Ahmad's update

I think now I am all set, Anki works perfectly, and the method is now clear. I follow the sequence of the book "Kanji ABC" which groups the Kanjis according to similar radicals, this is different from the regular approach of grouping Kanji according to difficulty or usage. I believe it is the natural approach since you get to know how exactly each radical is used within many Kanji so you get a feel of how it works.

I find the kunyomi (Japanese reading) easier than the onyomi, so perhaps if anybody can tell me of a way I can guess the on yomi from the character itself, I would appreciate it very much.

I am still behind a bit, but we will see who will win at the end!, I am not sure who is actually participating in this contest now, is it only me, Keith and nickolas ?

Nick's Strategy

Hello Everyone! Sorry for the late post.

Studying Chinese characters is my most favorite aspect of studying Japanese (and Chinese). As I have passed Level 2 of the JLPT, and Level 5 of the Kanji Aptitude Test (漢字能力検定）, I officially know about 1000 Kanji. However, I think I actually know around 1400 Kanji as I have been studying after passing those tests. Add to that the number of characters that I have learned throughout the course of studying Chinese, and I probably know a few dozen more. Even though the usage and form of Kanji used in the Chinese language is different from it's use and form in Japanese, knowing one form and use in one language helps you to learn the form and use in another much more easily.

I think studying Kanji with a group of people is good as you can get encouragement. My strategy is pretty simple. I will read 3 pages of the Kanji in Context Workbook vol. 2 starting from the 5th level. By doing so, I will be familiarized with 30 Kanji everyday. If I finish up to the last page before the challenge ends, I will start again from the 4th level of Kanij in context.

My weakest point in learning Kanji is learning its Kunyomi (native Japanese) pronunciations. Onyomi is very easy to guess once you are familiar with the phonetic elements in Chinese characters. However, with Kunyomi you have no choice but to memorize them. To help me remember Kunyomi, I have made a list at smart.fm of Kanji and only their native Japanese reading. If you would like to use, or help add to this list, please tell me.






Hopefully this will help me pass Level 1 of the JLPT in December.
Good Luck to everyone on this challenge!

Keith's day 4

I am in front of the TV (Japanese TV) all day. I have been keeping that up since the day before this Kanji Challenge began. So sometimes I see on TV, one of the new characters I am now studying. I might even find one of the words or hear a word that is on my list. I wish they appeared all the time but that doesn't happen.

I wish I already knew all the words and was only learning to read them now. As I mentioned in a previous post, it's so much easier to learn to read a word that I already know than to learn to read a word I don't even know yet. I think on my second pass through the flashcards, I am able to read those words that I already know even if the Kanji is totally new for me. Even if I have some familiarity with the Kanji character, it is harder to read when I don't know the word.

I think this has something to do with the intangibility of words. The Kanji characters themselves are very tangible. They have shape and you can see them. It seems easier for my brain to give me the word that I know when I look at Kanji than to try to come up with an unknown word for a familiar character. In fact, it's very simple. I remember in the past when there were times that I looked up some Kanji word only to find out that it was a word I already knew but had never seen in Kanji before. After that it could be read easily without need for review.

Here are the characters I studied today:

統　佐　拒　距　推　哲　掲　射　占　郷　著
諸　破　壊　撃　襲　爆　犯　逮　批　刑　帝
粋　赴　恵　房　展　殿　幼　稚　肝　蔵　倉
創　裕　沈　没　添　仰　刊　被　微　肩　腸

Keith's day 3 Kanji

Today I got started a little later than usual but still had plenty of time. I think it takes about 3 or 4 times through to get them all learned once. After that, it's just review to see which ones are weakest. I like it when some of the characters I am studying look similar because then I will take a closer look at them to see the difference and try to remember that. Otherwise I don't notice the details as much and tend to just recognize the shape.

I realized today that when I make my second pass through, I'm still going to need new quiz files for the new words I study. So today I created the new file for the first group. I'd like to have the files all finished when I start the second round. Who knows, I might be busy then and so it will really help.

I'm using the book Kanji in Context which has about 9,000 words for the 1947 Kanji. If you were to study just 25 words a day, you would have studied all of the 9,000 words in the book in one year. If you studied 100 a day, it would only take 90 days to go through the book once.

Here are the Kanji I studied today:

乏　勢　灯　鉱　縮　積　布　依　吉　燥　乾
江　液　汚　染　鮮　卸　御　盛　宮　犠　牲
誠　討　誇　秩　矛　盾　掃　余　述　迫　眼
睡　瞬　隣　舞　核　構　兵　革　絹　鯨　桃

This time it took only 50 minutes to enter the data for the 44 characters.

Where are you

Hi guys, Ahmad here. Where is everybody !

I am still gaining momentum, I have just finished 26 Kanji from the "Kanji ABC" book, a very interesting book, it has no explanations, just lists of Kanji grouping the ones with the same radicals together, and also gives you the breakdown of the character into the component-meanings, which helps in memorizing the character, but in a much simpler way than Henshal's book I think.

Please everybody let us hear from you, even if you haven't started yet, there is still 45 days to go, so come on update us on your Kanji-status!

July 17th, 09

Day#1+Day#2

一  土   上  下  光  二  仁  三  

人  囚  座  

山  仙  峠  出  拙  石  拓  岩  

耳  恥  摂  

火  灰  炭  煩  

Tot. Count = 26 

 

Keith's day 2

Today I went through another 44 Kanji characters in exactly the same way as I described yesterday. I forgot to mention that I put the 2 different types of questions into one file so they are mixed together when the quiz order is created. Therefor, I'm not just doing one type and then the other type. I think this is better than doing them separately because it keeps my brain from falling into a pattern. It's a lot easier to just read a full word than it is to try to remember which word I am learning for a single Kanji.

I also want to point out that it is many times easier to learn to read a known word than an unknown word. With a known word, once you read it you understand it immediately and the work is over. But after reading unknown words, then you have to sit there and try to remember what they mean.

With my two types of questions, I have over 80 "cards" to go through at once. Keep in mind, I'm not doing any writing. So far, this method is too easy. I need to add something. I think it should require a little more involvement with the characters. However, that would require more setup work. It will likely be more difficult when I get to the more "advanced" level characters as there will be many more words I do not know.

Here are the Kanji I learned today:
針納絶総為孝蓄抵抗条喫潔忠尺釈択描拝抜振折揮輝防妨憲騒博葬蒸宗浮奨励露宴宣貴賃貨貧縁恩霧

This takes me through character 859 in Kanji in Context. I think it took me around 90 minutes to type in the data for these 44 characters. Of course, I was watching TV at the same time.

Keith's day 1

Today is the first day of the 2009 Kanji Challenge. How are you doing? Here's how my day went.

Looking at my list of the Kanji numbers, I have 44 rows on a page, so I decided it would be easier to keep track of how far I need to work down my list by just doing one column a day. So that means I'm going to try to do 44 a day.

First I looked up each character in Kanji in Context because this is the book I used when I went through them to determine which characters I need to study. Then I figured the only way I'm going to be able to review the words for these characters all day is by having them together because I can't look them up every time. So I decided to use a quiz web page that I created a couple of years ago. It uses javascript and php to read a list from a file and create a random order quiz. Basically a flashcard quiz.

In my quiz file, I put two types of question. The first type shows the Kanji word and the answer is the reading in Hiragana. I'm using the first word listed for the Kanji in Kanji in Context. This question type will ensure that I am learning (at least for today) how to read new words.

The second type of question I have created shows just one character and the answer is that vocabulary word I am reading. With this type, I am forced to take a better look at the character since it is by itself. With the other type of question, I could just be able to read the word because of the accompanying Kanji or Okurigana without really noticing the target character.

I would like to have a third type where I need to choose the correct character from similar-looking Kanji, but that would take a lot of effort to create. Just typing in the 44 characters and a single word for each into a text file took a lot of time and was rather tiring. I had to take a break after entering the first 10 of them.

Not all of the characters from my first group are completely unknown characters but I included them even if I sort of knew them because I felt my recognition was too weak. I couldn't be sure if it was the character I was thinking it was and I would probably have to check to confirm it if I found it in something I read.

Here are the characters I studied today:
怒逃屈封筒賛達損懸尊導倫輸往芝皇聖禅嫁婿飾設施濃富紀素徳航慢養善需延即償散敷酔軒郡弾弓矢

Who wins

Give it your best guys, gambatte !

The winner is the one who breaks the record and studies the most number of Kanji in such a short period of 47 days.

Good luck, and keep us informed of your progress, obstacles and ideas please.

Ahmad

Keith's plan A

This is Keith on July 15th, Wednesday afternoon. I just finished my count of the Kanji that I need to study. Using the book, Kanji in Context, I went through it and wrote down the number for any Kanji that I felt I don't know. Previously, I estimated that I need to study about 800 characters, and the total from my count is 829 characters!

Ahmad has posted that the 2009 Kanji Challenge starts tomorrow and ends on the 31st of August. If my count is correct, that is 47 days. What I would like to do is go through the characters I need to learn twice. So that means studying 36 characters per day.

On the first pass through, I will take a good look at the vocabulary listed for the character but I will concentrate on learning only the first word in the list. So at the end of the day, I will be able to read 36 new words. At the half-way point in the Challenge, I hope to know and be able to read 829 new words.

During the second-half of the Challenge, I will make a second pass through the characters. During the 2nd pass, I will try to learn any additional readings for each character and one word for each reading. Of course, I will also get to review the words I had learned during the first pass.

I have not yet figured out what exactly I'm going to be doing to learn these words. Hopefully a lot of activities. Or maybe I will just be staring at them all day. If I spend my time as I am currently planning, I will be in front of the Japanese TV broadcast all day and so I will do my Kanji activities at the same time which means I could be working at this Kanji Challenge all day, just about every day.

I finished my counting today with the TV going and I'm also writing this post with the TV going. Will I also be able to learn the words I'm working on while the TV is going? I don't know, but if those words get used on TV I think it will have a positive impact.

Even if I don't manage to put these words into my reading ability, I hope that I will be able to remember having studied them before. That usually helps later when the words show up naturally. If nothing else, it creates a bit of excitement and creates a link between activities. Whenever a word is just in an isolated event, it is difficult to get it to stick in your mind, even if that event was a natural encounter. But several events will allow you to make connections.

So the next thing I need to do is to think about what I can do to learn the Kanji in the words each day. I'll post again.

Ready, Set, Go !

Start Date : Thursday, July 16th

End Date : Monday, August 31st

よし、行くゼ Kosuke's Method (a.k.a overkill)

Hello and thanks for the invite,

This semester at school we were asked to write down our goals for the semester. I wrote, amongst other things, learning the jouyou kanji. I'm not good at sticking to my goals so when I saw this challenge I thought it would be the perfect motivation. The timing also fits in nicely as the semester ends somewhere around mid September.

I need to learn alot of stuff besides Kanji for school so this period will not be a brute kanji effort, I simply intend to pick up the pace. However, like Keith, I also have a bit of a head start so it all balances out nicely.

留学試験(university enterance exams?, for which I enrolled simply to keep my pace up) and school require being able to write kanji, so as part of my challenge knowing a kanji will require being able to write it also.

My SRS of choice is Anki.

To tackle learning to write a Kanji I use a 4 field card. A typical card would be formatted like so:

---

Expression:
経費

この不景気では、中小企業のみならず大企業でも経費を削る必要がある

---

Meaning:
ある事を行うのに必要な費用

この不景気では、中小企業のみならず大企業でも～を削る必要がある

---

Reading:
[Omitted for brevity]

---

Additional:
「のみならず」の形で「～だけでなく、範囲はもっと大きく他にも及ぶ」と言いたい時に使う。硬い（かたい）表現
後の文には「も・で・さえ」などがよく使われる。

---

As you can predict, a Production card would show the definition of the word to be placed where the "~" symbol is. I gernally tackle one word per sentence. If an example sentence has word in it that doesn't have a card of it's own I generate a new card. If that card contains a word that doesn't have a card of it's own the process reiterates.

We often have to writte essay's in class so for me word recollection is important. Atleast thats how I justify all this overhead in my study.

My current stats according to Anki are:

• 1631 total unique kanji.
• Old Jouyou: 1491 of 1945 (76.7%).
• New Jouyou: 55 of 191 (28.8%).
• Jinmeiyou (reg): 50 of 645 (7.8%).
• Jinmeiyou (var): 2 of 145 (1.4%).
• 33 non-jouyou kanji.

Tools of the trade:

Electronic:

• Anki (The kanji stats will point out what remains)
  
• My Casio EX-word Dataplus4 XD-SP6700 electronic dictionary. It has
  明鏡（めいきょう） and 広辞苑（こうじえん） J-J dictionaries and Progressive (J-E). I also
  bought the Kodansha kanji learner's content for it.
• As much as I love my electronic dictionary it falls short in many places. Examples are sometimes garbage or not even present. I often prefer to use 三省堂（さんせいどう）'s 大辞林（だいじりん）for simplier more concise definitions and 研究社（けんきゅうしゃ） dictionary for examples and usage. These are the paid PC versions not the online versions.
• 今昔文字鏡（こんじゃくもじきょう）A nice Kanji dictionary but in all honesty I rarely require it.
  

I generally just add new words/kanji as I come across them. These have primarly been from the following text books:

• Kanji and Kana: I bought this along time ago before I started seriously studying Japanese. Its a simple Kanji dictionary and I don't recommend it (apologies to authors Hadamitzky and Spahn but honestly, what were you thinking? No seriously, post a reply to this if your reading this post because I want my $30 back).
• 文化中級日本語(ぶんかちゅうきゅうにほんご): The kanji I've learnt to date come from this text book (I and II). We used this in my school. I love these but I'm sad to say we've just finished them and started the book below. I'd say they contained about 1400 of the Kanji learnt so far.
• 上級で学ぶ（じょうきゅうでまなぶ）:This semster's text book for school. Just cracked it open, yesterday, yet to form an opinion.
• 日本語文型辞典（にほんごぶけいじてん）:I think this book has every piece of Japanese grammar ever thought up with a variety of examples. Unfortunatley no English so not recommended for beginners. I think they had a goal of not using the same word twice in an example sentence and for that reason provides a great resource for new words and usage.
  
• どんな時どう使う日本語表現文型辞典（どんなときどうつかうにほんごひょうげんぶんけいじてん）:This book is awesome, sometimes grammar gets pretty convoluted and it explains it a little more concisely than the above 日本語文型辞典(and also in Enlgish, Korean and Chinese) . Me and my room mate (Taiwan) love this book.
• Past 能力試験　(JLPT): This is a necessary evil. I plan to smash level 1 in December.
• Newspaper： I didn't even read the newspaper back home but I like to torture myself and use them for sentences. Mining newspapers crushes my soul. Kanji is used a little differentley in newspapers, thats about the only interesting thing about it.
• A dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar: English explanation, English translation. As I mentioned above grammar gets convoluted and this book sometimes helps. This book also contains alot of different kanji words in their examples. This is my failsafe if I just can't comprehend what the heck is going on in a sentence.

I think I'm probably the complete opposite of Keith(I guess that's why I like his blog.), I don't really opt for natural aquisition. My goal is to read not converse and I study as such. I'm not a big fan of TV or Movies. Memorizing a Kanji is usually done using brute force. Harder Kanji are rembered through my own stories. Heisig did not invent this. This was invented long before him. I disagree with his method of learning one meaning through a bunch of stories (tried it, didn't help me, didn't like it).

I've probably bored you all enough (I'd be suprised if your even reading this far). There's my goals, my tools and my method. Lets kick this off ASAP.

よろしくお願いします。

Kosuke.

Come on guys!

Ahmad here, the Kanji on the left is for "Challenge". Some years ago I started studying Kanji (now I can't remember any though!), but I soon got bored and dropped it. Recently I thought I should just study Japanese through sentence patterns, looking for them everywhere on the net, but I realized that without the Kanji I can't go far in my quest of collecting sentence patterns.

So that's why I came up with this challenge, primarily for those whose study has stalled or those who lack the initiative, the goal is not to finish the 2009 characters within those 6 weeks, but to challenge ourselves and try to break a record, How many Kanji you will retain is not the point, the point is to gain momentum and familiarity, to break the ice.

If you keep moving forward without hesitation, without self doubts, without fear, with a brave heart, you will be amazed at how many kanji you have acquired in a little time.

My strategy is basically to Keep M0ving Forward From One Kanji To Another Without Looking Back , also to focus for now on only one meaning and reading for each character (probably the Kun yomi/the Japanese reading)

So who's up to the challenge ?

Challengers so far:

Ahmad

Keith

Charith

Kosuke 

Lisa

Nicholas

(please guys accept the invitation in your inbox)

Are you up to the challenge ?

Ahmad:

1- Think of a simple strategy and a textbook (or online Kanji list) that you can use in studying.

2- Send us your email address so that I can send you an invitation to be an author on this blog.  

3- Post your strategy in brief.

We will start soon, hopefully we get more participants before we start.

Here is our email address/

challenge@kanji4.us

Welcome Challengers

Konnichiwa and peace,

I'm Ahmad, are you frustrated with learning Kanji, is it your first time to try to learn it, have you tried to memorize them before without avail, did you get bored and dropped it all together?

Whatever your situation is, we invite you to the challenge of "Who will be able to learn the most kanjis in a period of 6 weeks" our deadline is the end of August.

The rule of this challenge is there are no rules, you are challenging yourself first, so set up your own rules, method and priorities, and write a post here to apply and inform us of your strategy once you take the decision to join us.

As for me, I will try to follow the book Kanji ABC by Andreas Foerster and Naoko Tamura as it dissects each kanji into its basic components, and group them in a nice sequence. I will also try to focus on one meaning one reading for each of the 2009 characters I want to learn. As when I learn more than one meaning or reading for a character I get confused and forget it easily. So basically it will be like a crash course, just to get familiar with the meanings of the 2009 characters as well as one reading, and later on when I start mining for sentence patters I will surely learn the other readings as I find more compounds using the same character, but it will be in context, and thus I can build on the foundaition I have built that way.

Good luck and contact us if you are willing to join us in the challenge, 2009 characters/6 weeks, not for the weak hearted!

introduction and first post

Kanji Keith here, writing the introduction for the 2009 Kanji Challenge. My friend, Ahmad, had the idea to make this Kanji Challenge in order to create a group of Kanji learners to provide support and encouragement to each other in learning the Kanji. Not only do we intend to learn a bunch of Kanji, we are also going to do it as quickly as possible!

What do we mean by learn?

Our goal is to be able to read the characters only. We are not interested in writing them. Who really writes Japanese characters anyway? That is a skill which is not used when reading. And we want to be able to read Japanese. If we were to write in Japanese, it would be on the computer 99% of the time anyway. We can always work on writing by hand later if it should become a desired skill.

We might not learn the Kanji perfectly. Maybe we'll forget a lot of what we learn. Kanji characters can have many readings in Japanese. Some have only one reading. Many have two readings. Quite a few have 3 or 4 readings. And some have too many readings to count. But I think what we want to do is learn the most frequent readings, and not waste time trying to nail down every reading perfectly.

What are the guidelines to the challenge?

We are discussing that right now, so we'll have an update and new post soon. We'd like to get the challenge started real soon. One point is to learn 2009 Kanji characters. Ahmad thinks he can do this in 2 months. As for me, I'm going to have a headstart. I think I already know around 1200 characters real well. So I need to learn 800~900 more. I'm thinking about spending 2 hours a day to learn 30 a day. I think it would probably be best to break it up into 4 sessions of 30 minutes each. I'll be discussing more of what I'm going to do in future posts.

So everybody is welcomed to join the 2009 Kanji Challenge. It doesn't matter where you are starting from. If nobody joins us then I guess it'll just be me and Ahmad. But we'd really like some competitors, I mean, co-learners to take on our challenge.