Looking for Japanese Kanji lessons?
Want to learn how to read Japanese kanji in context?
In this sample Kanji lesson you’ll learn how to read Japanese. If you really want to start reading Kanji check out “Read Japanese Fast ” – it will have you reading Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji in 30 days. It focuses on reading rather than memorizing Kanji. Trying to memorize lots of Kanji adds up to whole lot of wasted time if you can’t read. You don’t need to know all the readings of each Kanji. You just want to start reading as soon as possible.
Read Japanese Fast Kanji Lessons
For more Japanese Kanji Lessons visit Read Japanese Fast
When I first started studying Japanese, learning and reading Kanji seemed like an unobtainable goal. I struggled with Hiragana and Katakana, and the complexity of Japanese grammar almost had me give up learning the language altogether on numerous occasions. I started studying Japanese well before we had the Internet and spent most of my study time learning from text books. This was a very slow and ineffective way to study.
For me to learn how to read Kanji was indeed a challenge. I had to use a big fat kanji dictionary to find out the readings and meanings of kanji. It would take me up to 5 minutes to look up and work out the readings and meanings of one individual Kanji character. First, I would have to work out the radical of the kanji, correctly determine the stroke number and the go hunting in the dictionary. Eventually, I purchase an electronic Kanji Tank dictionary, but this didn’t make learning Kanji any easier.
An Effective Way To Reading Kanji
In the end, the only way I could effectively learn kanji was have a Japanese native read with me. I would have someone read a very basic article to me, teaching the kanji readings along the way. Then, I would try to read the article back. Every now and then I would get caught with a Kanji, but I would be correctly immediately and I could continue reading. This method turn the standard learning process on its head. Instead of learning kanji in order to read Japanese, I was reading Japanese in order to learn Kanji.
This method was so effective for me that years later I decided to create a product that would teach students how to read Kanji in context using what I call a kanji coaching method. The product is Read Japanese Fast. I created this product with the help of my wife. Check out the video below.
Want more lessons? Visit http://readjapanesefast.com/
How is your Kanji coming along? If you are at a stage where you are studying Kanji then it should come as no surprise that the bulk of Japanese script is not actually Japanese, but Chinese in origin. Originally, Japanese was a spoken language without written form. It was only after contact with the Chinese was established, that the Japanese were exposed to the concept of written record. Eventually this lead to the borrowing of the Chinese writing system for recording spoken Japanese.
Onyomi and Kunyomi Kanji Readings
Because Japanese was originally a spoken language and very different from Chinese, modern Japanese is a hybrid of classical Japanese and classical Chinese pronunciations expressed in Japanese phonemes. This is reflected in the names of the kanji readings: readings that come from classical spoken Japanese are called kunyomi, and readings that come from classical Chinese are called onyomi.
Take a look at this short lesson to see both Onyomi and Kunyomi
A problem with these readings is that it is not always clear when to use which reading. There are no rules that state that a kanji is read in a particular way when used on its own, or when part of a word. The only real way to make sure you are using the right reading for a kanji when encountered in a context that you had not seen it in before, is to look it up – while sometimes one can guess whether a kunyomi or onyomi is used, it is typically impossible to be certain.
This is a frustrating aspect of learning Kanji. Looking up kanji can be very time consuming and will tempt you to give up reading Japanese altogether. The best way to learn Kanji and vocabulary is in context. Depending on each Kanji, in most cases you will find one “dominate” reading that will appear in compounds (combined Kanji words) a large percentage of the time. More often than not you only need to know one reading for some kanji. This is while trying to memorize several readings for hundreds of Kanji in no context is pointless and time wasting. If you are going to learn Kanji, then try to learn Kanji by reading it in context. We have a product that has helped hundreds of students to do just the: Read Kanji in context.
