Has anybody actually done the "All Japanese All the Time" method? I think it's very severe to have to get rid of everything you own and replace it all with Japanese. Anyone think there is a way to modify it?
Has anybody actually done the "All Japanese All the Time" method? I think it's very severe to have to get rid of everything you own and replace it all with Japanese. Anyone think there is a way to modify it?
I highly doubt it. I mean, his basic concept is "do your own language immersion program without traveling to the country and without doing it as coursework". There is really no way to learn via immersion other than, well, immersing yourself completely.
Has anybody actually done the "All Japanese All the Time" method? I think it's very severe to have to get rid of everything you own and replace it all with Japanese. Anyone think there is a way to modify it?
Indeed the immersion method of learning can produce really interesting results, but at the same time, is very stressful and hard to do. I live in Japan and I don't consider my self in an immersed atmosphere just because of the amount of English used in the country anyway.
Nibble: I tried using that JWPce program you mentioned. I find it *really* confusing. The interface is kinda bad, and it's hard to track down kanji you're looking for, even if you know what you're looking for! Like, it would be a great program if the programming aspect was done better.
Hey, sorry for being a thread necro, but I HAD to go somewhere with this question. Currently I have Genki 1 and Genki 2 and they're great on their own. However, I seem to have a bitch teacher from HELL for my Japanese class and I want something to help with my:
1.) Grammar (verbs included)
2.) Kanji
Can you guys recommend some books that can help with that? Cheap but good books. I've been looking and I already have one in mind (Oxford dictionary of verbs and grammar) but I figured I'd consult others before continuing with my purchases.
So your Japanese teacher answer your questions for you (in a non-bitchy way) or something?
Ha, I never saw this till just a couple of days ago.
She wasn't very good at explaining things when we asked her. Lots of people I know either barely scraped by in that class or failed it out right. So I wanted to get some books that would help me next time around. I have "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar", "Japanese Grammar", and "Oxford's dictionary of Japanese Grammar and Verbs". I also have "Essential Kanji" (which I'm not quite sure how to use still) and a bunch of Japanese slang books.
Ha, I never saw this till just a couple of days ago.
She wasn't very good at explaining things when we asked her. Lots of people I know either barely scraped by in that class or failed it out right. So I wanted to get some books that would help me next time around. I have "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar", "Japanese Grammar", and "Oxford's dictionary of Japanese Grammar and Verbs". I also have "Essential Kanji" (which I'm not quite sure how to use still) and a bunch of Japanese slang books.
These books have the sentences written with kanji and some romaji below (easily ignored unless you dont recognize a certain kanji character) followed by English translations.
Ha, I never saw this till just a couple of days ago.
She wasn't very good at explaining things when we asked her. Lots of people I know either barely scraped by in that class or failed it out right. So I wanted to get some books that would help me next time around. I have "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar", "Japanese Grammar", and "Oxford's dictionary of Japanese Grammar and Verbs". I also have "Essential Kanji" (which I'm not quite sure how to use still) and a bunch of Japanese slang books.
These books have the sentences written with kanji and some romaji below (easily ignored unless you dont recognize a certain kanji character) followed by English translations.
Oh man! I forgot I had "All about Particles" but I will check out those other two! Thanks!
Man, Remembering the Kanji gets hard. I hit chapter 18 and it was just like a brick wall. Doesn't help that I went from like 20 kanji a chapter to 80 in RtK Ch 18, and that it took me a few days to get through it.
I am thinking about including the stories inside of my flashcards. Like, instead of
Eminent
卓
I'll do
Eminent
"The most eminent magician is he who learned to use his magic wand early in life."
Are you making your own? in all honesty, I think you're better off getting the white rabbit flash cards. cheap, very durable, rounded corners (a godsend and something you dont think of until youve had them) and stroke patterns, multiple readings, look alike kanji and lots of example words on them.
if using remembering the kanji is useful for you, I'm not going to say stop, but I find if you put the amount of time you do into remembering the idioms from RtK, you could have just as easily put time into simply going over more kanji / more examples from a particular kanji for more vocab and mroe pattern recognition than simply going through that.
however, everyone learns differently, so could go either way.
I am using Anki, actually. I was using Mnemosyne, but decided to try Anki for the online syncing and custom card layouts.
My current plan is to finish RtK1 this year (unlikely), and then start memorizing sentences. I still am unsure as to that though, it almost seems like a waste to work on memorizing keywords for Kanji and not learn readings et all.
I thought that just memorizing readings before learning the actual word would be a waste, but considering how I use kanji on a daily basis (reading more than writing) it doesn't come up too often. After a while the readings come though.
I've got a question for those that are using Remembering the Kanji:
I had heard it was available for free on the internet, so I grabbed a copy. I got it from a Japanese study site somewhere, but it looks like there are mistakes. Now, is it actually freely available or is this an illegal copy?
I am actually surprised no one has linked Tae Kim's Japanese Guide to Japanese Grammar yet. It is, by far, the best way to learn Japanese I've found yet. It doesn't skimp out and jumps you straight into kanji immediately, and even goes into colloquial uses and conjugations of certain words, It's kind of hard at the beginning, but once you get through the initial difficulty, it's all just adding into the base he's established (i.e. just learning new verb conjugations, new types of grammar).
He also maintains a blog where he posts some additional lessons on Japanese from time ti time, usually on the colloquial uses of a word, or words with difficult meanings and analyses.
The JDIC is a must for every Japanese student. It is big and nearly exhaustive, and diligent referencing of unknown kanji here, looking at the sample sentences, and then writing them down by drill will have you memorizing kanji in no time.
Rikaichan is a Firefox plugin that uses the above mentioned JDIC dictionary to translate Japanese words you highlight in the browser. It's an alternative and faster way than constantly copy-pasting into the JDIC search bar.
Finally, just try to immerse yourself in Japanese as much as possible. Try to think and phrase your thoughts in Japanese. Consume media such as movies, games, TV shows, and books and novels (especially these). Try and have fun with learning. Pick up a copy of Super Robot Taisen K, or read A Game of Thrones or watch Battlestar Galactica in Japanese (just some of what I did). Anything to make your learning experience that much more fun.
Studying this way, I managed to pass the JLPT to 二級 in about a year and a half of studying. I don't know if that's average time or not, but damn it if I'm not proud of myself about it.
I believe that Hesieg actually put up "Remember the Kanji" on the internet as a serial a few years ago. I'm not sure about the legality of downloading the entierty of it now.
At the risk of being unpopular, when I used to use JDIC (around three years ago?) it was pretty shitty and filled with errors. 英次郎 is the best dictionary for looking up obscure terms and the regular Yahoo!辞書 has 国語、類語、英和 and 和英 dictionaries. The only real problem is the lack of an English interface. People who are more serious should buy a cheap electronic dictionary. Use of rikai chan should be limited. If you force yourself to use the Kanji enough reading them won't be difficult at all.
Darksteel, you have a talent for (at least passive) language acquisition. I find that a lot of people, even if they possess the tools to read a book in Japanese or play a game, will choose not to because they get distressed at the things they don't understand. Being able to read a sentence with a word you don't know (or a grammatical structure), and then figure it out through context and enter it into your own lexicon is a skill that a lot of people have difficulty with. Even though it's easy enough for a third grader to play, Super Robot Taisen games have some of vocabulary that even a native speaker doesn't really understand.
Just about everybody here is an adult, so I'd say the real key to success in learning a language is to have a clearly defined goal.
I always wanted to learn Japanese so I can understand it and speak it fluently, but I always thought: "Yeah, I can do it, I'll start the learning process right way!" Then that turned to "I have to seriously start soon". And so forth.
I haven't started the process seriously yet, which is disappointing. However I have picked up a few words, phrases, and sentences. But they're still only fragments of a sea of compounds and vocabulary words.
My main mission has always been to at least learn how to speak and understand the language, not really to read or write it. However, skimming through this thread, it seems that the general consensus is that it is worth learning Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana first before actually starting to learn actual sentence structures and vocal comprehension.
Should I start with the characters first?
I'm tired of waiting, and setting it aside. I want to start now.
Sidenote: I have the benefit of speaking Spanish, which is amazingly similar to Japanese phonetically.
victor_c26 on
It's been so long since I've posted here, I've removed my signature since most of what I had here were broken links. Shows over, you can carry on to the next post.
I always wanted to learn Japanese so I can understand it and speak it fluently, but I always thought: "Yeah, I can do it, I'll start the learning process right way!" Then that turned to "I have to seriously start soon". And so forth.
I haven't started the process seriously yet, which is disappointing. However I have picked up a few words, phrases, and sentences. But they're still only fragments of a sea of compounds and vocabulary words.
My main mission has always been to at least learn how to speak and understand the language, not really to read or write it. However, skimming through this thread, it seems that the general consensus is that it is worth learning Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana first before actually starting to learn actual sentence structures and vocal comprehension.
Should I start with the characters first?
I'm tired of waiting, and setting it aside. I want to start now.
Sidenote: I have the benefit of speaking Spanish, which is amazingly similar to Japanese phonetically.
Definitely start by learning Hiragana and Katakana first. As for Kanji, you just sort of pick it up when reading sentences, just as long as you keep looking up the kanji you don't know in a dictionary and drilling it into your head. I recommend this site to get you started at least, and the JDIC and the Yahoo!辞書 as your dictionaries (thanks for this, by the way, Cygnus, it's pretty good!). Also, as Cygnus said, if you're really serious, you should probably get an electronic dictionary, preferably one where you can write the Kanji to look it up. Personally, I don't have the money for it, but I am trying to save up.
Darksteel, you have a talent for (at least passive) language acquisition. I find that a lot of people, even if they possess the tools to read a book in Japanese or play a game, will choose not to because they get distressed at the things they don't understand. Being able to read a sentence with a word you don't know (or a grammatical structure), and then figure it out through context and enter it into your own lexicon is a skill that a lot of people have difficulty with. Even though it's easy enough for a third grader to play, Super Robot Taisen games have some of vocabulary that even a native speaker doesn't really understand.
Actually, and I've thought about this just now, probably one of the reasons I had an easy time with Japanese is because English isn't my first language. I actually speak native Tagalog (and my local dialect of Bisaya) much more fluently than I do English. It shares some similarity with Japanese in that there are a metric asston of verb conjugations. In fact, off my head, I guess we actually have more verb conjugations than Japanese, heh. We also have some similarity with elements of Keigo (verbs change form, and sometimes change entirely), and it's in-group/out-group shenanigans. So I guess my native Tagalog actually helped me a lot in learning Japanese. :P
So does anyone know how to get the japanese language pack for IE8? I downloaded the damn thing and now I only see little blocks everywhere, it's annoying.
I've been studying Japanese for 8 years, I've used a lot of books, but the one I liked the most was Japanese Step by Step. It does a very good job of explaining the gramatical structure of the language. Shortly after I stopped taking classes they switched to Japanese for Busy People, though I can't vouch for it personally, my friends say it's very good.
Other than books, music, movies and chat rooms help inmensly. But nothing like actually talking to someone.
Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that technically speaking neither of those 3 qualify as an alphabet, but rather a symbols system.
on my DS, as well as the traditional way of a notebook full of graph paper.
I honestly think that's the answer, and that every 'method' of memorising without writing is just emperor's new clothes, and doomed.
Now, when writing. Should I just write it as I go along and keep it handy, or should I write the character multiple times until it sinks in? I'm not exactly sure how long I should stay with a particular character, or how any times I should write the character while repeating it's meaning.
I've been memorizing a fair amount of characters, but the keep forgetting the few complex/abstract Kanji characters, at least so far.
victor_c26 on
It's been so long since I've posted here, I've removed my signature since most of what I had here were broken links. Shows over, you can carry on to the next post.
Japanese is written in two syllabaries (kana) and one logographic system (kanji).
Technically, Kana are a phonetic syllabary (which is somewhat misleading since they represent mora, not syllables) and Kanji are morphosyllabographs or morphophonographs, depending on which study you read. They are most definately not logographs, though that is often what they are called.
Isn't really that helpful to anyone, but I wanted to set that straight. I just spent a year doing a (college) independant study on the psycholinguistic aspects of reading Japanese, so I'm kind of oversensitive to that particular issue.
Now, when writing. Should I just write it as I go along and keep it handy, or should I write the character multiple times until it sinks in? I'm not exactly sure how long I should stay with a particular character, or how any times I should write the character while repeating it's meaning.
It's been shown in several studies that the most effective ways for English speakers to learn Kanji are associating them strongly with sound values or assocating them with pictures. To do the first, the easiest way is to actually say aloud the word it is representing while writing the character. Just do that for a while until it sticks. The other way would be something like writing the character down and then transofrming it into a picture - that helped me alot with kana. I had a much easier time remembering the kanji for electricity, also, once I found out that the top portion is supposed to depict a cloud with rain coming out of it and that the bottom part is a kite (that's true, incidentally).
I always wanted to learn Japanese so I can understand it and speak it fluently, but I always thought: "Yeah, I can do it, I'll start the learning process right way!" Then that turned to "I have to seriously start soon". And so forth.
The problem is that you don't have a goal. Set a realistic goal, something simple, and work towards it. If you're interested in reading manga and playing video games, you don't need to learn how to speak or write the language at all. If you want to give guided tours of Chicago to Japanese tourists, then you will need to know how to speak, but writing isn't that important. If you want to work in a Japanese company, you'll need to study proper business Japanese (teineigo, keigo and kenjyougo) and the specialized vocabulary for your field.
When I started studying I was interested in reading foreign newspapers. I then divided up my interest into smaller steps. First I read picture books, then novels for elementary school students, after that I moved on to adult novels and finally I was able to read Asahi Shinbun. Nowadays I want to move into translation, so I'm studying patent law, contract law and I read Nikkei shinbun.
I've been memorizing a fair amount of characters, but the keep forgetting the few complex/abstract Kanji characters, at least so far.
Let's Learn Kanji by Yasuo Mitamura probably the best kanji book for beginners. It focuses on teaching the individual elements that make up a Kanji, and the proper way of actually doing pen strokes. Once you understand what the individual radicals that make up a kanji mean, memorizing them will become much easier.
You may also like A Guide to Remebering Japanese Characters by Kenneth G. Henshall. It's more of a reference book describing the Chinese origin of each and every Kanji taught in the Japanese public school system. The approach and attitude is very different from Heiseig.
Since Kanji is used for outright words/meanings, while Hiragana is used as, basically, their alphabet. Should I really worry about learning the Kanji first and foremost, or can I start learning Hiragana (and possibly also Katakana) right away?
Darksteel recommended that I should start learning Hiragana and Katakana. Like I said, I mainly want to be able to speak and understand Japanese. Have a conversation and be able to listen to conversations.
victor_c26 on
It's been so long since I've posted here, I've removed my signature since most of what I had here were broken links. Shows over, you can carry on to the next post.
I would start with hiragana and katakana. In my first Japanese class at uni, we were expected to learn both of them (so like a 4 month period), and it was not bad at all. By the end we knew only 15 kanji, but knew both hiragana and katakana by heart.
Two weeks is a good upper limit for learning the kana, one week if you have a little more time to practice. Reading fluently is a different story, though. With a few common exceptions, you probably won't be able to scan a whole word at a time like we do in our native language for a little while longer.
Kanji isn't something you "learn first" or "learn later," it's something you're going to be learning basically forever. You should always be on the lookout for kanji you can pick up.
matisyahu on
i dont even like matisyahu and i dont know why i picked this username
Two weeks is a good upper limit for learning the kana, one week if you have a little more time to practice. Reading fluently is a different story, though. With a few common exceptions, you probably won't be able to scan a whole word at a time like we do in our native language for a little while longer.
Kanji isn't something you "learn first" or "learn later," it's something you're going to be learning basically forever. You should always be on the lookout for kanji you can pick up.
That's very true - learning Kanji is like learning English words. There will always be some you don't know. There are plenty of Kanji that Japanese people don't know, that's the main reason the Jouyou Kanji exist.
I'm not too sure that learning Hiragana and Katakana is so important if you don't have an interest in reading the language. First read Tae Kim's guide to Japanese from start to finish so you can get a feel for what the language is like.
If you're a college student there are a lot of summer programs you can go to in Japan which can really help you. Just make sure you go to a school geared towards Chinese and Koreans.
It's been so long since I've posted here, I've removed my signature since most of what I had here were broken links. Shows over, you can carry on to the next post.
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It seems that people have mentioned the important things - using a spaced repetition program and add-ons like rikaichan. Also, if you don't use firefox/can't install add-ons on a computer you use, popjisyo: http://www.popjisyo.com/WebHint/Portal_e.aspx works well .
Also, as someone who has been using Remember the Kanji for a while (I'm 200 kanji away from being done), I can comment a bit on it:
1) You absolutely can use it while learning something else. I'm in college Japanese, and I concurrently learn kanji from RTK. Sometimes, you will have to memorize a kanji for class that is out of order. It's a bit inconvenient, but not that bad. You just have to learn the primitives for that kanji ahead of time. Also, I'd recommend learning some other kanji that use those primitives to really cement the primitive.
2) Use the reviewing the kanji website to find stories/share your stories. It's really helpful if you're stuck. Some people think of really clever stuff.
3) As for whether you have to use all 3 books, I'm pretty sure the exact opposite is true, at least going by the forums on reviewing the kanji. Most people just learn book 1, because it's easier to learn the readings naturally through vocab in context, and the book 3 kanji you can just learn as you come across them as they are fairly rare.
4) If you're going to do RTK, do RTK. Don't halfass it or it won't be worth it. Go through the book in order, remember a good story for each kanji.
5) Use a spaced repetion system (I'm partial to Anki, because it kicks ass). I used RTK and a SRS, and I went from hating kanji and getting them wrong a lot to loving kanji and almost never making kanji errors. Once you do RTK, it will also be a lot easier to immerse yourself in japanese materials. I can play DQ5 on ds now because it is easy for me to look up kanji compound words I've never seen before, whereas before I'd have to do a cumbersome radical search in a dictionary. Also, it's a lot easier to remember words once you know Kanji.
Also, I recommend Oda Kazumasa for people who want to listen to some Japanese music. He is one of the most famous singers in Japan, and I really like his songs, but, more importantly, he sings slowly and clearly so it's easy to use his songs for learning.
I had trouble getting the flashcard programs the way I like them, so I found http://renshuu.org to be very helpful, mostly because it works with the Genki textbooks that my class uses. It has a few other word lists (JLPT, Japanese for Busy People, Kanji Kentei) that might be helpful to you all.
matisyahu on
i dont even like matisyahu and i dont know why i picked this username
Posts
I highly doubt it. I mean, his basic concept is "do your own language immersion program without traveling to the country and without doing it as coursework". There is really no way to learn via immersion other than, well, immersing yourself completely.
Indeed the immersion method of learning can produce really interesting results, but at the same time, is very stressful and hard to do. I live in Japan and I don't consider my self in an immersed atmosphere just because of the amount of English used in the country anyway.
Thanks anyway though.
Ha, I never saw this till just a couple of days ago.
She wasn't very good at explaining things when we asked her. Lots of people I know either barely scraped by in that class or failed it out right. So I wanted to get some books that would help me next time around. I have "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar", "Japanese Grammar", and "Oxford's dictionary of Japanese Grammar and Verbs". I also have "Essential Kanji" (which I'm not quite sure how to use still) and a bunch of Japanese slang books.
All About Particles, How to Tell the Difference Between Japanese Particles and Japanese Verbs at a Glance are all great tools if you are not an absolute beginner (ie, decent vocabulary and at a point where grammar is more important than learning new words/kanji). They are all by Naoko Chino, who's books I swear by.
There's also a book by her that is for basic sentence patterns that I've found incredibly useful of late called A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns.
These books have the sentences written with kanji and some romaji below (easily ignored unless you dont recognize a certain kanji character) followed by English translations.
Oh man! I forgot I had "All about Particles" but I will check out those other two! Thanks!
stupid particles.
STEAM
I am thinking about including the stories inside of my flashcards. Like, instead of
I'll do
Not sure if that'll screw me up, however...
if using remembering the kanji is useful for you, I'm not going to say stop, but I find if you put the amount of time you do into remembering the idioms from RtK, you could have just as easily put time into simply going over more kanji / more examples from a particular kanji for more vocab and mroe pattern recognition than simply going through that.
however, everyone learns differently, so could go either way.
My current plan is to finish RtK1 this year (unlikely), and then start memorizing sentences. I still am unsure as to that though, it almost seems like a waste to work on memorizing keywords for Kanji and not learn readings et all.
I use this:
Kakitori-Kun 2: Insanely long subtitle
on my DS, as well as the traditional way of a notebook full of graph paper.
I honestly think that's the answer, and that every 'method' of memorising without writing is just emperor's new clothes, and doomed.
I had heard it was available for free on the internet, so I grabbed a copy. I got it from a Japanese study site somewhere, but it looks like there are mistakes. Now, is it actually freely available or is this an illegal copy?
He also maintains a blog where he posts some additional lessons on Japanese from time ti time, usually on the colloquial uses of a word, or words with difficult meanings and analyses.
The JDIC is a must for every Japanese student. It is big and nearly exhaustive, and diligent referencing of unknown kanji here, looking at the sample sentences, and then writing them down by drill will have you memorizing kanji in no time.
Rikaichan is a Firefox plugin that uses the above mentioned JDIC dictionary to translate Japanese words you highlight in the browser. It's an alternative and faster way than constantly copy-pasting into the JDIC search bar.
Finally, just try to immerse yourself in Japanese as much as possible. Try to think and phrase your thoughts in Japanese. Consume media such as movies, games, TV shows, and books and novels (especially these). Try and have fun with learning. Pick up a copy of Super Robot Taisen K, or read A Game of Thrones or watch Battlestar Galactica in Japanese (just some of what I did). Anything to make your learning experience that much more fun.
Studying this way, I managed to pass the JLPT to 二級 in about a year and a half of studying. I don't know if that's average time or not, but damn it if I'm not proud of myself about it.
At the risk of being unpopular, when I used to use JDIC (around three years ago?) it was pretty shitty and filled with errors. 英次郎 is the best dictionary for looking up obscure terms and the regular Yahoo!辞書 has 国語、類語、英和 and 和英 dictionaries. The only real problem is the lack of an English interface. People who are more serious should buy a cheap electronic dictionary. Use of rikai chan should be limited. If you force yourself to use the Kanji enough reading them won't be difficult at all.
Darksteel, you have a talent for (at least passive) language acquisition. I find that a lot of people, even if they possess the tools to read a book in Japanese or play a game, will choose not to because they get distressed at the things they don't understand. Being able to read a sentence with a word you don't know (or a grammatical structure), and then figure it out through context and enter it into your own lexicon is a skill that a lot of people have difficulty with. Even though it's easy enough for a third grader to play, Super Robot Taisen games have some of vocabulary that even a native speaker doesn't really understand.
Just about everybody here is an adult, so I'd say the real key to success in learning a language is to have a clearly defined goal.
Thanks!
I haven't started the process seriously yet, which is disappointing. However I have picked up a few words, phrases, and sentences. But they're still only fragments of a sea of compounds and vocabulary words.
My main mission has always been to at least learn how to speak and understand the language, not really to read or write it. However, skimming through this thread, it seems that the general consensus is that it is worth learning Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana first before actually starting to learn actual sentence structures and vocal comprehension.
Should I start with the characters first?
I'm tired of waiting, and setting it aside. I want to start now.
Sidenote: I have the benefit of speaking Spanish, which is amazingly similar to Japanese phonetically.
Definitely start by learning Hiragana and Katakana first. As for Kanji, you just sort of pick it up when reading sentences, just as long as you keep looking up the kanji you don't know in a dictionary and drilling it into your head. I recommend this site to get you started at least, and the JDIC and the Yahoo!辞書 as your dictionaries (thanks for this, by the way, Cygnus, it's pretty good!). Also, as Cygnus said, if you're really serious, you should probably get an electronic dictionary, preferably one where you can write the Kanji to look it up. Personally, I don't have the money for it, but I am trying to save up.
Actually, and I've thought about this just now, probably one of the reasons I had an easy time with Japanese is because English isn't my first language. I actually speak native Tagalog (and my local dialect of Bisaya) much more fluently than I do English. It shares some similarity with Japanese in that there are a metric asston of verb conjugations. In fact, off my head, I guess we actually have more verb conjugations than Japanese, heh. We also have some similarity with elements of Keigo (verbs change form, and sometimes change entirely), and it's in-group/out-group shenanigans. So I guess my native Tagalog actually helped me a lot in learning Japanese. :P
STEAM
STEAM
Other than books, music, movies and chat rooms help inmensly. But nothing like actually talking to someone.
Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that technically speaking neither of those 3 qualify as an alphabet, but rather a symbols system.
Now, when writing. Should I just write it as I go along and keep it handy, or should I write the character multiple times until it sinks in? I'm not exactly sure how long I should stay with a particular character, or how any times I should write the character while repeating it's meaning.
I've been memorizing a fair amount of characters, but the keep forgetting the few complex/abstract Kanji characters, at least so far.
Technically, Kana are a phonetic syllabary (which is somewhat misleading since they represent mora, not syllables) and Kanji are morphosyllabographs or morphophonographs, depending on which study you read. They are most definately not logographs, though that is often what they are called.
Isn't really that helpful to anyone, but I wanted to set that straight. I just spent a year doing a (college) independant study on the psycholinguistic aspects of reading Japanese, so I'm kind of oversensitive to that particular issue.
It's been shown in several studies that the most effective ways for English speakers to learn Kanji are associating them strongly with sound values or assocating them with pictures. To do the first, the easiest way is to actually say aloud the word it is representing while writing the character. Just do that for a while until it sticks. The other way would be something like writing the character down and then transofrming it into a picture - that helped me alot with kana. I had a much easier time remembering the kanji for electricity, also, once I found out that the top portion is supposed to depict a cloud with rain coming out of it and that the bottom part is a kite (that's true, incidentally).
The problem is that you don't have a goal. Set a realistic goal, something simple, and work towards it. If you're interested in reading manga and playing video games, you don't need to learn how to speak or write the language at all. If you want to give guided tours of Chicago to Japanese tourists, then you will need to know how to speak, but writing isn't that important. If you want to work in a Japanese company, you'll need to study proper business Japanese (teineigo, keigo and kenjyougo) and the specialized vocabulary for your field.
When I started studying I was interested in reading foreign newspapers. I then divided up my interest into smaller steps. First I read picture books, then novels for elementary school students, after that I moved on to adult novels and finally I was able to read Asahi Shinbun. Nowadays I want to move into translation, so I'm studying patent law, contract law and I read Nikkei shinbun.
Let's Learn Kanji by Yasuo Mitamura probably the best kanji book for beginners. It focuses on teaching the individual elements that make up a Kanji, and the proper way of actually doing pen strokes. Once you understand what the individual radicals that make up a kanji mean, memorizing them will become much easier.
You may also like A Guide to Remebering Japanese Characters by Kenneth G. Henshall. It's more of a reference book describing the Chinese origin of each and every Kanji taught in the Japanese public school system. The approach and attitude is very different from Heiseig.
Since Kanji is used for outright words/meanings, while Hiragana is used as, basically, their alphabet. Should I really worry about learning the Kanji first and foremost, or can I start learning Hiragana (and possibly also Katakana) right away?
Darksteel recommended that I should start learning Hiragana and Katakana. Like I said, I mainly want to be able to speak and understand Japanese. Have a conversation and be able to listen to conversations.
Weaboo List
Kanji isn't something you "learn first" or "learn later," it's something you're going to be learning basically forever. You should always be on the lookout for kanji you can pick up.
That's very true - learning Kanji is like learning English words. There will always be some you don't know. There are plenty of Kanji that Japanese people don't know, that's the main reason the Jouyou Kanji exist.
If you're a college student there are a lot of summer programs you can go to in Japan which can really help you. Just make sure you go to a school geared towards Chinese and Koreans.
http://www.tofugu.com/2008/10/21/top-10-online-resources-for-learning-japanese-for-free
I have been using Smart.fm (Was known as Iknow!) and I find its a better flash card program.
http://smart.fm
Also, as someone who has been using Remember the Kanji for a while (I'm 200 kanji away from being done), I can comment a bit on it:
1) You absolutely can use it while learning something else. I'm in college Japanese, and I concurrently learn kanji from RTK. Sometimes, you will have to memorize a kanji for class that is out of order. It's a bit inconvenient, but not that bad. You just have to learn the primitives for that kanji ahead of time. Also, I'd recommend learning some other kanji that use those primitives to really cement the primitive.
2) Use the reviewing the kanji website to find stories/share your stories. It's really helpful if you're stuck. Some people think of really clever stuff.
3) As for whether you have to use all 3 books, I'm pretty sure the exact opposite is true, at least going by the forums on reviewing the kanji. Most people just learn book 1, because it's easier to learn the readings naturally through vocab in context, and the book 3 kanji you can just learn as you come across them as they are fairly rare.
4) If you're going to do RTK, do RTK. Don't halfass it or it won't be worth it. Go through the book in order, remember a good story for each kanji.
5) Use a spaced repetion system (I'm partial to Anki, because it kicks ass). I used RTK and a SRS, and I went from hating kanji and getting them wrong a lot to loving kanji and almost never making kanji errors. Once you do RTK, it will also be a lot easier to immerse yourself in japanese materials. I can play DQ5 on ds now because it is easy for me to look up kanji compound words I've never seen before, whereas before I'd have to do a cumbersome radical search in a dictionary. Also, it's a lot easier to remember words once you know Kanji.
Also, I recommend Oda Kazumasa for people who want to listen to some Japanese music. He is one of the most famous singers in Japan, and I really like his songs, but, more importantly, he sings slowly and clearly so it's easy to use his songs for learning.