Reddit reviews A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters

This book has good resources for kanji etymology.

If you want the actual derivations of the kanji,

http://www.amazon.com/A-Guide-Remembering-Japanese-Characters/dp/0804820384

is the go-to book

http://i.imgur.com/xjW6pox.png

for this character's derivation.

n.b. Henshall's book ordered in Heisig's simple -> complex is the best way to tackle the kanji IMO.

* edit but don't use Henshall's mnemonics, they suck

If you want to learn more about kanji etymology, check out A Guide to Remembering Japanese Kanji by Henshall. A lot of them are pretty interesting.

I can't believe nobody mentioned A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (and the Intermediate and Advanced books that follows it)

http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546/

Use Genki, skip the grammar descriptions in the book and instead look them up in A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (and read all the sections in the book before the dictionary part)

As linguist you should be aware of second language acquisition theory and therefore sympathise with / understand / appreciate how the teaching of the language progress through a normal textbook. You can't learn a language just by understanding its structure, you need practice and exposure.

For Kanji you can look at A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters, which will go through the etymology of the most common ~2100 characters as historically correct as any other work of etymology on these things can get. You can supplement with http://www.kanjinetworks.com

http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Remembering-Japanese-Characters/dp/0804820384/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1418734675&sr=8-2&keywords=guide+to+remembering+kanji

I think something like Core 2k decks for anki (or the paid version, know.jp) is good enough for practicing listening and reading comprehension, even for a linguist.

WaniKani or other "Learn Kanji via the Radicals" methods actually make learning Kanji a lot easier and more fun. WaniKani doesn't always use the "real" meaning of the radicals, which takes away some of your ability to figure out what unknown kanji may mean, but it the method is fantastic for learning kanji. www.amazon.com/Guide-Remembering-Japanese-Characters/dp/0804820384/ is really good if you need to learn a certain set of Kanji (via a class or something) and want to learn/use the radicals as wanikani picks your kanji for you.

http://www.amazon.com/A-Guide-Remembering-Japanese-Characters/dp/0804820384

http://books.google.com/books?id=3ZHD9wdspXgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA32#v=onepage&q&f=false

This is actually a very good book that shows you all of the development stages for the "Official" Kanji (the ones most commonly used/expected to know when you get out of High School) if you're really interested/bored.

Very nice survey of the options, thanks.

Some years ago I used Henshall's book and recommended it on another forum as an alternative to Heisig/RtK. I liked Henshall's mnemonics and etymologies, though he never got popular like Heisig/RtK did. I've not heard of Conning's book, it seems to be quite new, so I'm guessing it must be really good if you recommend it over Henshall.

Another +1 for the Core10k deck, though I'm only studying the words that have high frequency according to a particular frequency list I'm using. I've heard there's quite a bit of low-frequency, newspaper-ish vocab in it.

According to Henshall, 安 actually refers to a women menstruating at home.

BTW, wicked website you link to! Thanks for the link, I signed up.

I might be the only one, but I like the Henshall book. Reading a little paragraph about how a particular kanji evolved really stuck with me. It also makes for decent trivia sometimes.

Since you know a fair number of Kanji already, what you're doing seems to work for you. Henshall is basically just learning radicals, but not by their proper names in Japanese, and it comes with a neat little explanation of where the kanji came from. I used to just read the entries for any new kanji as I came across them studying in context, and it helped me fix them in my mind. Sometimes I'd make flashcards for his mnemonics if I was having trouble with a character.

If you are interested in mnemonics based on the true etymology of kanji, try Henshall's book.

Here's an Anki deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2081001609

He tracks the form and meaning of each kanji down to the original ancient inscriptions. Kanji are not just random symbols attached to meanings. They contain the wisdom of centuries.

You Sir, have answered every question I have. A few hours on reddit has equaled a few months of asking people IRL. I think I would definitely go down the road of learning the Kanji in context. It makes a lot more sense to do it that way because it will add to my vocabulary. Henshal it is!
ありがとう！！！
p.s : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804820384/ Is this the book?

Depends how you're learning.

I've been liking this book, which I got recommended a while back:

http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Japanese-Characters-language-library/dp/0804820384

Unlike heisig which is a program in itself, this book can be used to supplement class study which suits me just perfectly.

When you say you have studied Japanese for 2.5 years that's really not enough information. Have you been to Japan? Have you been there for an extended amount of time (e.g. several months?). I doubled my number of Kanji while I was staying in Japan, whenever I saw a sign / something written on my milk carton / my aircon remote, I would look it up and learn it that way. While in the subway I would take my time to look up random Kanji I saw in the advertisments.

I would use Kanji flashcards of the kind you can by in 500 box sets and go through a couple of them after a day of life in Japan: some characters I would have seen today but maybe would not remember, so going through the flash cards would help me remember them and clarify their reading. I would not learn with flash cards of Kanji I hadn't ever seen before - a useless exercise for me, I can only remember characters I've seen used in a real-life context. I don't "learn" Kanji programmatically taking them from some list and remembering the on- and kun-readings, I will only ever care about what I need to know in order to understand the text I'm working on. A children's book, song lyrics I got from the internet, texts for learners, Wikipedia articles, NHK news. The real lesson is: in order to get good at reading, you have to read a lot. Today I got a copy of a printed newspaper (読売新聞), you can buy those internationally, I got one from my local retailer at a train station in Germany. Reading an article takes an hour and a PC with a Kanji search by radical and a dictionary site, but I can do it.

For refreshment, I use resources like the amazing etymological dictionary "A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters" which will tell you the historical evolution and proper decomposition of Kanji, some stories can be really interesting. With this help I can tell that when seeing a character such as 緒, it consists of thread (糸) and the pronunciation しょ/しゃ(者), hence "the word meaning together (=bound by a thread) pronounced kind of like 者)". Next to etymological help you can also use pure visual clues.

When you read real Japanese texts, you quickly realize that 2000 Kanji is not enough. Even children's literature would use characters outside of that official list. 3000 is more realistic. You should have material (dictionaries, flash cards etc.) that covers more than the official list. Don't despair though, actual Japanese native speakers take their time learning them, too! The more Japanese you come in contact with every day, the better.

First off, thank you for sharing your personal background.

If English is not your native language, yet you are striving to learn a third - honestly, I can't send enough kudos your way.

As far as kanji is concerned, I highly recommend A Guide to Remembering the Japanese Characters: https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Remembering-Japanese-Characters/dp/0804820384/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501029816&sr=8-1&keywords=a+guide+to+learning+the+japanese+characters

"Remembering the Kanji" seems to be far more preferred, but me, I've found that learning the historical basis of the kanji has helped far more than mnemonics that may be counter to their actual origin. Again, that's just me - everyone is different.

tl;dr version - Looks like you've decided to start learning Japanese and join the group that may have other people looking at you weird. Ignore 'em. We're glad to have you. :)

wrt Hiragana/Katakana: Though this mightn't be so useful if you're comfortable with your existing methods, I used Remembering the Kana (Amazon link) to memorize most of the Hiragana in one afternoon. Complete memorization came with subsequent constant use of the Hiragana. Something I've learnt from using mnemonics: Memory tricks are useful for the initial hump of getting things into your short term memory, but practice (and use) is are still important to get things into your long term memory.

wrt Kanji: You'll be fine putting it off for a while. But when you do: I once posted a short rant on Kanji that might be useful. Going at the nice slow pace of one Kanji a day seems to be nice, maybe slower at the beginning when you're overwhelmed with everything else. As for mnemonics, RTK ([click here for sampler](http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/pdf/RK4/RK%201_s (maybe ramping it up later.ample.pdf), read the introduction!!) is oft recommended, but it misses usage examples and only teaches you how to write Kanji. A far, far, better book for looking at Kanji is Henshaw's Guide to Remembering the Japanese Characters. The only thing it misses is stroke order but you should get a hang of the general rules after learning the stroke order of the first 50 or so.

I learn Kanji with the Kanji Study app and with Henshall. I make my own groups (here's an example). I am nearly done; all common-use are now at least tentatively reviewed.

I am currently learning vocabulary by reading Japanese Graded Readers. I make my own vocabulary lists (example), but I don't really review the list: I make it (thus getting the words/phrases I don't know) and practice by reading the book. When I was doing a textbook, I'd use their vocab lists. The Graded Readers don't provide it, so I make my own. It's good practice.

Some Kanji facts.

There are 1945 Jouyou "Daily Use" kanji. Newspapers use these. Of these, about 1000 are designated Kyouiku "Educational kanji, divided into six grades to be learned by the end of elementary school. You might want to try and learn them in that order.

For reference, Kodansha's The Kanji Learner's Dictionary is unbeatable. It's compact, being almost small enough to fit into your pocket. It uses SKIP, which is the fastest, easiest way to look up characters.

When learning kanji, make sure you memorize the basic rules for stroke order. Enclosures first, left to right, top to bottom, horizontal before vertical, vertical piercings come last. Knowing the stroke order will make your handwriting look authentic.

Radicals each have their own meaning. A Guide to Remembering the Japanese Characters is very good for learning the meanings of each of the radicals and creating a "story" for each character to help you remember them.

One common pitfall with learning kanji is if you neglect to WRITE kanji out by hand, you will be able to READ them, but you will forget how to WRITE them. Just make sure that even if you're using a computer to write out your Japanese by hand.

Try to memorize WORDS instead of CHARACTERS. For example, don't just learn that 続 means "continue" because it's not a word on its own. Instead, learn that 接続 means "connection" and 続く means "to continue".

There's a lot of Kanji. You don't learn them in a few years. It takes Japanese natives over a decade of schooling before they are able to read their own language fluently. And they are immersed in it! Just keep working on them and don't get discouraged.