How to Memorize and Read Kanji Faster

(From my personal learning experience)

I think we all agree from an English-speaking background, kanji is hard. It’s REALLY hard. But I actually think the more you know, ironically the easier it gets to recognize the pronunciation at least. It’s more about patterns and memorizing the onyomi/kunyomi reading/sounds.

(Disclaimer: for beginners, don’t worry too much about this, focus on just recognizing big picture words.)

Onyomi: Chinese reading
(used for combo of kanji characters aka big words)

Kunyomi: Japanese reading
(usually used as standalone characters and with hiragana after it, but exceptions may exist)

For example: 品
Onyomi = ひん, ほん
食品 (しょくひん): food products
製品 (せいひん): manufactured goods/products
作品 (さくひん): work (book, film, etc.)

If the 品 is at the end, it’s pronounced as ひん usually. Of course there are exceptions, but (𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥…) that’s usually that’s how you read it. So whenever you see 品 you can sound it out basically and guess the meaning as something related to products.

Kunyomi =しな
品物 (しなもの): goods
品川 (しながわ): a place in Tokyo (ward)

These are the types of patterns I notice. It’s more structured than you originally think when you just start out. And the more kanji you recognize, the more you will start to notice these patterns hopefully.

Another Example: 会 in 会う = あう so:
間に合う(まにあう): make it in time
出会う (であう): to encounter
or
会 in 会話 = かい so:
機会 (きかい): opportunity
教会 (きょうかい): church
会社 (かいしゃ): company

Of course you can learn to recognize kanji in online programs such as Wanikani, but I personally think learning kanji as just single characters instead of full words is harder to remember in the long run.

Just try to memorize the sound patterns in the context of the word