常用漢字

[Anyaaa]

I was wondering, when you guys learnt to read kanji (and please... only answer if you can x_x'), did you learn the jouyou kanji, or a different order? That is, presuming you didn't go to a Japanese school.

I've been going through the jouyou, but it's started to annoy me that a lot of these kanji seem pretty useless to me. For instance, 矢 and 弓. I don't know about you guys, but I don't really spend a lot of time writing about archery. Actually wait. *rethinks* Well, those two are radicals (aren't they?) so I guess they're useful to be able to write (though I don't see why I need to know readings or meanings), but it's ones like 算. Hell if I'm ever gonna speak about calculations or whatever.

Would you suggest going JLPT order or something? Or keep going through jouyou? I'm about half way through grade 2 right now.

And should I ignore the ones I don't think I'll come across, at least until I'm proficient enough to actually need words containing 算 and the like?

... I love spamming you guys with ridiculous questions xD

[Akihiko Yamamoto Hozagaki]

Well... I'm not going by jouyou order at all. I'm actually going by what ever the book gives me next. I used to go by jouyou order though, I'd say stick with it and even learn those weird, useless kanji. It'll only make you wiser in the end.

Do you plan on taking the JLPT? If not, don't worry about it. Just learn what you can now in jouyou order, never hurt anyone. Even if it might get a little boring. That's just my opinion. I'm still new to Japanese myself, actually.

[Anyaaa]

Ah, thanks for the advice! =D

I think I'm going to do JLPT this year, and I had a quick look at the level 4 kanji and knew pretty much all of them. I thought that I'd keep going through jouyou, and if there were still some that I didn't know when the test was approaching, I could just learn those closer to the time.

Actually I should probably hurry the hell up with vocab... I only know like... 500 on that list of 800 or so. *dies*

[Ertai87]

I learned in whatever order my class told me XD I don't know the order actually...all I know is that I knew grade 5 or 6 (Japanese school) Kanji before I knew all the ones from Grade 1 XD Then again, I learned a lot of kanji randomly from anime subs and reading this forum, so... XD

On the topic of JLPT, (I should probably spin this question off into another thread, but it's tangentially on topic so...), does anyone have a suggestion for a book I should use to study from? I'm planning on taking Level 3 this year (my prof said Level 2 is probably too hard for me, and I've heard Level 4 is jokes). Preferably an ISBN or SKU number as well as a title (or a link to Amazon XD)

[Ruby_MoonT]

are you planning on buying the study books from a japanese book store? it'll also depend on how much time you have to study the materials but here are the ISBN for the books I used two years ago: (these are not for lv.3 but at least you'll know the publisher and what it might look like)

for the listening section (with CDs, complete in 28days! lol): 4-342-88174-8

for the grammar section: 4-88319-356-X
for the reading section: 4-88319-193-1
for learning more kanji: 4-88319-282-2

[Ertai87]

I'm working at a book store atm so I'd get them to order it for me, which is why I'd need the ISBNs. The bookstore doesn't normally carry any Japanese books at all, nevermind JLPT or anything, so I'd need to special order it. Thanks, though, and if anyone else has any suggestions, let me know.

[LavaBug]

I would strongly suggest to learn those "useless" kanji if you intend to take JLPT.
In general, useless as they seem now, you don't know when you still might be needing them. I mean before I came to Japan I never knew what I need word like 環境問題 for, but you see this topic quite often here.

[shinnraiu]

Wow I just want to point out that all these terms (JLPT, jouyou, etc) are so foreign to me. XD I understand what jouyou is kind of but I don't know exactly how it works or anything... agh...

Anyway the point I'm writing in this topic is that yeah all the "useless kanji" you think of are actually really useful to know. A lot of the time they repeat in radicals or not, whatever it is it's helpful to just know them, especially if you're combining kanji and stuff. So just learn them I guess.

[Anyaaa]

Okay, thank you everyone for replying! I'll learn all my kanji ;)