he even admitted that it wasn't really worth learning to write them out, it's more of a party trick (that took sooo many hours to do) than an actual useful skill. As long as you know basic stroke order, even if you were living in Japan and had to fill out forms you can always look up the kanji for reference when filling it out. Unless you need to be able to handwrite kanji, There's very little reason to spend the time to learn to write them all out. 皆さん、お互いに頑張りましょう！
My experience with learning japanese is the following: I do 1h-2.5h of anki flashcards every day. That includes kanji and vocabulary with 2k6k deck. Then I watch about 1h of media in japanese and read doujinshi for 30 minutes. Rinse and repeat. I passed N3 after 10 months after starting this and am aiming for N1 by the end of this year. I will also start reading NHK easy articles every day. I did this during secondary school so I believe anyone can do this if they make it a habit.
Did you hit your goal of N1? Either way, that's some pretty fast learning and dedication. I nned dedication. I started a few months ago and then stopped after learning hiragana and katakana. For me it get's really difficult when starting to learn to learn kanji and words, but i don't want to just learn words without the kanji because most words aren't wrote out in hiragana so i lost motivation. I'm relearning hiragana and katakana since i forgot most of them, i recognize some but not all. Do you have any advice for starting to learn words/kanji and grammar? Like for example, is it worth going straight into reading after learning hiragana and katakana, or should i get a solid foundation in grammar and simple words, like N5 level words? The first thing i read will probably be yotsuba which is fairly simple, so should i jump right into reading and using a dictionary or should i use anki and an N5 deck or a V2K deck to learn some common words in manga and LN's first as well as a grammar deck? IK some of this may be covered in the video, but i basically don't know what sort of foundation i need before i try to learn while reading since learning grammar without knowing words is difficult, and learning words without knowing grammar is difficult as well since it's hard to understand sentences. TLDR; what type of foundation should one have before trying to read to learn kanji and vocab, is grammar enough or should i also learn some common N5 words first?
@@Xx0ME0xX my response may be a bit late to be helpful to you, but going straight into reading without learning some grammar and vocab will not help you at all. You're not going to get anything out of being able to read a string of characters if you don't know what any of them mean when put together. I'd say that knowing most of N5 is a good start to being able to read, since you'll understand basic sentences and clauses. You should also frequently try to listen as well
@@AkatsukiAyano I agree, you'll need to have some basic vocab and grammar knowledge before reading will get you anywhere. Same goes for listening, if you don't understand anything it isn't helpful at all. That's why William combines it with flashcards, especially in the first few months. Later, when you have gained a solid base, you can focus more on reading and listening.
I have colour-grapheme synaesthesia (共感覚) and make my own personalized flashcards. Mostly I make flashcards for words rather than individual kanji, and show the kanji colour as it appears in each word, since for me this is morphologically conditioned (varies with context). Also, for some common kanji with multiple readings I make a kanji card depicting the kanji in the multiple colours for the various different readings.
This works for me! My vocab and reading has improved from non-existent to lower intermediate. A modest improvement, but it's enjoyable and I'm happy with it. 😊
For anyone else with colour-grapheme synaesthesia, I'd recommend giving it a try, if you think it might be useful for you.
I should clarify I'm not trying to learn to handwrite a huge number of kanji! Way too difficult! I'm just using the colours I perceive (through my synaesthesia) as a familiarisation device, to help me recognise kanji in context when reading, or when selecting the correct kanji from the predictive text on my phone!
Don't dismiss writing by hand. It's immensely powerful. You activate more of your brain and you'll remember more, better and faster.
Especially don’t dismiss it when Japanese kids themselves are taught that way!!!
@@kiwimusume Im not a japanese kid and i will never write japanese by hand.
This guide not only helps on learning kanji, I also do this when I study hiragana and katakana. The more I notice a character when reading, the more I remember it.
love the way you just went right to it, amazing, we need more people like you.
This reminds me of the time i was deep into learning kanji! So basically, I started getting interested in it because of Kuroko no Basket's character names. I went from learning the meaning of each kanji in their names, to learning the stroke orders, to learning the radicals, then the readings. Next thing I knew is that i saved several page links of kanji tables. But what made me retain it in my head and still do up to this day is when i create an original character, either for a fanfic or an original story (both of which i never wrote), and then think of i good name for the character. I would go on and research words, research names, research readings, combine syllables and stuff. It was very effective for me. I had an entire list of character names based off the numbers 1-10, and a bunch of other names saved in many different document files in my pc or phone. I literally bought a kanji dictionary just for this.
This is a really helpful video. I'm learning something new today.
1. Stroke order
2. Reading is definitely more effective than practice writing it until we learn each kanji. I never review the flashcards either. I will just read and look up if a kanji doesn't furigana.
I don’t bother with stroke order. I do generally stick to top to bottom and left to right direction but I don’t follow every order religiously. My kanji still end up looking the same. And most of the time I type kanji into a keyboard which generates the kanji sooo I don’t focus too much on writing kanji 😅
As an advance learner I have to say this is one of the best videos on learning kanji out there! I would also add on that watching things with Japanese subtitles is such a great way to learn. You practice listening and reading at the same time and you get to learn how the words are properly pronounced.
Absolutely perfect video. I love the way he explains everything compared to some of the other videos I’ve seen. Especially when he says don’t listen to the “Flexors”. There’s too much pressure when you’re of Japanese descent, to automatically know how to read all kanji. Saw the videos you’re like WTF are they talking about! But he keeps the explanations practical.
いい動画を作ってくれてありがとうゆた先生! Could you also do a video on tips for getting better at speaking? Im pretty confident in my listening and reading but when Im talking in Japanese I can only form short replies. I've been practicing a lot lately and feel myself getting better but I was hoping you'd have some good tips on speeding things up.
0:26 *NEED SAUCE!!!!*
spreadsheets are a game changer. Thanks so much for the tips!!
Only thing that's missing from this video is list of manga for starters, but still very helpful ^^
Yuta to the rescue on how I'm learning wrong, again lol.
Thanks for the content! Your premium course has been great. I recommend it for everyone learning Japanese.
0:06 官能小説から引用すなw
Reading really helps. I took Japanese classes where we just wrote Kanji, but then I went to Japan and took the train in Tokyo and then it suddenly all made sense to me. By reading the names of the stations in both Kanji and Hiragana remembered more Kanji's than if I would continue to write and write and write...
As someone who cant read any Kanji or Japanese or anything because just today i decided im going to try and learn. This video gave me a sense of calm as i was getting very overwhelmed by every other video i watched. Thank you.
How's it been? Have you made any progress? Rooting for ya
Thank you for your video. I'm currently learning kanji, and I agree with almost everything you've said. I would like to make an argument for writing kanji in the beginning though. For me, and as you've alluded to it's different for everyone, writing has helped me to clarify some of the similar looking kanji (similar looking to me and perhaps Western eyes in general, perhaps not). Also, in my job as an English teacher, being able to clarify the difference between, "He/She is _____" related to occupation, and "He/She is _____" related to personality... it's a lot easier to write '職' next to the former, with my limited Japanese/limited ability to explain. I think writing helps me with recognition, because I can see the pieces/radicals more easily, but it took about two months to reach that point for me.
I probably won't go back to that notebook, but I can duplicate the train schedule from memory... writing kanji, and then trying to pull it from memory and rewrite it the next day from memory helps me remember some of the basic shapes and the differences between them. For example, 夫 and 末 (not the best example, but off the top of my head... maybe 井and 丼). I think it's good to start writing kanji when learning, but maybe just not spend a ton of time focusing on it. For me, it also helps make what initially looked like more complicated kanji less complicated. For me, it has been helpful. Maybe it's as simple as having to look more carefully in order to get the parts right. Maybe it's something about muscle memory causing connections, and some complicated neuro-kinetic-optical phenomena I don't understand. Anyway, I wouldn't 'write' it off completely.
everyone learns stuff differently
for me writing stuff down actually helps me way more
Your way is so common that even Japanese kids learn it that way. I get tired of TH-camrs declaring stuff like this useless when that’s not true.
I really liked your message at the end about not worrying where others are at in their journey with learning. Great video Yuta!
I love learning to read and write kanji regardless of how much time it takes, it makes me genuinely happy for some reason. It's probably the small moments of achievement I feel every time I manage to read and understand an entire Japanese sentence or gradually see my technique in brush strokes improve that make the characters look so beautiful. I really agree with the people who say Kanji is the ultimate form of art.
Regarding the "Skip writing" part, there's a book by James W. Heisig called "Remembering the Kanji". It can teach you to write kanji by hand (as well as remembering the basic idea of what a particular kanji is about) VERY fast. At the moment I'm learning 20 new kanji a day, and they actually stay in memory (not without the help of anki ofc, book elaborates on how to use it). 20 new kanji takes about 1.5 h a day (that includes revising old ones through anki as well as putting new ones there)
I'm at 220 kanji, so I can't say much about the impact, but I do it because
a) it's hella interesting, and I'm starting to see the meaning in a lot of previously unintelligible glyphs
b) I hope it will make learning vocab tenfold easier, since I will be able to base my associations on kanji meanings.
P.S. the book doesn't teach you anything about the pronunciations and I thinks it's great, because as you said in the next sections, it's better to learn words in this context
OH yes, and it's basically a mnemonics book
P.P.S. oh, I guess I'm one of these 'flexing people', well so be it xd
I took this route as well. It helps to recognize kanji when you're used to writing it, it sticks better to your brain because you've already encountered and deciphered its parts so that when you encounter it you are less lost
I wouldn't recommend skipping writing
@@furiifouru oh, thanks, I needed a comment like this. Now I know I'm on a path that works xd
It gets hard to remember them after a while with the RTK method and some of his keywords are frustratingly bad. Like 召 being associated with the keyword 'seduce' when the first word you'll probably learn with it is 召し上がる which is honorific language for eating/drinking. It can be a nice scaffolding early on to make learning vocabulary easier when you're starting, but the only thing that really makes it stick longterm is learning Japanese words. I did all of RTK1 and found extreme diminishing utility by the time I had gone through about 1200 of them and think Heisig is full of it when he says you need to do all 2200 to get anything out of the book.
If you're spending an hour and a half a day on RTK1 only 220 kanji in that is really extreme. The time commitment will get way worse the more you learn once you start getting up to 100+ reviews a day, especially when you follow Heisig's advice to write them. Do not do RTK in isolation, it's like spinning your wheels in mud and getting nowhere. You should be spending more time with the language than with RTK. Using RTK1 as a supplement to Genki is fine but if it's your main study it's a huge timesink for not nearly enough benefit IMO.
RTK can also give a false sense of understanding kanji like meaning comes from the components when it most of the time really comes from just the radical. Eg like 銅 for copper. The radical is the 金 on the left which gives a vague meaning of some kind of metal in the kanji 銅. The way I remembered 銅 when doing RTK1 was 銅 = 金 + 同 = metal + same (同じ means same) and that "Copper wire is metal all at the same electric potential". But the real reason for the 同 in 銅 kanji is both 銅 and 同 have the on-yomi ドウ, eg the Chinese derived reading ドウ.
@@homerthompson416 I properly write every kanji only once. Maybe 2-3 times if I mess it up
When I review them I have an option of either vaguely drawing them in air/on screen/on any surface with finger or not to write at all if can picture it in my imagination clearly enough
this way reviewing is actually pretty fast and 100+ won't be an issue
every day there two parts to my rtk:
1) reading the stories, making sense of them and actually writing new characters with paper and pencil
2) anki: creating 20 new cards for the 20 new kanji I just learned and then reviewing them and what is left from previous days
@@tolyacow Are you also studying Japanese though? Or just laser focused on kanji through RTK? I highly highly recommend using Genki 1 and 2 in parallel, or maybe the Minna no Nihongo books since they're also well regarded, so you're learning the most important grammar and vocabulary that will form the base from which you can start studying with native material like manga, games, anime, movies, etc.
I do think RTK is much better for learning kanji than Genki's kanji sections are though. I ignored them since I was studying RTK1.
I do promise RTK1 will get way harder when you're out of the honeymoon phase though and you're trying to write down a kanji you learned two months ago. Studying the language in parallel will help keep motivation up when RTK starts feeling like the veggies mom makes you eat so you can get dessert.
What I like to do is I read lyrics to a Japanese song while I listen. It helps with retention, pronunciation, and also with pronouncing the kanji
Honestly, i find that making notes making me remember things better. Just making noted, not necessarily reviewing them.
In my expirience it can be useful to write words you want to learn down on paper or flashcards even if you are not gonna use them. Because the act of writing the word down can already help to remember it better.
If this guy studied in a standard Japanese school, he practiced writing them too. As someone who reached professional translator level by doing a similar mix of reading and writing to what Japanese kids do, I’m deeply skeptical of his advice tbh.
It took me a while to read Japanese in Pokemon Shield and news articles. I read almost as fast as my English now just through practice.
The same happened through my speaking. I started watching lots of TH-cam and live action shows with Japanese. Now whenever I speak to my conversation partner, she says I'm starting to sound way more natural. There's no trick. It's just exposure.
Nice. How long did it take from zero to playing Pokemon Shield?
@@ceticobr 2.5 years of rigorous study.
@@notequalto5179 You must be a very determined and disciplined learner. I am on my way there. When I am able to play my first Pokemon in Japanese I will come back here and post an update.
@@ceticobr definitely! It helps to be in a classroom environment with other students and teachers. And they had a program for meeting people for foreign exchange. Good luck on your studies!
@@notequalto5179 You were in a good situation indeed, but you are insane anyway! Thank you and good luck to you too. Have fun consuming awesome Japanese media.
I've personally found listening to japanese bands kinda helpful in learning kanji, as long as you're reading the lyrics while listening. With streaming sites like Spotify having lyrics on the ready, it makes accessing them quite easy. I should note that I'm also half-japanese myself and so I probably have a bit of a leg up in terms of fluency, but with not living in japan this has been a really helpful method to me.
I'm actually working as a manga translator Japanese→Spanish and I took the time to make my own list of every new word/phrase/refrain/slang/onomatopoeia I found that I didn't know when translating. It has helped me a lot to learn new things and now it's pages and pages long lol
I love how seamless your segway into advertising your business always is
“Why do you need to learn kanji because you want to read Japanese right?”….took me a few seconds as a Chinese person to process this 😂
Skipping writing and just reading is a sure way to start forgetting kanji and eventually mixing kanji with similar kanji, even Japanese are not immune to this, but it affects them to lesser extent because they've actually studied these characters hard as kids and written them thousands of times during their lifetimes. I can speak to this from my own experience, having studied all the jouyou kanji and some extra. When I was still studying kanji I was able to write any kanji I knew and if I glanced at a kanji I recognized, I was able to replicate it. I read and type Japanese daily, but not having to had to handwrite kanji for years I sometimes struggle to reproduce a kanji and even mix similar kanjis, especially if they're not frequently encountered in writing.
Learning the parts (radicals and others) and writing them down each time and each time you combine them to new characters is essential for getting the feel for how the kanji are built. It also acts as a tool for focus, as visual and tactile engagement helps engage the pathways necessary for neuroplasticity, that is necessary for learning. About the radicals: not all recognizable repeating patterns in kanji qualify as radicals so radicals are a less useful definition for a learner, it's only useful for old fashioned dictionaries really.
Looking up Heisig's Remembering the Kanji is probably still your best bet for learning kanji efficiently as an adult.
What especially gets me as a former ALT who got to see a little of how Japanese schools work is that Japanese kids THEMSELVES don’t only learn kanji by reading!!! They learn to write kanji the way we learn to write the alphabet AS WELL AS reading age-appropriate materials.
I also think these TH-camrs need to understand that it’s not easy to find Japanese books in Western countries, especially at the level that beginners would benefit from. It was all well and good for me to get hold of kids’ books and then YA novels and manga when I lived in Japan, but here in New Zealand it’s so hard that when I took one of my translation exams, the English to [other languages] translators had to translate a passage out of a book but the person who assigned my Japanese to English translation text gave up on finding a Japanese book at an appropriate level and assigned me a totally different kind of text. I’d love to see the focus change from “you should read” to “here are some websites where you can access good reading materials”. (And if that was buried somewhere in this video, that’s not what I mean. I mean that it should be the focus of the video.)
I love this, thank you!!
I am currently (slowly) playing a J-RPG game (Final Fantasy 7 Remake) and there is a lot of reading in it, I decided to switch the language to Japanese (audio and the text), so there is A LOT of reading!! I use a game script in Japanese too with a browser extension that highlights the kanji for the reading. I love this way because I get to have fun too.
The word 仲間 was so easy to learn as the characters say it a lot as they're part of the same group. So every time I see or hear it I instantly know it.
I never did well with flashcards and writing things down is tedious and boring.. That's why I much prefer methods like playing games, reading manga, or just passively listening to movies/shows I know the story of, no subtitles.
Thank you very for this helpful video:). I would only like to add that for all the people whose learning style is kinaesthetic (they need some body action to learn) writing things down and making notes is a very good method, even if they would discard the note immediately after producing it into the rubbish bin. Just the movements of their hand and a pen enhance their learning. For reviewing vocabulary l recommend doing it while walking, e.g. taking a step while reading each word.
Yes!! Also, Japanese children themselves practice writing kanji AS WELL AS reading age-appropriate stuff, so what I don’t want to see is people blaming themselves for not being able to learn kanji well when they’re not using all of the tools that native speakers use.
When I began learning japanese, I immediately started using kanji in all my writings. My friend called me stupid, cause why use kanji on a beginner level, when you can use kana until the time comes to learn kanji. But now I'm preparing for JLPT N4, and I already know some common kanji and words that include their readings. So the idea of being closer to actual japanese writing from the very beginning showed itself great in long-term
My wife teaches Japanese to non-Japanese children. She goes straight to Kanji (also learning kana of course), and the children have no issues with that. They absorb it easily, even at the beginner level they're at with the language itself. Her method appears to be much more effective than traditional step-by-step methods where all of childhood/teenager years are used to learn the stuff.
The weird thing is, I always found kanji incredibly tedious and unintuitive (and they are), but everytime I read Korean, which has probably the most intuitive and easy writing system ever, I'm starting to miss kanji because when I see 수, like in 수요일 (wednesday), it _could_ mean water, but I have to guess from context, unlike in Japanese where the 水 in 水曜日 is non-ambivalent.
This is solid advice for self teaching people. I am seriously learning Japanese for 1-2 years and this approach is basically how i do it. The only exception is i don’t read as much as i should. I mainly use anki to brute force kanji/vocabulary. But i managed to learn around 600-700 kanji so far according to the app. This lets me understand some basic phrases and signs. I hope i can get into reading more so i learn faster in the future.
I am playing games atm in Japanese, and Im enjoying the process. Thank you Yuta!
I'm a non-Japanese Japanese teacher studying learning methods and kanji didactics and I agree and humbly disagree with a number of things in this video.
Disagreements:
*radicals* are not the building blocks of kanji as mentioned in various antiquated textbooks. "Radicals" are just a very old index system for dictionaries. Kanjis DO have components and there is compelling evidence that learning them along with the kanji is very helpful.
=> its better to learn meaning, form phonetic components, as described in the "Kanji Outlier Dictionary" , the
"Etymological Dictionary of Han Chinese Characters" or “The World of Kanji”. Research shows that people who can recognize components are better at learning kanji.
*writing* can be very helpful for SOME people. So if you are a person who always needs to write things down to remember them, then practicing writing is helpful for you. Various apps and even a bit of calligraphy can also be helpful if you enjoy it.
=> practice writing if it's useful for you, but don't spend too much time.
*learning words instead of individual kanji* learning words in context of the kanji is absolutely helpful, in fact for some people it might even be the best method to learn words first and kanji later.
This is how Japanese learn... but then they already know a lot of keywords before they learn how to write them in kanji, and they are surrounded by Japanese kanji all day. Still, it takes them 18 years to master all standard kanji... Westerns don't have that type of time or environment ^^
=> learning keywords is key to learning kanji, but becoming aware of ONE or TWO common kanji readings for those key words is very helpful. Researchers have found that people who can associate a SOUND with a kanji are better at remembering them long term.
=> learning individualkanji meanings in the context of words and sentences helps at the intermediate and advanced level especially.
Agreements:
Context and reading usually helps! That is backed up by research, and it's been my experience as well. If you are lucky enough to go to Japan, one way to casually practice is to read street signs and ads. *if you've learned individual kanji it will be easier to remember new words and recognize known words in new contexts*
Mnemonics and visual stories as in the WaniKani system or Heisig can be helpful, especially when combined with semantic and phonetic components as mentioned above. Some people need more "logical" structure, while others need more visuals and mnemonics - some combination of the two is probably best.
Totally agree with SRS flashcards. I'd just add that Anki cards are more helpful for slowly learning individual kanji and that sentences with clozed deletion input are quite helpful.
Something not mentioned: the order and structure of a kanji course is important! For more on that subject there is a PhD thesis by Dr. Simon Paxton entitled, "Tackling the Kanji Hurdle", which is fairly convincing. Basically: while the perfect kanji learning method is the method that works for you, structurally an optimal kanji course doesn't exist.
Optimally you'd learn frequent words first or together with specific kanji, but kanji would be logically ordered in terms of frequent meaning and sound components. For instance, learning that the three dots on the right of 液、湿、汁 is the component for "water" and means "water" or "liquid" already helps a lot. At the same time, learning that the kanji 青 is pronounced せい (sei) helps you to learn all of these: 清, 靖, 精, 晴, 請, 情, 鯖, 静 because they are pronounced the same way. Of course in Japanese Kanji can have many readings, but in this way you can hit many birds with one stone.
The best book in terms of structure and kanji order I know of is "The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course" by Dr. Andrew Conning of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
If you are looking to learn kanji systematically the best bet would be to do Genki 1 or Marugoto Rikai A1 first, then go through KKLC and learn kanji for words you've learned. Ignore the provided vocabulary at first. Brush through Outlier Kanji Dictionary and/or Etymological Dictionary of Han Chinese Characters to get a feeling for the structure. If you still need a mnemonic because the structure is confusing refer to KKLC, WaniKani or Heisig for mnemonics -. At least make an Anki card or modify an existing one with the Kanji on the front and one or two readings and vocabulary on the back. Then read a lot or watch short videos with Japanese subtitles.
With all of this the most important thing to remember is not go get bogged down by a specific kanji or word. In a journey of 3000 kanji it's okay to ignore or brush by some steps, since you can always come back later or maybe even learn it by association. And have fun ^^ !
Manga was so crucial in learning Kanji, it helps train the eye to look for the context, which inadvertently helps in learning conversation.
Also, it's been scientifically proven that Kanji Flexing is a cry for help, and just not a good look. Friends don't let other friends Kanji Flex💪
As long as the Kanji Kentei remains more accessible than therapy in Japan, I am fine with this method of crying for help tbh
I wish I could've had this video when I started taking the plunge into learning kanji. I wasted so much time thinking I needed to learn each kanji on it's own, and ended up learning the 400 most common kanji before giving up learning Japanese for a while. Having come back from that now, I found that learning the kanji in the context of each new word I learn is so much better. I'm still not very far in my Japanese learning adventure, but so far I can agree with every point in this video. And again, I wish I could have had it back then and not wasted as much time. XD
Reading manga, nhk easy news and other reading materials and space repetition also sentence and word mining helps me alot.
Most people moving on to kanji will have just "learned" hiragana and katakana.
Frankly, I do suggest just going down the radical list with as much effort as you put into your hiragana.
According to wikipedia, which has a list, 51 of them are used in 75% of the everyday kanji.
Just pretend this is the third set of "kana" you have to learn.
Thank you. Excellent tip. I found an Anki deck, but it was pretty lame. Fishook.a and fishook.b tell me exactly nothing. I want to learn the most common ones because, I'm lazy and 51 radicals for 75% of the meaning is a bargain.
Hehehe... I've been procrastinating learning kanji for...yearssss. Hiragana and katakana 👍 good enough but, I can only recognise family kanji characters and that...will change! Fighting 😤😆
It’s hard but you can do it
Try Wanikani. Makes learning kanji almost fun.
to every piece of advice you gave i just said, “yes! yes! yes!”. i was especially happy to see the short “rolling” lists you recommend at 8:20 because that’s exactly how i’ve always taught myself languages and i’ve never seen the method talked about elsewhere.
but i disagree when you tell us not to write. it’s true that with intuitive “phonewriting” handwriting is becoming rare (and many japanese will tell you that if they can still recognize all the kanji they need they can handwrite fewer and fewer off the top of their head) but i’ve always sensed that there’s a mystical connection between hand and brain that helps you the same way speaking out loud does. when i’m trying to remember a kanji. miming writing it out really wakes my memory. handwriting kanji is also... soothing? satisfying? whichever, it’s a way to keep learning fun, which is the biggest key to not giving up. it may not be the best “return on investment” but you also stress learning in your own way at your own rate and i’ve always been convinced slow learning is best. after all, a native speaker doesn’t learn their language in 6 months or even 6 years, even after 60 they’re still progressing! 少しずつね。
After 2 years of struggling with kanji, I literally figured out exactly all the things you mentioned!!! I spent hours and hours writing each kanji again and again, and trying to remember all of their pronunciation. It was a waste of time basically 😅 I recently started reading manga, and trying to learn words instead of individual kanji, and I can see a big difference! I hope your video will help other people to save time and learn much faster! 🙏💕みんな、頑張って!!
I managed to memorize the most common 2,000 kanji in just a couple months using spaced repetition software and looking up the character etymologies on wiktitionary. The SRS algorithm really works, but you need to put in X hours a day on it and stick with it.
@@takanara7 I'm sure it works for many people! But in my case it takes way too long, and I don't have that much time because I have full-time job and I am also a university student. Plus, I have dyslexia, so it takes more time for me to memorize something usually 😔
But thank you for your reply!! You are amazing for learning them in a few months!!
Damn i was searching how to learn Kanji a few hours ago
Same
The first 30 seconds of video and you can see how cultured he is
I can't believe he decided to use *that* scene from Kizumonogatari as the example xD
Wow I've been trying different methods and trying to see what works for me, and I've settled on doing almost exactly what you suggested.
When learning a new word I focus on it for a while, write it down in notepad as well as the reading, meaning, sentence for context, then do something else for a few minutes. After a few minutes I've probably forgotten it so I go back an "re-learn" it and do it again. Then repeat that until I feel like I feel good about remembering it. And then review over the next few days.
I felt just using Anki by itself was a little too quick for me, it would tell me that I was "done for the day" but I hadn't really committed it to my memory yet. (there might be a setting in there that I can tweak) I still love using Anki but I find also writing it down and doing it manually as well has really helped me with committing new things to memory.
Really, the best advice I could give is don't just blindly follow a guide, try to really pay attention to how you feel when learning. Pay attention to what you feel works and doesn't work, and make adjustments. No two people are the same, it's up to you to learn how to learn, the best way for yourself!
This video is so informative and made me feel better with my progress thanks for bossting my morale in learning language.
I play Genshin Impact with both the texts and voices in Japanese. I'm highly MOTIVATED
I do too and it’s really tough haha
There’s a lot of complicated words
Yuta, I often see Japanese people using a book that is a bit large, and then written the words. May I know what kind of book it is?
The idea that memorizing kanji is boring might be true, but it's better than wading in against a sea of the unknown.
I've tried 'reading' to learn kanji naturally, but it really is inefficient to learn this way.
At the beginning in a given one hour session I'd learn maybe a few kanji, some contextual realities, and maybe get a few hints about grammar.
After everything I've tried what worked for me was the following progressive combination:
0. Kana iphone app to initially learn Hiragana/Katakana and be able to draw them correctly. I wasn't able to do anything else until I finished this convincingly.
1. Begin Wanikani + Duolingo + TaeKim + Imabi (without resorting to romaji).
Some people might find wanikani memorization 'boring' but it was indispensable for me to begin a rigorous systematic progression of knowledge starting from 0.
Duolingo helped cement the Hiragana/Katakana, and progressively provides contextual, vocabulary, and grammatical challenges.
In order to really meet the grammatical challenges, theoretical support from Tae Kim and Imabi was super useful.
2. Track your wanikani kanji knowledge relative to various sources of reading material with 'wkstats' and 'nihongo stats'.
3. Attempt to read sequentially more difficult material starting with children's books on youtube, progressing as you are comfortable with the vocabulary and grammar.
4. Practice listening to complicated phrases that you know you know all of the vocabulary for and training your real-time comprehension skill. Duolingo is often helpful for this, though there are some pronunciation/enunciation issues. Watching and rewatching TV shows has also been useful but only at this point of understanding.
5. Practice recording myself speaking Japanese phrase and listen to comparable recordings to identify where my pronunciations are off.
Without all of these jenga pieces, I would be very far behind my current (admittedly still 下手) level of kanji knowledge.
Once you get a foothold in japanese at this level then you can really start reading to learn new kanji through reading.
Before you have that foothold I believe that reading to learn kanji is counterproductive at least for my learning style.
$0.02
Hard agree about wading into a sea of the unknown. That method is so hyped up online but not only did I become a professional translator without doing it that way, Japanese kids themselves are formally taught kanji!
I personally like making physical flash cards. Read it, write it, say it, see it. The process of making physical flash cards takes longer but I find it makes me memorize much faster than had I typed it electronically.
I did a mix of that and reading stuff, and I will stand by it forever, especially since Japanese kids themselves have kanji lessons on top of reading age-appropriate stuff.
i happen to be one of the few "foreigners" who managed to pass the 1st level of the "KANJI KENTEI" test, and here's a hard truth: to learn something you HAVE to learn it: there are no miracles, and at the end of the day you have to invest time and effort into memorization of each kanji's readings, its correct stroke order, and then all the numerous compound words where that particular kanji is used: all the relevant info can be found on internet - one only has to commit themselves (if they are inclined to do so)
What are the benefits of passing it?
@@primecreator5257 why people climb on everest? yes, they may simply like mountain climbing. but everest itself is also the highest mountain, that not many people have conquered.
I second you, I don't think you can say you know kanji if you only know how to read them.
I know it’s controversial but I can highly recommend the Remembering the Kanji books by Heisig (RTK) I only did the first part of the series and skipped the second one with the readings and it helped me IMMENSELY with remembering vocabulary and it often helps me guessing the rough meaning of an unknown word with Kanji which ties in perfectly with Yutas first tip of reading.
It does take a lot of time to work through the first book and get to a point where you actually remember most Kanji but if you can stick with it the reward is insane.
Many people don’t like the method, it’s kind of hotly debated on the internet but I can honestly say to just give it a try. If it doesn’t work for you just stop
When did RTK become an issue? Jeez some people have time to get worked up about nothing.
It’s a good book with a good method. He does sure like those bible stories though. But, the method is sound.
@@christopherluke9658 a lot of people seem to consider it a waste of time because you don’t learn any actual Japanese, just some keywords for Kanji - so I kind of get the sentiment of it being considered “a waste of time”. However, having worked through the first book and being able to recall most of the Kanji it’s SUCH a blessing and makes learning a lot easier for me.
Hmmm, I don't think it is controversial in how it teaches (which personally, I think is the best method for non-native people like myself).
The controversy comes in when people discuss how to approach language learning. This usually goes like: "Learn everything in context!", "What good is a Kanji if you can't pronounce it or have a sample sentence to go with?". A lot of these biases come from a.) People that learned Japanese in a different (perhaps traditional) way b.) Japanese language instructors, where the focus is often on achieving "immediate" output.
It is quite easy to imagine why people incorrectly dismiss Heisig: Would you rather have someone learn the basics of talking, 200 frequently used Kanji and their readings to make them as beginners "useful" OR someone spending 10 weeks mastering 2200 Kanji without knowing much more than their meaning through a bunch of stories? I know a lot of people would think the former as being more "productive" but honestly, regarding the latter, once you know all the Kanji, your rate of learning is boosted in a way which gives you more self-confidence. The long term gain is not appreciable and hence the mistaken "controversy".
Personally, I find Heisig trains your "eye" to get accustomed to Kanji. And the writing becomes trivially easy. As a result, you can focus on pronunciation and reading much more easily.
@@christopherluke9658 Yeah its solid but I think using your own mnemonics or ones rooted in Japanese culture is better because learning language is also learning a cultural frame of mind. If you do Heisig's method exactly as is you end up trying to parse through two very different world views early on. Ultimately it's controversial because of large time investment, misuse (not using it alongside reading and listening), and its also possible to go without it entirely.
@@user-mm7bs6vl2u Heisig’s stories are too cringy. I use his book for radicals and keywords, after I just make some stories or look for stories in internet. I know about 400 kanji now and sometimes I understand a meaning of some sentences I can’t read them though. Some times I even already know kanji before see it in the book. If I see kanji many times in different sources I Google it, for example 聞く. I see it in Hollow Knight and know this word now but I have no Idea when I will see it in Heisig’s book.
I had my finger over the screen, ready to skip past the first 2 minutes of unnecessary intro, like every other video. Thanks for getting right into it!🎉
This is so true. When I was taking a Japanese course by a professional Japanese teacher we used newspapers. He had each person read out aloud. Years went by now I can truly appreciate that method
I've been learning Japanese on and off for about 12 years now and I always feel like I've made like no progress but then I'll look back at notes from like 2 years ago and I'm like... wow I _have_ actually progressed. Of those 12 only about the last 3 or 4 were spent trying to learn more kanji. I used to have this notepad document when I was a kid of Japanese translations from romaji to English; recently I upgraded to a word document that is 70% Japanese characters because it focuses on kanji and spelling moreso than translations.
I also recently took a sort of Japanese placement test and I actually scored better on the kanji section than the vocabulary section so now I'm like... I should be focusing on learning more vocabulary xD I feel like I'm the only person that has learned this language completely out of order: I first learned grammar and sentence structure, then kana, then verbs, then kanji, then vocabulary
It's been on and off for 12 years for me as well, and I always feel like I know almost nothing haha, but then I realize that I do recognize a lot of words and I'm able to understand more than I thought. I just wish I'd studied more during these years lol.
I use flashcards. It works for me :#
0:05 "Read"
There is 1 word that I most certainly can read here and it definitely is not a reflection of my motivations for learning Japanese.
Not everyone can skip writing. I have to write new words and kanji. No matter how many times I come across many words or kanji, if I don't take the time to write it until I know it, I'll never learn it. Besides I have friends who still like to write postcards.
Japanese kids don’t skip writing either. This advice is at best tailored to a particular type of brain, and I wish people wouldn’t treat it like the gospel.
"Tell yourself you are reading this cute romantic manga for educational purposes and not because you have no romance in real life.''
Why do you have to hurt me like this Yuta?
As someone who spent thousands of hours making a learn to read website, only to realize that all I really needed to do was have my daughter read to me - I can attest to everything Yuta is saying.... It was almost like a parody, every single thing he said not to do, I did, right down to ignoring stroke order which caught my off guard
I didn't know tomagschi meant friend
However it was obvious
I remember tamagachis😋
O-hayo Yuta🇯🇵
Ohio Utah 😋🇺🇸
I've been learning Japanese for years... since I was 11 and I'm 30 now.... and this is all very solid advice! taken me years to learn just this lol. I wish I knew this in the beginning. I almost gave up Japanese once due to how difficult it was and how fail the highschool/university system was in my country when I was learning. For example, a heavy focus of my university course was using 'keigo' when I could barely say anything other than my name in Japanese.
Actually learning how to read or write kanji that are commonly used helps alot when you read something.
This came at the perfect time. I've been trying to use the Olly Richards method of learning Japanese by reading, though I've been taking a break and am now trying to get back into it (I even started playing Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney in Japanese as a start).
I wonder, though. A major motivation of mine is to write stories (like, full novels) in Japanese. Any advice on that?
Just start writing, I guess. Do simple stories first, like you would for children. Whatever new things you picked up from reading, try including it in your next story.
Olly is a fraud. Don't listen to him. Listen to people who are actually legit fluent.
I learned every single kanji in 10 minutes, git gud nubs
Thanks for this beautiful video.
"Read" Yuta says, and immediately shows 黒牢城. It definitely deserves its prize, but the book is probably the most difficult thing I've read so far. Great video though, I particularly applaud you having the guts to declare that note taking isn't always learning, which is so against the grain of what is considered an absolute truth in so many places. I wasted so much time on mandarin practicing things that never ended up mattering at all. Practice the things you want to use in the language! (which is almost never writing thanks to IME)
I don’t think making notes is a waste of time even if you never review them! I think it does help you to retain the information when you write it down, especially physically, but even if it’s digitally, it’s good practice in spelling the word and making sure you understood all the syllables correctly.
Currently reading サクラの降る町. I scan it, extract the characters with OCR and then I can easily check the words I don't know with Rikaikun. It was tough in the beginning but it gets much easier very fast.
(Also knowing that sometimes a radical represents the reading of the kanji makes thing much easier.)
My focus is on learning how to identify kanji by radicals and stroke count. Things that trip me up are fancy fonts and variants of radicals. Sometimes if I'm stumped, it turns out that some radicals have very many strokes, 10 or more. I gather that kanji is listed 'alphabetically' by its main radical, though there can be several radicals in the kanji. The Jisho tool is good because you can track a kanji by any of its radical parts, and not just the dictionary radical. Lexilogos only tracks kanji by its main radical, not its parts. But Lexilogos also lists kanji by stroke order, e.g., all kanji with 12 strokes. Sometimes it can be tricky to figure out the correct stroke count, it's not always obvious what counts as one stroke or two strokes. Jisho will only list a single kanji by its radical, whereas Tangorin will list all the words that contain kanji containing a particular radical.
I seem to be mentally retarded at oral comprehension. But many Japanese TH-camrs like to overlay transcriptions on their videos, which is fantastic for me. That's where I get most of my kanji practice. It's also interesting to note the differences between what they say and the transcription.. Actually being able to follow what my favorite TH-camrs are saying is very pleasant.
my personal tip, learn hiragana and katakana, then read and memorize vocabulary written in them. Thats a good base to at least recognize enough words to understand a little.
Once I'm finished with basic Japanese, I'm going to replay the MGS games in their native language. The codec calls taught me English, and it didn't even feel like I was studying at the time. After all, the best method to learn a language has always been through immersion of the target language.
In my case I actually find it very helpful to write the translated words down in my notebook, but together with image associated with the Japanese word's prounacation and its meaning.
Not only it creates more connections in my brain for the particular word, but also consumes less time during the review - short glimpse of the image insead of reading the same sentence over and over again.
Useful insights in the psychology of learning. Thanks Yuta!
You're actually so funny lol I'm loving your videos! There are lots of people good at teaching japanese here on youtube but I'm drawn to your channel not only bc you're more clear, but also 'cause of your personality! You're great!
example sentences are critical. that's true. only use apps/dictionaries that make use of these. especially from intermediate level onwards.
Great advice - especially about ignoring the social media flexing! :)
What I do is go to wiktionary and type in "Appendix:Chinese radical". It lists all the radicals and all the characters in every radical, and gives an in-depth listing of all the pronunciations and definitions of each character. Not just for Japanese, but for Chinese and even usually for Korean and Vietnamese.
This inspires me to really get into reading. I keep telling myself I'm not on a good enough level for it to be worth anything yet, but I think I'm long past that now. As far as writing goes though.. from experience it's one of the "depends" things. Writing was a big part of me learning English, and has been for learning Japanese. But I never wrote with the intention of reviewing my notes. The act of writing on paper itself is what makes a very notable difference in my memory. Whereas looking something up on a screen or taking a note on a keyboard usually has me forgetting the moment I move on.
So I'll probably try reading something and write down every word I don't recognize. And if I see it again later and can't recall what it meant, I'll write it down again. Not to review, but for the visual/muscle memory because that's what seems to do it for me ^^