#Is studying radicals worth it?

48 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

fading violet
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This may be a stupid question. But, for some context: I don't currently have access to "Remembering the Kanji" and I've found that (while doing my Kaishi 1.5K Anki) I often forget what a word means because I don't understand the Kanji being used in that word. I figure, if I could break down the Kanji, I may fare better at figuring out what the word means, rather than just learning what it means through rote memorization as Anki tells me what it means over and over. So I looked into getting an Anki deck specifically for radicals only to be met with this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/2xhwbq/the_japanese_radicals_anki_deck_an_anki_deck_to/

Here they say that trying to learn radicals is kinda of a fool's errand, and I simply don't know enough to know if that's true or if it would actually help me in this case.

junior wrenBOT
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<@&1248039856404431062> Is studying radicals worth it?

echo jacinth
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No

fading violet
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thanks for the quick response XD

scarlet moss
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To go into more detail, Kanji have a lot of readings, but to learn all of the readings for different words, you'd need to immerse loads anyways. Why waste time with RTK and learning radicals if you can just go straight into learning words and figure it out eventually along the way? That isn't to say that learning radicals and doing RTK is bad; it will help a lot with writing practice in the future and it will help somewhat if you struggle to differentiate between similar Kanji; however, this can be fixed with more immersion anyways.

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Here's a video that supports what I'm talking about.

fading violet
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My only thought was that, by being able to recognize radicals I'd get better at recognizing the Kanji, thus a bit better at recognizing the words. So far I've been doing fine at just memorizing vocab, but it does feel like a bit of an uphill trek when often times the Kanji seem completely brand new each word I learn. And so I thought maybe a baseline familiarity might be helpful there.

But I'll take your word that it's truly just not time efficient.

old tapir
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I also want to point out that you should not be expecting to just rote memorize words from Anki. The expectation is that you are also immersing with text and audio together so that you are seeing and hearing these words in context so that the words and kanji become second nature. I truly hope that you are actually immersing and not just pounding Anki and hoping it'll work.

fading violet
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I don't have a desire to learn every kanji right away. I was just thinking, maybe it'd be nice to know why certain kanji are being used in certain words, and maybe the radicals would help me out.

fading violet
scarlet moss
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Then the logical thing to do would be to immerse in a variety of content.

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More situations = more words.

old tapir
fading violet
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Mhm, I've got a Japanese only spotify playlist I've been putting together. I watch a lot of Japanese netflix. And I've recently started trying to play Pokemon Omega Ruby in Japanese. But yea, with a limited vocab I feel like (espesically in the case of playing Pokemon where the focus is only on parsing text) I spend a lot more of my time figuring words out than recognizing them.

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Which isn't necissarily a bad thing

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but yea

old tapir
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Trying to do other forms of reading without audio at an early stage is going to be very painful

fading violet
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yea I'm getting that impression 😅

sour cape
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As guy who half baked RTK i did not feel too big of a difference between learning words with unknow radicals compared to the ones i know.

fading violet
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I get a minimum of an hour watching JP netflix with JP subs while I do my daily cardio though.

fading violet
sour cape
brazen jacinth
fading violet
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oh I didn't know that, thanks for the tip!

brazen jacinth
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You're welcome! 😊

scarlet moss
brazen jacinth
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I'd try Pokémon Violet or Pokémon Scarlet instead. They're probably a lot easier than Legends Arceus.

scarlet moss
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But.

old tapir
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Definitely easier than Arceus

scarlet moss
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Legends arceus is better anyways. :P

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Better story and better mechanics.

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Okay, that's a lie.

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SV has the better story and characters.

old tapir
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https://youtu.be/6h7PFyjIa_8?si=Ug_4-7Vo1U_Qr8xC
@brazen jacinth @fading violet

YouTube
Game Gengo ゲーム言語
The BEST Pokémon Games for Learning Japanese

Find out which are the BEST games in the Pokémon series to play in Japanese to help you learn the language and have fun while you're immersing! In this video we will take a look at the first hour of each main Pokémon game and analyze the both the text and language options, as well as the Japanese language and kanji data to see exactly which game...

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brazen jacinth
fading violet
scarlet moss
wind wind
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yes it's only like 218 things to learn

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and it helps in the long run

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it won't be like more efficient or anything tho probably

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it's just neat to know

sage moon
scarlet nymph
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A lot of sound components don't work in modern japanese or have been corrupted. So it's better to immerse if your goal is fluency asap. But learning radicals and etymology can be good for keeping up your motivation to learn.

sage moon