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Oh kanji, you are the bane of my Japanese-learning life. I don't want it to be this way with us, though, so I'd like to try to resolve our differences.
I think the problem with me and kanji is that I don't know enough of them. Well, obviously. But I think some of the ones I know are not actually very useful. I fully subscribe to the 80-20 rule - 20% of all kanji are the ones used 80% of the time. So if there are 2000 Joyo kanji, and I learn the most common 400, that should mean I'm going to understand about 80% of everyday writing, right?
The trick, then, is choosing which kanji to learn. I know all of the JLPT N4 and N5 kanji, which puts me at ~240. Most of these seem to be fairly common use. (The "probably not so useful" ones I alluded to above are not included in this group.) So if I add another ~160 then theoretically I've more or less cracked it. I suspect this is not quite true, but it's a good starting place.
So the question is... which 160?
I don't have the answer to this yet. If anyone does, let me know.
On the flip side, I'm thinking about starting Remember The Kanji. This definitely doesn't seem to be in order of usability, though, so I think the two goals need to be tried for separately.
I think the problem with me and kanji is that I don't know enough of them. Well, obviously. But I think some of the ones I know are not actually very useful. I fully subscribe to the 80-20 rule - 20% of all kanji are the ones used 80% of the time. So if there are 2000 Joyo kanji, and I learn the most common 400, that should mean I'm going to understand about 80% of everyday writing, right?
The trick, then, is choosing which kanji to learn. I know all of the JLPT N4 and N5 kanji, which puts me at ~240. Most of these seem to be fairly common use. (The "probably not so useful" ones I alluded to above are not included in this group.) So if I add another ~160 then theoretically I've more or less cracked it. I suspect this is not quite true, but it's a good starting place.
So the question is... which 160?
I don't have the answer to this yet. If anyone does, let me know.
On the flip side, I'm thinking about starting Remember The Kanji. This definitely doesn't seem to be in order of usability, though, so I think the two goals need to be tried for separately.