Getting Nihongo Jouzu

[yuckyyaki]

What should I focus on after hiragana and katakana? I'm getting some conflicting answers when I search online.

Kanji, it goes hand in hand with vocabulary.

 

[Banana Hammock]

Kanji, it goes hand in hand with vocabulary.

I kinda figured that was the case, but some people were saying that learning grammar and sentence structure were more important, and called learning Kanji after Kana a "trap."

 

[agility_]

Studying kanji by itself is the trap. It's more effective for the objectives of language learning to study words which contain kanji. I learned this the hard way when the Heisig approach wasn't completely working for me and I discovered that combining sentences made sense (and a big difference)

 

[Banana Hammock]

Studying kanji by itself is the trap. It's more effective for the objectives of language learning to study words which contain kanji. I learned this the hard way when the Heisig approach wasn't completely working for me and I discovered that combining sentences made sense (and a big difference)

Any resources you recommend for this?

 

[Clem the Gem]

I'll start by saying I have slacked off hugely, and other than 20 mins of Duolingo and Anki every day during my lunch break, I have not sat down and studied seriously in months and months. I was pretty low level, but felt I was making good progress. That being said, here are my (some controversial?) opinions. Take it as you will...

• Learn Hiragana first. No one will disagree there. I found this site very good for practicing Hiragana and Katakana. Spend a few minutes a day or however long it takes before you can get them all correct in one go. If you have yet to actually lean them, there are links at the start fortheir respective guides. Reject all romaji.

• Once you are comfortable with Hiragana, I would get stuck into grammar, without worrying too much about Katakana. Since it's rarer and really only used with foreign words, you can get away with just looking up Katakana words when you need to. You'll want to learn it soonish (well before Kanji), but start off reading and putting together simple Hiragana sentences first.

• I use a Firefox extension called "10ten Japanese Reader (Rikaichamp)". When enabled with a shortcut key, you can hover over Japanese text to get a dictionary entry popup right there instantly.

• I used fromzero as my main learning source for grammar to follow along with. Previously called yesjapan.com, you used to be able to access the entire first (and I think even 2nd and 3rd) course for free without signing up, but now you can only get the first 3 lessons of the first few courses with a free signup. (you can try accessing the old version of yesjapan.com through archive.org to get the free lessons)

The lessons are made for the absolute beginner, and use Hirigana / Katakana / Kanji progressivly as new characters, words and grammar concepts are taught and built upon.​

Even if you decide not to sign up or buy anything, every single lesson includes 1 or 2 lengthy videos to go along with it, and they are all up on the official youtube channel for anyone to watch.​

For referenece, If you follow along with these courses, Kanji is not introduced at all until course 3.​

(worth noting that other than a notepad to write things on, this is the only thing I have spent money on in all my language studies)​

• I frequently supplimented the above with JLPTsensei for looking up grammar concepts. Plus google. Lots and lots of googling.

• Duolingo has changed a lot since I started using it for different languages years ago. While the app itself has devolved into a monetised ad-pushing leftist propaganda tool with an ugly look made for babies, the Japanese course has at least improved a lot since it first came out. Absolutely don't spend money on it, but maybe give it a try to get started with the basics. The lesson hints (if they are even there at all) barely explain shit, so I wouldn't rely on it for more advanced stuff. Only ever use it to suppliment your studies.

• For Kanji, I have relied pretty much exclusively on Anki decks, referring to Jisho when needed. The way I have used it though is maybe a bit different. I came across this method in some Youtube video.

The bullshit thing about Kanji is those individual Kanji that make up words each have a dozen readings ad stupid vague meanings that often have nothing to do with the words they're used in. But you're expected to lean that 生 means some concept like "life" or "birth" or "pure" and this is ow they are taught. These meaning are not all that useful by themselves​

So with this method, firstly I have one of those big vocab decks for words. Mine is "Core 2k/6k Optimized Japanese Vocabulary" which may or may not be bad or outdated.​

I then have a second deck for kanji (mine's just called "Kanji" so I can't tell you which one it is exactly right now). It starts out with every entry suspended.​

You then start using the vocab deck. Every time you encounter a new word, you go into your kanji deck and un-suspend any kanji that appeared in that word. In each kanji card, you then add the word that you learned (in kanji, kana and English).​

So using the 生 example above, say I encountered the word 先生 (teacher) for the first time. I would then unlock both my 先 and 生 cards and edit them something like:​

先 - Before, ahead of, previous​

Known words:​

先生 (せんせい) - Teacher, master, doctor​

​

生 - Life​

Known words:​

先生 (せんせい) - Teacher, master, doctor​

Then every time I learn a new word that uses one of those kanji, it gets added to the list of known words. The end result is I'm not learning that 先 is "せい" or "じょう" or maybe "い", but instead 先 as in 先生 (teacher) or 学生 (student)​

• I also have another deck for learning just the Kanji radicals. These are the smaller bits of "sub-kanji" that every Kanji is made up of. It's more bullshit with each one having a bunch of different readings that you don't need to know. Oh and some of these radicals are also complete Kanji all on their own.

What I did do is make sure to learn how to write each one with the proper stroke order. Knowing how to draw the radicas, you can have a good idea how to draw complete Kanji that they appear in. Knowing the stroke order will be essential for reading hand-written Japanese.​

• I found this site somewhat recently. It has a very large selection of very simple short stories you can read for free. The idea is that you try your best to read it, using the cute pictures for context, with no translation help at all. If you don't understand it, skip it and pick another book.

They range from babby's first sentence, to simplified versions of Aesop's Fables.​

• Things I do not do that I really should do:

Just watch more shit in Japanese without translations. Even if it's just playing in the background. Using vtuber streams as an example, as you learn more and more, you'll first start hearing single words in the noise that you recognise, then sentence fragments, and soon you can get the gist of what's being said, if only for a moment. Feels good man once you actually start understanding things.​

​

Speak to people. I can barely hold a conversation in my own language so I'm terrible with this, but there are websites/apps where you can talk to random strangers in Japanese. Maybe you could find a 1view streamer and try communicating in chat. Join a JP server in an online game and be that funny foreign player talking in broken nihongo.​

 

[agility_]

Also here's a link to most of the known Anki decks, grammar books, guides and book resources.

 

[Banana Hammock]

https://www.youtube.com/@TaenyanJpAcademy/featured

Just found a vtuber that teaches Japanese.

 

[Postal rrat]

Japanese Guide - TheMoeWay

Moe Moe Moe Moe Moe Moe Moe

learnjapanese.moe

I do feel compelled to link this I have found it pretty useful as a general game plan and its a good list of resources, but you would have to be an absolute nut to do the thirty day program the idea behind it is fine the schedule is just a bit insane.

I have also been finding cure dolly to be a pretty good grammar guide. The presentation is a bit uncanny but a lot of things started making sense in a hurry

Duolingo is pretty crap after I would say the first thirty days I found it a good way to learn hiragana and katakana but it pretty quickly falls off a cliff, It doesn't teach grammar, Anki is better for adding vocabulary, also listening to bits of predetermined sentences doesn't provide nearly the same benefits as actual immersion everything duo does is done better elsewhere and there is a lot it just doesn't do.

Oh and Duolingo quickly gets to the point of actively sabotaging your efforts because they want money and I am still in absolute hate with the ads

 

[Clem the Gem]

https://www.youtube.com/@TaenyanJpAcademy/featured

Just found a vtuber that teaches Japanese.

Will definitely give this one a try. At work now but I just took a peek at the current live stream. ~20 viewers, so enough to keep chat going but not so crowded so that you can still get noticed by senpai sensei and ask questions.

 

[Thomas Talus]

Oh and Duolingo quickly gets to the point of actively sabotaging your efforts because they want money and I am still in absolute hate with the ads

I've never gotten ads.

 

[Clem the Gem]

I've never gotten ads.

You're not.. not giving them money are you?

They are absolutely obnoxious with the ads. Both the usual bullshit ones and their own ones shilling Duolingo Plus.

 

[Thomas Talus]

You're not.. not giving them money are you?

They are absolutely obnoxious with the ads. Both the usual bullshit ones and their own ones shilling Duolingo Plus.

No money. I used to get the audio DL+ ads, but no external ones.

 

[Postal rrat]

No money. I used to get the audio DL+ ads, but no external ones.

Do you live in the balkans or something I got 15 second ads every few lessons but I have found if you set your vpn to one those countries they often die off

 

[Thomas Talus]

Do you live in the balkans or something I got 15 second ads every few lessons but I have found if you set your vpn to one those countries they often die off

ConUS, Chrome + AdBlock Plus, no VPN.

 

[Postal rrat]

ConUS, Chrome + AdBlock Plus, no VPN.

It hit me while I was up doing things you've never used it on mobile or at least not stock mobile I split my time on duolingo between mobile and desktop and the mobile app is a little bastard

 

[Banana Hammock]

Duolingo is good for getting you started. It gives you some basics, and it's good at getting you motivated and interested. I feel like it drops off at around Unit 4, though. Not sure if that remains the case or not, though.

 

[Thomas Talus]

Duolingo is good for getting you started. It gives you some basics, and it's good at getting you motivated and interested. I feel like it drops off at around Unit 4, though. Not sure if that remains the case or not, though.

Yeah, after a while it seems to plateau, and there are some concepts that I think it fails to adequately convey the underlying meaning/function of, especially "koto."

 

[Postal rrat]

My last straw on duolingo was
今何時ですか？
"what time is it" Or more anally "what time is it now" of course to my dumb english speaking mind its the same fucking thing but you know computers care too much and then the program actively penalizes you for getting it "wrong". Duolingo until that moment at least had the advantage of being enjoyable but yeah it dies off fast.

 

[Thomas Talus]

The One Weird Trick (Green Owls Hate This!) to the "translate this sentence using these pieces" questions is that the intended answer will have 4 pieces left over (3 if you're doing kana to make a word). There are occasionally cases (usually EN -> JP) where you can give an acceptable answer that has 5 left over, and some short expressions that use all of the available pieces, but for the most part if you don't have 4 left over you should be reexamining your answer.

One odd thing about DL is that they seem to assign sentences to the character voice models fully randomly, so you get a fair amount of guys talking about their husbands/boyfriends and such, but they also don't exclude the Junior character from those, so you can end up with an elementary-school-age boy talking about his husband, which is... yeah.

 

[Postal rrat]

The One Weird Trick (Green Owls Hate This!) to the "translate this sentence using these pieces" questions is that the intended answer will have 4 pieces left over (3 if you're doing kana to make a word). There are occasionally cases (usually EN -> JP) where you can give an acceptable answer that has 5 left over, and some short expressions that use all of the available pieces, but for the most part if you don't have 4 left over you should be reexamining your answer.

One odd thing about DL is that they seem to assign sentences to the character voice models fully randomly, so you get a fair amount of guys talking about their husbands/boyfriends and such, but they also don't exclude the Junior character from those, so you can end up with an elementary-school-age boy talking about his husband, which is... yeah.

I knew the one weird trick thing beforehand but it's natural to want to rush through something that you already know and when the answer you give is just as correct as the one it's looking for well it can be more than a little frustrating, and you either need to pay up or watch ads and wait/practice the same busywork, if you want to pick up where you left off. It does honestly start to feel like its sabotaging you on purpose. I got up to a 100 day streak on the damn thing and I think honestly it was 70 days too many. I could bitch for ages but Duolingo being shit isn't new.

As for the other thing that does sound a little creepy I am choosing to believe it's sheer laziness feed a bunch of lines to a bunch of extras/robots so you get used to hearing the languages in a bunch of different tones and cadences. What lines and in whose voices who cares? It's just like the rest of it; make a check list, produce it never check for issues.