Commonly used Kanji's

[shitotaku]

Learning all Kanji's will take years especially from someone who just been introduced with the japanese language itself. to break down this long time, can i ask for a list or just other things that can help?

It might include common signs in japan?, or commonly used Kanji's in Visual Novels, or everyday conversations wirtten in kanji. any help would be greatly be appreciated.

edit: also help me how to read them

 

[Zero2DS]

from my perspective kanji have more than 1 way to read it... especially there is a kanji+ hiragana combo which will result in different form of reading but the same meaning...
for me i personally make and use my own note and constantly reading trough them so I'll remember if i meet the kanji in another game :)


Tips: Start by learning hiragana... its like you already have 1/4 of japanese language in your hand 1/4 is katakana, and the last 1/2 is the hardest "kanji" :)
If you're fluent with hiragana just go with sound and there should be no problem... hiragana+ sound +translation from agth etc2 and add a little improvisation and you should learn it little by little a step at a time~ ^^

well thats from me ^^

 

[Ignis]

Basically there are two kinds of kanji readings; kunyomi (Japanese reading) and onyomi (Chinese reading). However, to our demise, it's not like each kanji only has two readings. Some have only one reading; some have one for on and one for kun; some have more than once for on and kun each. There are also kanji that have hiragana following them, mostly kanji for verbs and some adjectives; rarely nouns. The hiragana following such kanji is called okurigana.

Usually, kun reading is used when the kanji stands alone or when used with okurigana. When it's combined with other kanji, usually the on reading is used.

For example,
姉 has a kun reading of "ane" and an on reading of "shi".
妹 has a kun reading of "imouto" and an on reading of "mai".
When combined, I wouldn't say you can't read them as "ane imouto"; but as a proper word, 姉妹 is read as "shimai".

About the kanji commonly used in visual novels, eh... I find it a hard question to answer. No, actually, I should say that I can't answer it, to be honest. First of all, even visual novels, being the hardest compared to animu and mango, differ in language difficulty level among themselves. You may be able to get the gist of an everyday school romance VN by knowing basic conversations, but for things like Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate...

Therefore~ my advice would be: study and memorise kanji by the order of Jouyou grade or JLPT level. If you neither have a text book nor are you taking a course, you can use some utility software and sites, like zKanji - it has an option to list kanji by Jouyou grade or JLPT level, so it'll be easier and neater for you to learn.

 

[shitotaku]

the Z kanji is priceless thanks Ignis-sama. I've been learning about japanese frequently. I've kinda mastered hiragana and katakana already. in regards to visual novels I've tried playing many of'em without the english translation, I've been relying on their speech to know what exactly they are saying. but the male part (which usually says nothing at all is what I've been confused. and also i don't like machine translations. it hurts in the eyes and ears >.<

 

[Ignis]

Thank the developers not me lol. Have fun using it.

Same here, I rely on voices as well since I myself suck at kanji too. While I'd encourage chatting in Japanese as a method to improve your flexibility with the language as well as grammar and structures, I don't know if it really works well with kanji. Trying to write down kanji in order to memorise them is also a way, although being a lazy person I am, I don't like doing it myself lol.

Machine translations hurt my heart and brain, but if you want to rely on the characters' speeches without using any automated translations in order to memorise kanji (matching what's being displayed with what's being talked), you will have to have yourself armed with the knowledge of some vocabularies and structures first. To improve your vocab and structure knowledge, you can watch a subbed animu or play a translated VN. If you play/watch to learn I recommend not to read something with overly dynamic translations, or even worse localised contents.

In other words, I don't really recommend using a Mangagamer game or an animu subbed by gg, just to name a few, to learn. I'm not saying that they're bad, but MG localises stuff and gg's translations are close to localised equivalence, so maybe not the right choice to use as a learning material since you can end up mixing up some terms.

 

[fog1]

yes Kanji is really hard , Although I'm a Chinese, I often writing or speaking the word in a wrong way
but when I went to japan, I found japanese Kanji is much harder than Chinese Kanji ......
Many Japanese also don't know some words' exactly meaning .........

 

[f903y]

Though the Chinese character might be difficult,
The game can be tasted more if it masters it.

 

[Eschatology]

Therefore~ my advice would be: study and memorise kanji by the order of Jouyou grade or JLPT level. If you neither have a text book nor are you taking a course, you can use some utility software and sites, like zKanji - it has an option to list kanji by Jouyou grade or JLPT level, so it'll be easier and neater for you to learn.

hmm,
in my opinion, isn't it easier to memorize the kanji based on their stroke ?
from the up root till down to the gutter,, (1-30 stroke)

[-_-]