I just got to the part of season two where we start learning kanji.

Eight kanji and I’m already lost?! I think I’m going to have to sit here and digest these evil beasts for a while before moving on.

Up until now, things have been a breeze. Hiragana was fun and easy; I’m by no means excellent at reading it, but I managed to do the drag n’ drop game in one minute forty seconds. The radicals were great; I just read through the page and I had them transported into my brain permanently.

Then, I get to these rotten little kanji. The on’yomi are fairly easy. Not as easy as the radicals, but alright. Then… then… … …then… …

Kunyomi.

GAH!!!! the HORROR!!! How on earth am I supposed to study or remember any of these things on anki when I have no clue which pronunciation is used in any given word?! It seems like every single word is a different pronunciation of the same symbol. I’ve read through the lesson and I still don’t understand! Is there any reason for the different pronunciations? is there any pattern at all? or are they completely arbitrary and random? Yes, I realize that all language is somewhat arbitrary to a certain extent, but most of the time there is some sort of order to it…

Another problem is the lack of worksheets for writing. I think part of the reason I found Hiragana so easy was the worksheets that let me write it out and have to recall it, not just recognize it. Are there any worksheets for writing these things out that maybe I’ve missed? If not, can someone direct me to something, anything, that would help?

Swamped,
Z-man

e.g. 犬’s kun’yomi ＝ いぬ (Dog)

There’s exceptions to this sometimes but once I noticed this learning kanji became a lot less daunting.

The readings can change a little when mixed with other kanji, but if you think about a word like 今日 this doesn’t even use the on’yomi or kun’yomi for either of the kanji (as far as I know!), it’s just the word きょう in kanji form. When you learn new vocab, if that word has a kanji associated to it then you can just write the vocab down and have it converted to kanji, it’s still pronounced the same. This is my understanding of things anyway and in practice it hasn’t caused me much grief yet.

It gets easier, I used to absolutely hate tackling even just 5 kanji, but now it’s 10-15 at a time and I’m getting through them quickly and remembering them well too.

That would only work for me if I knew the word (and how to pronounce it) to begin with. And by that time, I’d be so used to the Hiragana, that I think I’d have a hard time getting the Kanji to ‘stick’.

Took me a year ;D