I am a native Japanese speaker and taught Japanese at language school.
You can ask me some questions on grammar and vocabulary during the conversation. If I can’t answer them right away, since I quit teaching more than ten years ago and have forgotten how to explain things in a professional way, I’ll get back to you when I can find a better answer.
I’ve got a question about the Japanese radicals. I’m self learning from a book called ‘Let’s Learn Kanji’, I’m unsure wether to learn or not to learn the radicals which are not inderpentant Kanji themselves. The book does not specifically say I have to and it doesn’t say I need too either.
Do I need to learn them?
I have never taught Kanji using radicals in class for Japanese learners.
I don’t think it is necessary to learn them in my opinion.
But, if you find it easier to learn Kanji through radicals, go ahead
It’s important to identify the radicals, because they carry meaning, but you don’t need to learn the individually. That would be a bit like learning the prefixes ‘un-’ ‘in-’ ‘dis-’ as separate words. Focus on learning complete kanji in context, but be sure to pay attention to how they are composed. I found that my kanji took a big step forward when I focused on writing them out - that forces you to identify each component part of the character in order to write it. It’s frustrating at first because they all seem so hard but you’ll be amazed how quickly you start to see patterns and it gets much quicker. Good luck!
BTW, a book called Remembering The Kanji has been recommended to me by many many people…
