schultz's terrible kanji help page
i teach you the kanji real good.
introduction - updated the hell out of on 8/24 / 2008
the part about kanji. why it's hard, and how to learn it.
my method of study - tips and tricks
the textbook itself. . . - read this last.
introduction
This is the kanji book I wanted to have when I first started studying! This book is for people with a basic knowledge of ひらがな and カタカナ, people who aren't in a class and want to learn on their own, and busy people who don't have time to learn all the formal words, business words, old-timey words, or words-you-only-use-on-the-proficiency-test. In other words, this book is for average people who maybe have a job or a life or a bunch of college, and can only study an hour a day. I’m one of those people! That's why it's not a dictionary, or even a list of all kanji. Instead of teaching you every possible word, I try to teach the most common words in a deeper way, with more context. I try to address all the beginner questions, like, “How do I remember how it's pronounced?” “Why does it look that way?” “How is it different from that other guy over there?”and of course,“Do I really need this one?" My method puts its greasy arm around your shoulders and says, “Look, kid, I’m not only going to answer that question, but I'm going to explain what the underlying rule is.” My method takes the chaos of kanji and make a rational system out of it. And also gives tips to speed up your study, and help you avoid common mistakes. And of course the method would accomplish this via plenty of yo mama jokes.
When I got my first stack of kanji cards I was like, “WTF??? C’mon guys.” See, I thought it would just have the kanji on the front and the meaning on the back, but instead there was like this deluge of data: Kanji number, dictionary number, meaning, onyomi, examples, radicals, stroke order, even something called the “Sunshine computer dictionary graphemes” . .. WITH NO EXPLANATION OF WHY IT WOULD HELP ME TO LEARN ANY OF IT. Rather than solving the mysteries of kanji, all this extra no-context information just added to the confusion.
It's like this : Japanese IS pretty hard, but half the problems are the way it is taught. You’d think that foreigners would teach it better, because native speakers are generally oblivious to the inconsistencies of their language. But not this time ! Hey, Blue-eyes: you can’t teach Japanese like you’d teach German. You can’t teach kanji without radicals. You can’t teach synonyms by giving them all the same English definition. You can’t teach verbs without including the damn prepositions! Next time you, the reader, are going batshit about how arbitrary or complex Japanese is, take time and think that maybe the textbook is making it complex..
EXAMPLES OF THIS:
EXAMPLE 1: Most flashcards are small , so they give a one-word definition of a word, but no context. For instance, the card for 亡 will say it's pronounced な＊い, and it means, 'to go away' . . .but it won’t tell you that ない is never used by itself!(in fact, it's only used as part of the phrase 亡くなる). And it will go on to not tell you that 亡くなる doesn't mean to literally go away, it is used figuratively mean 'pass away, die' . . . Then, the card finishes up by not telling you that '亡くなる' is usually written in hiragana anyway, so who cares. So, through no fault of your own, you’ll write an email to your Japanese pen-pal saying, “私のボールペンが亡い“ and your pen-pal will be like, ‘Why did his ballpoint pen die?”
EXAMPLE 2 : Dictionaries, on the other hand, give you TOO MUCH information: look up ‘reciept,’ and you’ll see: uketori (受け取り)、ryoushuu (領収)、ryoushuushuu (領収証)、 juryoushou (受領書), AND Juryoushuu (受領証). But which word do Japanese people actually use when they go to the store? None! They say レシット (RISHI-TO)!!
Also, dictionaries print totally obscure words, wild exceptions, and totally rare nuances, right next to everyday words. Just look at an English-English dictionary if you don’t believe me.
Bottom line : Sometimes it’s not enough to just say ‘Here is the English word which is the equivalent of the Japanese word.’ Because the nearest English word overlaps with 3 Japanese words, and fits well with none! At times like that, you gotta explain the specific real-life situations when Japanese people only use word A and never use word B. For instance, my dictionary says that both 記憶 and 思い出 mean 'memory.' But, 記憶 means one's capacity to remember, as in, "As I get older I'm losing my memory." And 思い出 refers to a specific memory, such as seeing your dad get out of the hot tub. My dictionary also says 世の中 and 地球 both mean 'the world' - except 世の中 means world as in "Fuck the world!" or "I'm mad at the world!" while 地球 means the literal globe. In these instances, it turns out that the Japanese 'synonyms' aren’t even close to the same meaning - It is the ENGLISH WORD that has too broad of a meaning!
EXAMPLE 3: A lot of kanji textbooks teach kanji grouped according to subject. For example, a typical book will put 寒い, 暖かい, 涼しい, 熱い, and 温かいtogether, because they all have to do with temperature. That approach makes sense if you’re teaching German or Swahili or Thai, but for kanji? HELLS NAW!
Here's the problem: even though their meaning is very basic, those five kanjis are all really complex to read or write, and they have almost no radicals (component parts) in common - which means that if you learn the first kanji ( 寒い ) you have exactly zero information about how to draw the next one (暖かい ). Retarded! To make matters even worse, if you’re a drunk like me, you’ll forget the radicals of 寒 and 暖 before you ever encounter another kanji which uses that radical! So then you have to painstakingly re-learn the same radical, time and again.
So again, it’s not a “Nihongo is fucked” problem, it’s a “how people teach Nihongo is fucked” problem.
Now, compare that to my book, which teaches kanji in this order: 稚, 推, 唯, 維, and then 催. And here is what is really rad: by the time you get to 
, you will already have learned all the left-side radicals like 
、
, 
, etc.
So far, all kanji books have been written by people that are language experts
and professors. It turns out that professors are the people least-qualified
to teach kanji. (well, second only to Japanese people). Here’s why: By
the time some dude gets a PhD. In Japanese, he has totally forgotten the basic
problems that drive students crazy. He’s all into the 2,000 year old etemological
roots of “cow” (牛)instead of remembering that ‘cow’ looks exactly like ‘noon’(午)
and what a pain that is. He’s forgotten that if you're just now learning
“car” (車) and “big” (大）, you can’t necessarily see their relationship to collision
(衝) and nature (然). He’s forgotten that students waste a lot of time learning
pronunciations for kanji that are never, in practice, used. That is why I
am the ideal person to write the kanji books -- I still suck!!! Although I
have the experience to be a teacher, I am still learning and making mistakes
just like you guys, so I can tell you, “Don’t do this dumbass thing that
I did!” And more importantly, explain the reason why.
My system has three parts.
1: AN ADDITIVE SYSTEM OF MNEMONICS BASED ON SIMPLE RADICALS.
The second thing I did was, I talked with two computer-programmer guys who were basically mathematicians applying their knowledge to linguistics. Neither man had ever met the other, nor read the other’s work, but they both said the same thing: the most logical, efficient way to study was going from simple-to-complex kanji.
Start with a set of the most basic kanji. Then try to combine every kanji in that set with every other kanji in the set - and lo! You will be able to construct several new kanji just by re-arranging the kanji you already know. No learning big, complex kanji from scratch. After I've taught you all the kanji it is possible to make using the existing set, ONLY THEN do I teach you a new radical. Then the process repeats: I combine that new radical with all the kanji you already learned, and see how many NEW kanji result - and then repeat, and repeat, and then pretty soon you're reading whatever bullshit manga you're into! and these new kanji don't have ANY new parts to confuse you: they're all made of the parts you already know. The system makes learning easier, because, the more kanji in your set, the more combinations are possible - In other words, if I teach you a simple, 3-stroke radical and you can combine it with 10 kanji, maybe 2 new kanji will result. But once you've accumulated a set of 200 kanji, and I teach you a new 3-stroke radical, and combine it with all 200, a DOZEN new kanji will result - which means you can learn 12 kanji just by learning that 3-stroke radical!
Anyway, both mathemeticians had the same idea, and both wondered why there was no book or flashcard on the market that used it. So I sat down and busted that shit out.
2 : WARNING LABELS FOR COMMON PROBLEMS
or
A SYSTEM OF TAGS FOR KANJI THAT ARE EXCEPTIONS TO RULES.
To begin with, I looked for patterns in my errors. It turns out that, Instead of me making 1,000,000 different mistakes, I had been making the same dozen or so mistakes over and over again with hundreds of different kanjis - and what does that mean? It means that there were about a dozen fundamental problems which I had not been warned about. . .Not only did my textbooks not solve the problems, they didn't even give NAMES to the problems. . . they didn't even ACKNOWLEDGE the problems existed. Bullshit !! That's a double-whammy right there: how can you solve a problem when you don't even know what it is??
So I set out to give names to these only-in-Japanese problems.
For instance: Are there 2 kanji with the same meaning? Is this one useful or not? Is is usually written in hiragana? How to I remember if the vowel sound is a long-vowel or short-vowel? Do I often get it mixed up with a similar-looking kanji? Is this a word I can say, or is it only a newspaper word? Does the kanji go with a weird preposition? If there are two synonyms, which one is useful? Does the kanji only go with one specific other kanji? Can you guess the pronunciation from the radicals? Does it have 2 unrelated meanings? And so on. I made a sort of "checklist of common problems," and tagged all the kanji that were jerks in some way.
3: CHEATING
That's right - I cheated. I started by taking the two most common sets of kanji used by students: the JLPT kanji, levels 1-4 (which are used in the Japanese Proficiency Test), and the JOYO kanji (which are the 2,000-ish kanji that Japanese students have to memorize in high school). I combined those two sets, and then I threw out all the bullshit ones where the meaning sounds like a crossword puzzle clue (‘deep sea lifeform’ or ‘17th century sulphur refining component’) I deleted every out-dated, too-formal, useless, over-specialized, word I could. See, by the time I started writing this book, I’d been living in Japan for about 5 years, so I had a pretty good idea of what was useful and what wasn’t. I looked back at all the stuff I studied over the past 5 years that was not helpful to me, and got rid of it, so you don’t have to waste YOUR time. Not only that, I delteted a gang of next-to-useless pronunciations for kanji which most textbooks are bogged down with. Finally, I teach the most-common prepositions and particles together with the verbs - something no teacher would ever do.
Don’t be fooled by my hype, though: even with my awesome system of jaw-dropping logic, kanji is still a motherfucker. You’ll study 12 months and still not be able to read a newspaper. You’ll contend with maddening exceptions, inconsistencies, kanji that mean one thing by themselves, another thing when paired with a second kanji, and nothing at all when converted into a radical. You’ll encounter pernicious kanji that mutate and change shape; that look nothing like what they mean, and of course over 100 kanji with the same exact pronunciation!! (コウ, to be precise). And on top of all that, should you complain, you’ll have to deal with your Japanese friends who are quick to remind you that English is even worse!
Anyway, the book is split into three parts:
1 -basic facts about kanji like
their history and junk.
2 -how to use my system. All
the short-cuts and , unique challenges, and hidden patterns in kanji that
I discovered. Also, common noob mistakes and now to avoid them.
3 - uh, oh yeah . . .the actual 2,000 kanjis. Them!
SECTION ONE:
WHAT IS KANJI?
1: BASIC PARTS OF THE SYSTEM OF KANJI;
Introducing the radical / kanji / jukugo in that order:
Radicals are the smallest units . They are like letters of the alphabet, but there's over 200 of them. Several radicals compose a kanji.
Kanji are single words. There’s over 5,000 of them, but most of them are only
used in people’s names. You only need to know around 2,000 to read a newspaper.
Jukugo are compound words. : Just like English, several kanji compose a jukugo. (think of the English words like “butt pirate”, “can opener,” “douche bag” or “hat rack”).
I’ll go on about these 3 in unrelenting detail later. For now, let's deal with . . .
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RADICALS AND KANJI?
1 ) BEHOLD! Guys like 
,
and 
are
what I call ABSOLUTE radicals. They are never kanji on their own, only parts
of kanjis. They don’t have kunyomis Or onyomis. They don’t have any meaning.
2 ) Then there are what I call SWELL RADICALS; they're like the ABSOLUTE RADICALS, except that they DO HAVE MEANING. For example
is associated with sickness. It is used in maybe 10 kanjis, and all those
kanjis have to do with sickness. Again, BEHOLD.
痛 - hurts ,病 - sick , 疲 - get tired, 痢 - diarrhea, 症 - symptom …and so on.
3 ) KANJI THEMSELVES, even complex ones, can be radicals- if they wind up inside
a bigger kanji! For instance, the kanji for water and tree (水 木) become radicals when you stuff ‘em inside another kanji ： 様、泳、森 杢 材.
Often, these simple-kanji-which-are-used-in-bigger-kanji are SWELL RADICALS - kanji with a tree in them have to do with wooden things, kanjis with fire
in them are obviously about fire, etc.
2: DISPELLING THE 2 MOST PERNICIOUS MYTHS ABOUT KANJI!
MYTH #1: RADICALS ALWAYS MEAN SOMETHING.
MYTH #2: KANJI LOOK LIKE THE THINGS THEY DESCRIBE.
Students always say, “Why does 'country'(風) have 'insect' (虫) in it? Why does 'muscle' (筋) have 'bamboo' (竹) in it? Why does god damn sake (酒) have 'west' (西) in it?”
Before you curse Japanese for being "all crazy and shit," ask yourself, what if some ESL guy pointed at the word “fire” and asked you, “What does ‘r’ mean? What does ‘e’ mean?”
“It means . . . . it , uh. . .. it…”
Then he points to the word “fighter” and asks you, “Why is the ‘r’ at the end? Why isn’t it in the beginning?”
“Because mind your own business is why!!!”
See, it hurts your head to even think about questions like that in English
. . . and yet when it comes to Japanese, gaijin students can spend years asking
nothing BUT those types of questions.
This is not a ‘Japanese is crazy’ problem. Nor is it a ‘noobs are dumb’ problem. This is a problem because Japanese teachers and textbooks suck. Most new students are led to believe that radicals have meaning, and that kanji look like the things they describe. That’s not merely wrong, it makes kanji feel very foreign and illogical, when in fact kanji is basically structured the same as English!!
Check it out:
Radicals/kanji/jukugo = letters/words/compound words
Radicals don't have meaning any more than the letter "F" or "G" does! That's why it makes your head hurt if some ESL guy asks you, "What does the "f" in "fighter" mean?"
On the other hand, if that same ESL guy shows you the word “fire-fighter,” and asks, “What does ‘fire’ mean? What does ‘fighter’ mean?” In that case, it's easy for you to answer. Not only that, but once he knows what ‘fire’ and ‘fighter’ mean, he can easily guess by himself what a fire-fighter is - he doesn't even need to ask! And, the good news is that kanji is just the same: Jukugo (compound words) basically shriek their meaning at you.
Think about it like this: if kanji really DID ‘look like the things’, you’d
have to memorize 2,000 complicated drawings that had nothing in common. But with radicals,
you got to do is learn around 200 simple shapes and you can draw and read
almost all kanji - which is exactly the intention of kanji's inventors.
I will try to explain this with A HISTORICAL TANGENT:
In the beginning, Chinese dudes wrote pictographs - pictures that looked like
the things they represented. The drawback was that writing a paragraph took
as much time as drawing a comic book, because IT WAS DRAWING A COMIC BOOK..
So they (Who? Sages, motherfucker, sages! Who else?) simplified the pictographs
into what we now call Kanji. How?
Step one: They chose 200 or so RADICALS as their building blocks.
Step 2:
Any pictograph that was too hard, they said, “OK, what radical does the
top part most closely resemble? Swap 'em! What radical does the left part most
closely resemble? Swap 'em!” and so on.
For example, the old, complicated kanji for country is
. And the current kanji for country is 国。
Now, from the foreigner's point of view, this change is retarded
in two ways.
1) the radical that was swapped into the center of the new version means ‘jewel,’ (a jewel in a box? What does that have to do with a country?)
2 ) the simplified 国 looks almost the same
as the kanji for treasure; 宝 . (more confusion!)
But try looking at it from the point of view of the sages: they didn’t have
computers, they got bad arthritis, and they had to draw these crazy hard pictographs
all damn day. So one of the sages, in his wisdom, said “OK, fuck this! Can’t
we swap the center bit for a simpler radical?” And the other sage replied,
“Dood, if you drink enough sake the center bit looks kind of like 玉 .”
And the first sage was like, “Man you are just high as hell, but it’s late
and I got mad poems to write about seasons and shit, so yeah, let’s just say
くに is now officially 国 and call it a day.”
So that is how that went down.
So, the bad news is that country kanji (国) has nothing to do with the meaning of balls ( 玉 ), or the meaning of box (口). The good news is that IT DOESN’T MATTER. What matters is that, if you know the balls and box radicals, you can easily make a mnemonic using them to help you remember the country radical: "A country is a big box where the citizens keep all their balls." Then you can chuckle because you just said "balls." Put another way, mnemonics allow you to read kanji the way that learning the letters 'c','o', 'u', 'n', 't', 'r', and 'y' allow you to read the word 'country' - in fact, kanji is simpler, because you only had to learn two radicals instead of seven letters!
“But Schultzzz,” you ask: “If radicals don’t have meanings, why do you give them names like 'box' and 'balls' and, for that matter 'speculum'? Why do you need mnemonics at all?” First, those are not meanings, they’re arbitrary keywords. And second, English has mnemonics too, to help you spell. For example, “I before E except after C, or if your daddy’s GAY with the NEIGHBOR from around the WAY.”
3: THE TERRIBLE SECRET!!!!!
Check out these two groups of kanji:
Group ONE:
履ー歯―紫 顔― 僕 ―鼻
Group TWO:
丹― 屯−斤 −杉 −后
Which do you think are college-level words?
HERE'S THE ANSWER:
Group ONE:
履 ー put on pants
歯― tooth
紫 − purple
猿― monkey
顔― face
僕−ｍｅ
聞 −ｌｉｓｔｅｎ
鼻 - nose
Group TWO:
丹― ａ ｃｏｌｏｒ ｃａｌｌｅｄ ‘ｃｉｎｎａｂａｒ，’ ｗｈｉｃｈ I ｄｉｄｎ‘ｔ ｅｖｅｎ ｋｎｏｗ Ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ ｈａｄ ａ ｗｏｒｄ ｆｏｒ ｔｈａｔ ｃｏｌｏｒ．
屯− ａ ｇａｒｒｉｓｏｎ ｏｆ ｔｒｏｏｐｓ under the command of a Shogun.
斤 − ｕｎｉｔ ｏｆ ｍｅａｓｕｒｅｍｅｎｔ ｏｎｌｙ ｕｓｅｄ ｗｉｔｈ ｂｒｅａｄ ｌｏａｖｅｓ
杉 − ａ ｃｅｒｔａｉｎ ｋｉｎｄ ｏｆ ｃｅｄａｒ
后― ｄｏｗａｇｅｒ ｅｍｐｅｒｅｓｓ、ａ ｗｏｒｄ ｏｎｌｙ ｕｓｅｄ ｉｎ ｔｈｅ ｃｏｕｒｔ．
. . . .THE TERRIBLE SECRET IS:
THERE IS ALMOST NO CONNECTION BETWEEN HOW USEFUL A KANJI IS AND HOW COMPLEX
IT IS!
Put another way : kanji with easy meanings are often hard to read, and kanji
with obscure meanings can be really simple to read, but you’ll never use them. Here's why this is important:
If you’re teaching a normal language, like German, or even a pretty illogical
language like English, you’ll start with ‘kid words’ and then work up to ‘adult
words.’ But if you try teaching kanji that way,
you'll start new students off with hellaciously complex kanji, and then
3 years later, you teach
them simple kanjis. Dumb! To add insult to injury. . . .after the hapless
students bust ass learning common-but-complex kanjis like 館 and 裂 . . . a
year later, they’ll learn less-used kanjis like 官 and 列 . . . WHICH ARE COMPONENTS
OF 館 and 裂 ! And the students will say, “DAMN! Why didn’t you teach me官 and 列first!?!
Then learning 館 and 裂 would
have been easy!”
That’s why people generally agree that gaijin learn kanji best if they learn
simplest-to-most-complex.
The simple-to-complex method might seem like a waste of time when you are learning words like 竹 (bamboo) and complex abstractions like 云 (meaning variously, 'et cetra', 'vague', or an obsolete form of 'to say'). You might grumble, “Dude, I don’t yell out “Bamboo!!” on a daily basis, why do I need this?” But in fact, in Japan you need the bamboo radical in order to say box “ 箱 ” or even laugh “笑う ! “ and you need 云 to say simple words like cloud 雲。 Learning 云 beforehand makes learning 雲 way more doable.
Put more simply, the simple-to-complex method is more practical for learning. . . but the normal, kid-words-to-adult-words method is more practical for people who want to read and write right away. So how to reconcile the two, and get the best of both?
BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY. That is to say, if you're reading a book, and come across a complex kanji you don't know. . . you want to know it RIGHT NOW, so you can keep reading. You don't want to put your book down, and learn all 1, 400 kanjis leading up to that word. I get it. So, what you can do is, look up that word, and right under the kanji, it’ll tell you the radicals that compose every part of kanji. Not just one radical in the upper-left-hand corner like most kanji books. It’ll list the components of EVERY PART of the kanji, and tell you what page of the book all the radicals are on. Then you go and study those radicals (and nothing else), and then BOOM, you’re ready to learn the complex word - which by that time will seem simple.
4 : RADICALS -the most overlooked tool
Radicals are the little simple drawings that kanji are made up of. Ｓｏｕｌ（塊）、ｇｒａｖｅ （墓）、ａｎｄ ｐｌａｃｅ（地） ａｌｌ ｈａｖｅ ｔｈｅ ｓａｍｅ ｒａｄｉｃａｌ： ｅａｒｔｈ （土）.
The same way, bｒｉｇｈｔ（明）， ｗａｒｍ （温）， ａｎｄ Ｓｐｒｉｎｇ （春） ａｌｌ contain ｔｈｅ ｒａｄｉｃａｌ ｆｏｒ ｓｕｎ （日）。
Here is an example of how useful radicals are:
露 ('outdoors')!!! It looks like a huge, messy pile of chicken scratch, doesn’t it? It is a 21 stroke character .Trying to memorize where to put each of the 21 strokes is a huge depressing pain, and then trying to memorize each individual stroke for ALL 2000 KANJI makes you even more depressed, until you just wish Flanders was dead. BUT, if you have been learning radicals instead of 21 random chicken scratches, you see only 3 parts: rain 雨 , foot 足 , and each 各。 These three radicals are combined into the one character for outdoor (露). Not only that, if you have learned those 3 radicals, you can use them to help figure out dozens of other kanjis too! 雨 makes 雲 霜 雪 雷、 足 makes 踊 路 踏、and 各 makes 客 落 格 , and so on.
In other words, radicals are the ABCs of kanji. If this seems like a ‘DUHHH’ statement,
guess what? You're way smarter than most textbook publishers or teachers! Because, I ain’t seen even ONE JAPANESE TEXTBOOK YET that actually uses
radicals like ABCs. They’ll teach you like the one radical in the upper-left
corner of the kanji and then say, “OK you’re on your own, Hoss!” That’s like
trying to teach some ESL kid how to read the word “rotunda” by telling her
“OK, you got your 't' . . .and , uh, a little while later there’s an 'a' and oops gotta go,
BTW learn that and 10 more words by tomorrow KTHXBYE!”
For some reason (perhaps because they imported kanji from China), Japanese are only conscious of maybe 10% of the radicals they’re using. For example: if you show the kanji for warm (暖) to your Japanese friends, they might insist it has only one radical (日). So what is the other 90% of it?? 9 random chicken-scratch lines? This despite the fact that the upper-right part appears in exactly the same shape and position in over 10 other kanji (受、浮、隠、授、妥、採、 etc. ). What is that, some kind of wacky coincidence??? And the lower right part appears in even more kanji: 友、緩、抜、援.
“Oh, but and 友 are not radicals!”
Whatever, kid. Have fun spelling 'rotunda.'
ANOTHER HISTORICAL TANGENT:
Back in the days of books, if you wanted to look up a kanji you didn't know in a dictionary, you couldn't type in the hiragana and wait for the kanji to pop up. You had to try to comb through a dusty tome packed with over 5,000 kanji - without using abcs OR hiragana! Dictionaries were organized by "the main radical." Some damn sage looked at every kanji and arbitairly decided, "This part is the main radical," and then "alphebetized" all the kanji based on that. So instead of being structured like a, b, c, d, etc. The dictionaries were structured like water, fire, earth, human, etc. Long story short, Japanese only used radicals for dictionary-readin': As long as you knew one radical per kanji, (the so-called "main one"), then you were capable of looking shit up, and whoop-de-doo, you were the shit. Great for dictionaries, but lousy for actually LEARNING kanji.
And you know who is even weirder than Japanese? Stupid effing foreigners!! Because every foreign kanji book I have read copies the Japanese method. All "I had to learn it the hard way, so should you!” style. So I arbitrarily decided, if the exact same pattern of lines is used in 3 or more kanjis, it's a radical, and I made up a name for it, and listed it in my kanji dictionary right next to the “real” kanji. In other words, in my system, not only does every part of 暖 have a name, but by the time we get to 暖, you will already have LEARNED all the parts, and so learning 暖 will be easy!
First you learn 'day' (日）、 then you learn nest (). Then you learn 'friend' (友), and combine it with 'nest' to make 'crow' (
). Finally , you put day (日) and crows () together and you have warm: 暖かい. And you say, "The crows get warm in the sun." - QED. It might seem like a lot of steps, but look at it this way: each step only requires you to learn 3 or 4 lines at a time- AND those 3 or 4 lines can be used in dozens of kanji besides 暖.
“But Schultzzz, doesn’t that mean you’re giving me even more crap to learn?
What makes you think I have the time?” OK, good question. I used to think
that, too! It took me a long time to realize that, rather than saving time
by skipping the radicals, I was actually WASTING my time, and here's why:
Some radicals , such as 
, are
used in dozens of different kanji. If you hadn’t learned the radical, you’d
have to learn the same
pattern over and over
and over again. With my method, every time that pattern shows up, I’ll let
you know: "Hey, it’s that guy again! His name is ‘cave’ and you already know
him!” Besides, radicals are, by definition, really small and easy.
5 ; KANJI, FOOL!
Besides radicals, each kanji has hella ATTRIBUTES. Here they are:
Book number ? for use in backtracking
MEANING: kanji can have several meanings, just like English words. I take the most common meaning and make it the English keyword for that kanji. Every time you meet that kanji in the future, that keyword will be there, to greet you and say, "You learned me already!"
ON-YOMI : the, er, “Chinese” pronunciation of the kanji (about as Chinese as Chop Suey and the phrase “Wing Wong,” but I digress).
Unlike other teachers, I teach the ONyomi as just another radical - one that makes a sound, instead of a mark on the page. Kanji may have 4 or 5 KUNyomis, and they may be part of dozens and dozens of jukugo, but they only have one bottom-radical, only one left-side radical, only one top-radical, and they only have one ONyomi. Mostly. Furthermore, there may be 100 other kanjis with the same onyomi, the same way there are a hundred kanji with a water (水)or tree （木） radical. So that’s why it makes more sense to teach ONyomis together with the radicals. In practice, this means that 1) every ONyomi has its own English keyword (like "speculum" or "butcher"), and 2) the mnemonic for a given kanji incorporates the ONyomi as well as all the radicals, so you learn all of them at the same time.
A lot of textbooks and flashcards list 2 ONyomi or even 3 ONyomi per kanji! But usually the kanji in question uses onyomi #1 90% of the time, and only uses onyomi #2 with one specific jukugo. So, fuck it!! I only list the most useful onyomi, and if a certain jukugo uses a different pronunciation, I'll warn you about it.
Oh and plus, when I started studying, I didn’t learn ON yomis for the whole first year, which caused catastrophic problems for me when it was test time. The fuckin’ teachers, they never came out and said in plain English, “You need ON-yomis for compound words!!” I figured the ONyomi was some optional , formal thing, like sonkeigo, stroke order, or flower arrangement. Anyway.
STORY : a mnemonic, usually about your (adoptive) mother, which ties the MEANING
of the kanji, its ON-YOMI, and all of its RADICALS all together in one sentence.
Why do I pick on your moms so much? Maybe because the more annoying
something is, the more it gets stuck in your head -like a bad pop song or
a commercial with Carrot Top. Also, the bitch owes me bail money.
STROKE # : I don’t know who still gives a shit, what with the internet and all. But fuck it, here’s stroke order.
STROKE ORDER: Psyche! I don't care about this.
5b - more shit about how to PRONOUNCE KANJI:
Every kanji has two pronunciations- at least! Why? KUNyomi are the original, native Japanese words- what Japanese used to communicate before they imported kanji. That's why KUNyomi is usually called the 'Japanese reading.' ONyomi is called the 'Chinese reading,' which is pretty silly. . .and also complicated, so I will go on a . . .
BRIEF HISTORICAL-CONTEXT RANT:
When the Japanese, um, borrowed kanji from China, they got it wrong. There’s
no other way to say it. According to Google, the shit came over in the 5th
century, because Japanese traders needed to communicate with their Korean
and Chinese counterparts.
For every existing Japanese (i.e. KUNyomi) word, they tried to find the corresponding Chinese kanji, and then make them fit Furthermore, they decided to use the Chinese pronunciation of the words, too,but got it wrong . . thus ON-yomi. It's kind of like Canada: everyone in Canada has to learn Quebeqois French, even though real French can't understand Q-French! Anyway, the decision to force the square peg of Chinese characters in the round hole of the existing Japanese language leads to some really janky situations!
JANKY SITUATION 1: 150 words all having the same ON-yomi.
Whichever seafaring trader decided to import kanji to Japan obviously couldn’t speak Chinese! Duh - Chinese has tones, and Japanese doesn't. The Japanese trader was like, “It all sounds the same - KOU, SHOU, wing, wong, whatever. So let’s import something we don’t understand!” And the Japanese land-lubbers for some reason were heard to reply, “Here is a whole new vocabulary that adds nothing to our existing language, and which can’t be understood by Chinese either! OK, we’ll learn it, but only if we can keep our existing language, so now we have to learn twice as many words for shit we already knew how to say!” And the seafaring traders were like, “OK deal.” "Hey! Someone's trying to be Catholic over there!" "That's over the line - let's massacre the whole village!" That is how Japanese were back in the day.
JANKY SITUATION 2: Kanji which have two (or more!) ONyomi.
China has hella different dialects. So one Japanese trader would come back from Shanghai, where they pronounce 青い as SEI, and he'd teach everyone in his town to say SEI. Meanwhile, another Japanese trader would come back from Hong Kong, where they pronounce 青い as SHOU, and he'd teach everyone in HIS town to say SHOU. So there's that.
JANKY SITUATION 3: Duplicate kanji.
Even after assigning each Japanese word to a kanji, they still had hella kanji left over. So they took Japanese words with 2 or 3 nuances and ASSIGN EACH NUANCE TO A DIFFERENT KANJI, WHILE KEEPING THE KUNYOMI THE SAME. The most famous examples are the 3 katais (硬い、固い、and 堅い), the 3 hakarus（計る、図る、and 測る）, and the 3 tsutomerus（勤める、努める、and 務める）. As if that were not pernicious enough, they frequently picked kanji that looked as similar as their meanings:
激 - intense / 極 - extreme
摸 - pattern ／ 模 - model
傾 - incline ／ 偏 - lean or be predisposed to
Can you believe that shit???
HOWEVER, THERE IS GOOD NEWS: Despite all the jankiness, it's pretty simple to tell when to use the KUNyomi and when to use the ONyomi:
Kanji that are SOLO (i.e. 水、日、大きい、辛い.) use the KUNyomi.
PROPER NOUNS use the KUNyomi . . .usually. (田中 is Tanaka, 裏山 is Urayama, etc.)
JUKUGO (i.e. 種類、 漢字、 哲学、etc.) use the ONyomi.
HOWEVER . . .jukugo which have hiragana in ‘em (i.e. 手取り早い、 人当たり、 あざ笑う） use the
KUNyomi. The Japanese have a word for these hiragana letters that dangle off
of the ends of jukugo: OKURIGANA (literally, 'letters which are sent out (from the kanji)')
666; JUKUGO;
More good news:
Compound words are the MOST LOGICAL part of kanji: if
you know the component kanji, you can easily guess both the pronunciation
AND the meaning of a compound word . . . even if you've never seen that compound before! Just like English!
"Why bother including jukugo at all? Isn’t just learning 2000 kanji hard enough??"
Well, if you have never studied kanji before, you should definitely ignore the jukugo! But after you learn a few hundred kanji, studying jukugo has 4 benefits:
1 - JUKUGO EXPLORE THE VARIETY OF MEANINGS OF A KANJI:
Just like English words such as foot, joint, and bitch, many kanji ALSO have several unrelated meanings - For instance, 弾 means 'play guitar' but it is also the noun for 'bullet!' 玄 is even weirder - meaning 'mysterious,' 'brown rice,' AND 'entryway.' Including a bunch of
example jukugo is a way to show all the different meanings and uses for the more nebulous kanji.
2 - LEARNING THROUGH REPITITION:
Some students find that repetition helps them learn. If you are reading
the example jukugo aloud, and you say to yourself: 本人 is honninn, 本当 is hontou, 本来 is honrai, 本場 is honba . . .it sort of pounds it into your head that 本 is HON!
3 - APPLYING THE KANJI YOU JUST LEARNED TO INCREASE YOUR VOCABULARY:
Unlike certain other kanji textbooks or flashcards,
ALL the jukugo here are totally basic useful words . These are all (I hope) words you’ll be learning ANYWAY
in your first 2 years of study. And learning those compound words is
way easier if you just memorized the component kanjis yesterday!
THE BREAKTHROUGH POINT
Maybe it’s just me, but after one learns, say, 500 kanjis, you have a breakthrough.
It goes like this; you are peering nervously at some unfamiliar new jukugo
and you go, “Wait a fuckin’ second here, buddy ? I know the first half of
that already!” Or, “wait a fuckin’ second here, hombre ? I know the second
half of that already!” You start to be able to use kanjis you learned months
ago, and apply them to new words. And if you know both halves of a jukugo,
you can pretty easily guess the meaning, even if it’s a jukugo you’ve never
seen before.
4 - UNLIKE MOST BOOKS OR CARDS, I TELL YOU HOW TO USE THE JUKUGO
All Japanese verbs are used with a particle or a preposition: Go OVER the cat. Come FROM the store, etc. 90% of the time, that preposition is を. But the other 10% just kick foreigners' ass up and down the street, because there is no logical rule- it's just case-by-case which verb uses which particle. Some verbs, such as “行く,” only used with “に OR へ” and others, such as “言う” or “鳴く” are only used with “と”. As bad as Japanese is, the REAL problem is the teachers and textbooks. I find myself yelling at the book: “Why don’t you douchebags just teach the particle as if it were part of the verb?!?” And in this book, you bet your ass that's how I'm fuckin' doing it!!! Plus I’ll try to explain a little about the context and useage of the words: is this word childish? Formal? Read in newspapers but not spoken? Is it always used literally, or also figuratively? And so on.
7: SYNONYMS AND HOMOPHONES
Among linguists, Japanese is notorious for having hella same-sounding words. Get out your electric dictionary and type in かく。 Or しょうこう。 Or こうか Or かい。 Pretty fuckin' insane, eh? These same-sounding words are called homophones, and they largely result from all the janky same-sounding ONyomis I complained about earlier in the Historical Context Rant.
Even the word “kanji” ITSELF has like 3 homophones : 漢字、感じ、and 幹事！
Fortunately, this is mostly a problem when one is LISTENING - maybe that's why most JTV shows have subtitles . . . in Japanese! But if you're READING two homophones, the kanjis make the meaning clear - 漢字 (Chinese + Letter) can only mean 'chinese characters', while 幹事 (main + action) means 'someone who does actions at the main office,' in other words, a secretary.
The problem comes when certain kanji have the same sound AND THE SAME MEANING. These are the 'duplicate kanji' I mentioned earlier: for instance, 硬い、固い、and 堅い are all pronounced かたい, and they all mean HARD. AAAAAHH!!!!
Now, all languages have synonyms. Some people say that synonyms lend variety and
shades of nuance to a language, keeping it colorful and alive. I am not one
of those people. Most synonyms are dead-wood. They have the same meaning AND nuance. And what's worse, you can't even use them interchangeably - For instance, you can say, "Travel to the ends of the earth,"but you can't say, "Travel to the ends of the globe." You can say, "I'm going to the repair shop," but you can't say, "I'm going to the fix shop." Can you imagine how fucked-up that is to someone learning English??? It's like we only keep those redundant words around to use them in certain arbitrary expressions, specifically to fuck up ESL goons. In the same way, not even Japanese people can tell the difference in meaning betwen 硬い、固い、and 堅い. . . but they DO know which kanji to use in which idiom!
Before you give up and switch to Esperanto, ask yourself this: Why do E/J textbooks identify all 3 of those kanjis as ‘hard’ TO BEGIN WITH?? Wouldn’t it be simpler if they identified them one as, ‘hard,’ the second as ‘firm,’ and the third as ‘solid'? Once again, it’s not a problem with Japanese, it’s a problem with how it’s taught. And you KNOW that I give each Japanese synonym a different English keyword, so that you can tell them apart. That's another good thing about my keyword system.
Besides the regular synonym problems that all languages have, Japanese has a special issue: SOLO/COMPOUND PAIRS!
See, many kanji have a SOLO version and a COMPOUND WORD version, which seem to
mean the same thing - Like, half the damn kanji! For instance, 泊 by itself means 泊まる ('to lodge'). Used with 宿, it forms the compound 宿泊 which also means . . . .'to lodge.'
穏 by itself means 穏やか means 'peaceful, quiet'. Combine it with 平, and you get 平穏 , which also means . . . 'quiet or peaceful.'
蓄える and 蓄積 both mean 'to stockpile or amass .'
妙な and 奇妙な both mean 'mysterious, odd.' And so on.
Even E/J dictionaries don’t explain the differences between these solo/compound pairs, which leads to 1,000 irritated, burned-out foreigners kneading their brows and muttering, “WTF? Do I need both? Which should I study? Why are they wasting my time?”
HOW I DEAL WITH THIS: I will either delete one of the pair, or I'll try to explain the most common expression/idiom associated with each.
SECTION TWO ; HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
1 - MY METHOD OF MNEMONICS.
Remember mnemonics from school? “Every Good Boy Gets Fudge,” or “My Dear Aunt Sally,” or even that notorious paedophile, one Mr. “Roy G. Biv”?
Well, each kanji has a mnemonic sentence, or ‘story.’ And this is where the keywords come into play: I’ll give you a mnemonic sentance for each kanji, and that mnemonic ties together all the radicals, the ON-yomi, and also the meaning of the kanji.
Like a lot of students, I used to use random, slipshod metaphors with no system - if the same radical showed up in 3 different kanji, I'd use 3 diffrent metaphors for it. "OK, this radical is a fish that the fisherman catches. But on this next kanji, he's next to a flower, so I'm calling him a flowerpot." The end result is that I wasted a lot of time trying to keep the metaphors straight - time I could have spent on learning kanji! So that's why I use keywords - every time you see a kanji, radical, or ONyomi, it will always use the same one keyword. Hella rational!
There are those that think that kanji stories should be personal, and that
making them up yourself is going to provide an intimate connection which facilitates
learning. But,
1) The thought of 1,000 students spending 2,000 hours making up 3,000 stories
each, and then forgetting them all after they learn/give up on Japanese,
is just sad to me.
2) Who has the time to make up 2,000 stories? Why not just get right to the
learning?
3) The Japanese schools use standardized stories, and last time I checked,
Japanese people speak Japanese ok.
2 : KANJI TAGS (the big one!)
Remember back in the introduction when I mentioned how I made a system of tags for common, reoccuring fucked things about kanji? You probably thought I was just talking out of my ass. But no - I would never joke about my own ass. Once you read this next part, not only will you know more about fuckin’ kanji than most teachers, you’ll also be able to understand the idiosyncratic jargon I employ. Then all you have to do is learn 2.000 kanjis ,6,000 vocabulary words, an upside-down system of grammar, forget what sunlight and laughter and sleep were about. . . and then you can start writing your own anime fan-fiction! In Nihongo this time!
Earlier I talked about kanji ATTRIBUTES - things like ON and KUN yomis, stroke number, and radicals. Every book teaches about ATTRIBUTES. Now, I'm going to talk about TAGS - which are unique to my system. TAGS are categories I made up to try to make sense of kanji. They give names and definitions to problems that only exist in Japanese. Again, the way kanji is taught is the problem - most books don't even give NAMES for these situations, let alone tell you how to cope with them!
Here's what happened: Every time I put a kanji into the dictionary, I first compared it to a list
of 29 common kanji problems - and if it matched any of the 29 I tagged it with the appropriate
label(s). Most of the tags are WARNINGS - they say, “Watch out! Weird shit !!” On the other
hand, some of the tags are TIPS AND TRICKS that exploit some hidden symmetries
of kanji to help you learn faster.
Let's start with TAGS THAT APPLY TO THE MEANING:
IN THE DICTIONARY, MOST OF THESE TAGS ARE WRITTEN IN THE 特徴 (special characteristics) SECTION.
USEFULNESS : The answer to the question everyone wants to know: “Do I really need this one???” No professional teacher is going to give you an honest answer : they want you to pass the test, and the test has a bunch of retarded kanji on it that you’ll never use afterwards. Plus, most smart people will give some unsatisfying answer like, “Well, what do you mean by ‘need?’ You’ll need to read all of them eventually, it depends on what you’re reading!” I don’t like nuanced, mature answers like this. I prefer the old-fashioned ‘From one-to-five stars’ method. Yes, one-star kanji are still useful, otherwise I would have cut them out. However, if you're in a hurry, do what you gotta do. Also, here is a rad thing I did:
If a seldom-used, obsolete kanji like 寸 (an archaric measurement similar to a teaspoon) is part of essential kanji (such as 寺 (temple)and 付く, (to stick), then I'm going to give 寸 a lot of stars to reflect that.
JERK: JERK KANJI have 2 (or more!) unrelated meanings. And you can’t ignore one meaning
- both meanings are useful, otherwise I would have cut one out. Jerk RADICALS mean one thing when used as a SOLO kanji, and another thing when used as a
radical inside a bigger kanji. Some classic JERKS are: 沢 (swamp / bling) and 討(strike
down / discuss) and we can't forget 米 (rice / America).
TOTAL COCK : this is even worse than a jerk. A TOTAL COCK might have 3 kunyomis and
be part of 10 jukugo, which all mean the same thing. but here’s the catch:
nobody ever uses the kunyomis or those jukugo. the ONLY time the Total Cock
kanji is used, is with a word that has a totally different meaning, or a totally
different pronunciation, from all the other words of the kanji. 荷 昨 −
SOLO : 貝 ('shell') is a classic SOLO kanji. If you look it
up in your dictionary, you’ll find like 20 jukugo: 貝中毒、貝割れダイコン, 貝塚 ,貝形模様の飾り, 貝採集, 貝柱
、 貝殻, etc. But unless you're a marine biologist, you’ll
never use any of them! 貝 is used by itself, so usually you can get away with not
learning the ONyomi.
BETABETA: The opposite of a SOLO kanji - beta-beta in Japanese means “sticky” as in "greasy residue" or “needy boyfriend.” BETABETA
kanji are only used in jukugos! Which is rad because it means you don’t
need to study their KUNyomis. Who else tells you this kind of shit????
SIDEKICK : A variation of the BETABETA kanji, the SIDEKICK is a very distinct feature of Japanese: A trifling, minor-league kanji like 途! In fact, 途 is so low, he's only used in one word. He'd be a forgettable nobody, if it wasn't for one thing: that word is 途中 ('on the way'), and we use that word every day! Basically he got lucky and became a SIDEKICK of a really famous kanji, namely 中. This used to drive me CRAZY!!!! I was like, “Fuck!!!!! Why I gotta learn this if it’s only used in one word?? If I go to the trouble of learning this bastard I should be able to use it in 10 words!”
The good news is, it turns out you don’t need to learn sidekicks. Once you've learned the OTHER, more USEFUL kanji of the jukugo (中), make a flashcard of the whole jukugo, and learn 途 that way. More good news: You don't have to learn the KUNyomis of sidekicks, because they're seldom used.
PK means 'PRIMARY KANJI' : this is exactly what it sounds like - a kanji that can’t be broken down into radicals. For example, tree 木、water 水、 and mountain 山.As you'd exptect, primary kanji are often radicals of other kanji - 森、機、模、札,etc.
PREFIX and SUFFIX : Just like in English, these go in front of / behind dozens and dozens of words, to modify them. But UNLIKE English, you can’t put a Japanese prefix in front of any old word, it’s not allowed. So be careful! One of the most common prefix is 無, which means 'un-' as in 無敵 (unrivalled)、 無限 (unlimited)、and 無口 (person who doesn't use their mouth).
DUPE - aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh another only-in-Japanese irritation: the DUPLICATE. Dupes are fuckers like 務、努、and 勤 . . .that have the same KUNyomi, and even the same meaning. In fact, type in つとめる in your dictionary- all three of those dudes will pop up - IN THE SAME ENTRY. Here's my reconstruction of how dupes came about: “Dude! We got a lot of words with 2 or 3 nuances to ‘em. Let’s assign leftover Chinese characters to each of the nuances of our words!” “Yeah, that will help clear up a lot of the misunderstandings we have in spoken Japanese.” “Or else we could just speak very directly and to the point?” “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, Toshio-san, you so craazy!”
DUH : a kanji that (suprisingly) looks like what it represents: 山(mountain), 口(mouth), or 三 (3). Kanji that are blindingly obvious IF YOU KNOW THE RADICALS are also DUH. Like 否, which is "un-" 不 plus "mouth"口, means "refuse." Duh!
TAGS WHICH APPLY TO THE RADICALS:
ABSOLUTE RADICAL: Things like
, 
, , or 
that are so basic, they don't even get to be simple kanji - they're only radicals. (to make matters confusing,
some absolute radicals are composed of other, smaller ab-rads. don’t think
about this. just proceed)
MUTANT RADICAL; some very common PRIMARY KANJI change shape when they are
used as radicals. They tend to get squished and simplified. 水 becomes 
、火 becomes 
, and 人 becomes 
.These simplified,
squished versions are MUTANT RADICALS.
STRONG is short for 'STRONG RADICAL' Strong radicals are kanji like 可 (on-yomi: KA) and and 中 (on-yomi: CHUU).
If you see a kanji with the 可 inside it, (i.e.苛、何, 河, or 歌 )most likely their ONyomi will also be SHI. Likewise, if you see a kanji with 中 inside it, (i.e. 虫、忠, or 仲 )the ONyomi of that kanji will probably also be CHUU. Strong radicals are good because they help you guess the ON-yomis
of kanji that you can't read.
BE CAREFUL: of kanji such as 己. 己's ONyomi is KO, but most of the kanji which use the 己 radical have the ONyomi of KI!!!! In cases like that, I'll write a tag which says something like: "STRONG RADICAL FOR 'KI'"
SAME ON: the kanji’s ON-yomi is the same ON-yomi as one of the radicals in it (usually a STRONG RADICAL). For example, 衣 (cloth) is pronounced "I". 依 (rely on) has the cloth radical and is also pronounced "I." So if you forgot how to pronounce 依, but you remember how to pronounce 衣, you're in luck.
SWELL RAD: If a swell radical is inside of a kanji, the meaning of the whole kanji will be pretty much the same as the meaning of the swell radical. This is a helpful tool if it's a kanji you can't read! For instance, 
is used in words like 病(sick) 、 痛 (pain)、 疲 (fatigue)、 and 痴 (pervert). 火 (fire) is used in words like 焼 (roast)、 燃 (burn)、 爆 (explode)、 and 災 (natural disaster).
One more thing: SWELL RADICALS are usually on the left side, STRONG RADICALS are usually located on the right side of a kanji. So if you are stumped by a new (or, heh, forgotten) kanji, check the right-side radical for clues of its on-yomi.
TAGS THAT APPLY TO THE KUNYOMI : IN THE DICTIONARY, THESE TAGS GO NEXT TO THE INDIVIDUAL WORDS.
LAZY : some kanji have the same ON- and KUN-yomis. I say that is not nearly arbitary or complicated enough - why did they pass up a perfectly good chance to mess with foreigners’ minds? they must have felt LAZY.
BOOBOO : A word that most people use wrong gets a BOOBOO tag. For instance,
明けましておめでとう！ is usually translated as "Happy New Year!" But if you use this before Jan. 1st, you might as well hold a huge flag up over your head that says NOOB. Or 話す （’speak') Only noobs say "あなた は 日本語 を 話す？”）（’Do you conversation Japanese?') You're supposed to say ”あなた は 日本語を 喋る？”('Do you speak Japanese?') So 話す also gets a BOOBOO tag.
NUBI : a KUNyomi which is Never Used By Itself - 夕 is a NUBI. The KUNyomi is ゆう, but you'd never say, "It's a nice ゆう tonight!" You have to use it in certain specific idioms like 夕方(evening) or 夕べ (last night). (it makes more sense to just teach the phrases, but first you have to learn the word).
TAGS RELATING TO KUNYOMI AND JUKUGOS: THEY ALSO GO NEXT TO THE INDIVIDUAL WORDS.
NP (newspaper word)
All languages have a very formal version , even English: (“Your Honour, if it please the court to introduce the writ of habeas corpus?” “Indubitably, my good chap!”) But as usual, Japanese has to take a common linguistic phenomenon and bug it out until it’s totally incomprehsnsible to foreigners. So, in ADDITION to the formal Japanese (used only when talking to the Boss) , there’s a WHOLE NOTHER SET OF WORDS which are used in very every-day settings: announcements on the loudspeakers of train stations, television news reports, newspapers, etc. Some of these words are the most common and useful in Japanese, and yet most people will never ever say them. These words are only HEARD or READ, but they're not formal. I call these words NEWSPAPER WORDS, although they might be better called ANNOUNCEMENT WORDS. A common noob mistake is when a foreigner (having just learned the words) says them out loud. The foreigner figured that since they describe common things like trains leaving the station, they must be useful. Ha! NOOOOB. To make matters even worse, most every NEWSPAPER WORD has a more casual equivalent that regular folks use, and you gotta learn those too!
NEOLOGISM: Remember how people always laugh at the French because they outlawed the word “hamburger,” and they don’t say ‘email address,’ they gotta say, ‘adresse de courrier electronique?’ When an English word gets popular, they stone cold invent a French version, rather than polluting their language with outside terms! Well, back in the pre WWII days, Japan did the same thing. Today if they want to import a new word, like 'customer support' they’ll use katakana: カストマー・サッポト。 But back in the Tojo days, speaking the words of inferior mongrels was pretty gauche. What they’d do was, break the foreign compound word down into its basic parts, then find the kanji which corresponded to those parts, and make a new Japanese word - a NEOLOGISM. For instance, wheel-chair became 車椅子 （car-chair), and space-ship became 宇宙船 (universe vessel). Of course, these ‘pure Japanese’ words were written in Chinese, but whatever. When have racists ever made sense?
OBSOLETE : Unfortunately, a lot of kanji which are not used anymore as words. . . are still indespensable as radicals, so you still have to learn 'em.
KANA: Yet another only-in-Japanese headache: All kanji are written as hiragana. . . TO SOME EXTENT. For instance, in kids' books, or simply to emphasize the word (like all-caps in English). Then there's words such as 帽子 (hat) or 沢山 （hella) which are written as hiragana about half the time. Words like 居る (to live) or 可愛い (cute) are usually hiragana unless it's a really formal (or pretentious!) book. Words like 馬鹿 (idiot) or 凄い (deeeyamn!) are, inexplicably, usually written as KATAKANA.
Then there are words like 宜しく (yoroshiku= please) or 有難う (arigatou= thanks ) which are never written as kanji - BUUUUT they still carry the pronunciation of the kanji.
Furthermore, a lot of the DUPE kanji are written as hiragana, simply because even Japanese people don't have any fuckin' idea which kanji to use!!!
And then there are literally hundreds of jukugo where the first kanji is written as kanji but the second kanji is always written as hiragana. Or vice versa. What the hell is up with that? Make up your minds, guys!! (one piece of good news: if a kanji is written as hiragana in one jukogo, it’ll probably be written as kana in all of its jukugos)
Anyway, when a word is usually written in hiragana, I give it the KANA tag.
(A) stands for AMARI - which in Japanese means ‘not very often’ or ‘not very much.’ AMARI words aren’t that useful, and you can decide for yourself to learn them or not. A single A means, "If you're busy, skip it, but if you're planning on living in Japan, you won't be able to avoid this word." Two As mean, "Don't bother with this - I'm just including it to give you an idea of the various meanings that this kanji has." Three As means I'm just fucking with you.
FUCKED PRONUNCIATION : words like 田舎 (countryside), which, according to the ONyomis, should be pronounced たしゃ. . .but it's actually pronounced いなか. Or お土産 (souvinier) , which you'd think would be pronounced おどうさん, but it's actually pronounced おみやげ.
KUNKUN : a particular kind of FUCKED PRONUNCIATION. Unlike the examples above, which are totally random, KUNKUN jukugo use both words' KUNyomis, instead of the usual ONyomis.
KUN ON : same deal. Jukugo which mix kun and on yomis.
PN - PROPER NOUN - this kanji is often used in names of people or places.
Proper nouns in Japanese usually but not always take the KUN reading.
SARC : Some people say Japanese don’t “get sarcasm,” because they don’t understand the “I’ll say the opposite of what I mean and it never stops being funny” concept so beloved by Americans. Japanese sarcasm tends towards subtle irony ,and can be pretty rewarding if you can determine that a joke has, in fact, been made. To help you pick up on the difference between Eastern and Western sarcasm, I’ve tagged some of the better / more obvious examples. For instance, 党 means 'political party' - but someone who loves candy is called '甘党’ （’member of the Sweet Party')
FUCKED ROOTS - They say that kanji are ‘windows into the past,’ meaning that since they look like the things they depict, we can see the values of the ancient society that made them. However, in today’s politically correct times, that window is often as embarrassing as the screen of an old Western TV playing reruns of Sambo and Amos and Andy. This is evident in kanji like wife (奥さん), which famously translates to, ‘back of the house person,’ or 乙, which has two meanings: 'second place' and 'girl.' Oh no you di'int!!!!
ABUNAI : abunai (危ない)means ‘dangerous!’ ABUNAI kanji fall into 3 types:
1: it’s a discrimination word.
2: it’s a word that might start a fight
3 : it’s a word that will make Japanese giggle at you.
I deliberately don’t tell you which type the kanji is because I want you to ask your Japanese teacher or friends!!!!!!
ILL PAIR: Yet another only-in-Japanese type of problem : Synonyms where the kanji look as physically similar as their meanings! “Hey, a few foreigners managed to suss out the difference in the meanings of these synonyms. We can't let that slide. . . why don’t we make them look almost identical too?? That'll slow 'em down . . .IN YOUR FACE, FOREIGNERS!!!” Classic ILL PAIRS ? Here's a few:
削 (ｗｈｉｔｔｌｅ ｄｏｗｎ) /消 (ｅｒａｓｅ)
福 (good luck) / 富 ( get rich )
近 (close) /辺 (around here)
王 (king) / 主 (master)
妻 ( wife) / 婦 - (housewife)
3 : LOOKALIKES
This is another main problem that drives gaijin crazy.
Some kanji are different by only one stroke! Behold!!!!!
夫：husband/ 未 - not yet /末： ｔｈｅ ｔｉｐ
太 - fat /犬 - dog
告 - inform / 吉 - good omen
Deeeeyaaaamnn!!
Dealing with lookalikes is a two-step process.
1) Learn the radicals and mnemonics. For example,
'Good omen' (吉)is made out of samurai （士）+ mouth 〔口).
告 isn't just 'good omen plus a line' , it has its own meaning:
'Inform' （告）is made out of hurl （
） + mouth 〔口）
Now, when you're reading and you come accross 告, you'll be like, "Fuck! I know I studied this one . . . it's either 'good omen' or 'inform' . . .but which one is it?" And then you'll say, "OK, that top bit is . .. um. . .HURL. And the mnemonic for 'good omen' is. . ."It's considered good omen if a samurai kisses you on the mouth."? OK - so this kanji is not 'good omen', because there's no samurai. And the mnemonic for 'inform' is. . . "I inform you with my mouth, that I'm about to hurl the football." AHA! hurl! So this must be 'inform'!!"
So that is how knowing radicals and mnemonics pays off : if you've memorized them, 90% of lookalike problems just go away.
2) If you're constantly confusing two similar kanji, draw them side-by-side and compare them. Look at 'em until you find which radical is different. No matter how complicated kanji X and Y are, you know there’s one little part that’s different, and that one part is all you have to know. For example, 技 and 枝 look really similar. But the left-hand radicals are different. So just ignore the right-side altogether. And concentrate on remembering the keyword of the left-hand radicals.
技 - technique (HAND)
枝 - branch (TREE)
When you think about it like that, it's almost impossible to confuse them. You do techiques with your hands, but a tree has a branch. That rhymes, Marge, and you know it rhymes.
Here's another example that always used to kick my ass: 官 and 宮. The only difference is that one little line in the center. If the line is straight, the radical is 'beuracrat', and if the line is crooked, the radical is 'washtub.' That's easy to remember because the 'beuracrat' radical LOOKS LIKE A CAPITAL 'B'. Anyway, once you just concentrate on those two bottom radicals, it's totally easy to tell apart the two kanji:
官 - federal (BEURACRAT)
宮 -palace (WASHTUB)
DUH! There's a washtub in the palace, and a beuracrat works for the federal government.
So.
To help you carry out this two-step program, I've tagged the more obvious lookalikes (at least the ones that trouble me), and put them side-by-side for easy comparison. I then point out which radical is different between them. Finally, I make a mnemonic like the ones above, that only compare the 2 different radicals, and ignore the rest of the radicals.
CAREFUL, SON: the 'lookalike' mnemonics aren't supposed to be used together with the regular mnemonics, but INSTEAD of them. Only use the lookalike mnemonics if you're already confused about which kanji is which. Otherwise it is too much information: You will go, “Hey, those DO look alike! I didn’t think so before, but now that you mention it. . .” and then you will be more confused than you were before you read it.
4 - THEORY MEETS PRACTICE
The layout of each kanji's entry goes a little somethin' like this:
1:the kanji 2 : meaning/keyword
3 : 音： the ON-yomi (音 means ON)
4: a list of all the radicals in the kanji, with their pictures and english keywords.
5 : the mnemonic, which ties together the meaning, ONyomi, and radicals.
6: U: the "usefulness rating."
7: 特徴： the weird attributes , if any, of the kanji ('特徴’ means 'unique characteristics')
８: # of strokes
9 : 訓：KUN yomi (訓 means KUN)
10 : 熟語： the jukugo (熟語 means jukugo)
11: a list of ＬＯＯＫＡＬＩＫＥＳ, so you don't mix them up.
4A : EXAMPLES OF ACTUAL CARDS.
Let's start with an easy card. . . one with a minimal friction between clean theory and messy reality:
At the top is the radical and its English keyword.
I try to keep each English keyword unique. A lot of beginners get mixed up by synonyms such as 言う 喋る and 話す: "Teacher! Why do they have 3 words for talk??" And the teacher replies, "Why does English have 3 words for talk??" And textbooks don't help - sometimes they'll use the same English word for 3 kanji! Fuck that, I say. In my system 言う is 'say,' while 喋る is 'speak,' and 話す is 'conversation.' That's a side-benefit of a keyword-based system : dealing with synonyms.
Below that is the ONyomi (GEN, in all-caps.). Each ONyomi also corresponds to one (similar-sounding) English keyword. In this case, GEN's keyword is AGAIN.
Below that is a list of all the radicals that make up the kanji. Luckily, by the time you get to 言, you will already have learned all the radicals!!
Below that is the MNEMONIC - which ties together the Onyomi, the meaning ('say') and the radicals, all in one sentance. ONyomis are in CAPS, while the meaning is underlined.
Below that is the USEFULNESS RATING. 言う got five stars, so you can tell it's one of the most basic, important kanji. You can always skip the one-star kanji. I'm not gonna lie!
Lower down is the 訓 - the KUNyomi. In this case, と い＊う。 First of all, what is that asterisk??? The asterisk shows you where the OKURIGANA start. For example, い＊う is written 言う, and た＊べる is written 食べる.
Second of all, what's up with that 'と'? The 'と' is the PARTICLE which goes with the verb. Most verbs, like I said before, use を as the particle. But 言う NEVER uses を. Saying を言う is like having NOOB tattooed on your forehead. So if you see a particle like へ、に、 が、or と before the word, that's for grammar reasons.
Then, finally, are the jukugo. They're listed first as kanji (so you can read 'em), then as hiragana (so you can write 'em). You see how the final word (ひとりごと） is tagged with (A) and (KANA)? The (A) means 'not so useful of a word.' It's at the bottom because - get this - ALL THE JUKUGO ARE ARRANGED FROM MOST- TO LEAST-USEFUL. The (KANA) tag means that ひとりごと is written as hiragana half the time. So. . . I dunno, study it half as hard or something!
***
OK - moving on to another, slightly more complicated example:
This entry begins with THE JAPANESE FLAG which is SUPER IMPORTANT: Everytime I introduce a new primary kanji or a new radical, I’ll announce it with a little icon of a Japanese flag. The Japanese flag means “OK, I’VE RUN OUT OF COMBINATIONS OF OLD SHIT, HERE IS SOME NEW SHIT.” Once you learn that one new shit, the subsequent batch of kanji are just re-combinations of radicals you already learned.
Then, below, the kanji and its meaning.
Since this is a simple kanji, it is not made out of smaller radicals. So instead of showing you the radicals, I'll try to explain what it looks like.
Then the mnemonic - again, the Keyword/meaning is always underlined.
U:＊＊＊ means that 干 is averagely useful.
Then 特徴： the unique characteristics of the kanji.
The LOOKALIKES: SEE BELOW tag means, this kanji resembles another kanji, which I deliberately put next in the book so you can compare 'em easily. So pay close attention to the next kanji!!
Since 干 is a 'Japanese flag' kanji (i.e. a new shape) after this kanji entry, there will be a bunch of other kanjis which use the 干 radical, such as: 肝, 刊, 芋, 汗 and so on.
Speaking of sweat. . .
The (A) by the ONyomi means that you don't really have to study it.
Then there is a list of the 2 radicals that make up sweat. Behold! 干, which you've just learned, is one of them. So you already know half of this kanji! Both radicals link back to their respective entries, so if you forgot what 'water' is, you can review it before trying to learn 汗.
The 特徴 is SOLO, meaning that we don't use 汗 in jukugo. - which is why the ONyomi is tagged with (A) !!!
"But wait! There's 2 jukugo right below it!! What's up, dude?"
Those are 2 most common expressions which use the SOLO word. I didn't know where else to put them!
Notice how the first jukugo is useful, but the second jukugo (あせをかく）is tagged with an (A) (not so useful?) That's because all the jukugo are arranged in order from most-to-least useful.
Below the jukugo is the LOOKALIKES - which are put side-by-side for easy comparison. To make it even easier, I wrote (IN ALL CAPS) the keyword of the radical which is different between them - in this case 干 and 十.
Now that you know which radicals to look for, I give you a mnemonic to help remember the difference: "I drink juices one through TEN but I sweat until I'm DRY again."
The the meaning is always underlined, but the name of the RADICALs are always ALLCAPS.
You'll see that 距 has 2 mnemonics - one to help you remember the ONyomi, and another one for the radicals and meaning. That's because it's fuckin' hard for me to combine all 3 in one sentance all the time. If the ONyomi mnemonic becomes a breakaway republic, I always write the mnemonic next to the ONyomi itself. And as usual, meaning is underlined, while ON is CAPS.
Also, the keyword for the ONyomi isn't a word at all, it's an abbreviation: KYO spells 'Keep Your Odor! '
Why would I make it complicated like that?
Some ONyomis (such as SHO / SHOU, SHU/SHUU, and KYO/KYOU) come in both short- and long-vowel styles. This is one of the things that really messes me up! To help deal with this confusion, I decided that the English Keywords of short-vowel ONyomis will always be abbreviations: SHO becomes Smell His Odor, SHU becomes See Her Underpants, KYO becomes Keep Your Odor, etc.) Since these abbreviations are clearly 3 words, that should cue you that the ONyomi only has 3 letters, and therefore is short-vowel.
Long-vowel ONyomis (SHOU, SHUU, KYOU,etc.) use regular single words.
Also, you see how 距 is listed as a SIDEKICK? That means it's only used in one specific jukugo. That's why the KUNyomi is blank, and why there's only one example jukugo: 距離。 That might seem uninteresting, but consider this: Every other kanji book or flashcard has 4 or 5 example-words for 距! Even though they know damn well you won't use those words!! I just saved you an hour, buddy!
OK- pretty confusing when theory bangs head-on into reality, isn't it? I did the best I could (*sobs*)
OK, let's summarize what you learned from that:
を is the default particle. If a verb uses a weird particle, (へ、に、と, etc.） the weird particle will be written right next to the word!
ONyomi English keywords SOUND like their Japanese counterparts: SHOU becomes SHOW, KA becomes CAR, etc.
If I have to split the mnemonic into two parts, the ONyomi mnemonic goes up by the ONyomi!
Short-vowel ONyomi use abbreviations for the keywords, to tell them apart from their long-vowel cousins.
In the mnemonics, ONyomis are ALL CAPS, while meanings are underlined.
In KUNyomi, the asterisk (*) shows where the okurigana begin.
Jukugo are listed in most- to least-useful order.
If a word has only one or two jukugo, that means that in practice, it's only ever used with one or two jukugo! (other words, like 日 or 車 can be used in a dozen totally useful jukugos)
In the LOOKALIKES, I list the differing radical next to each kanji in ALL CAPS. The lookalike mnemonics go like this: meaning is underlined, and the RADICAL is in all caps.
5− TWO WAYS TO USE THE DICTIONARY:
USING THE DICTIONARY THE REGULAR WAY:
Study the kanji in order. There, that was easy.
In the beginning, set a goal of, say X amount of kanji. On your first go-round, don’t even look at the jukugo or KUNyomi. Just try to associate the kanji with its meaning and its component radicals; if you can do that you are rad.
Eventually, you'll reach a point where you'll start to recognize a lot of the 'other kanji' in a given kanji's example jukugos. Say you're studying 具 (tool). You happen to glance down at the jukugo list and see:
道具：どうぐ： ｔｏｏｌ
家具：かぐ：ｆｕｒｎｉｔｕｒｅ
具体的に：ぐたいてきな： ｃｏｎｃｒｅｔｅ ａｓ ｏｐｐｏｓｅｄ ｔｏ ａｂｓｔｒａｃｔ
具合：ぐあい： ａ ｃｏｎｄｉｔｉｏｎ − ｕｓｕａｌｌｙ ｅｉｔｈｅｒ ｇｏｏｄ ｏｒ ｎｏｔ ｇｏｏｄ． （ＫＡＮＡ） (A)
And maybe you'll say to yourself, "道具？ Hey, waitaminute, I've seen 道 before . . .road! 道 means road! It's on the street sign near my apartment! And the 家 from 家具 means house. AHA! Furniture literally means 'house tool'! How cute! Hmm. . .wonder if I can do all of them. The third one is still fucked. I got no idea. But the fourth one - 具合. . .合 . . . I know 合 from somewhere. . . Fuck . . AHA! It means 'to suit'! 似合う! OK, rad! So 'condition' is literally 'tool is suitable' . . the 'tool' (具） is in a 'suitable' （合） condition for me to use it.
"Hey . . .could it be . . .Not only do I know the kanji for these jukugo, but it's like I can memorize them hella easy. House tool = furniture. Duh! 'Tool is suitable' = 'it's in good CONDITION.' Double rad!"
I call this THE BREAKTHROUGH. You're now ready to go back to the beginning of the whole book and take on all the jukugo. You'll find that knowing the meanings of the 'other kanji' (道、家、 合) helps you learn 具's jukugos fast, AND helps you review those older kanji at the same time.
But - I'm not going to lie. . 50% of the time, the jukugo are going to have kanji you haven't learned yet. Don't even worry about those guys. Skip and come back later.
USING THE DICTIONARY TO LEARN A SPECIFIC WORD OUT OF ORDER:
1 Control+F to find the word.
2 Check the list of radicals below the word. Any radical you don’t know? Click the link to go to that radical and learn it.
3 Write the radical 10 times, while saying the keyword out loud : shouting, even. In fact, why don’t you make a flashcard of it, ya teacher’s pet!
4 Is the radical ITSELF a kanji, made up of radicals you don’t know? Go back to step 2.
5 Once you’ve learned all the parts, go back to the word you wanted to learn.
6 Write it 10 times, while muttering all the names of the radicals as you draw them. Then write it 10 more times, while reciting the mnemonic.
7 Read a book or magazine which uses that kanji a lot. Trust me, just reading a card a bunch without using the kanji in the real world is a garuntee you’ll forget the word. It’s one of my biggest faults as a student : I don’t read enough.
6 : BLUFFING WHEN YOU COME TO A KANJI YOU CAN'T READ:
TRY TO SOLVE IT WITHOUT YOUR DICTIONARY.
First, check the context. If you are looking at 泳 and can't remember if it means 'eternity' (永) or 'swim' (泳), the context should help you. For example, “This sentence is about the ocean. Ok, I guess it must be ‘swim’ then.”
Say all the radicals’ keywords aloud a few times - maybe that’ll make the mnemonic pop up in your memory. ("得 . . .Go! Sun! Temple! Go! Sun! Temple! You go, to the, . . uh, temple. . .You go to the temple of the sun god to OBTAIN virtue. It's OBTAIN!!"
Draw the kanji several times - this also sometimes knocks the memory loose.
If you're trying to read a jukugo and get stuck on one of the kanji, try to think of another jukugo that uses that same kanji. Not only is this an effective way to remember, but the "AHA!!" feeling you get when you pull it off is one of the best things about studying Japanese. Say, you're trying to read 品質. You're like, "Something, shitsu. NNNnnnnnnn. ... shitsu. Damn it! Where have I seen those three boxes before? Art? No, that's 芸実. Something about art, anyway. 作品!!! Sakuhin! Artworks! OK! SakuHIN = 作+品, so 品 = HIN. Therefore, 品質 must be HIN shitsu!"
Check for ‘swell radicals’ー radicals such as 口, 木, and 火 that actually DO have meaning. If it's got a 火 in it, it'll probably have something to do with fire.
Remember: the left side radicals are likely to be SWELL - to have to do with the meaning of the kanji. The right side radicals are more likely to be STRONG - to dictate the ONyomi of the kanji.
OK FUCK IT, CRACK OPEN THE DICTIONARY.
WAIT - YOU STILL HAVE TO BE ABLE TO SPELL IT TO LOOK IT UP.
"Jesus, what a vicious circle. If I could fuckin' spell it, I wouldn't need to look it up, would I? You cocks!!!"
Yeah, I know. tell me about it.
If you’re searching using the ONyomi and it ain’t there, try searching by using the KUN yomi.(remember : if there’s okurigana, you gotta use the KUNyomi!)
If the jukugo is long, and you can’t find it in the dictionary, maybe it’s
two words. Try just looking up the first 2 kanji. (unless the first kanji is a common prefix such as, 無 不 反 . . .in which case, try looking up
the word without the prefix)
If you can’t remember whether the ON has a short vowel or a long vowel, try
remembering the mnemonic, because the mnemonic uses the English keyword for the ONyomi. The English keyword for the short vowel is gonna
an abbreviation such as Smell Her Odors or Some One. While its long-vowel counterpart is going to have a regular keywords like SHOW(me your butt) or SO(many butts).
If you have absolutely no clue what the ON yomi is - ask yourself, "Does the right-side radical look like the right-side radical of another kanji that I DO know?" Maybe it has the same ON yomi as that other kanji.
If nothing else works, chances are you got a ‘ten-ten and maru’ problem on your sweaty little hands. Ten-ten and maru are the little marks that change the pronunciation, such as ha-ba-pa (は・ば・ぱ) or sha-ja (しゃ・じゃ). For example, usually, 者 is pronounced SHA, and 本 is supposed to be HON. But in 忍者 (ninja), SHA becomes the softer JA: にんじゃ. And in the word 一本 (one rod), HON becomes PON :いっぽん.
Why? My first Japanese teacher said, "Because it's DIFFICULT to pronounce ninSHA and ichiHON." I think the whole class laughed at her, although maybe I just wanted them to have laughed at her. God forbid that Japanese be difficult! Let's invent 20 new syllables to cut down on the difficulty, sure! And apply those 20 new syllables in totally aribtrary places? Why not?
Anyway, long story short, try changing the first syllable of the second kanji to a ten-ten or a maru and see what happens.
Finally, If you DO manage to find the word in your dictionary, don’t just nod, “Aha!” and keep
reading. No no no. You need to write the kanji down like 10 times while saying
the mnemonic. If you don’t have time right there and then, at least write that kanji down once on a "list of kanji I fucked
up on while reading this book” . . .so you can study the list later.
7: HOW TO STUDY REAL GOOD, BESIDES JUST READING THE BOOK
1) When you are learning a new word, draw it a bunch while repeating the names of the radicals. All gritting your teeth and muttering, “Earth, rifle, mouth,
plate. . . earth, rifle, mouth, plate…” over and over. And then write it some
more while saying the mnemonic out loud. That way, tomorrow when you already forgot
what the kanji means, you can squint at it and say the names of the radicals,
and the story should theoretically just pop into your head.!! “Earth. . . rifle.
.. mouth. . pl?SALT!!! THAT’S FUCKIN’ SALT!! 塩！！“ And then the cute guy next
to you in line at the bank will all look at you like, “Who is this fucking
spaz??” But that is your problem, not mine.
2) Write the information from this book on flash-cards. Personally I’m only putting this on the internet because it’s free. But if you’re like me, trying to study on the internet, with porn and youtube only a click away, is just futile. Cards are the way to go, because they’re tiny. You can whip ‘em out and study in line at the bank, at a red light, waiting for the bus, or whenever you got nothing else going on. I even study with my cards when I am in a traffic jam on the freeway, although I don’t recommend it.
Put the kanji on the front, and the on / kun yomis, radicals, and mnemonic on the back. Don't forget to leave room for lookalike kanji that you'll encounter later in your studies. If you are writing a card for, say, 郡 , leave space on the front side for lookalikes you discover later. Next week, when you fuck up and confuse 群 with 郡 , you can write “It’s NOT 群 !!” in the corner.
I wouldn't reccomend writing any of the tags on the cards - except maybe the "SAME ON" tag.
2a) Yes, make cards for the radicals too.
3) When it comes to jukugo, use the same method
you used with radicals: a+b=c. (only instead of radical+radical= kanji, now you've moved up to kanji+kanji=jukugo). Make up a mnemonic for the jukugo that includes the keywords
and the meanings of its component kanji. Write down the jukugo 10 times while saying the mnemonic out loud. Then make study-cards: jukugo on the front of the card; keywords and mnemonic on the back!
4) For some kanji (particularly guys like 名 or 物 which tend to use the KUNyomi in the jukugo) I always get the
KUN and ON readings mixed up . I get stuck in one of those awful “OK, it’s
the oppoaiste of what I think it is. But now I think it’s the opposite of
THAT,. . .crap!” brain-freezes. Anyway if you get stuck like that, here’s
an easy tip: learn kun and on together as if it was one
big word. 名 = NA-MEI and 物＝ BUTSUーMONOthat's one strategy. to keep from getting them mixed up. of course
this trick doesn’t work all the time: some words have like 4 kun yomis.
5) Email me! Like all things on the internet, this is a continual work-in-progress.
I'm working alone, doing this in my non-existent spare time, so there will
doubtless be 100 mistakes. if you spot one, please let me know. Or if you have some lookalikes, new kanji, or think of new tags that you think should be included.
click here to go to the actual dictionary!
APPENDICKS:
ONE - ALL THE ON-YOMI KEYWORDS
TWO - RADICALS AND PRIMARY KANJI IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
THREE - DUPLICATE KANJI
FOUR -ATTRIBUTES AND TAGS
FIVE -SAMPLE FLASHCARDS
SIX - LIST OF ALL ILL PAIRS
SEVEN - LIST OF COMMON SYNONYMS
ＮＵＭＢＥＲＳ．
Nｕｍｂｅｒｓ ｕｓｕａｌｌｙ ｕｓｅ ｔｈｅ ｏｎ−ｙｏｍｉ． Fｏｒ ｉｎｓｔａｎｃｅ， the ｏｎyomi is used as a prefix when countiｎｇ ｔｈｉｎｇｓ ( いっぱい＝ｏｎｅ ｃｕｐｆｕｌｌ，いちまい＝ｏｎｅ ｓｈｅｅｔ ｏｆ ｐａｐｅｒ， , いちにち＝ｏｎｅ ｄａｙ、 いっかい＝ｏｎｅ ｔｉｍｅ いっぴき＝ｏｎｅ ｋｉｔｔｙ， 一台＝ｏｎｅ ｃａｒ）．Ｙｏｕ ｗｉｌｌ ｎｏｔｉｃｅ ｔｈａｔ ｅａｃｈ ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｔ ｃａｔｅｇｏｒｙ ｏｆ ｏｂｊｅｃｔｓ （ｓｈｅｅｔｓ ｏｆ ｐａｐｅｒ， ｄａｙ， ｋｉｔｔｙ， ｃａｒ， ｅｔｃ） ｈａｓ ａ ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｔ ｓｕｆｆｉｘ． Ｔｈａｔ ｉｓ Ｊａｐａｎｅｓｅ． Ｔｈｅｙ ｈａｖｅ ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｔ ｗａｙｓ ｏｆ ｃｏｕｎｔｉｎｇ ｅｖｅｒｙｔｈｉｎｇ， ｂｕｔ ａｌｌ ｔｈｅ ｗａｙｓ ｕｓｅ ｔｈｅ ｓａｍｅ ｐｒｅｆｉｘｅｓ．
if you're doing math, or counting time: hours, months, days of the month you'll be using onyomi ｆｏｒ ｔｈａｔ ， ｔｏｏ．
Ｐｒｅｔｔｙ ｍｕｃｈ ｔｈｅ ｏｎｌｙ ｔｉｍｅ ｙｏｕ’ｌｌ ｂｅ ｕｓｉｎｇ ｔｈｅ ｋｕｎｙｏｍｉ ｉｓ ｗｈｅｎ ｃｏｕｎｔｉｎｇ ｄａｙｓ ｏｆ ｔｈｅ ｍｏｎｔｈ， ａｎｄ ｗｈｅｎ ｙｏｕ ａｒｅ ｓａｙｉｎｇ ”ｉ’ｄ ｌｉｋｅ ｏｎｅ， ｐｌｅａｓｅ！” ｏｒ， ”ｔｈｅｒｅ’ｓ ｆｉｖｅ ｔｈｉｎｇｓ ｏｎ ｙｏｕｒ ｂａｌｌｓ．” Ｂｕｔ ｗａｉｔ， ｙｏｕ ｓａｙ！ Ｉ ｔｈｏｕｇｈｔ ｔｈａｔ ｔｈｅｙ ｕｓｅ ｔｈｅ ｏｎ−ｙｏｍｉ ｆｏｒ ｃｏｕｎｔｉｎｇ！ Ｙｅａｈ， ｂｕｔ ｃｏｕｎｔｉｎｇ ａｌｌ ｐｒｅｆｉｘ−ｓｔｙｌｅ ｉｓ ｓｏ ｃｏｍｐｌｅｘ ｔｈａｔ ｅｖｅｎ Ｊａｐａｎｅｓｅ ｐｅｏｐｌｅ ｃａｎ’ｔ ｈａｎｄｌｅ ｉｔ， ｓｏ ｔｈｅｙ ｆａｌｌ ｂａｃｋ ｏｎ ａ ｍｏｒｅ ｇｅｎｅｒａｌ ｏｎｅ−ｓｉｚｅ−ｆｉｔｓ ａｌｌ ｍｅｔｈｏｄ ｏｆ ｃｏｕｎｔｉｎｇ， ｗｈｉｃｈ ｈａｐｐｅｎｓ ｔｏ ｕｓｅ ｋｕｎｙｏｍｉｓ． Ｇｏ ｃｏｍｐｌａｉｎ ｔｏ ｓｏｍｅｏｎｅ．
also, mostly Japanese people use Arabic numerals instead of kanji ｎｕｍｅｒａｌｓ nowadays. I figured I'd include the kanji numbers anyway because 1) you need'em as radicals, to make more complex, useful kanjis, and 2) the Ａｒａｂｉｃ ｎｕｍｅｒａｌｓ ａｒｅ ｓｔｉｌｌ ｐｒｏｎｏｕｎｃｅｄ ｌｉｋｅ ｋａｎｊｉ， ｓｏ ｙｏｕ ｇｏｔｔａ ｋｎｏｗ ｔｈｅ ｏｎ− ａｎｄ ｋｕｎ−ｙｏｍｉｓ， ａｎｄ ｗｈｅｎ ｔｏ ｕｓｅ ｗｈｉｃｈ．