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[bluethree]

Just about any Japan related subreddit is fucking awful. I only dip into japanlife sometimes for information and nothing else.

 

[Porcile]

I didn't mind I'm an expert. He seemed a fairly reasonable internet voice for the most part, and also quite generous. I don't need GAF to be a safe space or anything so I enjoyed the various discussions which were had over the last year and a half or so. Everything about Reddit is so fucking awful though. I could never join a Learning Japanese GAF subreddit like what was suggested by someone in his post.

 

[Beckx]

In all honesty expert really made me less eager to take part in this community at times. But I think he said stuff that was useful if you could figure out how to apply it to your own situation and motivations.

the last several pages have been great and i hope more beginner and intermediate learners will post. it's nice to have people to talk with who are going through the same things, even if the questions seem basic to the advanced folks.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

Fair enough, with kanji there's really no other way around it except for rote memorization (cramming or not). My main counter-argument has always been that you need a solid base in a language, but N1 is not the base (for me it's much lower, namely N4- to N3-ish). Apparently the Japan Foundation agrees too (even if you and I have a different opinion about the suitability for teaching).

It all depends on your level of dedication and what you want to achieve.

N4 is fine to teach people who just want to learn some "cool looking characters" and maybe have a few phrases to say to locals on their trip to Kyoto.

If you intend to use Japanese in a professional environment along with other Japanese people then you really will need to be able to pass N1 without much trouble. If you want to be able to confidently read or watch just about anything in Japanese, you will need to be higher than an N1 level.

If that's not your intention, and you just want to be able to maybe have some casual conversations with people, then of course you don't need to study that much. It just comes down to whether or not you really want to achieve some level of mastery of the language or not.

 

[Aizo]

I think Zefah is so right about waiting around to be at the right level for something. Dive in and you'll be pushed to catch up. I played with bands I didn't feel good enough to play with, but it pushed me to perform well and practice. I think it applies to many things.

re: expert. His avatar is still there so I don't think it's perma. He was probably just trying to see if he could light a fire under the ass of that subreddit.

That's a false rumor about perma bans. It's been confirmed that he was perma banned. I really liked when he was giving advice and being helpful. It's too bad he wasn't always like that.

 

[marimorimo]

I think Zefah is so right about waiting around to be at the right level for something. Dive in and you'll be pushed to catch up. I played with bands I didn't feel good enough to play with, but it pushed me to perform well and practice. I think it applies to many things.

Uh, I don't know if you realize it but that's exactly my argument. A learner has no business studying N1 grammar if they can't even be confident that they can pass N3. The same concept applies to anything that can be learned.

 

[Alanae]

Fair enough, with kanji there's really no other way around it except for rote memorization (cramming or not).

There is a way around it, though.
Just do it the other way round. Rather than learning kanji and then learning words, start off with learning words right away through doing that you'll end up learning the kanji without much additional effort.
It might seem logical to learn the "alphabet" before trying to learn the words it uses, in the case of kanji the amount of them is huge to the point that learning that alphabet will take you months of grind.
In the Japanese language there are far more words than there are kanji, which means that you'll be likely to keep seeing the kanji turn up in the various different words you're learning, and before long you'll start to see the patterns that belong with the different kanji, pattern recognition happening to be something that humans are rather good at. patterns such as the readings that particular kanji can have and a vague sense of the meaning of the kind of words it appears in (an exact meaning is often not really applicable to a particular kanji so it'd be a good idea to not to try and stick one to it). See a kanji appear in enough different words and you'll passively start building a mental list of what readings it can have and get a sense of which one of them would be likely to be used in case you come across a new word.
The main advantage of doing things this way round is that you can learn words while, and through use of reading things, which is a lot more fun to do than endless grind and rather effective as well.
the basic idea is the following:
Find something you're interested in reading (emphasis on the interested because it'll help you so much if you read something you actually like) > read until you see something you don't know/forgot > look up that thing > continue reading > repeat.
you wont remember everything in one go, but by repeatedly looking up that which you've forgotten it'll stick eventually.
The thing you read can be anything of interest, (digital) books, newpapers, the japanese subtitles of a series, manga/visual novels/text heavy games (some recommendations here) or even japanese twitter make good reading material. Options for looking up words that will always work are using handwriting lookup (the microsoft/google IME's have one built in) or the radical search found on http://jisho.org/. the former is more useful for the simpler (less strokes/radicals) kanji and vice versa. when reading something with copy-able text you can use text parsers, copy that text into an empty webpage use the incredibly useful rikaisama for quick word lookups, simply just google the individual words or use the digital dictionaries I mentioned in my previous post in combination with ebwin4. in case of playing supported vns or games on pc you can use text hookers to grab the text currently being displayed and display it in copyable form. there's a lot of tricks to combine the these so if anybody is interested in a more detailed explanation I wrote about it in more detail in here (search for the term "intermission"). lastly, for digital books the japanese amazon kindle app has built in dictionaries that are convenient.
While you can jump into reading as soon as you've got kana and basic grammar down (basic as in having read through tae kim/genki/etc), whatever you read first is going to be a struggle at that point, which is why it might be helpful to use something like core decks of anki as supplement to help you ease in . Just make sure to switch to making your own decks based of words you've actually encountered personally if you decide to stick with anki for the long run.
Keep in mind that this method wont actually teach you to handwrite japanese though, you'll actually need handwrite to practise that. But you can always start handwriting once you've gotten a stable foundation in the language from reading, however.

Uh, I don't know if you realize it but that's exactly my argument. A learner has no business studying N1 grammar if they can't even be confident that they can pass N3. The same concept applies to anything that can be learned.

Japanese grammar isn't quite linear like that, even if it were, the way the jlpt decides to group grammar concepts wouldn't be some absolute order of requirements either.
there's nothing particular about N1 grammar that makes it impossible to figure out if you haven't mastered N3 grammar, nor do people make much of a distinction (or even know which is which) between the different groups when writing.
One could make an argument that some examples of grammar are more rarely used than others, but that would not necessarily be related to how they would be to get (not to mention different people would find different things hard to figure out).

 

[Kansoku]

I'm finding that Kanji has become a crutch to me. I have an immensely harder time recognizing words from listening or reading from kana alone then when reading with kanji.
Did you guys encounter that as well? How did you solve it?

 

[Kilrogg]

I'm finding that Kanji has become a crutch to me. I have an immensely harder time recognizing words from listening or reading from kana alone then when reading with kanji.
Did you guys encounter that as well? How did you solve it?

Yeah. Kana-only text is a pain. That's because hiragana mostly exist to carry grammar functions, not meaning, and because there are no spaces between words in Japanese sadly.

The thing is, as you know, that Japanese is very much a visual language. So many kanji have the exact same on'yomi, or a very similar on'yomi, and so many kango words are two syllables long with the same pitch accent, that whenever you hear or even say a word out loud, the correct kanji should instantly pop up in your mind if you want to be able to really understand everything you hear without having to stop and think for even a fraction of a second.

I don't know about you, but I'm still not entirely used to the 'backwards' sentence structure of Japanese, with the verb at the end, so I need to be able to focus all my attention on what's coming next. Stopping for even a short moment to think 'wait, I know that word, I'm sure, I've heard it before, but it feels like there's 10 other words that sound the same, so which one is it?' distracts me from that. That questions might only take a tenth of a second to be answered in my mind, but it's enough to make me lose the thread of the sentence that's being said to me, especially if I have to stop several times for several words.

There aren't nearly as many homonyms or quasi-homonyms in Romance and Germanic languages such as French and English, and having the verb at the beginning (in most cases) certainly makes listening comprehension much easier. At least it does for us, because that's the order we're used to.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

Uh, I don't know if you realize it but that's exactly my argument. A learner has no business studying N1 grammar if they can't even be confident that they can pass N3. The same concept applies to anything that can be learned.

I couldn't disagree more. A Japanese learner has all the business in the world studying just about any aspect of Japanese.

It's not like math where it builds on itself, necessarily. Grammar points are broken up arbitrarily with the JLPT--intelligently, sure, but still completely arbitrarily. As long as you have a dictionary ready and are prepared to use it and other research tools, attacking "higher level" material is more than fine.

I'm finding that Kanji has become a crutch to me. I have an immensely harder time recognizing words from listening or reading from kana alone then when reading with kanji.
Did you guys encounter that as well? How did you solve it?

Kilrogg already explained it in more detail, but that's really just how the language works. The more you're exposed to the language and the more you read, the easier it will get to read Kana-only text, but that's just because your brain is able to narrow down the possibilities of what might realistically come next, making you stumble on the phonetics less.

 

[marimorimo]

I don't know about you, but I'm still not entirely used to the 'backwards' sentence structure of Japanese, with the verb at the end, so I need to be able to focus all my attention on what's coming next. Stopping for even a short moment to think 'wait, I know that word, I'm sure, I've heard it before, but it feels like there's 10 other words that sound the same, so which one is it?' distracts me from that. That questions might only take a tenth of a second to be answered in my mind, but it's enough to make me lose the thread of the sentence that's being said to me, especially if I have to stop several times for several words.

I have a "language hack" for that. If I'm having trouble understanding what someone is talking about, I make quick mental notes of the main points while he/she is talking--if it's a word I don't know/can't remember at the moment, I just file the information away in Japanese. Then when it's my turn to speak, I try to repeat what the other person just said, in my own words, for confirmation purposes (Japanese people love doing this so it sounds totally natural. 「確認ですが・・・」 or「～～～ということですね。&#12301. Often just that act of repeating what was said allows me to remember the meaning or just plain understand what I heard better. And if I made a mistake in comprehension, it's not a problem. The person would still be there to correct me. I 'm assured I understood the message and the other person is also sure that the message was relayed correctly, so it's a win-win.

 

[openrob]

Hi guys, novice here. I last posted in september, and not much has changed! I feel a bit more confident and plan to get back into the swing of things.

I am trying to learn Japanese. I don't have any conctrete goals in mind (e.g. Employment in Japan), but am really interested in Japan and have several friends who live there.

I am currently on my way to JLPT Lv 5. I'm using Wani-Kani, Youtube and Podcasts. I also read a bit of Remembering the Kanji, but then gave that up for Wani Kani. I am also going to try to get to a class once a week if I can find one that meets my geographical and financial means lol. I am confident with kana, pretty much got the sentance structure and can start simple conversations, order food etc.

Basically I would like to post here with updates of my progress every now and then.
If I can work towards my first JLPT cert then that would be a huge milestone for me.

For now I think it would be good to hear from others what the work like getting to, and moving on from, the Lv5?

 

[ZoltanXerxes]

I gotta say, seeing the comments in that thread expert posted at r/LearnJapanese...that community is run by a bunch of pricks. Like...how the hell do you grow and foster a community when it's like 1 or 2 people just deciding what (going by that thread) is and isn't "motivating". How is that place nothing more than an echo chamber of what a few people think is the "right" way to study the language? That mod deleted the post because it was demotivating, it couldn't be proven, it was pompous..I mean come on, he got butt hurt for some reason and nuked it, that's all it is.

I think the best parts of this thread (and the last) is the fact that people can argue and debate over ideas and concepts freely. Nobody here is afraid to speak their mind, and most of the time, nobody gets truly upset about it. Regardless of the fact that posts might have a bit of personal bite in them at times, at least the arguments and debates can remain. We don't have someone coming in here and saying, you're flat out wrong, piss off. You're free to tell someone they're wrong, but here you get to explain why. And people listen, and opinions change, and over time you find a new way to do something. Case in point - marimorimo, fully against whiteboard when we first started doing it, and she was able to draw inspiration from it and apply it somewhere else.

I don't care how anybody learns Japanese, and I don't think anybody else here does. But if you're going to dictate how people converse and approach it all..well, to me, that's an outright toxic place to be. I know some posters here post there too. Honestly, it's probably a good thing, so that you can help guide new learners in the right direction. So this isn't a dig at you folk, you're cool (I know Spork posts their often and is often very helpful to newcomers).

The goal is to learn Japanese, whatever method you choose is irrelevant as long as it works for you. I can't stand people who say that their method is better than someone else's and making you feel bad for not using their method.

 

[Kilrogg]

I have a "language hack" for that. If I'm having trouble understanding what someone is talking about, I make quick mental notes of the main points while he/she is talking--if it's a word I don't know/can't remember at the moment, I just file the information away in Japanese. Then when it's my turn to speak, I try to repeat what the other person just said, in my own words, for confirmation purposes (Japanese people love doing this so it sounds totally natural. 「確認ですが・・・」 or「～～～ということですね。&#12301. Often just that act of repeating what was said allows me to remember the meaning or just plain understand what I heard better. And if I made a mistake in comprehension, it's not a problem. The person would still be there to correct me. I 'm assured I understood the message and the other person is also sure that the message was relayed correctly, so it's a win-win.

Good point, thanks for the advice... Too bad it doesn't work when watching something .

 

[Beckx]

Does anyone know if the BigGlobe 大辞林 app on Android has pitch accent (and is it good)? Should i just get the NHK pitch accent app instead and a different J-J dictionary later when I need it more?

There's also an android app from LogoVista that purports to have Kenkyusha's college j-e dictionary - anyone know if its legit/good?

 

[RangerBAD]

My biggest problem from the last year has been finding people to talk to. Sites like italki are geared toward paid tutoring and most people become flakes. There's some apps, but I don't have a phone.

 

[Aizo]

Uh, I don't know if you realize it but that's exactly my argument. A learner has no business studying N1 grammar if they can't even be confident that they can pass N3. The same concept applies to anything that can be learned.

I just read his post on that page, so I don't know what your argument is really about. You're saying that my post is exactly the opposite of what you're arguing? I don't think someone should hold back studying something because it's too hard. They'll learn a lot that way.

 

[marimorimo]

Good point, thanks for the advice... Too bad it doesn't work when watching something .

Even better. That's what the replay button is for That's so much easier compared to repeating what was said.

I just read his post on that page, so I don't know what your argument is really about. You're saying that my post is exactly the opposite of what you're arguing? I don't think someone should hold back studying something because it's too hard. They'll learn a lot that way.

No, I'm saying that what you said is exactly what I wanted to say. Basically, I'm all for people aiming for N1, but I cannot advise learners to do it at 3 months. If you have 3 months of time, I believe that aiming for a more moderate goal would be more beneficial than going for an unrealistic one. Especially if they were starting out from zero or near it. Quality over quantity.

I've been meaning to stop talking about this since the last page but I don't want new learners to come here and be discouraged thinking that N5/N4/N3/N2 aren't worthy goals.

I think Zefah is so right about waiting around to be at the right level for something. Dive in and you'll be pushed to catch up.

That's where Zefah and I disagree: the right level to start using Japanese. My main argument is that people should wait until they have a usable level of Japanese (the "base") before diving into higher level grammar. I say that's N4-N3-ish, he says N1.

Knowing N4 by heart would already allow you to function and more than get by in Japanese society. That's the level I had when I started working at a fast food chain, surrounded by all-Japanese customers and co-workers. So maybe manual work that doesn't count as "professional" yet...

I was also hired in all 3 of my jobs with an N2 certificate. It involved plenty of live interpretation and translation. For half that time I wasn't good enough to pass N1. But I did my job well and nobody had complaints.

If it's just about consuming media, manga started making sense to me while I was studying for N4.

I played with bands I didn't feel good enough to play with, but it pushed me to perform well and practice. I think it applies to many things.

You already had the necessary skills to play in a band, meaning you already had a good base from which to push yourself to perform better. Chances are, you had more than 3 months to build that base. You may not have been the best, but you were already good enough to perform.

 

[ATXAlchemy]

I thought I'd make a visit on this thread.

If you can read/understand it within 7 seconds, keep pushing the second week and you should be fine. If you can't, you won't pass and you'll have only lost a week.

the grammar part of the first site you mentioned doesn't seem complete at all. I'm currently studying for N3 with Tobira and the Shin Kanzen Master N3 book and theres a lot more advanced stuff in it than mentioned on the side.

Was Genki 2 as far as you studied? That's roughly N4 level. Even if you remembered everything you learned out of those perfectly, you'd be a very long ways from the N2. If you're seriously interested in resuming your Japanese studies, trying to cram one to two years worth of learning into two weeks will be an extremely unpleasant way to do so. I'd personally skip this go-round and start studying at a rate which actually suits your current situation, motivation and goals.

Thanks for everyone who tried to help. Though biggest thanks lies to my friend who lent me her N2 books.

Also thanks to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for that wonderful de-stressing experience.

Spoiler

I understood most of that blurb, except for 2~3 words.

I'm assuming he didn't do so well on the test if he even did take it haha.

I thought GAF's motto is "Believe."?

Honestly speaking, I don't deserve that score in Listening. I didn't get even what exactly that goddamned fuufu was trying to do or what the question was in the last problem(s). Do they adjust scores on JLPT or something?

Oh, if anyone attempts to do what I did, don't do it. I was at a point where I was mis-seeing/recognizing kanjis that I have no problems with - and they were pretty common ones. Plus, it probably added more stress; I was also under training after a project/team shift in my job. (Probably contributed to my current health issues. >___>) Also, a bigger point is that my question was more like "I don't know where I am, I don't know what the fuck N5/4/3/2 scopes are and what to study, halp pls", so it's not like I know completely nothing. On grammar, I probably know more than half of what was in the N2 TRY! book. Kanji itself is easy to me because I studied and used to know Chinese (which is multiple tiers harder than Japanese IMO). The hardest part is probably studying/reviewing vocabs/readings, primarily because it is multifaceted, and the list I used is mostly unorganized.

Unrelated, but I appreciated the proctor we had (a retired linguistics lady). She was friendly, and I really liked the last words she made before ending the exam "See you next year on N1 exams. Remember, you don't need to pass N2 to do N1."

Re:I'm an expert, it's probably better to ask him about his ban (or a mod?). SmokyDave was banned in 2015, and he still has his avatar (he's still banned).

 

[Porcile]

Damn, you wrecked that shit. Badass.

 

[Jintor]

I think Zefah is so right about waiting around to be at the right level for something. Dive in and you'll be pushed to catch up. I played with bands I didn't feel good enough to play with, but it pushed me to perform well and practice. I think it applies to many things.

I think he's 100% on point. Sink or swim is by far the best method of learning, and I think honestly I squandered a lot of my time in Japan - probably at least half that first year or so - by putting myself in 'comfortable' situations where I could get away without having to know as much Japanese as you'd think.

But we don't all have the toughness to be in a state of constantly drowning, which is the way I feel sometimes in life, so to have Expert telling you how shit you are for not wanting to drown constantly could be a bit of a downer

Anyway, I've been feeling a bit more peaky with Japanese learning, so I might as well resub to this thread... even if all I'm doing these days is reading twitter. lmao.

 

[TheSporkWithin]

I agree with what everyone said. You both should and shouldn't study Japanese ahead of your level. Wait, what were we talking about again? Seriously, this last page is a mess. I see at least two posts saying they agree with someone who posted the exact opposite of what they said, and then one person saying they disagree with someone and then posting the exact same thing that person said.

I thought I'd make a visit on this thread.

mic drop

Goddamn. You killed it. I look like a real asshole there now!

 

[Jintor]

i think we should all study english imho

 

[Kilrogg]

@ATXAlchemy: that's 2 fewer points than I'd like.

j/k you aced it, man. I'm jelly AF honestly. Even at my peak back then I didn't get so high a score on the N2.

But the spirit of I'm an expert lives on in me I guess. Whiteboard power!... Wait, that didn't come out right. Ah well, you know what I mean.

 

[Hypron]

the digital epwing format dictionaries are really good.
on the J>J front you have the 明鏡国語 for its grammar explanations and the 大辞泉, 大辞林 and/or 広辞苑 for the occasional words that it doesn't have.
and for J>E there's the 新和英大辞典 which showers you with example sentences and sometimes adds in short explanations in Japanese as well.

Thanks for that!

you can always play them and if you feel you missed too much, play the NA release later

i have really, really enjoyed playing Persona 5 - it's been my long play since it released. i obviously can't understand everything, but it is fun to push myself and see what i can figure out. sometimes it's frustrating and other times it's exhilarating when you can follow the instructions for a puzzle or whatever.

plus tbh none of this is Murakami or Oe so it's not like it's really hard to follow. (though i wouldn't be surprised if Nioh uses a lot of archaic language)

but then again i'm not doing it as a learning thing & i've been enjoying playing import RPGs since forever ago on Genesis.

I totally agree that you should always challenge yourself, but keep in mind that I was crying in this thread 1 month ago because I found the listening part of the N5 exam hard. I made efforts on that front since then (30 min/day of shadowing) and I think I could work my way through JP videos by rewinding a decent amount - but it would already be challenging. Content that I only have one chance to understand on the other hand? I feel like I'd ruin the experience by missing more than half of what's being said. Like, the main reasons I want to play those games is because they look cool, not because they're Japanese (that's just a bonus).

.

Damn you aced that shit, congrats!

 

[Aizo]

Great job, ATX!! That's really impressive.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

I thought I'd make a visit on this thread.






Thanks for everyone who tried to help. Though biggest thanks lies to my friend who lent me her N2 books.

Also thanks to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for that wonderful de-stressing experience.

Spoiler

I understood most of that blurb, except for 2~3 words.

I thought GAF's motto is "Believe."?

Honestly speaking, I don't deserve that score in Listening. I didn't get even what exactly that goddamned fuufu was trying to do or what the question was in the last problem(s). Do they adjust scores on JLPT or something?

Oh, if anyone attempts to do what I did, don't do it. I was at a point where I was mis-seeing/recognizing kanjis that I have no problems with - and they were pretty common ones. Plus, it probably added more stress; I was also under training after a project/team shift in my job. (Probably contributed to my current health issues. >___>) Also, a bigger point is that my question was more like "I don't know where I am, I don't know what the fuck N5/4/3/2 scopes are and what to study, halp pls", so it's not like I know completely nothing. On grammar, I probably know more than half of what was in the N2 TRY! book. Kanji itself is easy to me because I studied and used to know Chinese (which is multiple tiers harder than Japanese IMO). The hardest part is probably studying/reviewing vocabs/readings, primarily because it is multifaceted, and the list I used is mostly unorganized.

Unrelated, but I appreciated the proctor we had (a retired linguistics lady). She was friendly, and I really liked the last words she made before ending the exam "See you next year on N1 exams. Remember, you don't need to pass N2 to do N1."

Re:I'm an expert, it's probably better to ask him about his ban (or a mod?). SmokyDave was banned in 2015, and he still has his avatar (he's still banned).

Nice job! I hope you take her words to heart and go for N1 next time.

I think he's 100% on point. Sink or swim is by far the best method of learning, and I think honestly I squandered a lot of my time in Japan - probably at least half that first year or so - by putting myself in 'comfortable' situations where I could get away without having to know as much Japanese as you'd think.

But we don't all have the toughness to be in a state of constantly drowning, which is the way I feel sometimes in life, so to have Expert telling you how shit you are for not wanting to drown constantly could be a bit of a downer

Anyway, I've been feeling a bit more peaky with Japanese learning, so I might as well resub to this thread... even if all I'm doing these days is reading twitter. lmao.

It's my hope that people will know whether or not they have the motivation to persevere. As long as your desire to get good is stronger than your sense of being overwhelmed, I think you'll be OK!

That's where Zefah and I disagree: the right level to start using Japanese. My main argument is that people should wait until they have a usable level of Japanese (the "base") before diving into higher level grammar. I say that's N4-N3-ish, he says N1.

Knowing N4 by heart would already allow you to function and more than get by in Japanese society. That's the level I had when I started working at a fast food chain, surrounded by all-Japanese customers and co-workers. So maybe manual work that doesn't count as "professional" yet...

I was also hired in all 3 of my jobs with an N2 certificate. It involved plenty of live interpretation and translation. For half that time I wasn't good enough to pass N1. But I did my job well and nobody had complaints.

If it's just about consuming media, manga started making sense to me while I was studying for N4.

I guess I just don't understand your concern around people trying things that are way higher level than what they are used to. There's no harm in learning "higher level" grammar points. You're going to have to learn most of everything anyway on your way to mastery.

To me, you seem overly worried that people will get discouraged or burnt out by trying difficult subject matter. That may be true for people who are not committed to learning the language and are just doing it for fun, but I've already said I wouldn't recommend such an approach for casual learners. If failing a few times or not being able to understand something at first is enough for you to say "fuck it, this isn't for me," then quite frankly you're not serious about learning the language.

When I say N1 is the base, I mean it when talking about being able to operate at a similar level as a native Japanese person. The N1 is not something any educated Japanese adult or even teenager would struggle to pass in the slightest, so it shouldn't be seen as some enormous challenge like the higher levels of the Kanji Kentei or something. I'm not saying you can't get work or get by in Japan just fine without being able to pass N1, but in terms of becoming truly fluent, I would definitely point to N1 as a base or starting point when it comes to higher level learning of the language. That's just my take, though. I realize not everyone is going to agree.

 

[Resilient]

snip.

that is great, congrats mate. prompted me to get back into things seriously.

I though about it but my Japanese isn't good enough to do that yet sadly. They're both RPGs with real time cutscenes/dialogue so I'd miss a lot of the plot :/

I'll probably replay them in, say, 6 months to a year, except in full Japanese this time.

here is what you and anybody else scared of playing in JPN should do.

start the game, get a text book, get your dictionary/app whatever.

for all text dialogue; any word or grammar pattern you don't understand, look it up, write it. don't write the eng meaning. keep playing for as long as you want/till you get burnt out. this means EVERY WORD, even ones in the menu, your equipment whatever, every word. write the Kanji and the kana after.

the next day, go back to your textbook, put the english meaning next to everything, even write some of those words again. you'll have to look them up if you can't remember them.

do this for 1 month, if you play the game for 20-30 hours you might not even make 3-5 hours of progress, but you'll have learned a shit ton of new words, and the game and text will become instantly familiar for you. so you should then breeze through the rest of the game. you should still be writing down new words though.

won't it be an awesome feeling when you can play without having to look up stuff in your dictionary every half minute?

 

[Deleted member 17706]

here is what you and anybody else scared of playing in JPN should do.

start the game, get a text book, get your dictionary/app whatever.

for all text dialogue; any word or grammar pattern you don't understand, look it up, write it. don't write the eng meaning. keep playing for as long as you want/till you get burnt out. this means EVERY WORD, even ones in the menu, your equipment whatever, every word. write the Kanji and the kana after.

the next day, go back to your textbook, put the english meaning next to everything, even write some of those words again. you'll have to look them up if you can't remember them.

do this for 1 month, if you play the game for 20-30 hours you might not even make 3-5 hours of progress, but you'll have learned a shit ton of new words, and the game and text will become instantly familiar for you. so you should then breeze through the rest of the game. you should still be writing down new words though.

won't it be an awesome feeling when you can play without having to look up stuff in your dictionary every half minute?

Other than the writing down English meanings part, that's pretty much exactly what I did when I was first learning back when the PS2 was still a pretty new system!

 

[Beckx]

so here's a question about a minor conflict between Tae Kim and Genki II

for the causative-passive form of most godan verbs (other than ー&#12377 Genki II says the common accepted practice is to drop the -う and add -あされる rather than the longer -あせられる (conjugating to -ます forms for polite situations). Tae Kim's says the short form is only used for casual speech and otherwise the longer -あせられる should be used.

Thoughts? My inclination is to defer to Genki but would like to know other opinions.

 

[AzureSkies]

Hey guys, I'm about to start lesson 8 on Genki 1. I've been learning Japanese for a few months. I posted in this thread a while ago and I just wanted to say that I will be more active as I was kinda scared away from posting by I'm an expert.

 

[Rutger]

here is what you and anybody else scared of playing in JPN should do.

start the game, get a text book, get your dictionary/app whatever.

for all text dialogue; any word or grammar pattern you don't understand, look it up, write it. don't write the eng meaning. keep playing for as long as you want/till you get burnt out. this means EVERY WORD, even ones in the menu, your equipment whatever, every word. write the Kanji and the kana after.

the next day, go back to your textbook, put the english meaning next to everything, even write some of those words again. you'll have to look them up if you can't remember them.

do this for 1 month, if you play the game for 20-30 hours you might not even make 3-5 hours of progress, but you'll have learned a shit ton of new words, and the game and text will become instantly familiar for you. so you should then breeze through the rest of the game. you should still be writing down new words though.

won't it be an awesome feeling when you can play without having to look up stuff in your dictionary every half minute?

Yeah, I would also recommend people just jump right into it if they're planing to play a game in Japanese. It can be a fun way to complement our studies, and going out of our comfort zone is a good thing.

Just make sure not to ignore studies outside of the games.

 

[Porcile]

I recommend Ocarina of Time on 3DS. If you're studying N4 materials and you use a dictionary you wont have too many problems. Obviously it's useless as a tool to pass JLPT because the vocabulary is ridiculous but you can definitely have a lot of fun playing through it.

 

[Valkerionseven]

I would recommend Pokemon for a game that is playable to the end. In general the concepts are not too lofty and the language used are not the most difficult (it is meant to be understood by young children)

Though my issue with it was the language used by some characters was really... girly in one case. Basically ignored a lot of the dialog by that character haha.

Games can also be set in Kana or Kanji depending which you want more practice in. I did Kana for a bit then switched to Kanji after I got it down. But like Resilient said, you should write down words you don't know and practice them later.

 

[Shouta]

I'm finding that Kanji has become a crutch to me. I have an immensely harder time recognizing words from listening or reading from kana alone then when reading with kanji.
Did you guys encounter that as well? How did you solve it?

Just to clarify, you have a hard time recognizing a word when you hear or read it without the kanji, right?

There's no hard and fast method to solve this problem, at least IMO. It's mostly exposure until it settles into your lexicon. You just have to find a method that works for you, as always.

I learned through context. So I'd look up words that I didn't understand and matched the right one with what was being talked about. I then branched off from that to learning potential uses of the word, the kanji, how each part interacted, then how I could form other words using those characters. All of that started piling up and it got faster for me because I had so many pieces of information connected in every direction. Eventually, I started learning words based off that accumulated knowledge and looked it up if I wanted to be sure.

 

[Nachos]

I didn't mind I'm an expert. He seemed a fairly reasonable internet voice for the most part, and also quite generous. I don't need GAF to be a safe space or anything so I enjoyed the various discussions which were had over the last year and a half or so. Everything about Reddit is so fucking awful though. I could never join a Learning Japanese GAF subreddit like what was suggested by someone in his post.

I'd argue he could be one of the most generous posters on the entire site. He always seemed willing to post at length about most topics, and not to show off, either. It's just that his way of speaking on here could easily be intimidating to some people, putting them off from seeing what he actually had to say.

I learned through context. So I'd look up words that I didn't understand and matched the right one with what was being talked about. I then branched off from that to learning potential uses of the word, the kanji, how each part interacted, then how I could form other words using those characters. All of that started piling up and it got faster for me because I had so many pieces of information connected in every direction. Eventually, I started learning words based off that accumulated knowledge and looked it up if I wanted to be sure.

Huh, I always was under the impression that you were a Japanese native.

 

[TakumiTrueno]

Hello everyone, I have been studying Japanese hard for a while now, I went through Genki 1 and 2. Ive just about finished reviewing Tobira. I liked the formats of these books. Can anyone recommend a textbook to follow after Tobira?

Also I use Memrise a lot which I find really helpful and goes along with the books I mentioned, so a memrise course or textbook recommendation would be really helpful.

 

[Jintor]

does anyone have a dictionary with a writing recognition app that recognises tentens or marus? I'm using akebi

if anyone knows how to get it to recognise a tenten or a maru 教えてください

 

[Kurita]

Just to clarify, you have a hard time recognizing a word when you hear or read it without the kanji, right?

There's no hard and fast method to solve this problem, at least IMO. It's mostly exposure until it settles into your lexicon. You just have to find a method that works for you, as always.

I learned through context. So I'd look up words that I didn't understand and matched the right one with what was being talked about. I then branched off from that to learning potential uses of the word, the kanji, how each part interacted, then how I could form other words using those characters. All of that started piling up and it got faster for me because I had so many pieces of information connected in every direction. Eventually, I started learning words based off that accumulated knowledge and looked it up if I wanted to be sure.

Yeah at some point it just snowballs.

 

[Kansoku]

Yeah. Kana-only text is a pain. That's because hiragana mostly exist to carry grammar functions, not meaning, and because there are no spaces between words in Japanese sadly.

Kilrogg already explained it in more detail, but that's really just how the language works. The more you're exposed to the language and the more you read, the easier it will get to read Kana-only text, but that's just because your brain is able to narrow down the possibilities of what might realistically come next, making you stumble on the phonetics less.

Just to clarify, you have a hard time recognizing a word when you hear or read it without the kanji, right?

I see. Thanks guys, it makes me feel a better about that.

 

[Kilrogg]

I see. Thanks guys, it makes me feel a better about that.

As long as the feeling doesn't translate into laziness, glad we could help. You just have to come to grips with the fact that Japanese is simply very different from English, and all you can do is work on it, get used to it, and make progress step by step. It's an endurance race more than anything, really. I'm trying to convince you as much as I'm trying to convince myself, to be honest .

 

[Beckx]

Hello everyone, I have been studying Japanese hard for a while now, I went through Genki 1 and 2. Ive just about finished reviewing Tobira. I liked the formats of these books. Can anyone recommend a textbook to follow after Tobira?

Also I use Memrise a lot which I find really helpful and goes along with the books I mentioned, so a memrise course or textbook recommendation would be really helpful.

Authentic Japanese is the textbook recommendation i've seen. i'm just about to start Tobira so no experience with it, but my current plan is to get that book when i'm ready.

Hey guys, I'm about to start lesson 8 on Genki 1. I've been learning Japanese for a few months. I posted in this thread a while ago and I just wanted to say that I will be more active as I was kinda scared away from posting by I'm an expert.

don't make the mistake i did - i did not realize the listening/reading comprehension section was even there until around lesson 8. i don't bother with those sections generally because i have a separate study for learning kanji, but the specific listening comprehension passages are really good and challenging for the level. i recommend listening several times without having the text around and seeing what you can parse out.

I'm trying to convince you as much as I'm trying to convince myself, to be honest .

hahah, aren't we all?

 

[Aubergine]

It's okay. Add pitch accents on top of that and you'll be dead by next week. But I figured I might kill two birds with one stone since I never properly learnt pitch accents with new words before. Should do wonders for my accent.

But yeah, it is grueling for people like us who go to work everyday. I skip a day here and there, mostly because I got a new toy - read: new laptop - and have a few social encounters every now and again, but I still somehow manage to get back into it and catch up.

That said, it might be due to the fact that I already know by heart 95% of what I've been studying so far. My friend and I wanted to do the whole thing from scratch even though we already have the JLPT N2 and N1 respectively.

The one hard part is memorizing the compounds. Most of them we already know, but we tend to focus so much on the writing and reading that we tend to gloss over the few words we don't know already well if at all.

We'll probably start doing rotations after a while. The hardcore method is simply not tenable with a full-time job.

Also... I'm an expert is not coming back, is he? It's been weeks I think. Such a shame for this thread :/.

Oh man, I know pitch-accent it important but I just don't have the time to pile that on top of trying to keep all this Kanji and grammar straight. It'll suck but I've relegated to just learning that by ear at the moment. Living in Japan helps, but there will be a day when I need to get serious about that.

I'm trying to make a conscious effort to not let my job be an excuse not to study because I know subconsciously I am using it as an excuse, and that's a habit I need to break. No days off. Period. At least, that's what I'd like to say, but I'm saying this more for myself than anything. Of course, it seems sometimes we have to acknowledge our limits. I ended up falling asleep while studying last night, which is pretty intense since I usually down a Red Bull on the hour drive home from work.

Thanks for posting your experiences as you go along, it definitely helps encourage me to stay motivated, Kilrogg!

Sorry I didn't get to this sooner, busy week.

I finished whiteboard and work full time/over time 5 days a week.

To finish whiteboard I think you need a few things.

1. Hunger/a goal. I wanted to prove expert wrong and finish it, and then pass N1 (I didn't)
2. Expectional circumstances. I was in probably in the least busy period of my career when I did it. After that Feb, there was no way I would ever find the proper time for it. But those 3 months, I made it happen.
3. Time commitment. My study looked like this at the peak of it (final grammar revision and 1600 kanji). Once grammar was finished the whole thing toned down and I didn't go further than 7-8 hours peak.

- wake up at 4am, study until 7:30am (3)
- study 30min on commute to work (30)
- study 1 hour at lunch (1)
- study 30min on commute home (30)
- study from 6:30 to 11:30 (5)

4. Most importantly - your own schedule/method. Experts original post that gets linked around is just one piece of the many nuggets of info he gave. The whiteboard post should probably be glued to those as well. I will go through and combine the best bits of it in the next week.

There is a strong emphasis on making the method into your own method. Something that works for you. I had asked about stuff, and the answer I'd get was along the lines of "this worked for me, doesn't mean it has to work for you".

Remember, I didn't pass N1 after doing this. I finished Feb and took the exam in July. I obviously kept studying, but it wasn't enough. Part of it may have had had to do with the short term memory retention (who knows, if I finished wb in June it's a different story?).

However, it worked. I can read mostly anything. A dictionary is still needed (I think you will never stop learning vocab, at least not for a long time). WB will teach you to read but you won't know the meaning for every word. Just around 6000

My handwriting is very good (and fast). Which is great if that's something you're after.

Hope that helps mate! Granted, after it was all said and done I missed a lot with my social life over 3 months and my girlfriend absolutely hated me. But when it was done, my friends were still my friends (and are), and ny GF respects what I'm trying to achieve. So nothing lost.

I think one of my biggest problems with my schedule is my amount of wasted time. I work the normal 8hrs/day 5days/week, but my commute to my school is an hour by car one way, so that's a two hour round trip where the only Japanese studying I can do is listening to Japanese podcasts on my commute. Problem is, that's not very directed learning, but hey I'll take what I can get. So, technically I work 10hrs/day 5/days a week. My body apparently can't subsist on 5/hrs sleep a night like I had been doing since I passed out in my studies last night, but that was what I was doing, which leaves 9hrs left of the day, with work prep and meals and misc extra time taking 2 hours of that which leaves maybe 7 hours of study max. Being realistic I only probably use 6 hours of that in a day, so its hard to fit everything in everyday I'm finding. I'm giving priority to grammar and Kanji, and I listen in the car everyday, but my reading is falling by the wayside as is directed listening practice. Weekends I generally budget the same 6 hours or so since I'm also trying to build/maintain a social life having moved to a new country only 10 months ago.

Maybe I just got to get better at maximizing my time, but shit its tough man. But, I suppose doing some is doing better than none. Gonna try and keep this pace until the next JLPT test season in the summer. Just got my result back from when I took the N2 before starting in on this method and only scored 71/180 which feels absolutely abysmal to me. I got right at half points on vocab/grammar and listening, with only 15pts to reading. Talk about a motivator, that just confirms to me that I need to keep on this method. My previous slow but steady pace was getting me nowhere fast. 5 years and can't even score half points total on N2 is absolutely shameful.

 

[Shouta]

Huh, I always was under the impression that you were a Japanese native.

Well, I can pass as a Japanese person if that's anything, lol. I had folks think I was Japanese until I stumbled on my Japanese and realized I wasn't. lol

 

[Beckx]

folks

i kind of want a 電子辞書

mainly because it would have the major J-J, kanji, J-E (kenkyusha) & NHK pitch accent dictionaries + Halpern's Learner's Dictionary + i can handwrite in kanji where i don't know the reading (reading books with no furigana)

talk me out of it please (other than cost - i like gadgets & while i know there are android apps, afaik (and this is important to me) if i don't know the reading i will have to go to a separate app or website like jisho to draw the kanji and get the reading).

 

[Hypron]

Damn I just had a look and those electronic dictionaries get pretty expensive. Most seem in the ￥20-30k range. Are they really that good? I've never seen/used a proper one (I had a very shitty Fr->En one back in 2007, but that's a bit different).

 

[Kilrogg]

denshijisho are a pre-iPod clunky mess of bad design, poor ergonomics and feature creep

You good now?

 

[Deleted member 17706]

Kilrogg (or anyone else), do you have any recommended replacement apps? Preferably an all-in-one app with all of the features one would want (being able to tap a word to jump to its definition, being able to look up radicals and individual Kanji, being able to write characters directly, etc.)

I haven't been impressed with the (albeit limited) dictionary apps I have tried on iOS.

Most importantly, it must absolutely not require an active Internet connection to work.

 

[Beckx]

denshijisho are a pre-iPod clunky mess of bad design, poor ergonomics and feature creep

You good now?

sort of?

hah. i just want an android app that has the major dictionaries combined, plus either handwriting recognition or (even better) photo recognition. what zefah said, basically.

and doesn't murder my poor G3's battery. :/

 

[Gradivus]

Hi all, this Dec i'm going to try and aim for N4/N3. I recently bought 1 year sub to Wanikani in hope to improve my kanji game, thou i'm not too sure what to do when it comes to grammar.

Is there any recommended grammar books/sites that the gaffers like to use?