The radicals don't always connect in the sense of meaning such as 頭 head has beans which is thought to make sense by some because heads are beans but it is infact 豆 sound used for the note of onyomi 化可咼加 having ka reading as the radical Seen in 花 for example most reading can be done by learning the 140 phonetic components which often give the reading at an instant With exceptions
As a chinese person who can’t differentiate them for the life of me, THANK YOU, you helped me in ways i never thought was possible, ありがとうございますとても役に立ちました。🤍🙏
Finally, a short and yet very informative lesson about kanji. Not like other youtubers who take 20 minutes to explain something that can be explained in 5.
sometimes i can’t believe i’m doing all of this just to understand and pronounce the “alphabet”! i haven’t even gotten to grammar and vocabulary yet. i could learn spanish, french, and another language in the time i’m taking to learn japanese. but it’s so worth it!!
The Kanji for depression has, until now, honestly given me depression just by looking at it... I was spooked... But now that I know that I can remember the radicals, I might actually have a chance of remembering it... Tho, Ill put it off until I get used to Kanji by remembering the simple ones first... Thanks for the lesson!
I'm a lot more interested in learning Japanese than I was when I tried to learn German and Italian. It makes me more motivated... but oh my gosh, it's so overwhelming. I'm only just starting on kanji and it really feels like I'll never start learning how to speak. It makes my brain so tired, trying to learn it 😭
I understand how you feel! Kanji takes years to learn, even as a Japanese native person! As long as you study 1 or 2 kanji characters a day, you'll be setting yourself on a good schedule. My recommendation for you is to search up "N5 kanji" and start memorizing those. Once that's done, you can move onto N4, N3, and so forth!
subbed. i just finished with learning katakana and hiragana. i was about to start learning kanji... then i found out about radicals... then i found out about kunyomi and onyomi... and now okurigana... wew
I just decided to learn Japanese and got confused immediately about why the apps start teaching Hiragana, with Kanji included in the footnote. Your video from 2 years ago clearly explained all those things. It is super helpful to me. Thank you very much! Best wishes for your current endeavors!
I actually thought I wouldn't understand any of this before clicking but I found this very useful and thank you for your help! I downloaded Kanji learning app and I forgot what was Kuyomi and Onyomi and I was struggling to understand which one to use!
ohh, the more i watch videos about Japanese, the more i worry that I never will be fluent in that. at least i stay motivated to learn. and i just want to find a friend just like me, who is also a beginner and learn together, but there is no one(
I appreciate how you take your time to explain everything! And I appreciate how you broke it down into sections and included important details. Now I know that I learn better when the teacher (or 先生) doesn’t rush, and gives detailed explanations!
Very good video. It seems clear that you have put a lot of work into making this video as good as you can. So far I have put little effort into learning grammar, and before now didn't even know the difference of kunyomi and onyomi, other than there being different readings, even though I've memorized all the kanji up to JLPT N4 and most of their readings/meanings. I haven't learned any radicals either. It seems I have been learning really inefficiently, so I'll learn those radicals and maybe make the next couple of hundred kanjis seem manageable! Person resting under a tree, so simple. I wouldn't have confused the kanji for "rest" with "body" at first I think. The book of a person is the body, it tells a story of how that person has lived.
Amazing!!!!! Loved this video, really helped because I'm quite a visual/audio learner so this has really helped me understand the onyomi/kunyomi thing. I've made so much progress with your resources ;A; Thank you!
best video ever. thank you soo much for mentioning juubako and yutou yomi.ive been searching about that but none of the videos mentioned it. hontoni arigato!! can you please make a video about the juubako and yutou yomi pls, onegaishimasu🙏🥺
thank you for the comment. Like I mentioned in the video, it's not necessary to know kanji radicals as they are simply a pattern you will notice while you study kanji. Just focus on memorizing the kanji in the N4 kanji list which is available to you on the internet. Good luck!
When you learn English (boss lvl 1) : hmm, I became fluent and I bet I can learn anything. Everyone says japanese is difficult... Psss I bet I can learn it in no time. Hiragana (boss lvl 2): easy Katakana (boss lvl 2.5): wtf all those people are dummies, this is a joke Kanji (boss lvl 100000): Sensei was right all along... Also respect for all the kids in japan who have to learn all of this in school
I’m really enjoying this series so far, and it clears up a lot of things that I was confused about before. Also, I have a question: when learning kanji, should I learn radicals first so I have an easier time learning the more complicated kanji? Anyways, ありがとうございます and がんばって Kensei Sensei！٩( 'ω' )و(btw, you’re so cute😳)
Radicals shouldn't be your priority when you study Kanji. It's better to start with simple kanji and as you memorize more, you'll notice the same radicals in the Kanji you learn. When you start noticing these patterns, you should search up what these radicals represent for further reference.
I gotta question🙋🏾♀️🙋🏾♀️🙋🏾♀️. 1.are kanji radicals a word it’s self and have pronunciation for them selfs or they are a meaning for a kanji. 2. Are kanji’s pronounced by hiragana and katakana? 3. This videos helped me out so much brotha thank you🙏🏾🙏🏾. I’m sorry if these question sound stupid cuz ion know😒🤦🏾♀️, but it will help me so much if I would know the meaning to them
1. Not all kanji radicals are words themselves. They only represent some kind of meaning. If you search up "Kusakanmuri" on google, you can see that this radical represents grass but the radical itself is NOT a word. 2. Kanji is pronounced in Hiragana but remember, hiragana and katakana follow the same syllabi, they are just written differently and used differently for different purposes 3. I'm glad you found this video helpful. I will be here to answer any of your other Japanese questions if needed
Do you mean which graphic? You should use a kana chart that shows you the proper columns and rows in Japanese, perhaps with the romaji readings on it as well.
OMG TT THANK YOU SO MUCH. I FINALLY UNDERSTAND TT. i have a question. sometimes a kanji has more than 1 kunyomi/ onyomi right? how do i know which one to use? (if it doesnt make sense, heres an example. so the onyomi of the kanji tree is boku AND/OR moku, which one of the two should i use? or the kunyomi is ki AND/OR ko, which one should i use out of the two?)
There is no rule of knowing when to use the onyomi and kunyomi. You simply have to know the word by memorization. Kind of like how in english we have homophones like “Allowed” and “Aloud”. There’s no rule to the spelling but it’s just written the way it is.
Imma dead , i'm actually first learning grammar , so conjugation wasnt tough for me , it was at the beginning lmao . I dont wanna go to kanji man 🙂🙂 . Btw ! Can u please make a video of n5 radicals . I mean , i hope u understand wht i mean bcoz i dont. Sorry and thankyou . Nice video !
So 日本 means Japan (nihon). These are two Kanji next to each other creating one word. (So one should use the onyomi pronunciation for both). 本 means “hon” in onyomi, so that’s okay. But then 日 would have to be „ni“ in onyomi, but isn’t like that. In onyomi 日 is „nichi“ or „jitsu“. This confuses me because I don’t know where the “ni” comes from. (Even in kunyomi it isn’t “ni”… its “hi, -bi or -ka” there)
actually 日本 is one of the very few exceptions to onyomi and kunyomi because as you said, "ni" is neither an onyomi and kunyomi. Since it's the country's name, it has to do with history and how the name was derived.
@@KenseiSensei Okay so I guess it comes from the onyomi pronunciation "nichi" because it has "ni" in the beginning. (Somehow like a shorter Version of it) But maybe it doesnt have anything to do with that, its just my speculation. Thanks for your answer :) Its nice having a native speaker to ask questions like this. (But sorry for asking so much hehe)
Hello Kensei. I just started learning japanese last week (After starting with your first lesson) and I'm done memorising kana (hiragana and katakana with Dakuon, Handakuon and Yoon variants). What do you think are the next steps in my learning journey?
I've learned Hiragana and Katakanas in 2 weeks with close to no issues, but Kanjis feel quite scary and depressing to learn as a new student. "Daunting" would be the right term. I know that they are actually supposed to make writing something easier and clearer than if you'd just use hiragana and katakanas only, but the frightening part is knowing each one has multiple meanings and there are around 3000 to be learned. Your video clarified some confusion and made me more confident about learning, It's still quite scary though. I will probably have plenty of kanji related nightmares soon enough. @.@ ありがとう ケンセイ センセイ！
Do Conjugations only refer to the tense of the word then? And i still don't really get readings. Lets say 磁 has the on reading ジ and no kun reading. How is this word read? If I translate it I get the word "Jiki". But then what is the purpose of the on reading? Ah, one other thing I wanted to say. I wanted to start by learning the joyo Kanji (i've learnt Hiragana/Katakana) as I will be more motivated if I start on vocab and delve into grammer later. However i'm unsure as to whether there is any point in memorising the readings as remembering the reading for 磁 is ジ doesnt seem to really tell me anything. I feel like I have a-lot more questions but this video was worth watching, Sorry for the long comment and thanks to anyone that can respond.
Conjugations refer to any change you make to a verb or adjective. Changing the tense is only one type of conjugation. 食べる (to eat) to 食べたい (to want to eat) is a conjugation that does not involve a change in tense. Some words like 磁 only have one reading, in this case the onyomi. If it only has one reading, it will always be read as that when you see it. 磁石, for example, is "jishaku" and it means magnet.
Lol... conjugations in Portuguese is way harder.ALL verbs have around 60 ways to say it and there are no exceptions... all verbs are like this thus all verbs have its own “ original form” that u NEED to know in order to conjugate and use the verb so... we need to know all original forms for all verbs and be able to conjugate and speak the same verb in more than 60 different ways
yes that's right. You don't have to necessarily memorize onyomi readings as long as you learn compound kanji. You will eventually naturally memorize the onyomi readings for a particular kanji if you know the vocabulary that uses it.
There is one thing I don't really understand... If I want to write "bank (Ginkou)" in kanji... And there are two kanji whose on' pronunciations are gin and kou, And there are two different kanji who's kun' pronunciations are gin and kou. How do I know if I have to use the kanji that are pronounced gin and kou in on' or those that are pronounced gin and kou in kun' to create my word "Ginkou" ?
In that case there is no way to know other than knowing the word itself. Ginkou as in bank is written as 銀行 in kanji. There are no other replacements. When you learn Kanji, you have to simply memorize what words use that kanji character.
@@KenseiSensei Okay thank you. But could one still understand what is meant even if one writes it with the "wrong" kanji that are just pronounced the same? So the two kanji together don't mean bank but are still pronounced Ginkou? In context one should still understand that its "bank" even though it is the "wrong" kanji, or would one not understand it?
@@animesensei7005 yes, people can guess what you’re trying to write. It’s similar to misspelling a word in English. If I write “where is the banque”, people will understand what I’m trying to write but the spelling is wrong.
Are numbers an exception too somehow? Because you said that just reading one kanji by itself in onyomi doesn't make sense. But "one" means "ichi" and the kanji is 一. But "ichi" is the onyomi pronunciation of this kanji. The kunyomi would be "hito(tsu)". If the kanji 一 stands there by itself then I would have to use the onyomi pronunciation "ichi" to say "one" right?
that is correct. Actually there is no formal "rule" to onyomi and kunyomi. Sometimes a word can take the onyomi pronunciation and still make sense by itself. I only mention this difference so it is a bit easier to understand the concept of the two types of pronunciations.
There are rules set, but not all follow them. Like us human, not all of human follow all of the law rules, if they really did there wouldn't be *single crime or poor people starving* around the world!
Say two Kanji are next to each other in a sentence with hiragana in it. Since it is a compound, but still surrounded with hiragana, do you use the Onyomi or Kunyomi pronunciation? I hope that question makes sense lol.
In most cases, you would use the kunyomi for both kanji, but there are many exceptions to this as there may be a situation where you use kunyomi for the first kanji but onyomi for the other.
What order do we learn them in? And why is there more than 1 kun reading and sometimes also more than 1 on reading which one do i use and when do i use it?
Some kanji can have more than one on and kun readings because they differ depending on the word it is a part of. There is no indication of which pronunication you use when reading Japanese. Rather, you need to instinctively know the word itself to know how to read it with its kanji. In other words, you need to expand your Japanese vocabulary, whilst knowing what each word uses for its pronunciation. This may sound hard but the more you do this (the more you memorize), you will start to understand patterns in kanji pronunciations and soon you will be able to guess which readings work for that specific use in a word.
I'm a complete beginner, so excuse me if I write something obvious. When I see Jukugo words, I sometimes see them joined by 'り', such as 通り過ぎ る. Can you please explain why that is? Why not just join both kanji without the 'り'?
Most compound words (Jukugo) in Japanese that have to do with action would require conjugation in order to attach two existing verbs together. The り is part of the conjugation process. 通り過ぎる is a compound verb that derives from: 通る + 過ぎる In order to attach the two verbs we undergo the following conjugation: 通る => 通り + 過ぎる => 通り過ぎる So to answer your question simply, we must undergo conjugation to combine two verbs to form a new one.
