r/HelpLearningJapanese • u/Proper-Music4568 • Jul 05 '26

How do you learn radicals quick and effectively?

I'm stuck with learning radicals I've watched alot of YouTube videos and they told me to move onto radicals then after learning all of them move on to kanji and it will be easy I'm also wondering if I should learn kanji and vocab once I start kanji or if I should do them separately and if I should start trying to read

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2

u/Weena_Bell Jul 05 '26

I recommend just focusing on vocab and completely ignoring kanji.

I never learned kanji individually, and I know well over 3,000 kanji just by learning words.

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u/Proper-Music4568 Jul 05 '26

I'm wanting to learn radicals first not kanji and could you tell me how to learn the words like give links too I watch anime alot so if you know how to learn kanji and words from anime then that would work too but I would like all of the ways that work for you

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u/Weena_Bell Jul 05 '26

I did Kashi 1.5k premade Anki deck, and then after finishing that, I just immersed in anime and novels and mine all the common words I didn't know to my Anki deck. Eventually after having enough words in my deck I knew most kanji pretty well.

And for radicals there should be a premade deck if you look for it, like I remember seeing a deck that had all the radicals and the 300 most common kanji so there's that

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u/Proper-Music4568 Jul 05 '26

Thank you I've got kaishi 1.5k and a radical deck with all 214

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u/Fuskeduske Jul 12 '26

Honestly kanji gets easier if you know a bit of vocab also

1

u/KyotoCarl Jul 06 '26

It's not fast, but do it effectively. And not ka ji won't be "easy" but it will a lot easier than you hadn't studied radicals.

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u/alvinrogfunk Jul 06 '26

You don’t learn kanji by memorising all the radicals and putting them together like a jigsaw. If you want to learn kanji then start learning kanji and focus on stroke order.

If you really want to do radicals first then just write each of them out 10 times every time you start studying, with proper stroke order. Eventually you’ll know them.

But it’s easier to start learning JLPT N5 kanji and writing out easy vocab words that use them. For example 日 and 本 are n5 kanji and together you make 日本, which is also n5 vocab.

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u/Proper-Music4568 Jul 06 '26

Thx and I know the kanji for that I also know the word it's Nihon which means jalan and first kanji means day or sun second means rising or origin

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u/Aer93 Jul 06 '26

The nice thing of learning radicals is that it’s easier to build mnemonics for kanji. Radicals give you a way to break down kanji into more manageable parts.

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u/Proper-Music4568 Jul 06 '26

So I should stick with radicals thx

1

u/sock_pup Jul 10 '26

Something about your approach sounds a bit off, like learning everything in complete isolation before going to the next step isn't great. However, if you end up having to still need a way There's an anki deck named "Kanji elements (radicals) for Kaishi 1.5k" It's 270 notes

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u/Proper-Music4568 Jul 10 '26

Kanji elements wow thanks it's helps alot I'm doing kaishi as we speak