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Discussion Anyone here learning Japanese?

From someone who started learning Chinese first, I like kanji.
I wish I had the head start you did, like a lot of the Chinese students in my Japanese classes. And I don’t mind them too much, but it’s more the hassle of looking up a definition. Like even to find the meaning of a kanji, I have to have some browser extension or manually draw it into Google translate every time.
 
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I was self studying Japanese for a few months some years ago. I didn't last long, but I'm planning to hop back in and start over.

Some things I have done:
Bought the Genki and Japanese for busy people books
Installed Anki on pc and laptop with some kanji decks
Subscribed to Japanese ammo Misa and learn Japanese channels on YouTube (I'll look up the exact channel names later)

I'm also planning to buy some Japanese magazines and newspapers, videogames and manga that contain kanji with furigana. Basically I want to improve my reading and listening skills. I've read that it's a good idea to tackle kanji as early as possible and to try to read magazines and newspapers to get used to them.
I know that writing is also an important thing, because of stuff like stroke order and number of strokes etc. But personally I'm not seeing myself needing to write in Japanese, though i might try that later on.

Anki is great for daily practicing with kanji, and the deck I'm using has natives pronouncing them. Genki will help with grammar, verbs, particles and stuff. Youtube is for listening skills, though Genki also has audio exercises.
Months later, and I still haven't done any studying or preparing like I said I was planning to lol. I really need to get into it again.

I'll soon buy a new desk and chair to setup my home office, so hopefully I'll start when that's done.
 
Months later, and I still haven't done any studying or preparing like I said I was planning to lol. I really need to get into it again.

I'll soon buy a new desk and chair to setup my home office, so hopefully I'll start when that's done.
Something you may or may not already be aware of, but you can integrate Yomichan (a browser extension that translates Japanese on the fly) and Anki together to create new cards in Anki on the fly by simply highlighting a word in Japanese and clicking a button. I haven't used it much myself because I set it up very recently as I'm preparing to take my first steps into the world of Japanese audio + Japanese subtitles, but it seems incredibly useful. Something I wanted to post in the thread in general, but I see you mention Anki so I thought it'd be helpful. I'll probably be using it a lot in the future myself as I progress with my learning.


 
Something you may or may not already be aware of, but you can integrate Yomichan (a browser extension that translates Japanese on the fly) and Anki together to create new cards in Anki on the fly by simply highlighting a word in Japanese and clicking a button. I haven't used it much myself because I set it up very recently as I'm preparing to take my first steps into the world of Japanese audio + Japanese subtitles, but it seems incredibly useful. Something I wanted to post in the thread in general, but I see you mention Anki so I thought it'd be helpful. I'll probably be using it a lot in the future myself as I progress with my learning.



Thank you for the tip! I'll download it as soon as I get to my laptop. This will come in handy for sure.
 
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I studied it for a couple years and really only know about as much as a baby in terms of vocab and grammar. I can still read hiragana and katakana though.
 
I've finished going through the Genki 1 textbook so I thought it was a bit of a nice milestone for an update post.

Honestly? My final thoughts on Genki are pretty mixed. I think that Genki is a convenient way to start learning Japanese, but I think once you start sort of figuring out how things work a bit better, the flaws in the textbook begin to become clear. Even as early as learning about the は particle I think Genki is a bit off the mark. In general I think the textbook does two things pretty poorly that I take issue with:

1) I really don't agree with starting with the more formal speak/verb forms (-ます/です). I've read numerous explanations for why this is done, and the two reasons I see listed the most are that if you are going to visit Japan then you will want to default to using the more formal speak, and in Japanese culture it's customary to speak to your teacher in formal speak, so the that's why the textbook (designed around a classroom approach) starts that way. I just don't think it's a logical progression for actually teaching the language. A lot of the things I thought felt off about "conjugations" with the language I would later learn are just strange quirks of the -ます helper verb.

2) Speaking of helper verbs, I really wish the textbook was a lot more clear about the actual mechanics of how a lot of the things in the language work grammatically. A lot of the time the textbook is just like "if you want to express [concept], use [verb stem] and stick all this on at the end of it." Like yeah that's how you do it, but I know personally I find it a lot easier to remember these types of things if I remember why I'm doing that, which is probably what Genki fails the most at teaching. A prime example of this is in Chapter 11, where the textbook simply states "The past tense short form of a verb + ことがある describes that you did something, or something happened, in earlier times." Why not just explain exactly what this means? It's a fairly simple concept to explain. What I actually started doing, as I progressed through Genki 1, was I would read a section in the book and dive deeper into the concept introduced elsewhere on the internet (I refer back to Cure Dolly's YouTube channel, a very very good source for learning Japanese grammar imo). Likewise, the textbook seemed very hesitant to describe things as "helper verbs" and "helper adjectives", and in my opinion knowing that something is a helper verb/adjective makes it a lot easier to think about how it functions in a sentence. I don't know if the textbook ever really made it clear that ます is a helper verb and not just the way verbs end when speaking politely. You attach the helper verb to the i-stem of other verbs (and there probably wasn't an opportune time to really describe what's happening here grammatically because, again, the textbook for some reason decides to start with the ます "form" of verbs).

That said, I think the textbook did a decent enough job guiding my learning early on, and the workbook at least gave me some repetition with the concepts and a chance for expression to try to hammer down the concepts a bit better. I'm not sure I'd truly recommend the textbook to others, but I'm also not really sure how else I'd recommend starting to learn grammar.

I was originally planning on progressing to Genki 2 after finishing Genki 1, but I'm not so sure I'll do so anymore. I actually bought another textbook that I'd heard really good things about called Japanese the Manga Way, and I plan to continue reading through that. I'm about 40% through that. I also plan on continuing to watch Cure Dolly's video lessons on grammar. But most importantly, I think I'm at the stage now where I should start trying to dip my feet into immersion. I want to start trying to watch things and play things in Japanese and struggle through figuring it out. I've been kicking that can down the road but I think it's a good time to start. I really wish it was easier to find anime with Japanese subtitles lol. I checked out Japanese Netflix's anime selection and it was pretty brutal, so I think I'll watch live action stuff for now, which is fine.
 
Hey guys, does anyone have any good ideas for early immersion materials for learning Japanese? I'd love ideas for things that are pretty easy to access, if at all possible.

My first attempt has been with Pokemon. I've been playing through Pokemon X in Japanese for a little while now but I just don't really think Pokemon is actually a great introduction to Japanese immersion. To me it feels like there are just way too many Pokemon-specific terms that sort of get in the way of trying to learn Japanese through the game. I'll read a sentence, more or less know what it's saying, but I'll see a word and think "oh I don't know that word let me look it up" and I'll find out it's Pidgey or Rhyhorn or something and it's just pretty disruptive while also not being very helpful imo. I think I'm at an early enough stage where just trying to get the grammar and vocab down is enough of a task that I'm not sure I want the burden of 600+ Pokemon names and a billion Pokemon move names on top of that. I still think these are likely good beginner material, but not necessarily first ever material I guess lol. I'd be grateful for ideas of better beginner suggestions if anybody has any. At this point I think I'm going to put Pokemon X on hold and come back around after I have a few other things under my belt.

I've been checking out NHK Easy a bit too. I don't spend a ton of time here, but I check it out once in a while if I'm just looking for a little bit of practice. It seems like a nice resource just trying to get some practice in.

The elusive piece of immersion material has been anime/television with Japanese audio and Japanese subtitles. I suppose it's time to put in some actual effort in finding this stuff, because they're not easily available outside of Japan at all. It's why I decided to check out video games first, because a ton of games have Japanese subtitles and audio conveniently included outside of Japan.


As far as other Japanese learning progress, I've cleared the first 20 levels of wanikani. Would still highly recommend to basically anybody learning the language. It's really exciting to already be about about a third of the way through this program. For context, I started using wanikani back on March 1st, and I've learned 717 kanji and 2,304 vocabulary words on the site.

I'm also just about finished reading Japanese the Manga Way. I've read through about 30 of 32 chapters. I really enjoyed this book, and unlike Genki I think I'll be happy to keep this book around and reference back to it when I need to refresh myself on grammar concepts. I'm not sure it's a good "first Japanese textbook", and thus I'm still not sure I have an idea of how to start learning outside of Genki 1, but the book teaches its concepts in a way I appreciate a lot more. It was also nice to get practice in with actual panels from manga as examples.

I'm pretty happy with my progress, and I think I've reached the point where learning Japanese is absolutely part of my daily rhythm and I'm not really worried about falling out of it the way I did later last year. It's required me to put a few of my interests on the backburner compared to before, but I'm actually enjoying myself learning and I'm looking forward to the day my learning intersects with my interests and I can do both at the same time.
 
Hey guys, does anyone have any good ideas for early immersion materials for learning Japanese? I'd love ideas for things that are pretty easy to access, if at all possible.

My first attempt has been with Pokemon. I've been playing through Pokemon X in Japanese for a little while now but I just don't really think Pokemon is actually a great introduction to Japanese immersion. To me it feels like there are just way too many Pokemon-specific terms that sort of get in the way of trying to learn Japanese through the game. I'll read a sentence, more or less know what it's saying, but I'll see a word and think "oh I don't know that word let me look it up" and I'll find out it's Pidgey or Rhyhorn or something and it's just pretty disruptive while also not being very helpful imo. I think I'm at an early enough stage where just trying to get the grammar and vocab down is enough of a task that I'm not sure I want the burden of 600+ Pokemon names and a billion Pokemon move names on top of that. I still think these are likely good beginner material, but not necessarily first ever material I guess lol. I'd be grateful for ideas of better beginner suggestions if anybody has any. At this point I think I'm going to put Pokemon X on hold and come back around after I have a few other things under my belt.

I've been checking out NHK Easy a bit too. I don't spend a ton of time here, but I check it out once in a while if I'm just looking for a little bit of practice. It seems like a nice resource just trying to get some practice in.

The elusive piece of immersion material has been anime/television with Japanese audio and Japanese subtitles. I suppose it's time to put in some actual effort in finding this stuff, because they're not easily available outside of Japan at all. It's why I decided to check out video games first, because a ton of games have Japanese subtitles and audio conveniently included outside of Japan.


As far as other Japanese learning progress, I've cleared the first 20 levels of wanikani. Would still highly recommend to basically anybody learning the language. It's really exciting to already be about about a third of the way through this program. For context, I started using wanikani back on March 1st, and I've learned 717 kanji and 2,304 vocabulary words on the site.

I'm also just about finished reading Japanese the Manga Way. I've read through about 30 of 32 chapters. I really enjoyed this book, and unlike Genki I think I'll be happy to keep this book around and reference back to it when I need to refresh myself on grammar concepts. I'm not sure it's a good "first Japanese textbook", and thus I'm still not sure I have an idea of how to start learning outside of Genki 1, but the book teaches its concepts in a way I appreciate a lot more. It was also nice to get practice in with actual panels from manga as examples.

I'm pretty happy with my progress, and I think I've reached the point where learning Japanese is absolutely part of my daily rhythm and I'm not really worried about falling out of it the way I did later last year. It's required me to put a few of my interests on the backburner compared to before, but I'm actually enjoying myself learning and I'm looking forward to the day my learning intersects with my interests and I can do both at the same time.
I don't have a ton of recommendations for the rest, but Animelon is a good site for watching anime with jp subs (and jp+en subs if you want both at once!) and it has pretty decent rewind options for if you're having trouble with any specific lines.

And I don't know how well it works in conjunction with wanikani, but jpdb is a nice tool if you want to build vocab with a specific game/series/book in mind, once you find something you want to dive into!
 
I don't have a ton of recommendations for the rest, but Animelon is a good site for watching anime with jp subs (and jp+en subs if you want both at once!) and it has pretty decent rewind options for if you're having trouble with any specific lines.

And I don't know how well it works in conjunction with wanikani, but jpdb is a nice tool if you want to build vocab with a specific game/series/book in mind, once you find something you want to dive into!
This looks really great! Thanks a lot for the suggestion. I'll definitely look through this site a bit tomorrow.
 
So I Had my JLPT N1 ages ago (Back before it was N1)
I have no trouble understanding anything unless it is very slangy / some country accent.
However there is a clear difference in my memory between the 2 languages.

FFXIV has been difficult to play in Japanese, not because I can`t understand what is happening in the moment, but there are so many proper names of organizations / people / etc that are Katakana or extremely long Kanji.

If I don`t actively try to study the game and memorize the names, I have very little recollection of them the next time they are casually mentioned in the game.
 
I have been studying Japanese consistently for about 1 hand a half year. I think I'm around mid N3 level at the moment. I'm only studying the language as a hobby and not really planning to take the JLPT or anything, but who knows, maybe I will attempt to take either N3 or N2 at some point by 2023 depeding on my progress at that point if needed. Right now I'm fine with reading stuff on rather simple topics though I do still have to look up new words and expressions, but that's natural. Listening is still very tough for me if it's not about something I know and familiar with. My speaking skill is pretty much the same as my listening. Writing is my strongest skill I think since I have been practicing writing every day for almost a year now.
So I Had my JLPT N1 ages ago (Back before it was N1)
I have no trouble understanding anything unless it is very slangy / some country accent.
However there is a clear difference in my memory between the 2 languages.

FFXIV has been difficult to play in Japanese, not because I can`t understand what is happening in the moment, but there are so many proper names of organizations / people / etc that are Katakana or extremely long Kanji.

If I don`t actively try to study the game and memorize the names, I have very little recollection of them the next time they are casually mentioned in the game.
うおお、日本語に関係ある仕事をしているんですか?
 
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Monthly-ish update?

So I've more or less watched through Cure Dolly's "Japanese from scratch: the game-changing course in organic Japanese" playlist on YouTube and I'd still definitely recommend this for anyone learning. My plan with this playlist was always to do a single once over of it and then reference the topics as I need to going forward. There's 93 videos but they're a pretty reasonable length at 8-15 minutes each for the most part. Really nice breakdown of a lot of topics that I didn't feel I was getting elsewhere, where the topics were broken down on their own terms and how they work within Japanese, rather than creating sometimes iffy connections to English language concepts that don't necessarily explain how these things are working. I suppose I should point out that Cure Dolly unfortunately passed away last year, so the content covered in the channel is static at this point, but she's left behind an absolutely invaluable resources for Japanese learners going forward. Of the 3 main resources I've used for Japanese grammar learning, Cure Dolly has been by far my favorite.


In other news, I feel like I've finally started with my Japanese immersion learning after I wasn't thrilled with how Pokemon was going. I've been watching Skilled Teaser Takagi-san on Animelon, thanks to the great site recommendation from @paranoodle. I think I'm really happy with how smooth the experience has been overall. I don't think it takes much for me to understand generally what's being said at any particular time. My early impression is that the most difficult things early on are going to be understanding some of the more "expression" type language. Words like いう are just used a lot in Japanese and just really understanding the different use cases and what they mean on a more fundamental level will go a long way in my learning.

My big internal conflict on immersion is whether it will be more useful to watch a lot of different things pretty lightly and take them all in and be more exposed to different types of language, or if I should do more in-depth translation and understanding as I go and try to really get a particular show down before moving onto the next. I've read a bit about this online and it seems both approaches have their fans and there are real pros and cons to each. So far I've been going for the more narrow but in-depth approach. I think I'm happy with this approach, but I do wonder sometimes.
 
So, I recently hit the 2-year mark of Japanese self-study. Thinking about where I started and where I am now is very encouraging.

I'm reading Japanese articles and twitter posts every day, and I've found that if I know the Kanji, I will most likely understand the sentence. Twitter replies are especially easy for me now since many of them are short and to the point. I also watched a couple episodes of an anime called "Blue Period" on Netflix yesterday with Japanese subtitles; it was difficult to keep up, but I learned some new words and was able to instantly identify phrases that I already knew.

With reading and listening being my focus, I'm excited with where I am now and eager to continue learning! I'm starting my first "adult" job soon, so maybe I can start saving for a visit to Japan sometime in the next few years.
 
I refer back to Cure Dolly's YouTube channel, a very very good source for learning Japanese grammar imo
Thank you for linking this channel! I just watched a few videos, it was enlightening and I will continue to use it as a resource as I work through Genki. I assume some of her teachings will be at odds with Genki’s but I think it’s okay, they are different enough that they probably each have their own value. Have you read the book she references, Alice in Kanji Land?
 
Thank you for linking this channel! I just watched a few videos, it was enlightening and I will continue to use it as a resource as I work through Genki. I assume some of her teachings will be at odds with Genki’s but I think it’s okay, they are different enough that they probably each have their own value. Have you read the book she references, Alice in Kanji Land?
Happy to see you're liking Cure Dolly's vids! I haven't read her books. I had just bought a few other Japanese books at the time of finding her channel so I never pulled the trigger on her books.

She wrote another book called Unlocking Japanese I believe. From the way I understand it, Unlocking Japanese is more focused on Japanese grammar and structure while Alice in Kanji Land seems to have a focus on N5 level kanji.

And yes, you will definitely see Cure Dolly's teachings at odds with Genki's somewhat often, and yes I've also come away thinking that there's definitely value in it. Even when they're at odds with each other, it can provide clarity or another perspective that I may find easier to make sense of.
 
For me the best strategy has been non-stop practice. Even when you're just a baby learner, getting to practice the language with others or if possible, with a native speaker helps you a lot. Watching anime or playing videogames in Japanese also helps.
 
Hello Gang nice to see everyone in this thread :) I've been studying pretty hard for the past year because I want to take a graduate position at a certain Japanese gaming company after I finish university, I went from ~N5 to over N2. How does everyone study? I mostly do self study but I do have classes at an online Japanese school to practice my speaking.

Also I'm happy to help anyone if they have questions or anything like that too!
 
I've been playing the japanese version of Pokemon BW, and it's been a blast. Of course, I've had to rely on a dictionary, a kanji app, and it's taken me 3 hours just to get to Prof. Juniper tour of the Pokemon Center in Accumula Town, but it's worth it.

Hello Gang nice to see everyone in this thread :) I've been studying pretty hard for the past year because I want to take a graduate position at a certain Japanese gaming company after I finish university, I went from ~N5 to over N2. How does everyone study? I mostly do self study but I do have classes at an online Japanese school to practice my speaking.

Also I'm happy to help anyone if they have questions or anything like that too!

Any advice on how to learn new vocabulary fast? Also any advice regarding expressions like はっきり、ずっかり、ぶらぶら、しっかり and so on? It seems like onomatopoeias and idiomatic words written in hiragana are so hard to memorize, especially when they are not used often and because they lack a kanji to latch on.
 
I've been playing the japanese version of Pokemon BW, and it's been a blast. Of course, I've had to rely on a dictionary, a kanji app, and it's taken me 3 hours just to get to Prof. Juniper tour of the Pokemon Center in Accumula Town, but it's worth it.



Any advice on how to learn new vocabulary fast? Also any advice regarding expressions like はっきり、ずっかり、ぶらぶら、しっかり and so on? It seems like onomatopoeias and idiomatic words written in hiragana are so hard to memorize, especially when they are not used often and because they lack a kanji to latch on.
So for learning vocabulary fast, what I used to do when I started learning is have 3 Anki decks: one for word reading (so the front of the card is the Japanese word, and I have to type in the romaji reading), one for translation (front is Japanese, input English translation), and another for reverse (front is English, back is Japanese word). This way you cover everything about a word. Nowadays I only keep the third deck, but it's because I'm focusing on handwriting, so what I do is see an Englihs word and then I write it in my notebook in Japanese and see if I got it right, along with reading.

For hiragana only words the same method as above works tbh but the thing I find really works is find similar sounding words and remembering the differences/similarties, or finding the words they come from. For example, ぶらぶら means swaying/dangling, and there's another word ぶら下げる which means the same thing as a verb. I'm guessing you can see why ぶらぶら is that way now. For はっきり for example, I'd remember it together with はきはき. They're a bit similar in writing but totally different in meaning, so if you remember that it's way easier to remember next time you see one of them. (はっきり is something like definite/precise/clear and はきはき is more like answering promptly/clearly/without waffling, etc). Hope this helps!
 
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Any advice on how to learn new vocabulary fast?
Depends on your definition of fast. WaniKani says it aims to teach you 2k kanji and 6k vocabulary words in 18 months. That's a long time on paper, but in the grand scheme of things it's pretty good. I use that to learn recognition, and then KaniWani to practice recall. WaniKani shows you the Japanese and asks you for meaning and reading, and then KaniWani shows you the English and asks you to enter the Japanese reading in hiragana.
 
I used WaniKani at the beginning but I really didn't like how there wasn't actual progression to the leraning, and I especially hated that they gave example sentences that you just couldn't read at that level. What I do is I just read articles, books, interviews, games etc and when I see a new word I put it in my anki deck.
 
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I just finished up level 30 of my WaniKani lessons so I thought I'd make a post! This puts me halfway through the WaniKani lessons since they go up to 60. I believe I started about a year ago so it took me a year to get halfway through. I was actually up into the 20's back in September, but I had some health issues which messed with my motivation and I ended up falling really far behind in my studying in general (as well as pretty much everything) but I'm all caught up on my WaniKani lessons and starting to progress through it again. Thinking I'll revisit some grammar lessons with Cure Dolly's videos as well as some of my textbooks then I'm hoping to take another shot at animelon to start trying to watch some stuff fully in Japanese again and learning that way. Hoping the next 30 levels of WaniKani take less time than the first 30.
 
Learning Japanese atm, my girlfriend taught English in Japan for 5 years so she's giving me lessons. Genki and Mango have been my main things. Duolingo I used to help learn Katakana and Hiragana. It's hard but I feel like I am making progress.
 
I've been slacking on learning a bit, need to get back into the swing of things. Was pretty much done with Genki chapter 1.
 
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So I started back up on my Japanese and been trying to relearn and learn new Kanji each day, even if I'm going a bit slow. It's going alright, honestly. Biggest thing is I'm trying to regain strength in my hand and eventually start to move on and properly go into the grammar and other portions of Japanese. I've been feeling really good about it, as a whole.
 
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