April 28, 2024
"Learning kanji is the worst"
"You have to learn over 2000 of them?! Nooo wayy"
Well well well. Learning kanji is my favorite part of learning Japanese. I know it can seem intimidating - after all, we are talking about more than 2000 characters! Of course, learning random pictures without any plan would be pretty hard. However, with a right system, it is not only manageable, but also... fun!
Each Kanji tells a story
Unlike vocabulary or grammar, it takes a bit of a storytelling to remember a kanji - and that's what makes it both easy and fun to learn. It feels more like a creative writing prompt rather than learning a language (something I personally struggle with).
There is a certain structure to kanji. Let's start with the singular "building blocks"! For example:
亻 is a person. I call him Mr. T, since he looks like a letter T. He's a tall, slender salaryman in a suit, constantly working overtime, constantly tired...
木 is a tree. You can imagine a tree by just looking at it.
Having those two "building blocks" (called primitives), we can build a larger kanji:
休 means rest. What can Mr. T doing under a tree? Of course, he's trying to get some rest after a long day at work. I picture Mr. T sitting by a tree, leaning back, dozing off with a briefcase in one hand and can of beer in the other one.
Getting freaky
Of course, it does get more crazy with time! To avoid being overwhelmed by the number of eleme