Tokyo Damage Report

the KANJIDAMAGE SITE has moved here.

This page is a textbook which supplements the main site. That's right:

I teach you the kanji real good.

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Introduction – why most kanji books are terrible.

kanji – what it is, and why it is hard.

how to learn it – the 'kanjidamage' method of study.

I got a discussion forum.

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Introduction

 

KANJIDAMAGE 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 or business words. In other words, this book is for average people who maybe have a job or a bunch of college, and can only study an hour a day. I'm one of those people! Finally, it's for people who are fed up with other methods, who are desperate enough to try anything.

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, not only am I going to answer that question, but I'm going to explain what the underlying rule is, so you can avoid similar problems in the future.” It takes the chaos of kanji and makes a rational system out of it. It gives tips to speed up your study and help you avoid common mistakes. And of course  KANJIDAMAGE accomplishes this via plenty of yo mama jokes.

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 own language. But no ! Foreign textbooks are just as bad. 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. 

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 etymological 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)(hint: both 車　and 大 are hidden in the middle of the bigger kanji). 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 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!”

EXAMPLES OF REGULAR TEXTBOOKS MAKING SHIT HARDER:

  1: 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 only added to the confusion.

2: Most flashcards/iphone apps 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 EVER used as part of the phrase 　亡くなる). And the flashcard/app  will also neglect to  tell you that 亡くなる doesn't mean to literally go away, it is used figuratively , to mean 'pass away, die' . . . Then, the card/app 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 just learned three wrong things. The result is that you'll write an email to your Japanese pen-pal saying, “私のボールペンが亡い“ (watashi no bo-rupen ga nai)　 and your pen-pal will be like, ‘Why did his ballpoint pen die?”

3 : Dictionaries, on the other hand, give you TOO MUCH information: look up ‘receipt,' 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)!!  But you won't learn that in the damn dictionary!!!!
Also, dictionaries print totally obscure words, wild exceptions, and totally rare nuances, right next to everyday words. Just look at a plain ole' 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 "the social 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 4: A lot of kanji textbooks teach kanji grouped according to subject. For example, the book they made us use in school  put 寒い (samui =cold) ,　暖かい (atatakai `= warm) ,　涼しい (suzushii = cool) ,　and 熱い (atsui = hot) 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 kanji 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 those radicals! 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 all the kanji together : 稚, 推, 唯, 維, and 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 .糸、, and , etc. So instead of learning the kanji from scratch, you'll be merely re-arranging parts that you already know, to make new kanji.

Which is only one of the many things I do that most books don't. Which brings us to . . . .

 

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the  four different strategies that together make up the KANJIDAMAGE method:

1: ARRANGING THE KANJI IN A RAD WAY.

The genesis of this method  was conversations that I had with two 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.

They said, "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 you've learned all those kanji – 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!

The system makes learning easier, because once you've learned around 200 kanji,  you can learn 12 NEW kanji just by learning ONE SINGLE 3-stroke radical and combining it with the first 200!

Anyway, both mathematicians 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: A COMPREHENSIVE, LOGICAL, OFFENSIVE SYSTEM OF MNEMONICS

Remember mnemonics from school? “Every Good Boy Gets Fudge,” or “My Dear Aunt Sally,” or even that notorious pedophile, one Mr. “Roy G. Biv”?

Well, I wrote a mnemonic sentence for each kanji. And that mnemonic ties together all the radicals in the kanji, the pronunciation, and also the meaning of the kanji.

Not only that, but each radical and each pronunciation corresponds to a specific English keyword, so every time you see a kanji, radical, or a Japanese pronunciation, it will always use the same one keyword. Hella rational!

 

3 : A SYSTEM OF WARNING LABELS FOR FUCKED-UP KANJI..

There's a lot of problems with kanji that don't occur when you're studying Chinese (or German or English, for that matter!) Further fucking you is the fact that normal textbooks or apps don't even acknowledge these problems exist! It's hard to fight back against a problem that has no name – you think you're the only one who has trouble with it.  I developed a sort of "checklist of common problems," and systematically tagged all the kanji that had those 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 in casual conversation, or is it only a newspaper word? Does the kanji go with a weird preposition? If there are two synonyms, which one is useful? Is the kanji only used in combination with one specific other kanji? Can you guess the pronunciation from the radicals? Does it have 2 unrelated meanings? And so on.

4: CHEATING

That's right – I cheated. I took 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 life form' or ‘17th century sulphur refining component'). 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. Finally, I teach the most-common prepositions and particles together with the verbs – something no other book does. In other words, it's not a complete dictionary. It's a book of the MOST COMMONNLY USED forms of words.

And if I saw a radical that didn't 'officially' exist according to the 'normal' textbooks, I arbitrairly gave it a name and threw that shit in the mix.  Better to learn it once than 20 different times, and fuck the rules!

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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!

(the Yo Mama jokes are also integral to the system, but they're not really a strategy. They're more like philosophy).

Anyway, hopefully this intro has convinced you to try the KANJIDAMAGE method.

 

the method  is split into three parts:

1 -basic facts about kanji like their history and junk. You can skip this.
2 -the KANJIDAMAGE study method . You need to read this to understand all the crazy abbreviations and slang terms in the dictionary.
3 -.the dictionary , which applies the methods of part 2 to around 1,800 kanji.

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SECTION ONE:

WHAT IS KANJI?

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1: BASIC PARTS OF THE SYSTEM OF KANJI;

 

Radicals (部首）are the smallest units . They are like letters of the alphabet, but there's over 200 of them. Radicals are combined in largely random combinations to make kanji.

Kanji (漢字)　are single words, made of radicals. 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 （熟語）　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”). Once you learned enough kanji, you can comprehend Jukugo almost without trying.

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 ) ABSOLUTE RADICALS -

Guys like , 、and are what I call ABSOLUTE radicals. They are never kanji on their own, only building blocks.  They don't have any pronunciations, and they don't have any meaning.

2 ) SYMBOLIC RADICALS –

 . . .are like the ABSOLUTE RADICALS (no pronunciation, never kanji by themselves), except that they DO HAVE MEANING. For example is associated with sickness. It is used in maybe 10 kanji, and all those kanji have to do with sickness. For instance, 痛 ( hurts) ,病 (sick) , 疲 (get tired), 痢 ( diarrhea), 症 (symptom), and so on.

3 ) KANJI THEMSELVES -

Kanji are made up of radicals. BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT – All kanji , even complex ones, can be radicals- if they wind up inside a bigger kanji! For instance, the kanji for water and tree (水　and 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 also SYMBOLIC RADICALS – kanji with a tree in them have to do with wooden things, kanji with fire in them are about fire, etc.

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2: DISPELLING THE 2 MOST PERNICIOUS MYTHS ABOUT KANJI!

MYTH #1: RADICALS ALWAYS MEAN SOMETHING.

MYTH #2: KANJI LOOK LIKE THE THINGS THEY DESCRIBE.

Remember what I said earlier about "half the difficulty of Japanese is how it is taught?" This is a perfect example.

Students always say, “Why does 'wind' (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 – 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. I know I did.

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 = letters

words = kanji

jukugo = 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 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. If you learn 1,000 kanji, you AUTOMATICALLY  learn how to read 2,000 jukugo for free.

Here's what a teacher should tell you on Day One of class:

DON'T ask 'what does this radical inside a kanji mean?'

DO ask 'what does this kanji inside a jukugo mean?'

Think about it like this: if kanji really DID ‘look like the things' that they describe, you'd have to memorize 2,000 complicated drawings that had nothing in common with each other. But with radicals, all you got to do is learn around 200 simple shapes and you can draw and read almost all kanji – which was exactly the intention of kanji's inventors.

I will try to explain this with A HISTORICAL TANGENT:

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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　國 . 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 國 　 is now officially 国 and call it a day.”

So that is how that went down.

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So, the bad news is that the kanji for 'country' (国) has nothing to do with the meaning of balls ( 玉 ), nor the meaning of box (口).

The good news is that IT DOESN'T MATTER.

What matters is that, thanks to the existence of radicals, you have an alphabet now, instead of 2,000 unrelated pictures of things. Just like English, you can  'read' individual kanji like 国 the same way that reading 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!

Put another way, if you know the 'balls' and 'box' radicals, you can easily make a mnemonic, to help you remember the kanji for country: "A country is a big box where the citizens keep all their balls." Then you can chuckle because you just said "balls."

“But Schultzzz,” you ask: “If radicals don't have meanings, why do you give them names like 'box' and 'balls' ? 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.”

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3: THE TERRIBLE SECRET!!!!!

Check out these two groups of kanji:

Group ONE:
履  歯  紫　顔    僕　鼻

Group TWO:
丹 　屯 斤　杉　后

Which do you think are college-level words? And which are simple kid-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 learn, and kanji with obscure meanings can be really simple to learn, 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 kanji. Dumb! To add insult to injury. . . .after the hapless students bust ass learning common-but-complex kanji like 館 and 裂 . . . a year later, they'll learn less-used kanji 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 'em from 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 childish-yet-fucking-difficult 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 all 2,000 kanji efficiently. .

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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 kanji too! For example, 雨 ALSO makes 雲　霜　雪　雷. And 　足  ALSO makes　踊　路　踏; 　各 ALSO makes　客　落　格 , and so on.

In other words, radicals are the ABCs of kanji. If this seems like a ‘DUHHH' statement to you, then 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 phrase “Black Sabbath” 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 'Black Sabbath'

 

 Here's what English would look like if it was taught the way Japanese is taught:

 

For a complete list of all the radicals I use, please check the appendix.

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ANOTHER HISTORICAL TANGENT:

Back in the days of books, if you wanted to look up a kanji 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 an actual paper book 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 arbitrarily decided, "This part is the main radical," and then "alphabetized" all the kanji based on that. So instead of being structured like a, b, c, d, etc. The dictionaries were structured like, " main radical =water(水）", "main radical = fire(火）", "main radical = earth(土）", etc.

Long story short, as long as you knew one radical per kanji, (the so-called "main one"), then you were capable of looking shit up, and that's why you never learned any of other radicals. Great for dictionaries, but lousy for memorizing kanji.

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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 three or more kanji, it's a damn 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! Let me break it down further:

First you learn 'day' (日）, a real kanji.

Then you learn nest () an 'absolute radical', with no meaning.

Then you learn 'friend' (友) (another real kanji), and combine it with 'nest' to make 'crow' ()

(mnemonic: the crows are friends, so they live in the same nest).

Finally , you put day (日) and crow () together and you have warm: 暖かい.

And you say, "The crows get warm in the sun." – QED.

And you know what ?  It  turns out that I'm not a TOTAL crackpot ; professional linguists have been aware of these 'un-named' radicals for years, and always use them when studying Japanese (they call them 'graphemes'). But for some reason, this knowledge stayed in the ivory tower and the average Japanese teacher never found out about it.

“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:

Each radical 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.  If you want to learn kanji, you'll have to learn the radicals ANYWAY – wouldn't it be easier to learn them once, instead of dozens of times?

Let's sum up what we've learned so far this chapter:

 In KANJIDAMAGE, every part has a name! And every kanji can be assembled like a math equation, hella rationally:

木(tree)+Eazy+Eazy+成 (become)= machine　機!

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5 ; KANJI, FOOL!

Besides radicals, each kanji has hella ATTRIBUTES. Here they are:

MEANING: A 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!"

MNEMONIC: a sentence,  usually about your (adoptive) mother, which ties the MEANING of the kanji, its ON-YOMI, and all of its RADICALS all together.  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, I'll put the number of strokes it takes to draw the kanji.

STROKE ORDER: Psyche! I don't care about this even a little bit.

KUN-YOMI: the way the kanji is pronounced by itself, for instance, the KUNyomi of 酒 is "SAKE" and the KUNyomi of 水 is MIZU.

ON-YOMI : the, er, “Chinese” pronunciation of the kanji, which is only used when the kanji is combined with another kanji to form a compound word.  For instance, the ON-yomi of 酒 is "SHU", so drunk-driving （飲酒運転） is pronounced in-SHU-un-ten.

(ON-yomi are 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 – albeit a radical that you hear, rather than see. A kanji may have 4 or 5 KUNyomi, and it may be part of dozens and dozens of jukugo, but it will 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 kanji 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 consider ONyomi as a kind of radical.

In practice, this means that

1) like the written radicals, I give every ONyomi its own English keyword (for instance, the SHU of 酒 is "See Her Underwear," and all the other kanji pronounced SHU have the same keyword. . . .just like all the kanji with the 水 radical have "water" as the keyword for that radical )

2) the mnemonics always include  ONyomi along with the  written radicals, so you learn all of them at the same time.

For a list of all the ONyomi I use, and their corresponding keywords, please check the appendix.

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!!  Like I said before, I cheat!

OK! Kanji have two pronunciations, the KUN and ON. But why?  This simple question requires yet. . .

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. . . . ANOTHER 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 word (what we today call the 'KUNyomi' word), they tried to find the corresponding Chinese kanji, and pair them up. 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 Quebeqois-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 multiculturalism went, 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 (blue)  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 native Japanese words (KUNYOMI, remember) with 2 or 3 nuances and ASSIGNED EACH NUANCE TO A DIFFERENT KANJI, WHILE KEEPING THE KUNYOMI THE SAME. The most infamous 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 which looked as similar as their meanings:

 

激 - intense / 極 - extreme

摸 – pattern　／　模 - model

傾 　- incline　／　偏　- lean or be predisposed to

Another example: to freeze is こおる、 and frost/ice is こおり – both clearly came from the same Japanese word. But when they were picking Kanji to assign to the Japanese words, こおる　became 凍る　 and こおり became 氷. So now you have to learn twice as many kanji, PLUS you STILL have to learn the original Japanese words (koori and kooru) in order to PRONOUNCE them. So nothing was achieved!

Can you believe that shit???

 

Beginner students have been known to weep openly in class when the teacher tries to explain about this.

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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:

One-word kanji (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 (compound words 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') . Please learn this word. Don't do like I did and wind up bleeding from both eyes.

For instance, 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-yomi for compound words!!” I figured the ONyomi was some optional , formal thing, like sonkeigo, stroke order, or flower arrangement.

Anyway.

    Just to make things clearer, here's a chart, showing various flavors of kanji words:

                            

NO OKURIGANA, KUNYOMI 猫(cat) 雲（ｃloud) 尻（butt)	OKURIGANA, KUNYOMI 大きい(big) 殺す（kill) 辺り（around here)
NO OKURIGANA, COMPOUND 秘密（secret) 記者（reporter) 洗濯機(washing machine)	OKURIGANA, COMPOUND 落ち着き（calm down) 繰り返し（repeat) 食べ放題（all you can eat)

It's worth noting that the no-okurigana words are almost always nouns.

The single-kanji KUNYOMI words with okurigana are all parts of speech, but the most complex words (compounds with okurigana) are almost always verbs.

 

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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!

 

I try to include a few example jukugo along with each kanji.

"Why bother including example jukugo at all? Isn't just learning 1800 kanji hard enough??"

Well, if you have never studied kanji before, you should definitely  ignore the jukugo! But after you get some confidence, you'll find that learning 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 ON-YOMI 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 honnin,　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 -  INCREASE YOUR VOCABULARY:
Unlike certain other kanji textbooks or flashcards, ALL the jukugo here are totally basic useful words . These are all 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 kanji!

4 – UNLIKE MOST BOOKS OR CARDS, I TELL YOU HOW TO USE THE JUKUGO

In any language, verbs are used with a particle or a preposition: Go OVER the cat. Come FROM the store, etc. In Japanese, 90% of verbs use the preposition ' を'. But the other 10% of verbs just kick foreigners' ass up and down the street, because each verb uses seemingly random particles, and there is no overall rule to it! Some verbs, such as “行く,” are only used with the prepositions '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 textbooks: “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 usage 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 which have totally unrelated meanings. 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 are almost all the ONyomi-usin'-ass jukugo. In other words, the homophones largely result from Japanese people trying to speak Chinese without tones – Janky Situation #1 of 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 kanji are really helpful in clearing up the meaning -　If you analyze the English keywords, you'll see that the first "kanji" (漢字) means  "Chinese + Letter" -  so clearly, THAT'S the "kanji" you want.  On the other hand, 幹事 breaks down to "main office+ action"  – in other words, it means "a secretary."

This is actually one of the few things where the complexity of kanji makes it MORE logical  and MORE handy than spoken Japanese.

Moving on to synonyms: 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 specifically to fuck up ESL goons.

The real problem comes when certain kanji are homonyms AND synonyms at the same time! These are what I call the 'duplicate kanji' - for instance, 硬い、固い、and 堅い are all pronounced かたい, and they all mean HARD.

Or do they???

Before you give up on Japanese, ask yourself this: Why do E/J textbooks identify all 3 of those kanji as ‘hard' TO BEGIN WITH?? Wouldn't it be simpler if the books identified 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. God damn it!

To help solve this problem, I give each Japanese synonym a HELLA different English keyword, so that you can tell them apart.

Also, on the good-news tip:I have made a list of all these 'duplicates' and explained when to use which.

 

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SECTION TWO ; HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

 

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1. SEQUENCE NUMBER:

The 1,700 kanji in this dictionary are arranged in a RAD SEQUENCE so that most new kanji you learn are just a re-arrangements of parts you already know. About once every ten kanji, I'll teach you a brand-new, unfamilar radical (or new kanji) and then combine that new guy with things you already learned before – giving you the maximum results from memorizing the minimum of chicken-scratch.

2. FLAG

If a kanji has a JAPANESE IMPERIAL NAVY FLAG above it, that means it's one of those new brand-new radicals or new kanji – something you have to learn from scratch. Subsequent kanji will combine this new shape with radicals you already learned.

3. KANJI / ENGLISH KEYWORD

Or, I should say, a UNIQUE English keyword. Unlike a lot of the other guys, I’m NOT going to define 話す　(hanasu) and 喋る (shaberu) AND 言う (iu)　all as "say." In my system, each Japanese synonym has a unique keyword which reflects its nuance: 言う is ’say,’ but 話す is ’conversation’, and 喋る is ’speak.’ So there.

4. BREAKDOWN

Here's what other kanji sites/software/books don't do: explain what EVERY LITTLE BIT OF A KANJI IS. They might tell you what the left-hand radical is, or what the bottom bit is. No way, man! Up in here, we explain what ALL the pieces are, and give you a handy little mathematic-lookin' breakdown that explains how all the radicals add up to the kanji.

Here's what else is rad: because of the RAD SEQUENCE, you have already learned those radicals.

Even more rad: if you – like me – tend to forget stuff as fast as you learn it, you just have to click on the radicals in the breakdown to go to their respective pages. Once you review them, then you can return to the original kanji and you'll be like, "Oh, shit, now I get it."

One more thing : radicals don't have meaning, any more than letters like 'A', 'B', or 'G' have meaning. The arrangement of 土 (earth) and 里 (village) to make 埋 is totally arbitrary – so don't give yourself a heart attack trying to figure out why earth and village. Radicals' keywords are just arbitrary nicknames. And even when kanji are used to make bigger kanji (as is the case here), those kanji LOSE THEIR MEANING. It's not like ancient Egyptian where a picture of an owl means owl. It's like English, where 'C', 'A' and 'T' mean 'CAT.' You don't ask "What does 'C' mean?"

Sorry, but it just burns me up that teachers don't emphasize that.

5. ONYOMI

ONyomi is the way that the kanji is pronounced when it's used in compound words. Unlike the other guys, I give each ONyomi a specific English keyword, which is the same for every kanji with that ONyomi. These "ONyomi English keywords" SOUND like their Japanese counterparts: しょう(SHOU) becomes SHOW, か(KA) becomes CAR, etc. In the case of our example kanji, まい (MAI) becomes MY.

Often, ONyomi come in short- and long-vowel pairs, which really fucks me up. For instance, しゅう and しゅ　 or しょう and しょ. To help tell the difference, I made a rule: Short-vowel ONyomi use abbreviations for the keywords: (two pungent examples: Smell His Odor for SHO, and Smell Her Underpants for SHU).

For a complete list of all onyomi and their English keywords, go here.

6.MNEMONIC

Mnemonic is one (sometimes two) sentences that tie together all the information you learned so far: the sentence contains ALL the radicals, the kanji keyword, and the ON-yomi keyword, and is usually in the form of a Yo Mama joke. If you can memorize the mnemonic sentance, you've memorized all the important things about the kanji.

7. KANJI USEFULNESS RANKING

Another thing the other guys don't do for you: tell you if the kanji is actually USED in newspapers, TV, manga, and magazines. Yeah, this is just opinion, but it's 4 peoples' opinions: me and three Japanese people from different walks of life.

Usefulness ratings are based on how often the word appears IN ITS KANJI FORM. If a word is really common, but usually written as hiragana, it'll have a low usefulness ranking, meaning you shouldn't bother learning the kanji version.

Speaking of usefulness : a LOT of the JOYO and JLPT kanji are NOT in here, because they're useless. Me myself, I am a grown-ass man and I am not interested in taking no tests. You won't find any crap kanji in this site, because I am trying to save you kids time so you can spend it myspacing or whatever you do these days.

8. STROKE NUMBER

9. TAGS

Tags are another unique part of the kanjidamage system. They're like little warning labels that tell you if a kanji is especially dangerous or weird. Is the kanji only used on formal occasions? Is it pronounced funny ? Will it start a fight under certain circumstances? Is it usually written in hiragana anyway, so who cares? Tags tell you that shit.

Tags are all mysterious abbreviations like PN, FR, or NUBI. If you click on the tag, you'll be sent to an internet web page that explains it. On the internet!

10. DESCRIPTION

Any miscellaneous pictures or nuances of the kanji go here.

11. KUNYOMI

"KUNyomi" is kind of the Bizarro twin of ONyomi.: ONyomi tells you how the kanji is pronounced in compound words, but KUNyomi tells you how the kanji is pronounced by itself.

In KUNyomi, the asterisk (*) shows where the okurigana begin. For instance, if the kanji is 食 and the kunyomi is た＊べる, then it's normally written 食べる.

If a verb uses a weird particle, (へ、に、と, etc.） the weird particle will be written right next to the word! を is the default particle, so it's not written.

Also, words with する next to 'em, they can be used as verbs OR nouns. So if I say, for example, 　小便する (shouben suru)　(meaning 'to take a whiz,') – I'm assuming you're smart enough to figure out that 小便 WITHOUT する just means 'peepee.'

12. WORD USEFULNESS / WORD TAGS

KUNyomi (and compound words, too!) also get rated for usefulness and tagged for weirdness.

13. JUKUGO

JUKUGO is the Japanese word for "compound word."

The Achilles heel of 99% of books, study-cards, and kanji web apps is: lame jukugo. Jukugo that waste your damn time. Not here. These guys are arranged from five-stars to one-stars, so you can decide for yourself how nerdy to get with it. And kanji that – 90 % of the time – are ONLY used with one particular other kanji? They only will have that ONE jukugo listed. Deeyaamn. Why was that so hard for everyone else in the business to invent?!?

14. JUKUGO BREAKDOWN

Just like the "kanji breakdown"(#4 above), the JUKUGO BREAKDOWN teaches you how the compound word is made. This is RADDDDDDDDDDDDD. Why? Well, remember when I told you that radicals combined to make a kanji are as meaningless as ABC? Well, when kanji are combined to make jukugo, it's as meaningful and logical as combining "douche + bag" to make "douchebag." If you know the first two words, there is no way you can't guess the third word. Again, it's just like English. Thinking of jukugo in terms of their component kanjis' English keywords makes memorizing the meaning child's play. And it ALSO helps eliminate that troublesome "Is it XY? or YX?" phenomenon.

And, just like the kanji breakdown, if you have forgotten the meanings of one of the kanji, you can click on it to review. RAD.

15. LOOKALIKES

OH MAN, it's yet another function the other guys don't give you. Lots of kanji look alike to the point of making you go insane. But – the good news is that to distinguish between lookalikes, you don't have to memorize the whole kanji: actually all you should do is concentrate on the ONE RADICAL that makes each kanji unique. In the LOOKALIKES section, I list the lookalikes next to the english keyword for their unique radical.

Here's an example of lookalikes  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 'bureaucrat', and if the line is crooked, the radical is 'washtub.' That's easy to remember because the 'bureaucrat' 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) (呂）

DUH! There's a washtub in the palace, and a 'bureaucrat' works for the federal government.

16. LOOKALIKES MNEMONIC

The mnemonic combines the lookalike kanji meanings, and their unique radicals, all in one sentance. If you memorize it, you'll never be troubled by the confusion again. Maybe. I hope so.

In the mnemonic, the kanji's meaning is underlined, and the UNIQUE RADICAL is in all caps.

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2 – USING THE DICTIONARY TO LEARN A SPECIFIC WORD OUT OF ORDER

Obviously it's best if you learn them in order – but, say you're reading a Japanese book, and come to a word which stumps you. You want to learn the kanji right away, so you can keep on reading your book – but you're only up to #16 in the dictionary. What do you do?

1- Look up the word. (since we don't have a search function now, you'll have to go to the main kanji screen and then use your browser's 'find' function. Doh. )

2 – Check the BREAKDOWN for that kanji(the list of radicals below the word). Any radical you don't know? Click the link to go to that radical and learn it.

2a – 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!

3 – Is the radical ITSELF a kanji, made up of radicals you don't know? Go back to step 2 and repeat.

5 – Once you've learned all the parts, THEN go back to the word you wanted to learn – it should be simple now.

 

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3  : BLUFFING WHEN YOU COME TO A KANJI YOU CAN'T READ:

FIRST, TRY TO SOLVE IT WITHOUT YOUR DICTIONARY.

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!!　得る is OBTAINNNNN!! "

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 SYMBOLIC - to dictate the ONyomi of the kanji.

 

Still stuck?

OK FUCK IT, THEN, 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. You just discovered yet another hideous, pernicious ass-ache available only in Japanese.

Let's say that you are lucky, and remember the ONyomi for BOTH kanji in a given word. So, you are searching using the ONyomi – but there ain't nothing there in your dictionary! In that case, try searching by using the KUN yomi instead.

(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 ONyomi  is gonna an abbreviation (SHO= Smell Her Odors) or (SO=Some One). While its long-vowel counterpart is going to have a regular keywords like SHOW(me your butt) or SOO(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 arbitrary 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.

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6: HOW TO STUDY REAL GOOD, BESIDES JUST USING KANJIDAMAGE

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 yomi, 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 recommend writing any of the tags on the cards – except maybe the "SAME ON" tag.

2a) Yes, make cards for the radicals too.

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 . Anyway if you get stuck like that, here's an easy tip: learn the kun and on together as if it was one big word. 名 = NA-MEI and 物＝　BUTSUーMONO that'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!

 

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7 – fuckin' huge suppliment about how to tell apart hundreds of common Japanese synonyms. (this will take years to finish)

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