5 Kanji books reviewed

FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm the main author of Kanji From Zero! so my review is possibly biased although I am trying not to be biased.
1006字の正しい書き方: goo.gl/JSKdpm
Kanji From Zero: goo.gl/yebH99
Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji: goo.gl/JFqhfg
Kanji Learner's Course: goo.gl/dHdcWz
Remembering the Kanji: goo.gl/uzn4hQ

[@tankeryy1566]

*Time Stamps:* 1006字の正しい書き方: 3:44 Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji: 6:31 Kanji Learner's Course: 9:48 Remembering the Kanji: 12:38 Kanji From Zero: 17:42

[@ffelegal]

Thanks, my friend. You are a friend.

[@damlurker]

12:38 What everyone is here for lol

[@kathleenanne7868]

James Heisig has lived in Japan for decades and speaks, reads and writes Japanese. He came to Japan unexpectedly and was told to attend language school before starting to lecture Religious Studies at a University. He learnt the Kanji quickly to put himself on par with Chinese students. He then stayed with a Japanese family to learn Japanese by speaking to the children. Wikipedia says he is still living in Japan. I also came to Japan unexpectedly, and found a copy of RTK in my house. I enjoyed the party trick thing while I learnt Japanese by immersion - being single in a small rural town will do that!

[@QuadDamage-tt7sj]

How did you make to move there? How did you pay for the house etc.? What visa did you get?

[@matthewdavis9437]

This video is astronomically more biased than you think it is. You're grossly simplifying and misrepresenting the content of those other books in favor of your own.

[@Jolvie]

As someone who has really struggled with learning kanji, the RTK was a lifesaver because it allowed me to not have such a brainsplosion per kanji. Since, if I know the meaning of a kanji I can easily match it up with the meaning of the word in Japanese - it just allows me to learn them much more quickly and stay motivated. Trying to remember multiple readings per kanji right off the bat was making me feel frustrated. RTK helped me a lot. So, I can keep the vocabulary learning and the kanji meaning separate, and then they magically just sort of mesh together once you have a kanji, and a vocabulary word. So there are hooks to hang things on, instead of trying to make one character (which just looks like a complicated jumble) mean something in a confusing web of a language that is so new to me. Although I'm also looking forward to trying out your book too since I think slow and steady wins the race for me and doing 250 kanji per book seems very smart!

[@shibainu6027]

Jolvie makes a lot of sense.

[@tadeus1457]

when should I start learning the readings then?

[@neobretsmith360]

Rtk is the scaffolding to understand the meanings, stroke order, and components of each Kanji. I definitely recommend not obsessing over the keywords in rtk they're there just to give you a general idea of what the Kanji represents(not the actual translation). It's purpose is to help you remember how to recall the image of the kanji from memory. After you are familiar you can easily attach the yon/kun yomi to the image of the Kanji. Some time you get funky keyword. And that makes RTK really frustrating, no doubt. But if you want to learn the readings you can, learn them as you go through RTK. Ideally you want to learn the readings organically, through Immersion. Like watching Japanese shows with Japanese subs, thats the method that I found to be most enjoyable.

[@jos3056]

Ta Deus ッ once you finish learning the meaning of the kanji in rtk 1 move on to rtk 2

[@roberth1328]

My reference kanji book is called "Japanese Kanji and Kana" published by Tuttle. It goes over quite a lot about kana, pronunciation of Japanese sounds, stroke order, radicals and then shows the 2136 joyo kanji. It also gives up to 5 compound words per kanji.

[@GingerGaiden]

He thought it looked like a kids book? The design of the book is what drew me in at 25 years old! I've had fun for the first time learning kanji using your books. Just thought you should know!

[@matthewdavis9437]

Back after a while. KKLC is 100% a course. Read the intro at least if you're gonna review a book. It can be used as a reference book, but you're wrong and I find your lack of effort to accurately review the content says a lot.

[@Elpolloloco52]

Heisig chose the keyword "I" for 吾 (われ) because that is literally all that Kanji ever means. It was a Classical Chinese word for "I" (they had several). It seems that in most contexts it is interchangeable with 我 (われ) (which, incidentally, is also the primary Mandarin Chinese word for I). For 私( わたし), he chooses the keyword "private" because that is the actual meaning of the kanji in most contexts outside its use as a pronoun (and it comes to mean "I" *because* and as an extension of of its real meaning, private). You will very quickly learn that 私 is the main way (though not the only) way of referring to oneself in Japanese, and you don't need Heisig to tell you that. Not what he's trying to do. His only goal, as he states clearly from the outset, is to teach you how to write the kanji, and their basic meanings. His idea is that this should be done *before* you actually start learning Japanese, not as a *part* of learning Japanese (if that makes sense).

[@joseamezola6280]

Andrew Scott Conning, who wrote The Kanji Learner's Course, also has a series of readers that give you a lot of practice in reading words in context that use the kanji that you learn. He also had a very affordable workbook (like $9 with shipping included) that allows you to practice writing all the kanji. If you use all of these resources combined then it is more like a course.

[@intesarnur5200]

Heisig method is used in the ajatt method. There are different ways to approach languages. But the whole point is to learn the meanings then learn the readings. The readings usually come with the context in Japanese as the kanji reading keeps changing depending on context.

[@citronmonet294]

"You absolutely have to learn kanji, but it shouldn't be the sole measure of how great you are." 😅

[@bobbob6252]

"The idae of Remembering the Kanji is completely just to learn the meaning of the characters" Then you have misunderstood this book, I must say. It actually is a method that leverages 3 main principles that will make memorizing 2,000 kanji much easier and quicker. 1) It orders the Kanji in an order that makes learning the the easiest and fastest. 2) It will not teach readings or a list of meanings because what matters when creating a new memory for a kanji is how it looks and *one* unique keyword for mental reference sake. 3) Teaches how to use mnemonics to make the visual memorization (in combination with point 1) much easier and long term. I mean we can argue for days, but I already finished this book in 26 days and have all those kanji memorized by heart, and am able to recognize and write down any of them. It just works. It did it for me and many others. Please do not mislead thousands of learners who might have had a much better journey studying kanji by using RTK.

[@sagefields5847]

I don't believe for a second you have memorised them and can write them all down in 26 days. Delusional at best.

[@anichanzu1128]

@@sagefields5847 Look into ajatt lmfao

[@Ryodakun]

I agree. But 26 days? Really? Most people take between 3-5 months. How did you do it in 26 days?

[@Real_LiamOBryan]

@@Ryodakun It is very doable. For a time I was doing around a hundred a day. That only lasted about 11 days for me. I made it to the 1100 mark that way. The problem is, your retention goes way down. In my case, my retention dropped from 85%-95% all the way down to 45%-55%. Another issue is that, to maintain your knowledge, and solidify the rest that you haven't learned well, you have to review in Anki for a long time after that with tons of cards per day. You can't spend more than a second or two per card. On the upside, you can either drop the reviews, and use learning vocabulary with those kanji as a means of remembering them, or you can just forget about remembering them altogether. This is fine since the book will have completely demystified the kanji for you. For example, I've only ever learned how to recognize and write 1100 kanji; however, any time I see some similar kanji that I don't know, I can easily tell the difference between them and I can memorize them very easily. I feel that I could move to something like the Kanji in Context book and very easily learn their ~2100 kanji and ~9500 vocabulary.

[@Real_LiamOBryan]

@@sagefields5847 I learned 1100 in 11 days at 100 a day. I can't remember them because I did it years ago and dropped learning Japanese altogether; however, it is entirely possible. See my comment below for how.

[@olivermiller2013]

Why are you not more honest and title your video, that you are talking about your book? Take the title and talk only about it. Sorry, but this video could be far better.

[@jakellaneta5991]

Do you guys also heard that long fart😂

[@PrinceOfTheFlies]

17:13

[@aleksandraswiatek5809]

Is the "updated" version of Kanji from Zero out yet?

[@jasperpetronella]

The reason they say “copula” rather than that it's just “to be” is because “to be” in English (and a lot of European languages) can also be used for adjectives (“She is smart”), whereas “copula” just means the ability to express equivalence or categorization (“She is a Chinese person”), so they intend to make a distinction. Since Japanese, Korean and Chinese for example don't use the same word to cover all of these functions, their “to be” words _only_ function as copulas, unlike the English one. But I agree; using the word in itself doesn't help people understand it unless they study linguistics. Too often people who write educational texts don't realize this.

[@catherinebutler4819]

The (green) complete guide to kanji *doesn't* give stroke order, by the way! It does give some of the history behind each kanji, though, which is interesting and sometimes useful in helping remember them, I find.

[@Arctagon]

To someone who's studied linguistics, terms like ‘copula’ can be useful, but they should definitely be avoided in books meant for the general public. Such terms should be reserved not to books attempting to teach you the language, but books about the language.

[@ManFinest]

Most people don't study linguistics.

[@Kakashi-Usagi]

I don’t have your book but I love your layout. I also hate walls of text, and like how you separate bits into boxes. I also love that you teach in the order that Japanese people learn in at school. And it’s true that your books are actual workbooks not referencing books, so obviously they help teach. I think making stories with each element of the kanji is super helpful for me and many others. But when I learn vocabulary often my struggle is remembering the readings so I extend the mnemonic idea to readings. For example, 任せる まかせる I think ‘I entrust MY CASTLE (makaseru) to you’. And yes I think people who write Japanese books either aren’t native English speakers or are native and are heavily into linguistics and grammar. I think they don’t realise often native English speakers don’t learn grammar terms and structures, so explaining things grammatically makes it really difficult for English speakers. It’s better to explain grammar in an easy to understand way. I really want to buy your book!

[@moorooster223]

in defense of "the complete guide to japanese kanji," I actually liked the "wall of text". I have an interest in the history of writing and language so I read the beginning part about the different scripts and how the modern japanese writing system evolved and such. I also enjoyed the history lesson beside each kanji character in the book. furthermore although I did have to coach myself for the most part, I learned the first 240 kanji (the amount in your book) in just a few days from purchasing it. probably for most people it feels incomplete or too open ended or as you say like a reference guid, but for me using it plus pencil and paper is perfect.

[@CrouchingShiba]

I like George and am very careful about criticizing him but this video does a HUGE disservice to RTK (which has helped me and scores of others immensely.) I don't know where George stands today on this issue but saying RTK is a waste of time because it doesn't teach readings is either ignorant or malicious and self-serving. George himself has said many times that you should not learn readings out-of-context without actual words. RTK is a fool-proof way to safeguard against this. It's the most logical first step in learning kanji, that's it. I'm confident that someone who goes through a course like RTK is far more proficient in writing and understanding kanji than someone who does a book like Kanji from Zero. The readings are learned next, in context of words within full phrases, just as George has recommended numerous times. I wouldn't jump in randomly and cause drama but I can't take baseless criticism of a tried and tested system that has helped numerous people, including myself. There are also those on Japanese learning boards who recommend not doing RTK because it teaches you to WRITE, which in their opinion is a useless skill because of computer keyboards which use kana. If you have 6 months or a year to learn Japanese for whatever reason then sure, go ahead and do just the most important stuff. If you want to have a deeper learning of the language then you better f***ing learn how to write. How would you like to wake up one day and not be able to write in your native tongue. Do you want to feel like an ignoramus asking strangers for guidance when you're asked to fill out the simplest form? I can't get past people recommending illiteracy (because that's what not knowing how to write is) on a forum made for the specific purpose of making people literate. BTW, I know George recommends you learn how to write too. This part of the comment was just a general defense of RTK.

[@koopanique]

The "Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji" is more than a reference book; it's a book that gives an introduction to the ethymology of EACH SINGLE jouyou kanji. It's very interesting if you're interested in the characters themselves, but it's not meant to have you "remember" the kanji, unlike what is unfortunately stated on the cover. It does have a mnemonics for each kanji, but for this you're better off using RTK (Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig). RTK on the other hand, IS a book that can get you through all of the jouyou kanji in a few months. Only the meanings though; not the readings. But having a "feel" as well as a single keyword for all the jouyou kanji is invaluable in my experience. Btw J. Heisig is definitely alive, when I finished RTK I sent him an email and he answered me :)

[@koopanique]

@Bianca Donzelli Hello, it doesn't have stroke order, and it has kunyomi and onyomi but written in romaji. It does have meaning in English. In this book, the mnemonics are a single sentence for each kanji that contains the keywords of the elements that the kanji is made of. The idea is that you just have to remember the sentence to remember all the elements. But the mnemonics are not very good, again the book is not made to help you learn kanji, it's just a book that gives the (estimated) etymology for each jouyou kanji. It's not a learning book, even if it's quite interesting. I don't know why they tried to add mnemonics.

[@volundrsigdag3456]

You should use RTK together with textbook, Anki and grammar explanation book. When you already know the character, it easier to remember the reading, it comes naturally. Instead of remembering all the readings whole day, you can move forward and learn new words. Sorry for my English...

[@ManFinest]

Doesn't that mean we still have to learn the meaning of the word and the pronunciation?

[@user-hs8uw4hn3n]

@@ManFinest For me it gets easier to remember how to write the words. Like, if you already have in your mind that this kanji (仕) means serve and this (事) means thing, instead of trying to remember how to write the kanjis and confusing the elements, how many strokes it has and if you write like this or like this, if you just put in your mind that the word "work" (仕事- し•ごと) is written with the kanjis "serve" and "thing" it gets easy to write 仕事 , mainly because in this book the meaning brings you instantly to the elements that forms the kanji. And also, when you see a word you don't know, with kanjis you know, you think like "Oh, this word is made with THESE kanjis". Idk if you understood what I meant and sorry for my english lol but is basically this, you're not gonna use only this book, after finishing it, you learn the words that uses the kanjis

[@Sndcbr]

Just started watching your videos. I've noticed that your brand is "Japanese from zero" but all your series seem to start with book one. What's up with that? ;) Just kidding, but love the videos!

[@TUFF93ryley]

Is there like a cat in the back ground, what's that sound?

[@mz0g]

i have IBS. did i really need to be reminded of stomach gurgles throughout a whole freaking kanji video?

[@gamingbeast6629]

Looool I thought they were coming from my cat. Jesus

[@jillustration]

....... you completely and utterly missed the whole point of the Heisig method but ok. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[@WelcomeToHorrorville]

Jill Andersen what was the point, I’m not being funny at all by asking this question I genuinely want to know because I am considering hard on. Using RTK.

[@jillustration]

WELCOME TO HORRORVILLE. No worries, I’m happy to try and explain. Im probably gonna have to cut this into several replies because this is gonna get a bit long 😅 this is part 1 So, one the most common criticism with Heisig is often that you learn seemingly useless (rare/uncommon) kanji throughout the book (but especially early on) while extremely commonly used ones like the kanji for taberu (to eat) doesn’t show up until you’re already like 1000 kanji in. The complaints are, that it takes a long time (3 months if you manage 20 kanji a day on a regular basis, which, let me tell you now, you probably won’t) and that you don’t learn the most common kanji earlier and that you can’t use heisig in combination with regular Japanese studies BECAUSE of that weird order. Another common complaint is that some of the keywords are very similar in meaning or synonyms and Leads to confusion when revising, and that some of them aren’t even the main meaning of the kanji or seem slightly off. This is all true. But, here comes the big BUTT 😏

[@jillustration]

(2) As explained in literally the introduction of the book, the kanji are arranged in a very specific order in order to facilitate learning and retaining them ALL. and this is the crux here, the end goal is to learn all 2500 ish jouyou kanji plus the few extra you get sprinkled in for reasons I’ll explain, within the (when you think about it) extremely short period of time of 3 months. Not the 500 most used, not the 1000 most used, no, the entire official jouyou kanji list. Something that takes people who try and do it conventionally YEARS, if they ever truly achieve fluency at all. That’s the goal. ALL of them. In a crazy short amount of time. The „problem“ people are having is that it can be quite exhausting and feel like you’re going nowhere when working through the book, because it takes so long and you cannot yet DO anything with the ones you do know because the order in which you learn them is not that of regular textbooks, and you’re not learning any of the readings, only their meanings, so you can’t even practice reading Japanese or use your gained kanji in any other way than be excited that you recognise a few in anime now (I actually love that part 😂 ) Basically, you gotta finish RTK once you start or it’ll essentially be a huge waste of time. Because the goal is all or nothing.

[@jillustration]

(3) Now why the order is so weird: Heisig explains this also in the introduction. Basically he threw out the conventional order of learning them by „difficulty“ level OR by „usage frequency“ in favour of the order in which they are easiest to learn, because every kanji you learn is based on elements you have ALREADY learned, a method that basically boils down to „stacked learning“. You learn very simple and easy to retain ones first with the help of imaginative mnemonics that make a story and vivid picture in your head (which is btw by now scientifically proven to be the most effective way of retaining something. Unless of course you have aphantasia, then this will be virtually useless, sadly) Each new kanji gets a key word, which will for now be your „definition“ of the kanji. Some are pictographs, some require just remembering them, but those first ones are easy because they’re very simple and you will see them so often it’s actually hard to forget them, trust me. Then based on those elements, those building blocks so to speak which you now have in your tool box, RTK presents you with all the kanji you can „make“ with the elements now in your possession. For example very early on you learn 日 (day/sun) and 目(eye) which then a couple of lines later leads us to learning 冒(risk) which is made up of the sun above an eye - pretty sure you can already see a story forming in your head of how to remember “risk” in connection with these two elements. So bit by bit your library of building blocks (primitives, Heisig calls them) gets bigger and bigger and before you know it, you’ll be seeing kanji like 激(violent) and 雌(female) and not only immediately recognise their individual elements & know how to make a story to remember it but also automatically know the stroke order without having actually written it once. This btw, is also why some more uncommon kanji are mixed in, because they’re useful as “primitives” or “building blocks” for other, much more common kanji! That’s the magic of Heisig.

[@jillustration]

(4) Now the point that dear George here completely missed is that, yes, you don’t learn any readings or more than one meaning. Why? Because the goal here is not to teach you Japanese, its to get the most difficult part of the journey TO learning Japanese out of the way first which is learning to recognise and write the kanji. It’s reducing the information so much that you can very very quickly learn a vast amount of characters. And why this makes perfect sense is this: I’m gonna borrow the words of another youtuber here (Matt vs Japan - check him out btw, he’s reached near native level speaking fluency (I say „near“ only because he wants to sound completely native and that’s a bit crazy because pitch accents... he’s for all intents and purposes, fluent on a native level) and he makes a ton of informative videos about how he did it. He comes across a tad douchy and arrogant in some of his videos (especially the older ones) but he’s still a very good learning method resource in my opinion) anyway, what you’re doing with RTK is essentially creating a very simple “dictionary entry” in your brain, for every jouyou kanji . Kaji + keyword, that’s it. No readings no connotations. BUT the reason this is so valuable is because it is MUCH much easier for our brains to ADD additional information to “already existing dictionary entries” than to create highly complex new ones.

[@CaptainWumbo]

Why do you dislike the meaning for 吾？"I" is exactly what it means. An electronic dictionary will show you plenty of kanji compound words where it means that. 吾子 my child. It's part of the common use kanji, that's why it's in the book. One of the very nice things about streamlining learning the kanji this way is that heisig's keywords pretty much always find the right kanji if you look it up in an electronic dictionary. So it's much less tedious looking up words you don't know. Otherwise you have to count strokes or look through 50 words that start with a particular radical... It's hot garbage. Naturally once you know a reading or two you can just type it, but it is an exercise in frustration before that if you have to look up more than two words.

[@mbwelsh]

One of the best arguments I have heard (because yes, I did want to learn kanji in grade order thinking it would start off easy and get harder), was that we are not elementary students in Japan, so we shouldn't learn like they do. We are adults with a much larger vocabulary. Please don't take to heart that one star review with the argument "that's not how they teach it in Japan". You are not teaching Japanese children in Japan. The majority of us are English speaking adults. I do believe that Heisig does denote which of his Kanji are not real. The newer volumes of your references kinda makes me feel like you lack credibility...my versions of these books are older and look used. Yours look like you just got them for the purpose of this video. And that wall of text, is actually pretty interesting and a lot of times tells you what you need to know to be successful in using the book. Basic Kanji book should have been one of the books you reviewed...instead of your own. :\

[@TUFF93ryley]

I started reading RTK because I've seen people who are able to read Japanese after reading it (Although not Japanese names or Hiragana Obviously). But yea most of the time you probably are not going to be writing Japanese and been able to speak and comprehend Japanese is far more usable for most people. I'm personally really liking remembering the kanji as it's filling in the gaps when reading. I really like your books as well, but I often find it hard to remember the long lists of words you have in your books with out any mnemonics or context learning. But again I really like your books as well.

[@kittychobit]

The reason why RTK is popular is because it doesn’t teach useless informative since kanji have many meanings and sayings. It teaches you how to read kanji like a Chinese student would. Chinese Japanese learners already know how to read and write the kanji, they invented it. So the only thing Chinese leaners have to do is learn the new readings which they can read book with furigana to do. It take the pressure and stress of of kanji that some books don’t know how to do.

[@jamesvalderhaug5915]

Heisig has segmented the learning process intelligently. Book One has the Meaning and Book Two has the Readings. It is incredibly efficient and will accelerate your absorption and recognition of Kanji.

[@asuka-ryo]

@Creeps MaPasta why are you so mad though 😂

[@greeniris17]

Any update on when Kanji from zero 2 will be out?

[@tyran370]

RTK method looks stupid because it seems like it adds an extra step in between, and some of the keywords are a bit off (a side effect of requiring a unique keyword for every kanji), but for me the method was BY FAR the fastest way to memorize lots of kanji (took me about 2 months). The key is it lets you recognize them easily and not get confused with similar looking ones. It's hard to review this book without having experienced it yourself. I do not recommend the second part however. Better to learn readings in context.

[@TalaySeedam]

Haven't you read 「吾輩は猫である」, how it's possible you don't know 吾.

[@jholotanbest2688]

I can go through RTK 1 with my horrible memory in about 250 hours, which is not that much. After that, I can learn Japanese like any other language. When I learn a new word I memorize how to say it, what it means and how to write it just like when learning English.

[@chJohnJobs]

Personally i love the "kids" style, it feels SUPER warm and welcoming

[@bestrafung2754]

I've always found things that are child friendly also good for adults because they will be welcoming and go through everything step by step. Some people are too afraid of looking at anything like that for some reason. It's beneficial for people of ALL ages.

[@albertokruger1253]

Best teacher EVER!!! You are helping me a lot to study japanese!!!

[@Ignas_]

"漢字を理解" seems perfectly fine to me. Pretty much any sentence in Japanese can be turned into an attributive (adjective-like) clause and/or drop almost all grammar words.「漢字を理解（するのために）Kanji Learner's Course（です）」 is what it sounds like to me. It's a callout.

[@daolin2607]

1006字の漢字は小学校で使ってました。

[@gristen]

i dropped out so take this with a grain of salt but i majored in english in college and have never heard the word copula in my life

[@matthewdavis9437]

"How many stroke orders they have" Every kanji has one stroke order, but usually multiple strokes.

[@jamespower4480]

There are other books that go along with the Kanji Learners Course, including a writing practice book and reading practice books that use the kanji in the order you learn them from the main book, I think the first reading practice book is about $1

[@DavidJohnson-qs9mk]

Right. The Green workbook is terrifi, both for writing practice and fast review. Also, very importantly, there are several workbooks with sentences available on iOS, keyed to the KLC main book, meaning the sentences use kanji already learned.

[@foxheals]

i agree honestly. i have ur book, and after i read a lesson (covering 7 or so kanji each) i feel like i can actually use them right away. when book 2 comes out i plan on pre-ordering (assume it comes out before I'm senile and cant learn).

[@LordKniife01]

I love RTK. And it's okay if other people don't like it. Everyone use other learning methods, those who seems the best working for them. All good and fun. But yeah, RTK is really good in teach you over 2000 Kanji in an relativ easy way. I started learning the kanji not a month ago, but i already know easily over 100 of them just from my memory (and i can write them). Yes, i can't read most of them yet, but knowing the Kanji + a meaning (key word) really helps in this process later on. I already know the Kanji and a english meaning, adding more information to this knowledge is not hard as learning it from 0 (no pun intended). When i'm finished with RTK in maybe 3-4 Months, i literally know any important Kanji and this knowledge will help me so much with the rest of learning japanese. And i don't think it's much more work for the brain to remember these storys. For some reason its really easy for the brain and no extra efford, that's why RTK is such a great method to >Remember< the Kanji.

[@栗ニコラス]

It feels your are playing the game on easy mode (with your book covering only the first two grades of elementary school) and comparing the scores with others playing expert mode in this review. Maybe going back to this topic after you finish your series would be a better aproach. Making an entire system to learn and make sense of all kanji a là RTK is a totally different thing than trying to replicate a Kanji Kentei series in english. Both aproaches are aimed at totally different audiences (adult vs kids).

[@lastninjaitachi]

I disagree, why would anyone buy a book thats apparently advanced but doesn't even teach the readings, You wouldn't even be able to read the kanji in sentences. If it was such a great method it would be how its taught in Japan, and its not. The Japanese teach it the way his book does, by learning the readings and writing them out, not just remembering a meaning that doesn't teach you to read.

[@derekmaggard9235]

@@lastninjaitachi A very dedicated person can learn to write 2,200 Kanji in about a month along with some meanings... are you seriously suggesting that this carries no benefit? Do Chinese people not have an advantage in learning Japanese, for instance?

[@333Rich33]

@@derekmaggard9235 Although you would be able to write 2200 kanji after that amount of time, how much of that would you retain after a month? A year? From what I see, George’s book tries to go slow and get you to UNDERSTAND the kanji, rather than MEMORIZE the kanji. Since understanding is much more important for conversation than memorizing the kanji.

[@mrl9418]

Yes, kanji 17 means "I." If you're an anime fan, that's the very first word in the opening of Ghost In The Shell, "Reincarnation," the first of those dragged 「あ」 in 吾が舞えば. It's also one of the two kanji in the first word of the title of Natzume Soseki novel "I am a cat." - 「吾輩は猫である」pronounced わがはい。Obviously, its very uselessness burns it into your memory forever 😀 When you will have forgotten even how to order a cup of coffee, you'll still remember this, guaranteed.

[@daithi1966]

It's been a couple years now. When is book 2 coming out?

[@Slakenji]

Remembering the Kanji has actually been the most efficient way for me to learn Kanji personally.

[@lindavel43]

Ok. I've been seeing so many people say this method works. They have four copies of it at the library. I will head there this week to check one out. Do you think this is the type of book you read once or should I buy a copy? Thanks.

[@Slakenji]

Linda Vel I would recommend buying a copy because it takes a minimum of several months to get through it, and you’ll want to constantly use that book as a reference.

[@yoelmarquez5029]

I love it just do it with anki and you are golden

[@yoelmarquez5029]

@Bianca Donzelli it has stroke order and meaning but no kind of pronunciation

[@ericj9011]

I bet you love it when people call Japanese an “agglutinative language“. 😂 Right, KKLC is not a course by itself. It’s a course when combined with the other materials like the green, writing book, the wall poster, and especially the graded readers, 10 volumes of those. So the book is poorly named, but the kanji ordering is good. Still, both it and RTK need to break the kanji into three passes instead of trying to do all of them in one go. Agree that many of the RTK keywords are terrible and don’t connect with the Japanese meeting, while others are completely inspired and perfect. The book gives me the sense that he just got lazy along the way, and decided to publish it before putting enough work into it. I think the basic Heisig method makes sense otherwise - it’s a case of great idea, not so great execution.

[@declan8577]

Remembering the Kanji right at he beginning, 10 a day make 3000 after 300 days. I can then start getting into manga and understand it because I know the Kanji. Reading will teach me vocabulary and grammar, listening and doing sentence cards will teach me to combine the vocab and Kanji.

[@Ki12B]

Didn't you promise some time ago that Kanji From Zero! 2 would come out in 2017? :P

[@PolyglotGeorge]

Yes. I guess it turned out to not be true. It wasn't for a lack of effort. But perhaps not enough effort...

[@Ki12B]

It's alright, better take your time.

[@venomania726]

RTK, in my opinion, is a very good book for westerners learning Japanese or Chinese. The way that memory works, and memory recall works, is that attaching less new information to more old information = you remember things better. So normally when you learn a Kanji, what you're trying to get them to learn is 1; the form of the Kanji (1 kanji form to no previous knowledge), 2; the meaning of the kanji (1 new information of form to 1 old knowledge meaning) and 3; at least 1 reading (1 new information reading to 1 new information form to 1 old information meaning). So you're trying to atach a form to nothing, which therefore means a meaning to nothing and then a reading to a form to nothing. It's an uphill struggle. This is why Westerners struggle so much when they try and learn Japanese over say a Chinese person who already has a ton of form and meaning information in their brain which translates over fine. So the point of RTK is to help you in that aspect, it helps you form in your mind information in the form of bring able to remember the form of a kanji and recall it's meaning. So later on when you learn Japanese and you see the reading for a kanji you're not attaching new information to nothing you go OH! wait i know that kanji it means this, AH so that's how you read it! and you form a much more solid memory. What is meant to happen i believe is you use mnemonics to help you remember the form, a mnemonic in your own language, so you're attaching 1 bit of new information to a lot of old information, words in your own language. In this mnemonic you include the meaning word, so the form is attached to the meaning. Over time as you learn and see the kanji used, and use it yourself the menmonic is no longer needed to recall the kanji and you do it on sheer muscle memory. So that is the purpose of RTK, which is why it makes no sense to include the readings, as that is not what RTK is trying to do. I'm sure you find this true in your studies of Chinese. Do you not find you learn to read chinese characters quite easily now because you know them in japanese? All you're doing is attaching that new sound, or meaning, or both, to a bunch of old information you already have in your mind, either as the form you know or the difference between meaings or similarities, these are all memories that are old information to you. Something most westerners learning Japanese lack, because we have no relatable old information except our native language, hence why RTK is so good. I do agree with you though, forcing menmocis on people is never good. It's always advisable to create your own, again it's about attaching new information to more old, make it something you like and feel attached too. If you lack such talents there are websites like kanji koohi as an example that have tons of user made mnemonics for each RTK kanji. You should be more than able to find at least one you like for each Kanji

[@maiadraconica6488]

remembering the kanji 6th edition is so pretty and shiny, i love purple and its kindof thicc so taking it out of my drawer every day feels very nice.

[@AdamWebbCSEC]

Respect is due to you, man. Great job on your book. Glad you're still working to make it even better.

[@MadAsgardian]

Bills self as polyglot, can't pronounce polyglot.

[@ShelleyCarl]

George! I’ve recently discovered you on KZbin and you are definitely now my Go-to resource for kanji. I ordered your book and did 3 chapters today for my kanji review. I LOVE your style and I’ll continue to go through the whole book. I studied kanji in 1987 and have not kept up with it but recently decided to focus on anti again. THANK YOU for giving me hope!

[@Seawolf159]

If I wanted to pay more, I'd probably have chosen the from zero range. I feel like it could be excellent, but it seems slow and expensive. I decided against it for now and it might bite me. We'll see.

[@PolyglotGeorge]

If I could have crammed all the fun stuff I wanted to teach in one book with all the kanji I would have. Kanji From Zero! isn’t just a data book on kanji with raw facts. It has sections on how kanji is used in Japan’s culture and how it’s integrated in daily life. That unfortunately makes it difficult, for me at least, to put out a book with every kanji in it would be 7,000 pages. :-)

[@orti1283]

9:50 Come on, you can't call this a review when you didn't even read the preface yourself. It's not a course in the conventional way, but it IS pedagogically arranged for studying it sequentially from start to end, it builds everything cummulatively and every vocab example only use characters that have appeared before, helping everything flow seamlessly into your mind. It doesn't impose a given pace, nor imposes a fixed way of studying it (authough it does suggest a detailed method in the preface) so it requires a lot of discipline, but having studied it on its entirety I can give testimony of its effectiveness. I studied it religiously for 4 months and learned almost 90% of its characters, which made my reading ability skyrocket. It's hands-down the best resource ever made to this date.

[@jaakkohintsala2597]

ive bought remembering the kanji series, kodansha's kanji learner's course and your book, and imo remembering the kanji is by far the best out of the three

[@jaakkohintsala2597]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/ipi1pZhspLiifJo here is a video about remembering the kanji by matt vs japan which is also the reason i bought the series

[@PolyglotGeorge]

I am glad you found a book that you like.

[@Elpolloloco52]

@Misa Amane He explicitly states that RTK is between an in-context approach and an out of context approach. To paraphrase, it is doing the minimum of the out of context approach to rid the in-context approach of its flaws. So, basically, you run through the first volume of RTK at whatever speed you can (and that can possibly be extremely fast, depending on your time and motivation--some people do the whole thing in 20 days, 100 kanji per day), then, with the out-of-context learning out of the way, start doing in-context learning exclusively. I don't think he would recommend the second volume of RTK, however. Almost no one does, it seems.

[@Elpolloloco52]

@Misa Amane Perhaps, but the thing that distinguishes it from other out-of-context approaches is that it is highly selective in what it deems necessary to be learned out of context. If we count complete knowledge of a kanji as understanding of it's written form, meaning(s), and a set of readings, Heisig only really teaches you half of that, by design. The half that he teaches you is out-of-context. The half you're supposed to learn on your own is in-context. Basically, I get what you're saying, but regardless of whether the book itself is entirely out-of-context, the way you use it to actually learn the kanji (as defined above), or the "Heisig method" as people call it, is by necessity an in-between approach. Note that I am intentionally excluding the second book and Heisig's recommendations for learning the readings from this, because nobody uses it, and the "Heisig community" has by and large developed its own way of using Heisig to learn the kanji.

[@Elpolloloco52]

@Misa Amane The idea is that in-context learning is far superior to out-of-context learning (and, regarding WaniKani, learning vocab with the Kanji is still out-of-context-your point about KKLC is fair though). And yet some out-of-context learning is still necessary. To what extent is a matter for debate; RTK definitely takes a minimalistic approach to how much out-of-context learning is necessary. Anecdotally, I have heard from several people who did not use Heisig to learn the characters that all their friends who did use Heisig are a lot more fluent at reading. There may be some survivorship bias here (because Heisig, the way most people use the method, is pretty boring). I personally picked it up because I have been learning Chinese informally for two years, learned about 500~600 hanzi in the process, and when I started learning Japanese, found out that words where I already knew the characters I memorized basically instantly, while words where I didn't know the characters took me significantly more time (like four times as long, with a lot of later failures to recall them). Heisig does have some drawbacks, of course (for one, a lot of his mnemonics are meh, or only work if you're quite well educated/cultured). But so far as achieving the stated goal (which is to learn how to write and to attach some kind of meaning to each kanji, and that only), Heisig is basically the best option available. If that goal is not in line with your own goals or understanding of how Japanese should be learned, or doesn't fit with your own learning style or particular situation, then by all means don't use it. Use what works for you. And obviously, if you've started one way and it's working for you, finish it. The benefits of consistency are far better than trying to find the "ideal" way of learning kanji. But if Heisig's stated goals align with your own, then there is simply no better method than Heisig.

[@xTYYSHx]

At what point in learning to speak Japanese should you learn Kanji? Mainly going with your course, I am currently working through JFZ Book 1 and I was curious if I should study Kanji hand in hand or wait a little until I can understand/speak basics.

[@yvindskjnhaug3245]

I'm one year late, but I am in book three and I am going to start learning kanji now. That's the order George wanted anyway. The books start including kanji in JFZ book 3.

[@jonarbuckle]

I own the first book he reviewed, and the wall of text isn't that bad. It really just gives an insight on the history of kanji and how it's written.

[@Bopsterjazz]

I just saw another review where the guy said he hated that, but I'm a "story" nerd and would love something like that.

[@lelionmusic]

吾 is a real kanji though and is actually in the jinmeiyou kanji list, ranked 1828 of the most frequently used kanji in newspapers according to jisho.org. Why should you not learn that? Also, RTK2 is generally not regarding as a central part of the heisig approach, the thing is to just learn all the meanings and how to write kanji, then start learning vocabulary words and other things, and you will pick up the readings naturally.

[@mz0g]

yep. you "learn" kanji through words. it's completely dumb to open a kanji guide and retain onyomi and kunyomi readings. you learn kanji in context through vocabulary. RTK is just the first starting block before delving into kanji.

[@MercuryRain]

I feel like RTK is the most divisive topic in all of Japanese. It's really just a love-it-or-hate-it method. I personally despise it and wonder how the hell anyone could learn anything from it, but I know some people who swear by it. I bought the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary and use WaniKani primarily for kanji readings and meanings, and then I used your books for learning how to write them.

[@jacobmorgenstein6788]

You need a shower

[@ffelegal]

Do you intend to continue the KanjifromZero series?

[@PolyglotGeorge]

yes. book three work will come after I finish these revisions. Kanji From Zero! book 3 is already maybe 65% done.

[@SogonD.Zunatsu]

I think Matt vs Japan's approach is good, from the start you learn hiragana and katakana, then with anki you learn the meaning, and only the meaning of the 1000 most recurrent kanji. That way you can actually start learning real japanese and not rely on crutches like romaji or hiragana writings of words which always see in kanji. It's easier to learn vocabulary when you already know somewhat the kanji, and since there are a lot of phonymes in Japanese, the visual aid that the kanji bring is essential to remembering vocab. From then on you actually learn vocab through sentence cards with anki, and read grammar rules on the side. After you acquired some vocab, time to ingest the language through books, shows, anime with Japanese subtitles or no subtitles at all. It's important to not have your native language or a language you understand interfere with the one you're trying to learn, or you'll focus on it, especially if you don't more than one language yet.

[@lucasmendonca7038]

i wish there was a portuguese (brasilian) edition, it would help a lot

[@SeanORaigh]

The Kanji reference and learning app I use lists 吾 as I but also makes it clear that it's uncommon and it's usage as I is archaic.

[@samuelwu3944]

中国人にとって、漢字は大体七年うちにマスターできることです。あまり苦しいものではないと感じます。でも、これに比べて、漢字の学習は欧米人にとってそんなに酷いものになるのは、すこし驚きます。

[@karinbohl7849]

Thank you George for your from Zero books. 🔝🔝🔝They really help me learning from scratch while all the other methods e.g Genki or even Minna no nihongo are far too difficult for a self-student beginner 😅

[@RobertEddyOfficial]

some someting purring or singing a im mad song?

[@vesper7750]

Robert Eddy what

[@456qsn4]

日本人天天砍鸡？！

[@adambraun1990]

あの本は「漢字を覚える」が絶対に大嫌いですね。私の意見に悪いシリーズです。

[@JDMred]

Hello, you talked about the meat radical but i contradict to your opinion. It looks exactly like the way meat is preserved in traditional way. Like ham hanging in a smoking chamber, to dry out. Best regards Drazen

[@andynewman7103]

交渉 I remembered that :)

[@Ihatemyusernamemore]

When i was 17 i was sad about not being able to read everything i could say in Japanese. When i was 18 i used that Heisig book to learn 2000 kanji meanings and writings in 2 months and stopped being sad

[@PolyglotGeorge]

And by "read" you mean you knew how to pronounce the characters? Or could you just understand the meaning of the characters? Did you actually do book 2 or 3 in the RTK series to learn the readings?

[@Ihatemyusernamemore]

Polyglot George I did do the second book, but the second book only taught the Onyomi and many people on the forum I was on say "do RTK 1 and RTK 3, learn the readings through encountering the character in the wild" I did find that the Kunyomis came too. What it looked like was once I knew the writings I felt all confident. Bear in mind, I already knew some Japanese so a lot of the readings I already knew, but what was more common was learning a new Kanji would show me that that was a whole word/concept I didn't know in Japanese. Like I'd learn how to write "chase" and then i'd learn "Tsui" from the book 2 along with a word like "Tsuiseki" and then I'd learn "ou" from seeing it in the wild. So what I found is it got me into reading an it helped me know which words I didn't know, if that makes sense, and it helped me learn them real fast, this also positively impacted my speaking cause like when you read you can see a whole immaculate japanese sentence on wiki or somewhere like Harry Potter and then when you need to express a similar idea in conversation, it sort of "comes out" The whole thing with learning writings and meanings, then readings is it's just small chunking, taking a big hard task "learning a kanji, it's writing and its readings and vocab" and breaks it down into smaller easier tasks for maximum efficiency. I get what you mean in this video when you say mnemonics can be time consuming but what you lose in time it takes to learn the Kanji you gain back tenfold in terms of the likelihood of remembering the character later.

[@themasked_senshi4521]

Is it really that good ?

[@Slakenji]

TheMasked_Senshi Yes it really is the best way to tackle Kanji that I know of. I highly recommend you watch Matt vs. Japan’s video on Remembering the Kanji, it explains everything better than I can.

[@Raimalon]

Slake And I highly recommend that after you watched Matt‘s video, you dig a little bit deeper to learn about all the misinformation that is provided in his video, instead of blindly believing every word he says.

[@kuroichan101]

Ive been wondering if I should even get a kanji book because I felt like I could just learn kanji as a learned new words but I was considering it anyway. This video was pretty helpful PS I hate when books, videos, etc try to teach just the meaning of a kanji and not readings, etc because I dont even know what to do with that information.

[@user-ws8pq8cd2j]

yeah! The Kanji from Zero 1 book teaches you like 1500 words as you learn 240 kanji, so i definitely recommend this book to you. i love it and it is super helpful. goo luck!

[@wohienie]

Love the Korean from Zero books, haven't tried the Japanese yet.

[@JezzmanGAMES]

I'm just gonna drop my comment over here. I'm using RTK as a supplement to my Japanese university studies. So I learn everything at once. It just sucks that the kanji we need to learn, aren't in the order of the book. Because we also have to know On & Kun yomi, what I'm finding to be helpful is adding a "common word" or a "JLPT-N3-or-higher word" for each reading (on+kun). If there are multiple readings, I take maximum 2 On + 2 Kun (most-used). We'll see how it goes. I agree that you should learn how to read or pronounce the kanji at the same time. At least learn 1 word for every kanji. But I wouldn't know, I'm just a learner, not a teacher (yet). EDIT: And I just saw this is a 2 year old video. But I still stand behind my words. :)

[@Rufiowascool]

By the way George - it's PolygLot, with an L, not Polygot as you say several times in this ;-)

[@shubethune5748]

Kanji -English word secret connection is revealed in my book.兄兑阅悦脱税, "The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course: A Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering 2300 Characters" explains 脱 as a brother 兄...flesh 月 exposed. So are 阅,悦. That is farfetched. 脱 and 兄 have no semantic relation...

[@yoelmarquez5029]

I only got rtk to follow ajatt since you only need the meaning then you start sentences

[@politicalsamarai2567]

What's your process for learning a language? Like what are you doing now to learn Chinese?

[@Freak80MC]

Didn't even know you had this channel!

[@muattaromonova7874]

Hi.can I find pdf version all of kanji books

[@CrimsonKnightmare1]

I already bought RTK i guess i fucked up

[@PolyglotGeorge]

Well you should know MANY MANY people swear by this book. Go talk to the guy running Nukumarine channel on KZbin, he will help you a lot with RTK.

[@khaledalsafadi4448]

Iam not finding the new version

[@roseanastasiabig4509]

your books are too expensive

[@warrenlfrank]

I tried to learn Japanese from a primarily verbal / speaking type teaching course and was not that successful , My wife is Filipina who is pretty much fluent in English ('Tagalog' is considered the main national language of the Philippines). For years she told me she could read English better then speak it. I have also heard this from other's whose native language is not English. Therefore I have decided to learn Japanese from a course that firstly teaches it from a written approach which it seems will make it easier to then be able to ACTUALLY speak it . I have listened to your course and your teaching method is the best I have seen so far. You are correct in saying the books you reviewed are more dictionaries and reference books than workbooks to learn the language, especially for beginners. I enjoy your videos and your approach to learning Japanese as well.

[@ThinkForward0]

Please share your book in UAE 🇦🇪 stores there are a lot of people who want to learn Japanese but ordering from amazon isn't an option because the delivery is too expensive

[@JJerseyGirl]

I am trying to learn Japanese I do not have time to take classes, so I like having my handheld and I am an adult.

[@SunWarrior155]

I'd really appreciate a review of the "Kanji Study" app. I'm not sure if there's an iOS version, but it's out for Android.

[@jklaxon]

hi, which is the better ?

[@shahmareo]

Hey George! I think Heisig's is pretty awesome for someone who already knows a lot Japanese vocabulary. For example someone who has studied both the Genki textbooks (only the grammar sections) has learnt like 1500 words, if this person goes on to study Heisig's and learns all the Kanji, they'll be able to guess how to read a lot of them. Like, they learn the meaning of this character 飲 is "to drink", through Heisig's, and they already know that the Japanese word for to drink is Nomu. Secondly, it seems like your only problem with Heisig's is having to buy 2 books, are you worried about people having to spend twice the money? Who cares, the knowledge they'll be gaining will be priceless. If you study both Book 1 and 2 side by side or simultaneously, Heisig's is brilliant source for studying Kanji.

[@JishinimaTidehoshi]

Kanji Learner's Course also has mnemonics like Heisig's but it includes the readings and vocabulary. Kanji Learner's book is far SUPERIOR in my humble opinion!!!

[@PolyglotGeorge]

I think book 1 could have had the readings. Without them it is incomplete. I am aware many people love RTK, but many also don’t. Neither is wrong, they just have differing opinions.

[@Buenanueva1]

I love your Kanji From Zero book because of the workbook style of activities.

[@davidnguyen9799]

JapaneseFromZero(channel,books) rlly help me so much thx ~~

[@christineemata9465]

Is kanji from zero available in japan bookstores?

[@TUFF93ryley]

It feels like you could easily connect meat to raising because one of the examples in also growing or raising kids and you could connect this to raising live stock or meat.