Mastering 漢字 (Kanji and Traditional Chinese Characters)

[WilliamSmith]

@peregrino
@Yohan
Thanks for the 3 great posts you guys made in here. (I didn't notice them until just now.)

I'm still aiming to become a "poor man's" Arthur Waley and do my own translations, without having to feel guilty for being on the "WMAF" offender list, since I decided to do Asian men a favor and stop banging their chicks anymore, and it makes me feel way less background psychological anxiety because I always loved their languages and culture and wasn't ever trying to upset them. (I'm so old I was originally so naive I didn't even realize so many of them minded, but like I said, there was no internet back then and I was just clueless until I started noticing them getting mad and writing stuff complainign about too many white dumbasses poaching their chicks, LOL.)

Back on topic for learning the traditional characters:

If you only want to know Japanese, focusing on that list Yohan suggested alone does make sense, of course, since it's already tricky enough to learn the kana scripts + the kanji Yohan suggested, and get used to when/where the onyomi and kunyomi readings are used in practice, etc.

I like my own variation of the so-called Heisig method in which I know the radicals and create mnemonics, yet (unlike Heisig, who didn't even include the actual readings but just the meaning of the ideograms) I also make flashcards by hand that have the Cantonese and Vietnamese readings on the back. I haven't yet, but I might also add the Onyomi (old "Chinese" reading of the Kanji), which is usually closer to the Cantonese because of the historic period when the characters were adapted from a form of middle Chinese that was closer to Cantonese than Mandarin.
But that overly complex 3-way split is obviously is because of my polyglot goal of learning Cantonese, Japanese, and Vietnamese (the latter language correlating strongly with Cantonese more than most people think, despite grammatical differences, even though grammar is a bit different).

Also, on the subject of Japanese often forgetting how to write (or perhaps even read) the Kanji in the computer age, you might like the following videos:
To make this situation even funnier (and in line with the conversation I noticed some of you including @Natural_Born_Cynic and Yohan having comparing Japan with Korea lately), some Japanese got vocally annoyed with "That Japanese Man Yuta" for making these videos, and accused him of being a Korean trying to make the Japanese look bad and lose face (I guess by insinuating it was common to forget how to write the kanji, LOL). I think they even cited him having more facial hair than normal as supposed evidence he was supposedly actually a Korean.

Also, FYI / alert to @Outcast9428: Cute Japanese girls you might like here:

[Yohan]

If you only want to know Japanese, focusing on that list Yohan suggested alone does make sense, of course, since it's already tricky enough to learn the kana scripts + the kanji Yohan suggested, and get used to when/where the onyomi and kunyomi readings are used in practice, etc.

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Also, on the subject of Japanese often forgetting how to write (or perhaps even read) the Kanji in the computer age, you might like the following videos:
To make this situation even funnier (and in line with the conversation I noticed some of you including @Natural_Born_Cynic and Yohan having comparing Japan with Korea lately), some Japanese got vocally annoyed with "That Japanese Man Yuta" for making these video...

Such trolls who make fun out of Yuta are plainly stupid people.

It is true, if you are out of China/Japan, even as a native speaker, you forget because of missing daily exercise, how to write Chinese characters. This happens even within China and Japan because nowadays the use of computer for writing office and private messages and the use of translation programs is replacing the human brain work more and more.

Many Western foreigners, who are interested in knowing some Japanese make therefore the mistake that they learn only how to speak the language and totally ignore the way of writing it. - This later on makes them somehow illiterates in Japan.

You cannot brush aside Japanese reading as wherever you are in Japan, this is the way of writing of more than 96 percent of the population and the national language.

So what you have to do is after learning a new Japanese word to look up how it is written. - And the best way to do that is just to follow how this is done with Japanese children in school. Those characters and compounds of them which are frequently in use have priority.
Do not move over to grade 2, if you still have problems with grade 1.

Korea abolished the Chinese characters and made a reform, now mostly using only their own hangul - however still some very simple Chinese characters are in use, like small, big, person, up, down....小、大、人、下、上.

Obviously this makes it easier for Koreans to write and read their own language. Vietnam did the same using the roman alphabet.

No Chinese characters anymore in Korean language - For me it's a pity, as many Korean words, mostly nouns are so similar to Japanese nouns...It's getting a bit more difficult for Japanese learning Korean, and also for Koreans learning Japanese.
See the character and know what it means, but read the hangul and after guess its meaning?

While Korean and Japanese are indeed somehow similar in many aspects, they are clearly two different languages and a Japanese who does not know Korean and a Korean who does not know Japanese cannot communicate with each other, neither in spoken nor in written language.

It should be more done about Japanese/Korean language education in both countries, it helps for a good relationship between Japan and South Korea.

[Mr. Mistoffelees]

O.M.G! I am all about learning oriental languages like Kanji and traditional Chinese characters so preeeeeeety!

Can anyone recommend any good sources for someone who is a beginner?

[WilliamSmith]

O.M.G! I am all about learning oriental languages like Kanji and traditional Chinese characters so preeeeeeety!

Can anyone recommend any good sources for someone who is a beginner?

I think they're beautiful too, I've always loved them.
I think I posted my suggestions earlier in the thread already, but you're looking in the right place!

Here's one just for you:
尻擬き