The Best Way to Learn Kanji (2024)

FAQs

What is the most efficient way to learn kanji? ›

Try making kanji flashcards for any kanji you have a hard time remembering. I do it a few different ways: Make cards with kanji on the front to practise either for their meaning or pronunciation. Create cards with whole sentences on them and practice reading them, kanji and all.

If you learn 10 kanji a day, you can learn all of them in 200 days (just under 7 months) If you learn 5 kanji a day, you can learn all of them in 400 days (just over 13 months) If you learn just 2 kanji a day, you can learn all of them in 1000 days (less than 3 years)

There are about 2,000 kanji characters in common use and once you get them down, you're officially literate. You can then read newspapers and most books. There are thousands more and even Japanese folks don't know them all, but knowing 2,000 characters more or less gets the job done.

Yes and no. In terms of writing ability, you could argue that Japanese people have somewhat forgotten kanji. As most people don't write things by hand anymore it has gotten easier to forget. It's the same as how English speakers say they've forgotten how to spell sometimes.

Virtually every adult in Japan can recognize over 2,000 kanji. A university educated person will recognize around 3,000, and an exceptionally well-educated, well-read person, with a techincal expertise might know up to 5,000.

But how long does it actually take to learn Kanji? According to our calculations, if you can put in the work to learn 25 kanji a day, and you have no prior experience with Japanese, you should be able to read kanji within three months.

At the N5 level, the JLPT expects you to know about 100 kanji to pass. These kanji can change slightly between tests, but you can generally expect to see the 100 most common kanji for verbs, numbers, time, places, people, basic adjectives, and directions.

Some Tips to Get the Most Out of Remember the Kanji

Don't just say the keywords out loud; literally see, hear, taste, smell and feel the stories. Make sure you know the exact meaning of each and every keyword. Look them up on Wikipedia or do a Google Image search if necessary. Study before bed and upon waking.

How many kanji are there in total? ›

The total number of kanji is well over 50,000, though few if any native speakers know anywhere near this number. In modern Japanese, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries each contain 46 basic characters, or 71 including diacritics.

A lot of a beginner's time when using a textbook is spent looking up kanji and vocabulary. This takes your focus away from the grammar you're trying to learn and makes progression slow and frustrating. Learning (some) kanji and vocabulary first makes learning grammar a lot faster and, more importantly, easier.

It is said that there are 2136 daily use kanji. ( I guess less tho..) We learn them in elementary school and junior high school.

The Most Difficult Japanese Kanji on Record: たいと(Taito)

たいと(taito) is the most difficult Japanese Kanji on the record with a total of 84 strokes. It is formed by combining 3 雲 (くもkumo) with 3 龍 (りゅうRyuu). 雲means cloud and 龍 means dragon in English.

You would have to know all the jouyou kanji, 10,000 words, and know hundreds of grammar patterns. So, to reach near-native levels of fluency, you'd need at least a year of full-time, immersive studying.

Yes. They learn the standard 2136 kanji over a period of 9 years at school. Then they also read constantly so they pick up 1-2000 more on top of that. Technically zero as kanji are not a part of the spoken language.

No. Chinese hànzì, Japanese kanji,and Korean hanja do not use the same set of traditional Chinese characters. The characters used in Korean (hanja) and Japanese (kanji) are distinct from those used in China in many respects.

Yes. Except for special situations such as mental or physical illness, or those having been brought up abroad, all Japanese citizens as well as most foreigners brought up in Japan can read Kanji as well as write. The school system teaches about 2100 kanji. However most adults can read about 2500 and possibly 3,000.

The Japanese Ministry of Education has a list of kanji called the jōyō kanji (常用漢字). These 2136 kanji are meant to be a literary baseline for kids who finish compulsory education. Most high school graduates know these.

With such a huge amount, you might assume you'd have to learn 10,000 or so just to even try to get by. But at schools in Japan, students only learn 1,006 kanji characters during their elementary school years, and another 1,000 or so are taught throughout secondary education.

Is learning kanji hard? ›

Even kanji, the boogeyman of the Japanese language, is actually pretty easy. Technology has not only made it a lot easier to learn kanji (through spaced repetition systems), but a lot easier to read and write kanji too. You no longer have to memorize the stroke order of each kanji; now, you can just type it in!

Most people who want to learn the 2000 Jouyou Kanji take around 1-1.5 years if they are going at a steady pace. The timing is similar for N1 kanji lists. This of course depends on a lot of factors so let's take a look at how fast you could learn the kanji and get it out of the way!

If you believe learning KANJI is important to you, you definitely should do it. However, 10 KANJI a week along with studying vocabulary and sentence patterns sounds like an advanced-level Japanese class in college. If you have enough time to study everything at that pace, that's great.

In fact, learning in 3 months may be enough for you to have basic conversations in Japanese and even read some texts. Indeed, there is no language that you cannot learn in 3 months. The only thing that is not guaranteed in 3 months is your fluency.

Writing practice is not necessary if you do not plan on handwriting Kanji. The reason why people suggest writing them is that writing something down with your hand creates a better bond in your brain. But if your condition does not allow for that, you can learn them without writing just fine.

When you type in a kanji character, it will spit out several different words that use that character. Learning this way will eventually help your brain to really understand the way that kanji is used to indicate meaning, and should really pick up your learning speed as you go.

On-reading is usually used when the kanji is a part of a compound (two or more kanji characters are placed side by site). Kun-reading is used when the kanji is used on its own, either as a complete noun or as adjective stems and verb stems.

The JLPT N1 is the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. This official exam proves that you have a high level of Japanese that allows you to understand this language in many circ*mstances.

Does the JLPT certificate expire at some point? The JLPT certificate never expires.

How many kanji does duolingo teach? ›

In our Japanese course, you can learn the shapes, pronunciations, and meanings of all Hiragana characters (there are about 50), all 50 Katakana characters, and 88 basic Kanji (Chinese) characters that you need to know in order to reach basic proficiency.

Duolingo is an excellent free resource for learning languages, especially if you consider yourself a beginner who is looking to immerse yourself quickly in Japanese.

The word “kanji” means “Han characters” (i.e. “Chinese characters”).

About 3000-5000 words will give you 'basic fluency'. At this level you will be able to find a way to say anything you want to, but it probably won't be the way a native speaker would say it.

As mentioned before, Mandarin is unanimously considered the most difficult language to master in the world! Spoken by over a billion people in the world, the language can be extremely difficult for people whose native languages use the Latin writing system.

Although you can manage with only katakana and hiragana, you will still lack a lot if you don't know kanji. Therefore, you should learn kanji first before studying vocabulary. About 2,000 kanji characters are officially known to be necessary for everyday use.

Yes, it's true. Japanese has three completely separate sets of characters, called kanji, hiragana, and katakana, that are used in reading and writing. That first rendering of “Tokyo” is in kanji, with the hiragana version next, and the katakana one at the bottom.

The average Chinese person only needs to know around 2,000 characters to be recognized as fluent. Those characters represent a basic education level that can help you make it in day-to-day life.

A funny phrase in japanese is “toragahitowokamoutosurutokinounarinow” 虎が人を噛もうとするときのうなり声。 It is 37 letters long and is comprised of a 17 syllables. It is a very odd phrase, as it is defined as “the growl a tiger makes when it is about to about to bite someone”.

For zero in Japanese, the kanji is 零 (rei). However, it is more common to use and say “zero” the same way we say it in English: ゼロ (zero).

Is Japanese easier than Korean? ›

This makes learning Korean much easier than Japanese. Japanese has 46 letters in its alphabet. Meanwhile, Korean only has 24. If you're looking for which is easier to learn between Korean or Japanese, Korean wins this round too.

If you learn 10 kanji a day, you can learn all of them in 200 days (just under 7 months) If you learn 5 kanji a day, you can learn all of them in 400 days (just over 13 months) If you learn just 2 kanji a day, you can learn all of them in 1000 days (less than 3 years)

Study Japanese every day

Grab a few recommended textbooks and knuckle down for at least twenty minutes a day (ideally an hour or two, but twenty minutes is better than nothing). This will give you the basics and the “correct” forms of grammar, situationally appropriate language, clear examples and practice exercises.

Kanji forms an essential part of Japanese writing scripts

Although you can manage with only katakana and hiragana, you will still lack a lot if you don't know kanji. Therefore, you should learn kanji first before studying vocabulary.

But how long does it actually take to learn Kanji? According to our calculations, if you can put in the work to learn 25 kanji a day, and you have no prior experience with Japanese, you should be able to read kanji within three months. You probably first came across kanji when you decided to learn Japanese.

In Japanese elementary schools, students learn kanji by what may be called the 'repetition method'. Many school children have kanji practice as homework, and many students buy notebooks called 漢字練習帳 (かんじれんしゅうちょう, kanjirenshūcho) just for kanji practice!

Does Duolingo teach you to read and write in Japanese? Yes, it does. The Duolingo Japanese course teaches you to read hiragana, katakana, and about 90 essential kanji. You should know enough kanji to pass the JLPT N5 test if you complete the Duolingo Japanese course.

This makes learning Korean much easier than Japanese. Japanese has 46 letters in its alphabet. Meanwhile, Korean only has 24. If you're looking for which is easier to learn between Korean or Japanese, Korean wins this round too.

According to the US Department of State, Japanese is one of the hardest languages for English natives to learn. It doesn't have many similarities in structure to English. They estimate it takes 88 weeks of learning, or 2200 hours, to reach fluency.

How many kanjis are there? ›

The total number of kanji is well over 50,000, though few if any native speakers know anywhere near this number. In modern Japanese, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries each contain 46 basic characters, or 71 including diacritics.

Most people who want to learn the 2000 Jouyou Kanji take around 1-1.5 years if they are going at a steady pace. The timing is similar for N1 kanji lists. This of course depends on a lot of factors so let's take a look at how fast you could learn the kanji and get it out of the way!

Some Tips to Get the Most Out of Remember the Kanji

Don't just say the keywords out loud; literally see, hear, taste, smell and feel the stories. Make sure you know the exact meaning of each and every keyword. Look them up on Wikipedia or do a Google Image search if necessary. Study before bed and upon waking.

If you believe learning KANJI is important to you, you definitely should do it. However, 10 KANJI a week along with studying vocabulary and sentence patterns sounds like an advanced-level Japanese class in college. If you have enough time to study everything at that pace, that's great.

Even kanji, the boogeyman of the Japanese language, is actually pretty easy. Technology has not only made it a lot easier to learn kanji (through spaced repetition systems), but a lot easier to read and write kanji too. You no longer have to memorize the stroke order of each kanji; now, you can just type it in!

With such a huge amount, you might assume you'd have to learn 10,000 or so just to even try to get by. But at schools in Japan, students only learn 1,006 kanji characters during their elementary school years, and another 1,000 or so are taught throughout secondary education.

yes you can. Listening to a language while asleep can help supercharge your vocabulary. With the Learn Japanese While Sleeping Audiobook, you'll absorb over 430 Japanese words and phrases effortlessly. And of course — learn words passively — in your sleep.

As mentioned before, Mandarin is unanimously considered the most difficult language to master in the world! Spoken by over a billion people in the world, the language can be extremely difficult for people whose native languages use the Latin writing system.

The Japanese language is considered one of the most difficult to learn by many English speakers. With three separate writing systems, an opposite sentence structure to English, and a complicated hierarchy of politeness, it's decidedly complex.