How phonetic is Japanese Kanji?

[Elmiwisa]

I am sorry if I missed out some major sources of information somewhere about Japanese, but I tried Google, Wikipedia and some self study Japanese guide and I can't seems to find this information again.

Anyway, I am trying to self study Japanese. Already took me a few weeks to be just barely able to read hiragana (while I can recognize all characters now, it still take me a few seconds to read each character ), and I haven't even started on katagana yet. But now I am trying to squeeze in some kanji, and it seems nearly hopeless for me, since most characters appeared extremely complicated. And of course, the sound and the character have to be memorized separately, since the character does not seems to give any indication of how thing sounds. I have always been a fast sound learner when it comes to language, but based on how slow I learned hiragana, it seems like remembering characters is going to be a major difficulty for me.
However, I remembered from quite a while ago reading some articles claiming that linguistics studies show that Japanese Kanji is about 60-70% phonetic. I do not remember the source, nor did I tried to track down the studies, nor did I even try to clarify what does the number means exactly (I wasn't into Japanese back then ). However, the article does mention that this level of phonetic is only obtainable by knowing a great deal of tricks regarding how to deduce the character from the sound, and for a typical person it fall down to around 20%.

So have anyone able to get a hand on something related to the information? Be it some sort of scholarly article that show a similar result, or perhaps some guide on trick to how to reach that 60-70%. It would be really helpful for me. Even the average at 20% which seems pretty awful is still much higher than what I can do at the moment. Right now the number of words which I know the sounds is around 20x more than those in which I can memorize the Kanji.
And feel free to add in personal experience and tricks as well.
Thanks a lot.

(edit: add in more emoticons and font)

(edit: clarify the concept of phonetic)
"Phonetic" refers to a feature of language wherein a practitioner, simply by knowing a small set of character, and a few rules, usually not much larger than the number of phonemes in the language, can guess correctly and close to correct most of the time the way the words is written from the sound, and vice versa, without knowing the word at all. For example, in English, let's say if I don't know the word "sheep" and very few English words total and someone say "sheep", I can guess that the word will likely to start with "sh" or "s" (many people don't put enough effort on "sh" to make it distinguishable from "s"), good chance of being followed by "ee" or "i" (some people tend to shorten long vowel), and end with "p" or "b" (hard to tell voiced from voiceless consonant when it follow right after a vowel). So that's a pretty close guess. But for Japanese, if someone come to me and say "konnichiwa", I can guess the last character correctly (which is in hiragana) but nothing else, unless I already know the word.

[chocojax]

I'm not a native speaker, but.

1) You should probably learn to read+write hiragana and katakana first, it'll probably help you ease into learning the written language, before starting on kanji. O:
2) Yeah, the "sound" is already a given (since everything has the same pronunciation) but the only thing is how you do the pitch accent and stuff. So, the only way to get that is to study from authentic Japanese things (such as anime, news, etc). There's a difference between how rain and candy are pronounced (both are "ame", but I forgot which one goes up and which one goes down first, so forgive me lool).

Also, I'm sorry, I don't really have any information on that kind of stuff. :/ I'm taking classes on it, so I can't really say much on self-study.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

You'll want to learn the hiragana and katakana first. It will maker it easier to learn and pronounce kanji. This is also how Japanese schoolchildren are taught - they learn the hiragana and katakana first, then progress to kanji. Children's manga and books often have helper hiragana on top of difficult kanji so the child can sound them out. EDIT: Furigana - those helper kana are called furigana.

I've found Rosetta Stone's software is great for learning Japanese "naturally" as a self-learner. You said you are a very sound oriented learner. Basically, the program is in Japanese, with pictures, and Japanese men and women are telling you to do things, and you can tell from their tone of voice if they are approving or disapproving of what you just did, even though you don't understand what they just said. Nothing gets translated. You are learning like a child does. It teaches you to think in the foreign language, but perhaps more importantly in your case as a self-learner, it will let you listen to native speakers pronouncing all the words you are learning.

It's kind funny - I'd totally learned what the words for boy and girl were, and was feeling proud of myself for picking out the corresponding pictures when they said those words to me. Then they go and say a phrase and I can make out the word "boy", and I go to click, only to find that all four pictures were of a boy. But one boy was on top of a table, another was under the table, etc. So they were teaching me a new word by combining it with one I'd shown mastery of. I click the wrong thing and I get a disapproving admonishment in Japanese, then the phrase is carefully repeated.

You'll still want to learn the hiragana and katakana and kanji to read and write, and definitely combine it with other studies, but Rosetta Stone is good for quickly getting conversationally fluent in Japanese. It also has the written Japanese above the pictures, so you can pick up the reading and writing that way too. (I still suck, but I keep slacking off in my studies ... for months at a time. Even so, I'm still able to understand a phrase or sentence once every few minutes without reading the subs while watching an anime. Just don't ask me to form sentences on my own!)

[Ophelia]

Are you possibly referring to the radicals?
I remember my teacher saying that the radicals may give you a hint by how the kanji is pronounced in the ON reading - but that is definitely not always the case (very rarely?) and separately learning how to pronounce a few radicals would be too much work and simply not worth it.
(More about this: http://namakajiri.net/nikki/testing-the ... ese-kanji/)

The key to know how to pronounce/read kanji is, sadly, to learn them by heart. That's how everybody in Japan does it.
Though recognizing the most common radicals can be a help with understanding the kanji! If a kanji has the grass radical on them, it's typically some kind of plant and so on.

But I agree with the others, first try to learn hiragana and katakana properly before you start with kanji.

[Elmiwisa]

Whoa thanks Ophelia, that IS a huge study. I haven't been able to read through all of them yet, but it appears that it is trying to reach the conclusion that contradict the 60%-70% claim. That would be a downer . Oh well, I would still see whether there are some tricks that I can still savage out of it. Radical is one trick for sure, but I heard there are quite a number of phonological rules that can help me too, I just need to learn them all. For example, 達 (tachi-"many") the first syllable is a た, but when that character appear in 友達 (tomo-dachi-"friend") the first syllable for that character is だ which is just a た with these extra 2 dots. My friend said it is due to the last syllable 友 (which is も) being voiced (and she actually studied Japanese before so she probably know more example of this rule) so you add that 2 dots to the hiragana. So yeah, these tricks like that help me not having to remember different pronunciation for the same character in different words.
Thanks to everyone else your answer. I already learned hiragana when I made the first post (took me over 2 weeks to do so though). I initially did not try to learn katakana (which I misspelled every time in my first post and is also another example of the above rule) since it is only for foreign loanword anyway. But turn out it is waaayyyy easier than hiragana, and I managed it in 2 days. Is it just me or it is just much easier? Almost all characters looks exactly the same, so there is not much to remember, to say the least.

Also, can I ask a slightly off-topic question too? What is the different between the "d" and the "r" (such as れ (re) vs で (de))? I tried some sources online and I can't tell the differences . If you know how to pronounce these consonants differently, can you describe in details how your tongue move?

Anyway, feel free to continue to contribute other tips and tricks to learn Japanese Kanji character and pronunciation if you can. I would gladly appreciate it
Thanks a lot. ありがとうございます (Arigatoogozaimasu).

[Ophelia]

Also, can I ask a slightly off-topic question too? What is the different between the "d" and the "r" (such as れ (re) vs で (de))? I tried some sources online and I can't tell the differences . If you know how to pronounce these consonants differently, can you describe in details how your tongue move?

The "d" sound is same ol' sound we have in english or other languages.
The "r" sound is a special case, however. A lot of Japanese people have trouble pronouncing the r, which is why it sounds like l a lot of times. It's more like a mix between r, l and d, which is a bit confusing for non Japanese people.

R is trilled once and once only making it sound deceptively like a "D" to untrained listeners. It may also give off the effect of an "L" sound when sung by modern J-pop vocalists.

(source)

Here is a random video japanese pronounciation on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1Sz3tgJs-w&hd=1
There are countless others who can help you.

[Ekamu]

私　は　にほんご　が　べんきょうして　です。
でも　ちょっと　こじょう。
にほんご　が　むずかしくない　です。

がんばて　ね。　

I'm learning Japanese too, here is what I said:

I am studying japanese language.
Its like a little castle/ (It's a steady process)
Japanese is not difficult.
Good luck (not 100% sure about this one since I learned from Anime)

Anyway my point is that you can still learn and say a lot with just hiragana, the only kanji there is 私（わたし）(wa-ta-shi) which means me/I.

Forget about Kanji completely, its not at all important to construct a sentence and communicate with someone in Japanese. Hiragana and Katakana are crucial.
Later you can instead just focus on memorizing some common kanji for words like I, person, numbers, days of the week, months, time, basics like her, him.
Then even later you can then learn some adjectives, nouns, verbs, e.t.c but just remember the important ones that are more commonly used.

There are like 44000 Kanji or something all together, their is no way a beginner should even bother with learning most of them. Just stick to the important ones, as you go on you will naturally pick up the rest along the way. Its nothing crucial.

Think of Kanji as like advanced vocabulary in English. their very many people who speak in fluent English without ever using some very complicated words like
Ostentatious
Nomenclature
Vicarious
Scoliosis

Some of those words are completely useless unless you want to sound smart or you are writing a thesis for Masters Degree in Linguistics or Medicine.

A lot of us who know English for example learn some of these new words everyday even if we have been speaking it for all our lives. It's not a shocker that you find some random word you did not know about.

If you want to learn a language quickly, there is only one possible way, practice practice practice, you have to constantly try and make sentences even stupid ones in Japanese everyday, you have to constantly write in Hiragana and Katakana everyday, you have to constantly repeat writting that Kanji word you want to memorize every singe time, you have to keep revising new vocabulary, try conjugating it, make new sentences, do whatever it takes to make it a major part of your day. There is no other way, this is how languages are learned.

Forget about, how long will it take, how much do I need to know before I can... just do it and do it every day, as much as you can and never stop until it becomes a part of you.

I've only been learning Japanese for maybe a week or less but I practice everyday, its an obsession and I don't let my mind rest untill I am content with what I have learned for the day. Someday soon I will be fluent enough to start mastering Kanji.

I also teach myself. check out this site:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/

[Taleweaver]

Also, can I ask a slightly off-topic question too? What is the different between the "d" and the "r" (such as れ (re) vs で (de))? I tried some sources online and I can't tell the differences . If you know how to pronounce these consonants differently, can you describe in details how your tongue move?

For a d, touch the back of your upper teeth with the tip of your tongue, just where the teeth meet your gums. Then, speak a voiced sound while releasing your tongue.
For a Japanese r, keep your tongue relaxed. Then, just as you begin to voice the sound, flick your tongue against that very same spot you touched in the beginning of pronouncing your "d" earlier. Your tongue will "roll" once as you pronounce the new sound, which is exactly the kind of "r" you're trying to get.

[Aines445]

私　は　にほんご　が　べんきょうして　です。
でも　ちょっと　こじょう。
にほんご　が　むずかしくない　です。

がんばて　ね。　

I'm learning Japanese too, here is what I said:

I am studying japanese language.
Its like a little castle/ (It's a steady process)
Japanese is not difficult.
Good luck (not 100% sure about this one since I learned from Anime)

Since I really don't feel like copy and pasting hiragana, I'm going to voice some things in romaji. I hope I don't look like some sort of know-it-all by doing this, but I just felt like helping ^^ (Especially because I'm not native nor 100% fluent).

私　は　にほんご　が　べんきょうして　です。

The subject and words are correct somewhat, but the grammar is off. First, the ga particle isn't supposed to be there, but if you really want to add a particle, you should use wo instead. The verb to study isn't correctly conjugated either (I won't be talking about all verbs, just about the verb to study or verbs that follow the same formula). I noticed that putting -shite (replacing the former -suru) to a verb is often for imperative sentences, in the sense of a request or order (Or maybe -shinasai or -shitekudasai or maybe -shitekure, depending on how you want to emphasize it or how you will speak) or for a sequence of events. If you're phrasing it in progressive tense, it's -shite iru (-Shiteru for short or talking fast, or also for knowing something, but that's another thing). But I kind of feel like talking about the -desu too, so here I go (But I might be wrong on this). If you don't connect the -desu with the whole sentence, then it will feel misplaced (Poor -desu XD) so it's -shite iru no desu or -shite irun desu for short (-shiterun desu too). I'm not really sure, but I think it would sound better if instead of just saying -desu with the verb conjugated like that right next to it.

I'm not really sure about the second sentence, since I'm not as knowladgeable on proverbs (Proverbs exclusive to a certain country are called idioms (idiomas) where I come from but I'm not sure if it's correct to use that here too <.<). And I'm also not sure if you should use some sort of particle (or maybe -desu) at the end too, so I'm not going to point it out. The last one is pretty much correct though, -wa could be used since that seems like a topic to me. I'm not saying anything about spacing because that is one of the thing I don't know at all about japanese. Japanese spacing just confuses me x.x (I'm not mentioning the ganbate ne part because it's correct).

If I'm saying something wrong, please correct me because I'm not the most reliable source for learning japanese.

Good Luck!

Anyways <.<

In terms of kanji being mostly phonetic, I agree. Since words can have many kanji for other contexts, it's important to be able to tell which kanji is used in the context of a sentence. I could probably do it in hiragana, but not not with kanji. So yeah, kanji is pretty hard. I think you should concentrate on knowing hiragana to the point of reading it better, and katakana too for english words written like that (It's hard to know what they're talking about without knowing katakana because it's kind of like general pronounciations of english in a japanese context). After that, you can (probably) learn kanji a bit better.

[TrickWithAKnife]

From experience, you are better off mastering Hiragana and Katakana before attempting Kanji.

I was much slower than average at learning Hiragana, spending 4 and a half months, studying every day.
Tried other methods for Katakana and mastered it in an hour and a half, spread over 2 days. Sometimes study methods need to be adjusted to suit the student.
The methods that Japanese children use to learn are not designed for speedy study.

Kanji can be very difficult at first because they have many readings, many meanings, and the meanings often change depending on which other Kanji they are attached to.
Having a reasonable vocabulary definitely makes Kanji study much easier too.

I'm actually (slowly) working on a lengthy VN to teach Hiragana, Katakana, pronunciation, basic Japanese conversation (more than just survival phrases, but not enough to watch movies without subtitles) and a bit of a survival guide to living in Japan. Tokyo especially.

If I'm able to, I'd be happy to help out any time if you like. I'd consider the practice to be very useful.

I should point out, however, that I'm not fluent in Japanese or Kanji. But for the early stages, I'm sure I could help.

[hiko27]

There's acrually the Heisig (idk if I spelled that right) method of memorizing kanji that somewhat uses mnemonics. My friend is actually using that method to quickly memorize his kanjis but he speaks the language (he lives in a community with tons of native speakers) so he already knows the words. Or another way to memorize them is by radicals, I don't know if this works but apparently it does for some.

From my experience, the only thing I could tell you about memorizing kanji is to memorize a daily amount of them everyday (or every other day if you want) but the most important thing is to actually review the kanji (even the ones you learned the past few days) every single day. Another thing that could help you is by writing it multiple times with the right stroke order. I have a notebook just for stroke order wherein I fill up one page of the same kanji. Redoing the same kanji over and over again actually helps (I can freaking write 飴 in my sleep cause of how many times I've written it). Another thing I do that helps is either watch anime and not pay attention to subs (this is actually more on oral practice) or read Japanese, whether it be manga, sites, or light novels (I think novels are better imo cause it lets you grasp the grammar as well).

Same goes for hiragana or katakana. Review, rewrite and read. That's what I do and I do it everyday. And also, look for a Japanese study buddy that can help you review your things. And don't rush the studying, well, unless you're taking the JLPT this December like me ugh. I have to memorize so muh kanji and practice listening to more Japanese. And oh! Memorize hiragana and katakana first because they're like the alphabets of Japanese; if you skip them, how can you ever make words? Plus some of them are used in kanji (like エ). You could use your knowledge of hiragana and katakana for the Heisig method if you choose that method.