<< I'm sure your vocabulary is far over 1000 words in Spanish. There are plenty of cognates. >>
True. However, there are also false cognates, not to mention that I don't know which words will be cognates and which words will not, so cognates are not helpful for on-the-fly speech production, only memorization and a semi-reliable aid for reading or listening. For instance, it's a well-known formula that almost *any* English verb ending with -ate has a Spanish equivalent ending in -ar. There are very few exceptions, but sometimes the word doesn't mean what you think it means. "Trasladar" means "translate" in the sense of geometry, not of language: moving something from one place to another, or transferring. The word for that is "traducir"... which looks like the English word "traduce", which means something different! So I prefer to just look at every cognate as a new word unless I'm certain it's used the same way as in English, or if it's very improbable that the meaning is different (it would be a bit silly to assume an "aeroplano" might not be an airplane -- though of course the assumption that it is one must be questioned if it wouldn't make sense in the context!). It's just a new word that's generally easy to memorize or work out on context.
<< How do you learn the character but not know how to read them?
To be honest, it sounds like you are studying the wrong way or wasting your time. If you just want to learn how to write some character, well that's cool but not very practical if don't go any deeper than that. >>
I'm using Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. At http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/, Khatzumoto claims to have achieved fluency in Japanese in only 18 months -- though not quite native-level fluency -- and he used this "kanji first" method. I believe him, but, as the name of his site suggests, his method also involves extreme immersion. Nonetheless, I'm convinced that his method works without such immersion; it'll just take longer.
There are two reasons I use this method. One, if you actually use kanji as you learn them, then for them to be useful you must learn them in order of frequency or by grade level. I believe that is a mistake, because the individual components of kanji are much harder to recognize that way. It also often happens that you learn a complex shape in one kanji, and it gives you a difficult time, and then that complex shape turns out to be a kanji of its own that comes later. No, no, no! It's much easier to learn the complex shape first, and THEN learn it in the combined character. I learned that the hard way.
The other reason is that I treat kanji as a really big alphabet. Just as we learn our ABCs before we learn how to spell "cat", it makes sense to me to learn all the common kanji before learning to write Japanese. It eases the strain on the memory, because there is so much involved in remembering a word written in kanji. For instance, take a compound word such as 安全 anzen ("safety"). The first step is to remember that it's written with "relax" and "whole" (or whatever you want to call them). Then you have to recall the individual components of the kanji: "House, woman, umbrella, king." ("Umbrella" is an arbitrary name from Heisig to make it easier to remember. Easy recollection is more important than where the shape etymologically comes from.) Then you have to make sure you put the components in the right places -- usually easy, but sometimes it's unintuitive. Then finally you have to recall the strokes, and in the proper order. And on top of all that we have to concern ourselves with both the reading and meaning of this word. That's a lot of work! The more of that work you have to do at once when memorizing, the harder it is and the easier it is for something to slip out of your memory.
- Kef
True. However, there are also false cognates, not to mention that I don't know which words will be cognates and which words will not, so cognates are not helpful for on-the-fly speech production, only memorization and a semi-reliable aid for reading or listening. For instance, it's a well-known formula that almost *any* English verb ending with -ate has a Spanish equivalent ending in -ar. There are very few exceptions, but sometimes the word doesn't mean what you think it means. "Trasladar" means "translate" in the sense of geometry, not of language: moving something from one place to another, or transferring. The word for that is "traducir"... which looks like the English word "traduce", which means something different! So I prefer to just look at every cognate as a new word unless I'm certain it's used the same way as in English, or if it's very improbable that the meaning is different (it would be a bit silly to assume an "aeroplano" might not be an airplane -- though of course the assumption that it is one must be questioned if it wouldn't make sense in the context!). It's just a new word that's generally easy to memorize or work out on context.
<< How do you learn the character but not know how to read them?
To be honest, it sounds like you are studying the wrong way or wasting your time. If you just want to learn how to write some character, well that's cool but not very practical if don't go any deeper than that. >>
I'm using Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. At http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/, Khatzumoto claims to have achieved fluency in Japanese in only 18 months -- though not quite native-level fluency -- and he used this "kanji first" method. I believe him, but, as the name of his site suggests, his method also involves extreme immersion. Nonetheless, I'm convinced that his method works without such immersion; it'll just take longer.
There are two reasons I use this method. One, if you actually use kanji as you learn them, then for them to be useful you must learn them in order of frequency or by grade level. I believe that is a mistake, because the individual components of kanji are much harder to recognize that way. It also often happens that you learn a complex shape in one kanji, and it gives you a difficult time, and then that complex shape turns out to be a kanji of its own that comes later. No, no, no! It's much easier to learn the complex shape first, and THEN learn it in the combined character. I learned that the hard way.
The other reason is that I treat kanji as a really big alphabet. Just as we learn our ABCs before we learn how to spell "cat", it makes sense to me to learn all the common kanji before learning to write Japanese. It eases the strain on the memory, because there is so much involved in remembering a word written in kanji. For instance, take a compound word such as 安全 anzen ("safety"). The first step is to remember that it's written with "relax" and "whole" (or whatever you want to call them). Then you have to recall the individual components of the kanji: "House, woman, umbrella, king." ("Umbrella" is an arbitrary name from Heisig to make it easier to remember. Easy recollection is more important than where the shape etymologically comes from.) Then you have to make sure you put the components in the right places -- usually easy, but sometimes it's unintuitive. Then finally you have to recall the strokes, and in the proper order. And on top of all that we have to concern ourselves with both the reading and meaning of this word. That's a lot of work! The more of that work you have to do at once when memorizing, the harder it is and the easier it is for something to slip out of your memory.
- Kef