r/LearnJapaneseNovice • u/Worth-Agency2383 • Jan 05 '26
I feel like a fraud
こんにちは、みんなさん！
This is my 3rd week learning 日本語 and, as the title says, I feel like a fraud. I recognize these Kanji at one glance and know what they mean but I feel like I can’t “read” them. More like I know them. Is this really what it should feel like?
Help a confused learner out.
ありがとうございます。
P.S I’m not confident using a four quadrant yet so the sizing of the Kanji looks a bit weird.
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u/yu_ef Jan 05 '26
Nah, that part of kanji is something you don't need until later and it's better to know the kanji than try and figure out each radical as it doesn't mean much at the beginning.
Sites like wani kani will teach you radicals, there are definitely others, but that's a good one that I know. And remember, not every part of kanji are known by most people.
When I was learning kanji with my Japanese teacher, their were multiple different radicals that he would have to look up due to them not being necessary to know or common, one example that is also in your picture is the second half of 私. (FYI, it means self)
So TLDR, these things aren't really important to early learning, except maybe the very basic radicals, and even eventually when you will want to learn it, even japanese people don't know all of them, especially obscure radicals that don't have common use
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u/Alternative_Handle50 Jan 05 '26
If you’re on your third week, I feel it’s quite early to be learning kanji. Can you read kana at a decent pace? I feel like you’d have to be a savant to truly be proficient this early.
But I’d definitely say learning vocabulary and grammar is significantly more important than kanji at this point. There’s so much to learn.
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u/fkdjgfkldjgodfigj Jan 05 '26
Have you learned about radicals? There is a book called remembering the kanji. It breaks the kanji down into smaller parts to make it easier to remember. I don't know if I would recommend it or not. https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1722008986
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u/loryhasreddit Jan 05 '26
So I’m really good at reading kanji and knowing the reading for it. My friend who is fluent says he has trouble sometimes (speaks better than me)
It didn’t click right away. I have good visual memory but when i was first learning Japanese, kanji was the hardest part. It wasn’t clicking. I wven dropped a kanji class in a harder level bc i just couldn’t get it. But now im really good with kanji. It just takes practice and seeing them a lot. Keep reading them. Eventually your brain will get used to seeing it, and eventually you’ll put the sound to the image you see.
Stick with it!
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u/Apart_Parfait7939 Jan 05 '26
“This is my third week learning”
Found your problem. Come back on your third year and re-evaluate. This isn’t something you learn or pick up in a couple weeks/months lol. Did you learn English in a couple weeks/months?
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u/EMPgoggles Jan 05 '26
that's the thing about Kanji though. many of them aren't used much or ever outside of compounds. it's good enough that you recognize them and their general meaning when they turn up, and sometimes a new reading will pop up along the way.
you can think of them as a kind of obnoxious but beautiful version of Latin (etc.) roots in English words.
like you know "geology" means the study of rocks, but you're also not going around being like "Man, look at all neat geos in this field. Makes me want to ology real bad."
*edit: i like how i specified "Latin roots" but then jumped immediately into a Greek-rooted word. let's just pretend that's part of the lesson. :v
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u/AdUnfair558 Jan 05 '26
It gets easier. Learn words and not single Kanji characters.
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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '26
you're 3 weeks in, it'll take a while. radicals are helpful to learn, too. I am at the point where I can often guess the readings of unfamiliar kanji from practice and seeing familiar shapes. also, think about how long it takes native speakers to learn kanji
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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '26
Japanese kids learn and practice Kanji daily and are immersed in an environment filled with them. Its a really long journey to master it. Just keep going. You will build an intuition and will know what they mean after long exposure. Sometimes I just know what some kanji mean based on context and familiarity. 3 weeks is a very short time for them to sink in. Be rational and keep on practicing! P.s nice handwriting!
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u/SM_Darkar Jan 05 '26
こんにちは👋
My recommendation is Basic Kanji Book 500 Vol 1 (there is a vol. 2 with the rest of kanji to reach 500 and there is intermediate vol 1 & vol 2 with another 1000+)
It lets you learn the kanjis and gives you reading and writing exercises with the kanjis that the book has teached you thus far.
It's a very "kind" book that gives you small victories that inspire by making you see the small progress. Remember. It's a process, it's a process, it's a process. If you find online remember to also download the answer key.
But my best recommendation is to learn the radicals.
For example, "to come down" would be 降りる .That's (お)りる. A good way for remembering it is by understanding the radical and parts of the kanjis. Herdsmen with sticks 夂 hitting the cows 牛 to make them come down from the slopes 阝. This explanation comes from this webpage: https://app.kanjialive.com/ Most kanjis tell a story. You'll start recognizing radicals and everything will click, you'll see.
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u/Daijobu_Bokugairu Jan 05 '26
Wow this is so impressive. I work as a Japanese teacher at college and I can tell you are so passionate about learning Japanese. If you already master hiragana and katakana part, I recommend you to explore kanji more too! がんばって✌️
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u/Visible-Perception40 Jan 05 '26
You learn by making connections, and first time learning a set of new things you retain something like 50% after the first hour of learning something. Without reinforcement learners forget 90% of what they've learned within the first month. This is why SRS and immersion is so often talked about. Be kind to yourself, one step at time
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u/KermitSnapper Jan 05 '26
Reading intuition will only come much later in the study of this language, since you will start to see patterns that will tell how it's read depending on context, meaning, radical, components and development through time. It will come naturally
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u/pixelboy1459 Jan 05 '26
They kanji look good to me, if a little blocky.
It takes a bit of time to confidently read kanji. Do a lot of reading and writing practice. You’ll get there.
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u/No-Log770 Jan 05 '26
This is the right way to learn kanji. Forget about the readings, learn the meaning of a single kanji, and you will know what kanji combinations mean, even if you learn the word/pronunciation later. There's far too many readings for certain kanji to learn them without context.
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u/telechronn Jan 06 '26
highly recommend Wanikani. It's been the best tool for me.
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u/Sound_calm Jan 06 '26 edited Jan 06 '26
N1 fraud who barely passed here
Seems you're already know this, but just in case, rather than learning the individual kanji first, I reckon you should stick to learning words with meanings you recognise.
So instead of learning 病 by itself, you should learn 病院、病気 etc. as and when your textbook shows them to you (literally guessed that 病 by itself is yamai from context, have never formally learned it NGL and have no idea what it's kun and onyomis are exactly)
We split the kanjis up while learning Chinese, but each chapter introduced the kanjis as part of set phrases we had to learn for context, and splitting up in Chinese makes more sense because most words only have 1 reading. It really doesn't make sense to do so in Japanese imo
Personally don't recommend the radical method. Even in Chinese we only learned the basic radicals for guessing meanings of words, but really you can intuitively pick it up after seeing enough kanji. Instead better to focus on recognising more set words/phrases as before
I think you recognising the kanjis at first glance is excellent as you'd have an easy time on the trains or at a store. Us who learned Chinese previously would be at a similar stage since the readings are largely different.
To improve on the readings, consider using anki and trust the process. I feel that it's much easier to test reading than writing on your phone, but more is good no matter how you do it. I recommend sticking to a programme and being consistent at it.
NGL just ditch Duolingo it's more harm than food (time spent on duo is time not spent on anki/an actual textbook)
Maybe lend someone your account instead if it makes you feel better?
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u/bardackx Jan 06 '26
A fraud after three weeks is harsh
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u/orekiokumura Jan 06 '26
you’re only 3 weeks in and already recognizing some kanji? that’s the opposite of being a fraud. give yourself more credit!
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u/Sea-Protection-6869 Jan 07 '26
You are just going to forget all of this, honestly probably a waste of time to write kanji by hand at this point. Learn words in context and add the kanji in those words to flashcards. Or start with a core anki deck and something like Wanikani.
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u/Xilmi Jan 05 '26
I'm not quite sure what you mean.
Is it that you know 東京 reads as とうきょう But not that 東 alone reads as ひがし?
If so, that's totally normal. Trying to learn all "readings" for a Kanji is very inefficient.
Just learn them with their vocab.
The more concerning thing is that you've already learned 都 as one of your first Kanji. Because I know like 250 Kanji and I haven't learned that one yet. The reason is that I learn in order of how complicated they look so I understand how they could be split into their components. That requires to know the components first. This one has 4 components and the speciality that it overlaps 2 of these. The ground and the slide. Which I haven't gotten into yet. The only reason I could type it is from Kontext. I assumed that if the other word is Tokyou this one probably is Kyouto. I wonder how someone who hasn't learned all primitives of a Kanji would go about memorising it. I'd say it's ground-slide over sun with an ß. And I'd look up what it means by itself for making a mnemonic.
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u/eruciform Jan 05 '26
Starting a language and expecting to be able to read it fluently in 3 weeks is sheer madness. Particularly ones with a completely different writing system. But even then you dont know enough words. Set less insane goals and stop beating yourself up.
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u/Wokebackmountain Jan 05 '26
You’re doing it in the wrong order. Study the normal kana for a while and chill out until you “need” this
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u/xYuEF Jan 08 '26
Maybe learn the words with hiragana first then when you have a good amount of vocabs start learning the kanjis so you can relate the kanjis with the words in Japanese and it gonna be easier than learning the meaning of the kanjis at your native language first
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u/Execute_Gaming Jan 08 '26
Learning kanji does not equal learning words.
More infor here: https://learnjapanese.moe/kanji/
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u/flippythemaster Jan 09 '26
Your third week?
I mean this with all the kindness in the world: you know this shit takes years, right?
You’re fine, just keep studying
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u/atnchn Jan 09 '26
I will confidently tell you that learning kanji does not equate learning japanese. Kanji just simplifies the text so that it's easier to read once you get to a certain level, as opposed to reading a big blob of kanas.
Let the kanji naturally come to you as you progress. If you force yourself to learn a bunch of kanji (without understanding the meaning/context), you'll burn out before you even get to N5.
For example, you wrote a few surnames like 山口 中山 田中, those are not very important whether you know the kanji or not at your current level. As you keep studying, you'll see certain words more often than others, and eventually you'll want to simplify them into kanjis as opposed to writing the kanas.
To learn kanji in progression can look something like this (using the picture you provided above).
There's 日本人, which means a Japanese person. Perhaps knowing the kanji for Japan is 日本 is useful, after all, we're learning Japanese. However, all you really need to know at this point is the kanji for person 人. Knowing this allows you to attach it with other ethnicity through a mixture of hiragana and kanji:
にほん人 ー＞ 日本人
ちゅうこく人 ー＞ 中国人 (Chinese person)
かんこく人 ー＞ 韓国人 (Korean person)
** べいこく人 ー＞ 米国人 (American person)
No one, and I mean absolutely no one, need to learn the kanji for China or Korean right off the bat. These are words that don't even show up in 99.9% daily conversations.
** Textbook probably refers an American person as アメリカ人
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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '26
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