How long did it take you to become comfortable with the
Japanese language to start dreaming in Japanese? Was it
harder to learn for an English speaker, than one of the
romance languages? Was there any one book that helped you
learn to write Kanji better than another? Any tips would be
appreciated. Can a person outside of Tokyo get by who
learns to speak a little Japanese but remains illiterate
(Kanji and hiragana are killing me!)
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and can read and write about 1,000 one-or-two-character
words. I am not an ethnic Korean, so if I can learn to
speak and write Japanese in Korea in a classroom with
Koreans taught in Korean, you can do it in Japan. If you
want to develop any proficiency in the language, you must
devote a good chunk of time to studying it. I take
language lessons ten hours a week during vacations at a
language institute here. I spend an additional 10 hours at
home previewing and reviewing the grammar and vocabulary
and practicing writing the characters. I have a number of
books on kanji and would recommend buying two: Remembering
the Kanji, a silver book (can't remember the author,
sorry!), with the word "kanji" written in kanji on the
front. This book has mneumonics to help you remember how
to write them, but it does not show the stroke order. The
other book is a kanji dictionary published by a Japanese
company. Can't remember the name, but it has a yellow
cover with some pictures of Japanese cultural icons. This
dictionary, in addition to showing the stroke order, has a
list of common words using that particular character under
each entry and shows the pronunciation in Katakana and
Hiragana, not Romanji. This more accurately represents
pronunciation and will help you sightread those alphabets.
The appendices in back index the entries by pronunciation
and by meaning of the character. You can practice writing
the characters on kanji practice pads, available at any
stationery or bookstore. Persevere and don't give up - you
can do it!
A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters by Kenneth
Henshaw, published by Tuttle, and A Dictionary of Kanji
Usage, no author, published by Gakken. If you just want to
get around, you're probably better off just learning the
Hiragana and Katakana, but if you really want to learn some
characters, you can teach yourself at home.
I'd also recommend Gakken's book--it has the kanji arranged not as the government teaches its
elementary students but in the order of most frequesntly used kanji to least used. It also has
lists of several words that the kanji is most asscociated with--unfortunately I have outgrown it
and keep finding the words I need to look up aren't there--but as a basic vocab builder I haven't
seen anything better. You just need to grind them out--using flashcards is a good way to
remember them.