schultz's terrible kanji help page

i teach you the kanji real good.

---

introduction - about kanji. why it's hard, and how to learn it.

radicals,

mnemonics

pronunciation

meanings;

my system

example

the textbook itself. . . - read this last.

---

introduction

 

When I got my first stack of kanji cards I was like what the fuck. Seriously, all this information; kanji number, dictionary number, meaning, onyomi, examples, radicals, stroke order, even something called the “Sunshine computer dictionary graphemes” . .. 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. WITH NO CONTEXT OF WHY IT WAS IMPORTANT. No clue of how to use the data. I just got overwhelmed and gave up. I was like, “Jesus, what is this shit? do I NEED all this?? Fuck, learning 1,000 kanji is hard enough WITHOUT LEARNING ALL OF THIS OTHER SHIT. WHY DON’T THESE KANJI CARD MOTHERFUCKERS SEE THAT??” I didn’t understand that, used correctly, the “extra shit” would help make kanji learning easier. It’s just a matter of understanding how the extra shit is used, and how it helps you. And that is what I am about to explain. Except for stroke order. I still don’t give a shit. If I want to write, I use a computer.

Most kanji books : wait, all?are written by people that are language experts and professors. Next to Japanese people, professors are the worst thing to happen to Kanji-teaching ever! By the time some dude gets a PhD. In Japanese, he is so good he has totally forgotten the basic problems that drive students crazy. He’s all into the 2,000 year old etemological roots of “cow” instead of remembering that cow looks like noon and that is annoying. He’s forgotten that kids who are still working on “car” (車)　and “big”　(大） can’t necessarily see their relationship to collision (衝) and nature (然). Forgotten that students waste a lot of time learning pronunciations for kanjis 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 know can tell you, “Don’t do this dumbass thing that I did!” and just as importantly, explain the reason why.

I set out to write the kind of kanji book I would have wanted when I was just starting! Something that explains the underlying logic of kanji in regular words, answers the questions that exasperate average students, has a system which anticipates and deals with the problems regular people encounter when studying, and has curse words. So very many curse words.

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, kanjis that mean one thing by themselves, another thing when paired with a second kanji, and nothing at all when converted into a radical. Kanjis that mutate and change shape; that look nothing like what they mean, and of course over 100 kanjis with the same exact pronunciation!! (Kou, to be precise). And on top of all that, you’ll have to deal with your Japanese friends who are quick to remind you that English is even worse!

Keeping all this horribleness in mind, let’s just plunge right to the bottom of the shit-storm, shall we? Let’s show you exactly what you are fucking with before you commit yourself. Let’s, Dante-like, get right to the worst part, the most terrible central secret of kanji : hated and feared by students and teachers alike. . . BEHOLD!!!!

THE TERRIBLE SECRET OF KANJI!!!!!

The terrible secret of kanji is this:

THERE IS ALMOST NO CONNECTION BETWEEN HOW USEFUL A KANJI IS AND HOW COMPLEX IT IS. The numerals are a great example. The letterforms of Arabic numerals are all about the same complexity?1,2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.0. But Kanji numbers are like, 1 　一、 2 　二、 3 三、　 ok so far, but then 4 and 5 are like: 四 , 　五 . (what the hell? Where did those come from? Not only are they way more complicamated, they don’t even look like they are part of the same system!) six through ten are more simple again : 六　七　八　九　十 , but then a hundred is all nuts like, 百 .

So, as this example shows, if you start off teaching the most widely-used kanji first, the students are going to go nuts. Some of the common kanji like 　大　 (big) and 水　（ water ） are simple but most of them, such as 難　 (hard) or 最新 (newest) are really really savage.

To add insult to injury. . . .after you bust your ass learning common-but-complex kanjis like 館 and 裂 . . . months later you’ll finally be taught less-used kanjis like 官 and 　列 . . . WHICH ARE COMPONENTS OF 館 and 裂 ! And you’ll say, “DAMN! Why didn’t you teach me the simple ones first! Then learning the complex ones would have been easy!”

That’s why people generally agree that gaijin learn kanji best if they learn simplest-to-most-complex. Because, when you realize, “Hey, this crazy-looking kanji is just built out of simpler kanji which I already know!” it becomes easy to memorize it.

The simple-to-complex method might seem like a waste of time when you are wading through old-fashioned words like 竹 (bamboo) and complex abstractions like 云　 (meaning variously, myself, vague, or an obsolete form of “to say”). You might grumble, “dude, I don’t walk around America saying “Bamboo!!” on a daily basis, why do I need this?” But in fact, in Japan you need “bamboo” in order to say box “ 箱 ” or laugh “笑う ! “ and you need 云 to say simple words like cloud 雲。 Learning 云 beforehand makes learning 雲 way less painful.

Now, for those of you still here, parts of kanji on the card (the same shit that baffled me when I started) and explain them to you. In this way you’ll learn about the hidden history and logic of kanji, as well as practical tips on how to use my dictionary for maximum learnin’.

 

RADICALS. These are the abcs of kanji.

Trying to teach Kanji without radicals is like trying to teach English without teaching them the alphabet!

Imagine if you were trying to learn CAT, and your teacher was like, “OK, first, make a half circle, then move your pencil to the right and make a triangle, and draw a line through the middle of it, then move your pencil to the right again and draw a horizontal line , crossed with a vertical line. . . .” And then when your teacher tried to teach you CATAPULT, you had to start over from the beginning again, with no clue that you already had learned “C” “A” and “T”! and yet that’s the way Kanji is taught in most Japanese schools, and (rant deleted).

When I first started learning kanji I DID NOT want to learn radicals. I thought, “Christ! I gotta learn 2000 kanjis, and ON TOP OF THAT, they want me to learn these little bitty radicals guys that aren’t even proper kanjis? 2000 kanjis isn’t enough??” It took me a long time to realize that, rather than saving time by “skipping” the radicals, I was actually WASTING my time, like the student studying “CAT” and then learning the letter C all over again, for “CATAPULT.”

Here is an example of how useful radicals are:

露 !!! It looks like a huge bunch of chicken scratch, doesn’t it? that is a 21 stroke character (compare to the equivalent English word, “outdoor”. (9 strokes).) Trying to memorize where to put each of the 21 strokes is a huge depressing pain, and then trying to memorize the strokes 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. Not only that, if you have learned those 3 radicals, you can use them to help figure out dozens of other kanjis too! 雲　霜　雪　雷、　踊　路　踏、　客　落　格 , and so on.

Here’s my method:

You learn

水　− water

Then you learn 火 - fire

Then you learn 炎 - flame

(fire plus fire)

Then,

淡 - faint, pale

(fire plus water, which you have already learned)

言う - say

談 - conversation

(say + fire)

And so on.

Each kanji builds on the one before it.

 

Compare this to the textbook I had when I studied kanji:

They taught us

寒いー cold

Then taught us

暑い - hot

then

温かい - warm

And finally

涼しい - cool

 

They grouped it by theme rather than by radicals, with the result that if you learn the first word in the series ( 寒い ) you have exactly zero information about how to draw the next term in the series ( 暑い ). Retarded!

Now, you say, “YEAH BUT WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A RADICAL AND A KANJI? BECAUSE I NOTICED THAT A LOT OF THEM SHITS LIKE WATER, TREE, PERSON, ARE SOMETIMES ONE AND SOMETIMES THE OTHER.”

It helps to have a little classification.

A radical is a COMPONENT OF A KANJI.

1 ) guys like , and are what I call ABSOLUTE radicals. They are never kanjis on their own, only parts of kanjis. They don’t have kunyomis Or onyomis. They don’t have any meaning, except what I made up! And, they are combined to form KANJIS.

2 ) Then there are what I call SWELL RADICALS; they don’t have kun- or on-yomis, they are never kanjis by themselves, but 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

癒　−　 cure

疲 - get tired

痢 - diarrhea

疾 - illness

痴 - molester

症 - symptom

And so on.

 

SWELL kanjis are not an exact science. But in a pinch, they ARE helpful in guessing the meaning.

For example, there’s this radical, which is part of maybe 20 kanjis:

Half the kanjis have to do with cats or small animals . . .

猫 - cat

狩 - hunt

猛 - fierce

独 - solitary

猿　− monkey

狐 - fox

 

. . . but the remaining half do not.

狙 -aim at

獄 - prison

獲 - acquire

狂 - go nuts

 

As you can see, SWELL (i.e. meaning-laden) radicals are usually on the LEFT SIDE of a kanji. So if you are totally stuck on an unfamiliar kanji, glancing at the leftmost radical is the best way to get a clue to its meaning.

 

3 ) Stuff like water and tree are kanjis when you use ‘em by themselves ： 水　木

but radicals when you stuff ‘em inside another kanji ： 海　洋　泳、　森　杢　材

Almost all of these radicals-which-are-also-kanjis are SWELL RADICALS. Kanjis with a tree in them have to do with wooden things, kanjis with fire in them are obviously about fire, etc.

Also, kanjis often CHANGE SHAPE when they turn into radicals. Water (水) becomes , fire (火) becomes etc. I call these distorted, simplified versions MUTANT RADICAL VERSIONS, and I’ll teach you both.

Kanjis themselves can be combined to form COMPOUNDS.

 

4 ) Compounds (short for “compound words”) are words consisting of 2 shorter words bundled together: “fireman”, “can opener,” “policeman” or “hat rack”. Here is some good news for you; compound words are the MOST LOGICAL part of kanji, (way more logical than English). Even if you never seen the compound word before in your life, if you know the component kanjis, you can easily guess both the pronunciation AND the meaning! (full disclosure: Logic of compounds only kicks in after about one year, when you learn your first 5,600 kanji. but once you cross that threshold it is like blaow!!! So have faith.)

Kanji is notoriously illogical. Smarter gaijin than I have wound up in four-point restraints trying to figure out WHY, for instance bamboo 竹 +eye 目 +tree 木　 =box ( 箱 ). (hint: it doesn’t). But again, it helps to return to the “radicals-as-alphabet” metaphor. If you’re studying English, it IS TEMPTING BUT NOT HELPFUL to ask “Why the fuck is “sugar” is spelled with no H, but “honest” is spelled with a silent ?!?!?”. when studying kanji, all that matters is that a) you can recognize the components, and b) can make a story that connects them AND the meaning. For example, “Build a box out of bamboo trees to hold your collection of celebrity eyeballs.” Et volia. But if you didn’t bother learning bamboo , you couldn’t do that. Only by being a hard-ass about going simple-to-complex can we turn illogical Kanji into a logical, easy learning system. Simple part plus simple part equals word. Word plus other simple part equals hard word. Repeat.

(HISTORICAL TANGENT)

historical note?kanji isn’t illogical just to drive Westerners crazy.

The reason we wind up with random kanji like

bamboo 竹 +eye 目 +tree 木　 =box ( 箱 ). or

foot 足 + head 頭 + sun 日 = topic 題

is this:

Kanji used to be EVEN MORE COMPLICATED. Like a lot of languages, it started off as pictographs. Like all King Tut style, the letters looked like the things that they looked like. The drawback was that writing a paragraph took as much time as drawing a comic book, because IT WAS DRAWING A COMIC BOOK. The Chinese sages realized that to expidite the process, the kanji would have to be simplified. As they reduced the kanji to simpler and simpler forms, these simpler forms turned into RADICALS. Put another way, when the sages were simplifying the kanji for topic ( 題 ), they were not thinking IS IT WEIRD THAT SUN AND HEAD AND FOOT MEAN TOPIC? WILL THIS BE CONFUSING TO FOREIGNERS 1,000 YEARS FROM NOW? BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE TERRIBLE! The meaning of it was not on their minds at all. They were thinking, “WHICH COMBINATION OF RADICALS MOST CLOSELY RESEMBLES THE ORIGINAL PICTOGRAPH? BECAUSE WE ARE JUST SIMPLIFYING IT BUT WE DON’T WANT TO FUCK AROUND AND INVENT A WHOLE NEW LANGUAGE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.” And the one sage would be looking at the original pictograph, like, “If you draw the top part like this, it kind of looks like the sun radical.” And the other sage was like, “Yeah, and if you squint your eyes and drink some sake, the bottom part kind of looks like feet.” And the third sage was like, “The right side looks like nothing on God’s green earth, plus we have 200 more kanji to simplify before lunch, so let’s just make it the face one, fuck it.” and they hi-fived and moved on. Anyway, this is the system we are stuck with

 

MNEMONICS:

The Japanese school system calls them goroawase, linguists call them mnemonics, but most students of Japanese just call them stories. Little things like My Dear Aunt Sally or Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, or even that creepy pedophile, one Mister Roy G. Biv…. Everybody has used stories to help them remember long and arbitrary combinations of shit, and kanji is no exception.

How it works is obvious?once you’ve broken an unfamiliar kanji down into its component radicals, you make a story which ties together the radicals PLUS the meaning of the kanji. For example, I’m sure that every student sees 休み (rest) and probably instinctively says to themselves, “ok it’s a person resting by a tree taking a siesta.” 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,

• 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 the fuck up on Japanese, is just sad to me.
• Who has the time to make up 2,000 stories? Why not just get right to the learning?
• The Japanese schools use standardized stories, and last time I checked, Japanese people speak Japanese ok.

 

Plus the most important reason :

By making up the stories myself, I can UNLEASH THE LOGIC!!! What I mean is, I can provide a framework where each radical corresponds to one particular English keyword. So if this guy here: is called wheat in the story for "handy"(利) , it’ll be called wheat in the stories for all these kanjis as well:

橋稚 秘 程私 秒 移 称 !!

That makes the stories easier to remember, since you don’t have to waste time trying to recall which name you were using for

Also, stories are the easiest way to tell similar-looking kanji apart.

for example, overcome (克） looks a lot like inform (告）. they even have the same pronunciation (koku)! but overcome is composed of the kanji for ten　(十) + the kanji for "older brother" (兄)　, whereas inform is composed of hurl ( )+ mouth (口） . if , thanks to the stories that go with each kanji, have their radicals memorized, it's hella easy to tell them apart.

in other words, 　克　looks 90% identical to 告, but the story "ten older brothers" sounds very different from "hurl a mouth."!!!!

So for this reason I am going to include the stories with my kanji cards.

 

PRONUNCIATION:

Kunyomi and Onyomi mean, respectively “of the meaning,” and, “of the sound.”

Probably you already know that, so maybe skip over this part.

in practice, this means that all kanjis have 2 pronunciations! the kunyomi is the traditional japanese pronunciation. the onyomi is the sad, awkward attempt to pronounce it the chinese way. hence "of the sound."

here is how it works:

SOLO kanjis (i.e. 水、日、大きい、辛い.) use the kunyomi.

COMPOUND kanjis (i.e. 種類、　漢字、　哲学、etc.) use the onyomi.

HOWEVER compound words which have hiragana at the end (手取り早い、 人当たり、　あざ笑う） use the kunyomi. This is not so hard, though, if you consider that both compounds-with-hirigana-at-the-end use the same pronunciation as solos-with-hiragana-at-the-end!

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. And because it is so easy and fun to learn, it caught on throughout the country of Japan. It's been pain and suffering ever since.

This 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) 固い　硬い　堅い. three words which all mean "hard" in English. Of course, you say, you can't expect evey word of English to correspond one-to-one with a foreign language. OK that is true. but get this: 固い　硬い　堅い are also THE SAME WORD IN JAPANESE TOO!!( they are all pronounced katai) but i guess in Chinese, "hard" and "katai" is 3 words, each meaning a different thing. and each word found its way into Japanese somehow.

janky situation 2) the flip-side of 1. Sometimes Japanese has 2 or 3 words, but Chinese only had one kanji for that word. Thus we have kanjis such as 米 or　便 that are doing double-duty -- they have 2 totally unrelated meanings. (so do English words like ought/aught or effect/affect, you say. no, i say, because those words are spelled different. that actually makes it even more evil than kanji, you say, because those different spellings arise from the fact that English vowels all have like 5 different pronunciations. god,fine, you win. happy now?)

janky situation 3) on-yomis, of course, come from Chinese. but Chinese has tones, and Japanese doesn't. whoever dumbfuck decided to import Kanji to Japan, was ILLITERATE and COULDN'T SPEAK CHINESE FOR SHIT, but somehow they convinced everyone in the fuckin' country to speak their retarded chinese. That's why we got over 100 kanjis with the same exact onyomis (KOU and CHOU, I'm looking at you). because all chinese sounds the same to Japanese! And you wonder why Chinese hate japanese so much. It's as if everyone in Canada decided to "pronounce canadian words chinese style" and they all went around saying, "ching chong, wing wong!" and pointing to stuff. Christ, not only is it irritating to learn, but it is just racially offensive.

 

ANYWAY.

When I was first studying kanji , I made a horrible mistake : I was like, “Christ the teacher wants us to learn 10 kanji a day. There is no way I can do this AND learn the onyomi too. I’ll just learn the shapes.” I got away with that for maybe a year, but in the end I failed the test. Then, when I DID finally start studying onyomis, I didn’t distinguish between the long-vowel ones ( こう、　ごう、　りょう ) and the short vowel ones ( こ、　ご、　りょ ) : which I STILL suck at telling the difference. To keep you impressionable youths from making the same mistakes, I am treating ONYOMI AS JUST ANOTHER FORM OF RADICAL. Each onyomi has is own English codeword, and the Story for a given kanji will include all the radicals AND the onyomi.

For example,

 

老 - get old

Onyomi : Rou

Radicals : Dizzy + heel

Onyomi story: A bunch of old people in a ROW, (waiting for the Social Security office to open. )

Radical story:The old man was so senile he got dizzy while walking and fell on his heel.

 

If I can, I try to combine all the mnemonics into one single story, like this:

 

埋 - bury

Onyomi: mai

Radicals : , earth + village

Story: i bury MY family in the earth of the same village where we were born.

 

Another benefit of this system is, it helps solve the long-vowel / short-vowel problem.

How? Well, everytime you see a kanji with an onyomi of ぼ , the story is gonna be about

- B.O. (body odor).

But every time you see a kanji with an onyomi of ぼう , the story is gonna be about BOWLing

 

So even if you can’t remember if the word is long-vowel or short- vowel. . . if you can remember the story, you’ll remember the pronunciation!

 

OH NO BAD NEWS:

Some Japanese on-yomis have no English equivalent, like

Kyo or kyou. So, hard as I tried, I couldn’t make up English code-words to correspond to them.

In these cases, I am using Japanese words.

for example, - 巨　− the onyomi for “giant huge just insanely big” is KYO.

Everytime I’m teaching you a kanji that has the onyomi of KYO, I will use 巨 as the mnemonic. So, it is kind of awkward to use one Japanese word as a mnemonic of an unrelated other Japanese word. I know this and am ashamed.

 

One more thing about onyomis: this time it is good news.

Just like SWELL RADICALS enable you to guess the MEANING of an unknown kanji, STRONG RADICALS let you guess the PRONUNCIATION of an unknown kanji.

 

STRONG RADICALS are things like 士 (shi) and (KEN) and 中 (chuu).

If you see a kanji with 士 in it, most likely the onyomi will be SHI.

And don’t worry: I’ll dutifully point out every strong radical when we come to it.

For example:

Samurai ( 士 ) has an on-yomi of “shi.” samurai is STRONG RADICAL, so most kanji which have the samurai radical will be pronounced “shi”. And, in fact, every time a kanji has the same on-yomi as one of its component radicals, I ‘ll point THAT out too, with a little blurb reading “same ON!”

For example:

志　 intention, volition

Onyomi : Shi

Radicals : Samurai (same ON) + heart

If a kanji has the “same ON!” tag, you might find it easier to simply skip the onyomi story altogether, and rely on the onyomi story of the strong radical instead.

One more thing: just like 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.

meanings, and the various stragegies kanji use to avoid having them.

this is totally hard and crazy and if you already have a headache, you should probably just stop right now, because by the time you are done with this section you will hate me.

 

In a logical world, kanji X would always mean X. Even if there were no corresponding word in English, X should have a stable meaning in its native language! But, haha, in Japanese, X can mean one thing by itself, a second thing as a radical, and a third thing in a compound! And that’s not even counting kanjis that have 2 totally unrelated meanings TO BEGIN WITH (the most infamous of these being, 米 , which means either “rice” or “the continent of America.”

this means we need some labels to hang on different types of confusing kanji, so we can point to them and say, "THAT right there! THAT is why this guy is messed up."

KANJI CLASSIFICATIONS:

NORMAL KANJI : has the same meaning(s) solo and in a compound kanji. (however, as with 米 , it might have 2 or more meanings in both solo and compound forms!)

 

JERK KANJI

this is one of those kanji where, as a SOLO kanji, it means one thing, but as part of a COMPOUND , it usually means something totally different. 米 is the classic jerk kanji. solo it means rice, but in a compound it means "america." for instance, "central america" is 中米。

another example: 種 by itself means "seed," but if it's in a compound it means "type" -

種類- kind

種種 - all different kinds of. . .

種族 - ethnic tribe

JERK RADICAL.

Can you guess what this is?

some of these are my fault. for instance, 又 means "again." but it looks so much like a crotch, that I decided to use "crotch" for the keyword. 奴　or 収. Mercifully, i only do this when the kanji is pretty obsolete and usually not used.

some JERK RADICALS are not my fault. like 月。 solo OR in a compound, it means moon or month. but as a radical, it usually means "internal organ" -　脳、肺、骨、筋 and so on. Another example is this:　母. solo OR in a compound, it means Mama. but in its radical form ( ) it means "every." every time. oops!

anyway, to help solve this problem, i'll always write the "solo" definition in normal letters, but I'll write the JERK DEFINITION in italics.

WHY-BOTHER KANJI -- so-called because you look at the bastard and think, "Jesus, i got 100 things to do today plus i can barely write "car", and you want me to learn some shit like "high plain"原？ what the hell?? how often do i say "high plane?" but actually you DO need it, to say common words like cause 原因 and please お願い。　likewise, the kanji for the ancient Wu Dynasty (呉) is necessary for such useful words as "apologize" (誤) and "entertainment" (娯)

these are hard to distinguish from ACTUAL useless kanji of which there is no shortage. I try to help by providing example compounds that show the utility of why-bother kanjis.

RANDOM KANJI -- kanji that, even solo, have 2 or 3 totally unrelated meanings.

率 is the classic. it means leader AND ratio. huh? yeah, exactly. 率 has 2 on-yomis -- one for each random meaning! in other words, when it's being used in a word which has to do with leading, the ONyomi is SOTSU, but when it's being used in a word which has to do with rates, the ONyomi is RITSU.

To help solve this problem, If i teach you a random kanji, I'll always write which onyomi goes with which random meaning.

 

HALF- KANJI : a kanji that, in practice, is never used by itself; it is only used as the left or right half of a compound. Which is not so bad, right? Well, no it IS bad. Because 90% of half-kanjis have kunyomis, THAT ARE NEVER USED. And the fuckin’ dictionaries and textbooks don’t WARN YOU. Many is the foreigner who bothered to learn the kunyomis for 争う,　 差す or 黄, only to be told by their Japanese friends, “Oh, we never say that! We instead say 競争, 差別, and 黄色.” Suffice to say, in MY fuckin’ dictionary I ain’t printing no useless kun-yomis.

 

SPECIFIC KANJI : is a rare kind of kanji, that is , in practice, ONLY used with ONE other kanji, in ONE SPECIFIC COMPOUND. Examples are ,溜　is only used in "sigh" (溜息) and , 冗 seldom seen outside of "joke" (冗談)　, or 糖, which is only used in "salt" (砂糖). Perniciously, the SPECIFIC KANJIS are usually really hard to draw and read, but are paired with really basic other kanjis to form totally crucial compounds that you have to learn. The good news is, I just skip these kanjis! Fuck ‘em. Just study the compound word.

 

LITERARY KANJI / LITERARY WORDS - this, like the HALF-KANJI is a really really common problem that textbooks and dictionaries absolutely don’t tell you about. There are like hundreds of words that are written but never spoken because it “sounds weird.” This is not limited to stuff like, “Good evening Dear Madam, may I have the honor of escorting you to the grand piano this insalubrious evening praytell?” Common sense will not help you here either: even words which are kind of casual English, such as ,EEE ,　FFF, GGG, are “literary” Japanese. I doubt I am the only foreigner who has busted ass learning like 12 words, only to be told by my Japanese friends, “Oh, we never say that, either. We just write it.” Anyway, the buck stops here. EVERY TIME I teach you a word which is “literary,” I will put a little warning sign next to it.

 

Closely related to literary kanji are FANCY KANJI. Otherwise known as “YEAH-THERE-IS-A-KANJI-BUT-WE-USUALLY-WRITE-THIS-AS-HIRAGANA” kanji. And again, lots of innocent, struggling young students like you waste millions of hours studying these bastards. It’s a tricky problem, though, because it’s not black-and-white.

Some words like 車　 or 自分 are 99% of the time written in kanji form.

Other words like LLL PPP are written in hiragana half the time, kanji half the time.

Then other words like 為に　 RRR are only written as kanji if the writer is trying to be fancy, pretentious, or what have you. These are the worst because you gotta learn ‘em anyway, even if they are almost never used in everyday situations. (this is because there is no shortage of pretentious writers here).

Then there are words like OOO YYY , which turned into hiragana so long ago, most Japanese people don’t even know there IS a kanji for them!!

 

Anyway, my advice to you is this: get out of the Western trap of thinking of the SOLO word’s meaning as “the real thing” and the COMPOUND word’s meaning as “some weird extra shit.” in Japanese, the compound-word-meaning is a totally fundamental part of the kanji! (as you can see from all the half-kanjis which don’t even HAVE solo meanings!!

MY SYSTEM:

First, I arranged all the kanjis from simple to complex. I did this by starting with the simplest radicals, like one, two, three, sun, moon, all that shit. I introduce radicals one by one and then combine them with all the kanjis you’ve already learned. Only when all the combinations are exhausted do I introduce a new radical. This way, there’s an order or logic to it, and also, this system ensures that new kanjis are mostly made up of previously studied parts! And, learning simple obsolete kanjis is just like learning simple radicals, so it is not a waste of time. In fact, I have been getting busy analyzing kanji and figuring out radicals that EVEN JAPANESE PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT- One of the weird things about the Japanese teaching system is they only care about radicals like water, man, tree ; in other words, radicals that can also stand alone as kanji. They don’t really notice radicals like .or　 .

I say FUCK THAT. If it’s got more than 3 strokes, it’s a radical and it should be studied separately, so no one ever gets ambushed by some crazy shit like 暖 which (according to Japanese people) has only one radical ( 日 ) and 9 random chicken-scratch lines..

My system has like 100 radicals that aren’t in other textbooks, but occur in dozens of kanji, greatly simplifying them. And by learning more, rather than less, radicals, I ensure that EVERY NEW KANJI YOU STUDY IS JUST SHIT YOU ALREADY KNOW PLUS ONE OR TWO NEW LINES. In fact, in my system, MOST of the new kanjis are just re-arrangements of stuff you know with NO new lines.

Second, I made a system where every radical has a corresponding English keyword. And every ONyomi ALSO has single corresponding keyword. Then use these keywords to create an unique mnemonic for each kanji that includes not only its radicals, its meaning, but also its on-yomi. In other words, I am treading onyomis as just another radical, albeit a sonic one rather than a written one. Because I just bring the logic that hard.

Also, I am making up some buzzwords that explain the various weird, hidden properties of kanji. I want to reveal the hidden patterns so that we can exploit the good patterns and if possible avoid the bad patterns. And this isn’t possible without inventing some buzzwords for shit that just does not exist in English!

On top of all that, my system will have little flashing lights and alarms that alert you to the following hazards:

Kanji or onyomis or kunyomis that are, in practice, almost never used.

Kanjis that have fucked etemology (that is to say, the radicals spell out a humorous or offensive message that most contemporary Japanese overlook)

Various kinds of jerk kanji, fancy kanji, half-kanji and other nasties.

1 --My system is made for self-study : hence this long-ass introduction! Most kanji cards or kanji books I’ve seen are incomprehensible. The lady at the bookstore said, “That’s because they’re for use in class, and the publisher is counting on the teacher to explain how to use the books.” You don’t need a teacher to help you. In fact a teacher would probably just interfere, by teaching you the wrong way. (see #2)

2 -- My system is made for people who want to read books and magazines, not for people who are trying to pass a test : the Japanese Language tests (much like the feared TOEIC) make you learn a bunch of useless stuff, just to pass the test. I don’t fuck around with that; I just teach useful shit.

3 -- My system is made for people who already know hiragana and katakana.

4 : it’s made for people who are studying vocabulary separately from kanji. (because of the TERRIBLE SECRET OF KANJI, the best way to learn Japanese is to divide it into kanji and vocab, then teach kanji with the. . “start with easy to write ones and work up to crazy shit” principle, while simultaneously teaching vocab with the “start with the everyday words and work up to specialized words” method (AKA the Non-Crazy-Language Teaching Method) since almost all schools already do it this way, I figure this will not inconvenience you too much. Plus, the good side is you don’t have to learn the kun-yomis from me! Just concentrate on the on-yomis and the shapes.

OK, YOU PUT UP WITH MY BOASTING ABOUT WHY I STRUCTURED IT THE WAY I STRUCTURE IT. WHEN AM I ACTUALLY GONNA EXPLAIN HOW TO USE IT?

HERE, DUMBASS. right here.

***************************************************************

列　 - row (meaning)

sei (no KUN) (pronunciation: onyomi first, then kunyomi)

ssh! + sword (list of radicals that make the kanji)

STRONG ON YOMI ( a WARNING about the kanji)

the commander SAYs, ssh!! Quiet down and stand in a line with your swords!

(the story, with the onyomi keyword in ALL FUCKIN' CAPS.)

DMW 別.

(don't mix this up with 別)

---

裂 - tear up (the next kanji)

retsu, sakeru

row (same ON) + cloth (notice how this kanji builds on the previous one? also, that it says "same ON", letting you know that 裂 gets its pronunciation from the 列　radical)

LET'S stand in a row and tear up cloth.

 

(the flat lets you know we have run out of previously-taught radicals to mix 列

with, and the next kanji is going to be some new shit.)

---

種 - seed, type kind (jerk alert)

(two meanings- one for the kanji by itself, and another meaning for when it's part of a compound word. the compound's definition will always be in italics)

shu, tane

wheat + heavy

this kind of wheat seed is really heavy so you’ll have to use both HANDS (手)to pick it up.

---

LOOKING UP A KANJI: in lieu of a search thingy, just use the built-in find function of your PC, use control+f, which should open up a box called "find". type in the kanji. Have fun with that.

you know what else is handy? alt+ left arrow. takes you back to the page you were at before.

 

hope that helps!

 

HINTS ON HOW TO STUDY:

• make cards, and write the shit from this site, on the cards. Personally I’m only putting this on the internet because it’s free for you and free for me. But if you’re like me, trying to study on the internet, with porn and youtube only a click a way, 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 on the freeway.
• Yeah, make cards for the radicals too!
• Put numbers on the cards, so you can keep them in the order I so laboriously constructed.
• If you are writing a card for, say, 郡 , leave space on it for other kanjis you mix up with 郡。 Later when you fuck up and confuse 群 with 郡 , you can write “it’s NOT 群 !!” in the corner and be reminded of that.
• When you are learning a new word, draw it a bunch while repeating the radicals of the kanji. 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 story. That way, tomorrow when you already forgot what the kanji means, if you squint at it and say the names of the radicals, 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.
• write 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. 　Especially if there are 2 kanjis that you keep mixing up, tell me so i can add them to the list of "hard-to-tell-apart DMW dudes." or if there's a kanji that is not listed. Or if you are some kind of HTML/JAVA genius that likes a challenge, contact me and we can try turning this into a real web-page.

 

 

THIS IS SO TOTALLY NOT DONE YET.

Eventually I want to have the dictionary cross-linked so that clicking on a radical of a kanji takes you to the entry for that radical. I also want to someday have the pronunciations printed in hiragana, tons of example words, have warnings about which kanji are only used in weird contexts, and an index system which rates the kanji on if they are widely used or you can skip'em. but for now. . . .

click here for the textbook.