HOW TEXTFUGU DOES KANJI

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” – Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize

Kanji is one of the biggest hurdles you’ll face in your Japanese learning career (remember what kanji is?). In order to really feel comfortable when reading (say, a newspaper), you’ll have to know around 2000 different kanji, and that doesn’t even take into account all the combinations different kanji can make (and the different pronunciations these combinations will come up with). That’s no easy feat, and it definitely won’t happen overnight. Japanese school children spend 8+ years learning kanji, not to mention they have everyday access to the stuff (and you probably don’t). Don’t worry, though, because you’ll beat them by a longshot.

The thing is, very few people teach kanji in a way that actually makes sense. When you learn most languages, you go from simple words to more complicated ones. With kanji, simple words can have terrifyingly difficult kanji associated with them, and strange obscure words can have really simple kanji. How complicated a word is, and how complicated a kanji is have no connection, so by teaching simple words you’re actually making it more difficult to learn kanji, and this will set you back years. The order in which you learn new words may feel a bit random here on TextFugu, but in the end (if you stick with it) it will come together almost magically. Plus, you won’t have to spend nearly as much time as those dumb (but very hard working!) Japanese school children (or everyone else you know that’s learning Japanese).

The 80-20 Rule

Have you ever heard of the 80-20 rule, coined by Vilfredo Pareto? He figured out that 80% of the effects come from roughly 20% of the causes. Here are some examples:

• 20% of people make 80% of the world’s income
• Microsoft found that by fixing the top 20% of most reported bugs, 80% of all problems were fixed
• 20% of your time spent gets 80% of the results done (at work, school, etc)

Those are some pretty big numbers, and you’ll see this principle everywhere, especially if you start really looking. We’ll be using the 80-20 rule throughout TextFugu, but right now we’re focusing on kanji. With kanji, here is our mantra: 20% of kanji makes up 80% of all that is written. Therefore, you’re going to learn that 20% first, so you can start studying the things that really interest you (books, magazines, letters, etc).

To make things easier for you, I’ve found and compiled a list of radicals to learn (more on this next chapter), a list of the most commonly used kanji, and will even guide you through kanji learning step by step using mnemonic tricks and devices that will place kanji into your long term memory very quickly and efficiently. On top of that, as you go through the other (non-kanji) lessons on TextFugu, you’ll find that your kanji learning will sync up, so you’ll be able to learn grammar, vocab, and kanji at the same time. Absolutely no other textbook combines these three things to give you a answer-all method of learning Japanese. This means you’ll get the most bang for your buck, and you’ll be reading, writing, and speaking at a conversational level a lot more quickly.

WHAT KANJI IS MADE OF

Sadly, kanji is not made up of unicorns and rainbows. If it was, everyone would be a lot happier for sure. Unfortunately for you, kanji is complicated. My goal is to simplify it for you a lot. When using “normal” kanji learning strategies, kanji is made up of strokes… sometimes a lot of strokes. According to your brain, each stroke is just another thing you have to remember, and that’s no fun at all. TextFugu takes this and flips it around. It can be much simpler than this, and here’s how:

How “Normal” People Learn Kanji

Step 1: Look at a kanji.

Step 2: Try to memorize ALL of the different strokes and readings (there are often 4-10 different ways to read the same kanji).

Step 3: Hit your head on a curb until it feels better.

Step 4: Forget the kanji, because it’s only in your short term memory (and you’ve hit your head on a curb).

In all seriousness, though, this is pretty close to how kanji learning happens. Look at a kanji, memorize each individual stroke, then memorize the readings of it four-to-ten times. If you’re in school, you can add the “study right before the kanji quiz and forget them immediately after” step as well. Kanji study today just doesn’t work, which is why it takes so long to learn. We’ll be using a completely different method that will make things a lot less painful. It’s not going to be easy, nobody can claim that, but you won’t be head butting a curb, either. Certainly will beat what everyone else does.

How YOU Will Learn Kanji

You are not a normal person, forget that now. There’s no shame in that. Over the years, people and resources come up with some kind of “norm” and follow it without question. These norms come from people who either a) Speak Japanese natively, so they have no idea what it’s like for someone to learn kanji, or b) have been learning Japanese for so long that they also don’t know what it’s like to learn kanji.

Sometimes normal is good, because the norm has been chiseled down to the simplest, most effective method. Great. In the case of Japanese learning, this is far from true. Over the years, people who teach Japanese tend to be people who have never had to learn Japanese (except by growing up learning it, and this doesn’t count). A lot of assumptions are made, nothing is tested, and nothing gets better. We’re going to do things differently, and no matter how strangely other Japanese learners and teachers look at you, stick with it. In time, all of them will start following your lead.

Here’s how we’ll be learning Japanese on TextFugu:

Step 1: Learn the radicals. Radicals are like pieces of kanji – kind of like how these letters are the pieces of English words. Instead of learning kanji stroke by stroke, we’ll be piecing together radicals (which are like small kanji) into bigger, more complicated kanji. Instead of learning 12 different steps to writing a kanji (i.e. individual strokes), you’ll be able to learn two or three, because you’ll already know how to write those pieces, and will just need to put them together. SO much easier and more effective (from a solid memory standpoint), yet almost nobody teaches it this way.

Step 2: Using these radicals, we’ll start learning kanji that use these radicals. Using mnemonic devices, you’ll learn the pronunciation of each kanji as well as how to read / write it. We’ll also learn common words that use these kanji in them.

Step 3: Continue to progress in this way. Each kanji will build upon something you already know, so it will be as simple as learning a tiny little addition or change to learn a new kanji. We certainly won’t be using the “here’s a new kanji, learn it the hard way” method.

Step 4: Use practice worksheets, unconventional memory tricks, and the best technology out there to study these new words and get them into your long term memory.

All that being said, I’d love it if you got started. Learning the radicals will be your kanji learning foundation, so it’s important you do this step well. There are quite a few (approximately 250) but they also build on each other. So, just make sure you start at the beginning, and it will actually be really simple to learn them all in a fairly short amount of time. Use the mnemonic devices to get these into your long term memory and kanji learning will be a breeze for you.

Learning Kanji Radicals (Part 1) →

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