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1) When I want to take a temporary break from the grammar lessons and such, would it be a good idea to jump to the kanji pages and learn them before Koichi tells you to? Sometimes I just feel like learning some kanji but I’m not sure if I should follow the textbook down to the letter or not. I don’t see the harm in it, but I thought I’d ask people that are probably more experienced.
2) What other resources should I use alongside TextFugu to help study my Japanese (for things I already know, at least)? Like books on particle usage and stuff, just to use an example. Basically, I’ve seen people on this forum say that TextFugu shouldn’t be your *only* resource for learning Japanese. I don’t want something that will explain things in too complicated of a manner though, because that would just result in confusion.
1) It wouldn’t hurt, if that’s what you want to do.
2)Tae Kim is good, although I can’t say what is or isn’t too complicated.
1. No, there’s no harm in skipping ahead on kanji – if for no other reason than the fact that there’s way more kanji (and vocab) than there is grammar. Essentially, in order to be completely literate in Japanese, you should probably learn the joyo kanji, a list of kanji defined by the Japanese government as those in regular use – for example, newspapers and official documents and the like. There’s currently 2136 kanji on that list, whereas Koichi’s lessons cover approximately 410 of them, or a bit under one-fifth of the total. Don’t let those numbers scare you, though – just pointing out that there’s no risk of running out of kanji. Just take them one-at-a-time.
2. The Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar is very good, as are the Intermediate and Advanced volumes. I also use (or did use, when I was actually doing self-study) Japanese for Busy People. It covers all of the same topics, but a fresh viewpoint is often helpful.
There are THAT many kanji lessons now? When I stopped doing them, there couldn’t have been any more than about 70, I reckon. It’s been about 2.5 years though, so that’s probably less than there ought to be.
1. Yep, kanji is essential – the sooner you learn them, the better.
2. I second Japanese for Busy People and Tae Kim, though to be honest, I found Tae Kim quite dense and difficult to follow when I first started – after I learned some more grammar and a lot more vocab though, it turned out to be really great :D It might be different for you, I don’t know.
Yeah, there doesn’t look like there’s anywhere close to 400 on the kanji page. I could be mistaken though. Also, are radicals gonna become more useful once I get to the more “complicated” kanji (stroke-wise)? So far I find that they really don’t help that much, and it’s far easier to just memorize the mnemonics for the kanji themselves.
Thanks for the help guys.
It was only an eyeball, but looking at this page: http://www.textfugu.com/kanji/
1 stroke: 1
2 strokes: 13
3 strokes: 20
4 strokes: 53
5 strokes: 79
6 strokes: 81
7 strokes: 79
8 strokes: 62 (and an ellipsis)
9 strokes: 25
… And now that I’ve written all that, I’m not sure the kanji numbers are stroke counts – 話, which has 13 strokes, is in 8-2, while 私 with seven strokes is in 9. Anyway, the grand total is 413 – not bad for an eyeballed approximation. It all adds up.
As for learning by radicals, I’ll grant the benefit is not immediately apparent when the radical forms most of the kanji. However, when you start hitting complex ones like 億 or 曜, being able to break it into components is incredibly helpful.
Learning the radicals helps to no end.
Think there’s just over 400 kanji there (did a quick count a while ago).
After about set 7 or 8 they stop being based on the stroke numberl.
Alright, I’ll keep up the radicals then. Thanks guys.
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