Ah, New Year’s resolutions…! Do you people keep them?
I made a New Year’s resolution to learn Chinese. Status? Pending. Since 2001.
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I do. At least I kept last year’s. You still have a chance to change that. For example, you could start learning 5 hanzi daily. In ~200 days, you will have learned 1k hanzi, which will cover like 80% of your hanzi needs. Or do 405 days and learn 2k, if you like. That will be what, 95%?
This is just memorizing their meaning. There’s much more to the language, but it’s the first step. Doing 5 hanzi daily doesn’t take much time. You can use mnemonics to assist learning, and tools like Anki for spaced repetition.
So, if you’re willing to spend 5-20 minutes daily learning, you can get there eventually. A sandcastle is built from grains of sand. Start with a grain. Silly but it works. Main thing is to form a habit, and habits are best formed by starting small.
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Also, just start 
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knowing kanji only is not enough to understand speech in video (sound)
That’s why the 5 minutes (or whatever small thing) per day is just the starting point. It’s meant to not only increase as you go on, but also balloon as you begin to want to go past the 5 minutes, as you inevitably will. This is made explicit in the article Icedrinker linked in the New Year’s Resolutions thread.
I also don’t get why people keep bringing up this “objection” to Icedrinker’s method, since beyond being a strawman, the method worked for him (I believe it was with German). I think it’s a very good way to approach something new.
That said, I’m not convinced RTK would be the best use of one’s study time, but if it works it works.
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I’m glad you’ve encapsulated the future implications of the idea I was proposing.
knowing kanji only is not enough to understand speech in video (sound)
Where did I say that? here’s a related message
will have learned 1k hanzi, which will cover like 80% of your hanzi needs
Once you’re done with hanzi, you can go ahead onto other parts of the language. Or do it in parallel. Hanzi meanings is just a part of the puzzle.
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in many other languages knowing how to read is enough to know how to hear, but not here, I just warning. It may be more easy to learn how to listen instead of how to read.
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I’m feeling aggravated at all the criticism I’m getting in everything I’m saying. Other threads too. I’ve had years of experience with languages, and I speak 5 languages, but apparently all my views are just trash.
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I agree that steady is better than zero and 2000 hanzi are better than 20 hanzi. I’m just not organised enough to keep my resolution.
His post was clearly giving the tldr of things he had already posted in detail on this forum. It’s not reasonable to assume that it was trying to replace what it was clearly a summation of.
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I agree with what you’ve wrote, and it’s how I view learning a language as well. I’ve personally been progressing steadily but slowly, by regularly doing a little. Nevertheless, I believe the criticism is meant constructively, and there’s some truth in them as well. There’s different methods of leaning, and to each their own.
Kanji is one of the major parts of learning Japanese, and knowing them without a doubt improves speaking as well, since the pronunciation usually only makes sense if you know how to write the word.
Learning Kanji is something that can easily be done grain by grain as well, and it starts becoming fun once you get used to it a bit, so that you automatically progress past the 5 minutes per day (I’ve had a couple of months where I studied kanji for 4 hours per day because it was fun to do)
I think it’s a matter of expectations. Don’t go into a project like learning a language, and expect to speak it fluently within a year (or 5 years), especially without following classes or being inside a country where the language is spoken. If your goal is fluency quickly, go to a language school and move to the country.
You should learn a language on your own because you’re interested in learning the language. If you enjoy it, it’s not wasted time either.
I do agree that there are a lot of “scam”-like offers on the internet (“get fluent with only these 5 small steps”, “this app is the reason I can speak …” etc.). There is no shortcut to success, mastering a language is only possible with a huge amount of effort.
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I pressed it before reading the text… Let me read the text now.
I’d still press it, because I think more knowledge only makes the problems you encounter more interesting. I would still like to dive deeper into grammar and etymology and rare kanji and such, because I honestly find it fun in itself.
My mother is also learning Japanese (she started that about a year ago), and she’s convinced she will never reach fluency, but really enjoys the learning itself.
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True.
Also, languages are not always meant to be a career push or a school prerequisite and people should not feel the pressure to acquire them fast! I’ve learned my “professional stuff” languages as fast as I were expected to and now I feel perfectly comfortable to learn my “hobby stuff” languages as slowly as I want.
I would like to make some progress because it is more practical for daily life, that’s all.
I am a great enemy of the “learn 5 languages before you get to work this morning, while you also peel oranges in swan shapes and compose a great instrumental song” people, but I also understand that teaching and self-learning have covered a lot of mileage since the late 1800s. New, reasonably functional methods are being discovered. Some work, some don’t, some are hoaxes. We take our pick and pay the fees.
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wait until you learn Chinese … 士 土 壬 王 玉
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Those all occur in Japanese too, though… 
(although 壬 apparently only in names)
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Or 已己巳己巴
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戊戌戍戉成
Fascinating! 已己巳己 is a word in Japanese, meaning “all the same”. Seems like it’s not that well-known, though.
It almost looks like a joke entry in the dictionary…
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Ya, sort of. Lots of “creative ways” to create phases, even new words/characters in Chinese and kanji. And it also showed that even if one character is written the same, the pronunciation (and meaning) of the character can be different.
已己巳己 (いこみき) the first 己 is こ, the second 己 is き. Also, こ (コ) was simplified from the character 己 to begin with.