What is the learning curve like for learning Japanese writing?

Are you able to use what you've learnt as you're progressing, or are you only
realistically able to start reading real text once you've learnt about two or
three thousand kanji?

Related question: [What are the advantages/disadvantages of writing in romaji
instead of in kanji and
kana?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/354/what-are-the-
advantages-disadvantages-of-writing-in-romaji-instead-of-kanji-hira) has a few
answers on the merits of learning Japanese writing.

**Edit:** By "real text", I meant text you'd encounter in real life, not
learning text that has had its grammar artificially dumbed down. As an example
of "dumbing down", I've heard that texts deliberately made up entirely of kana
is only for children too young to know the kanji. By contrast, signs and
menus, even if they're not literary masterpieces, haven't had their grammar
artificially changed. Would learning the kana be enough to identify a few
gairaigo items in a fast food restaurant menu, for example?
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learning orthography
What is the learning curve for learning Japanese writing?
First, I think you would agree with me if I say that there is no silver bullet
for learning Japanese writing. It takes practice and determination. There is
also the factor of individual; different people may need different amount and
kind of efforts to be invested to achieve the desired fluency in reading and
writing in Japanese. That said, here I share some methods I used to improve
reading/writing:

  1. First and foremost, don't be afraid to read Japanese texts, whatever they are. If you have a set of choices, pick from the one with the most difficult-looking kanji, and later downgrade to the one with less kanji if you get tired. But try to not get tired too fast!

  2. Just like learning any foreign languages, dictionary is your friend. Especially now that we have dictionary softwares and websites, looking up kanji words you do not know won't probably take long. Take special note when looking up verbs whether they are transitive or not, nouns if they are na-adjectives or not etc.

  3. Write them down! I found it easier to remember the shapes and strokes of kanji if I copy them down. Some kanji characters differ just by small radicals, so having your body memorize the strokes makes it easier to detect the difference.

  4. Know the grammar. Of course if you don't know the grammar, words are just words. There won't be any meaning unless if you know how the words relate to each other; how the verbs describe the nouns with the help of particles etc.

I guess my points (1) and (2) above answer your question "or are you only
realistically able to start reading real text once you've learnt about two or
three thousand kanji", which is no. **You don't have to wait till you remember
thousands kanji before you start reading, because how are you going to
remember those thousands kanji if you don't start reading?**
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> What is the learning curve like for learning Japanese writing?

About the same as English. Chances are you didn't start learning to read
English by pedaling your five-speed Schwinn (with the baseball card in the
back tire) to the local library and checking out _Pride and Prejudice_ with
your shiny new card. You had to start with the Easy Readers, wherein you
discovered, I hope, Dr. Seuss stories with all those wonderfully rhyming
monosyllables. Along the way you learned that the letter C is a mystical
letter of many sounds, and someone had to tell you that the Cs in _cake_ ,
_cell_ , and _cello_ all sound different. You also learned about heteronyms,
those quizzical words which have identical spellings and different meanings.
Eventually you reached the point where you can pick up the latest _New York
Times_ and understand every sentence (even if you don't understand the story
behind the sentences).

Japanese is no different. You start with the kana and gradually tunnel through
Kanji Mountain. As you go you pick up on the rules of the game: this kanji is
pronounced this way when it's part of a compound and that way when it's alone,
or this compound looks like an _onyomi_ compound but it's really _kunyomi_ ,
and so on. For a long time the dictionary is your closest companion, but the
longer you study the more your reading range expands, and the less you need to
rely on your trusty indexed friend. If you stick with it, you'll eventually be
able to comfortably read a letter from your electric service provider or
browse the new fiction in the bookstore without immediately needing a
dictionary. It takes years of study, but so did English, and it's highly
rewarding.

> Are you able to use what you've learnt as you're progressing, or are you
> only realistically able to start reading real text once you've learnt about
> two or three thousand kanji?

What is "real text" to you? A newspaper? A Murakami novel? A graduation
thesis? If you restrict yourself to these "grown-up" materials, you will
likely end in frustration. Nothing is stopping you from reading anything, but
the lower your reading ability, the more of a grind it will be to slog through
the unfamiliar kanji and grammar in high-level texts. Progress always depends
on studying things that are _just above_ your level. If you're working on
grade school kanji, read material targeted at grade schoolers: the kids'
section of newspapers, manga for kids, and so on. (This is why I personally
recommend studying kanji in the same order used in Japan.) When the material
you're reading becomes too easy, move on to something more difficult. It's all
"real text", and everything is a stepping stone to get you to what you really
want to read.
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I'd like to add to Derek and Lukman's excellent answers my usual plug for
young adult manga as a learning resource. Since all but the most basic kanji
have furigana next to them, you don't have to know hundreds of kanji to read
them, and it's easy to look up the meanings of new words and learn the
readings of new kanji. While the content of most young adult manga may not be
on the level of _Pride and Prejudice_ , there are some diamonds in the rough,
and you can end up learning a lot of language from even the most vapid text.
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My learning resource was Karaoke. Like Amandas answer, most of the kanji have
furigana which makes it great to read.

One plus to karaoke is that it will also improve your listening,
speaking/pronunciation, reading speed and speaking speed.

The downside is that music is poetry in a sense and thus you'll find outdated
grammatical structures, not correct furigana over kanji (there is a question
already on this), and the words that you learn will be limited to the kind of
music you like. I ended up learning all the different ways and kanji to say
love and meet (not really useful).

As an aside, by doing this, you can impress Japanese people by being able to
sing along and sing your own songs in karaoke. I also had weird after-effect
of remembering a lot of the songs where I learned words. Like ダブダブ from
Morning Musume, ~ぬ grammatical form from Aqua Times, etc.
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Having picked up about 2,000+ characters from Chinese, I feel like I am
sometimes working in the opposite direction to most students of Japanese.
Often I can get the gist of a text just by looking at the kanji. So while it
may sound circuitous, don't be afraid to do as I did and study a good deal of
Chinese first off. Personally, I found hiragana and katakana really boring and
couldn't see any other way to do it. As it stands, I can and do learn by
reading 'mature'-level texts like the translated/recorded stories by Akutagawa
and Soseki, and Japanese RPGs.
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