#i am learning japanese and I am currently memorizing hiragana!

[gayaest]

かわいい!! ⭐️🏐🧡

Hinata Shoyo

[dndiguess-blog]

2024年7月19日 — Just starting out (again); What do I have to work with?

As someone who's been trying to learn japanese on and off for over a decade it's always a challenge to come back to it, especially after a longer break. This is the position I find myself in currently since I haven't seriously tried improving my skills or immersed myself for a few years now.

Granted, I never quite got to the point where I could naturally immerse myself in japanese on any level even when I was actively practicing, but I knew a lot of basics. When I decided a couple weeks ago to see just how rusty I had gotten it was clear that I needed a good repeat of nearly everything before I could even think about progressing. I'm sure many others that habitually cycle through different hobbies can relate to how frustrating and sad it can be to have to relearn concepts and skills that were no match to your previous self. I also have the bad habit of letting go of things when I don't feel that I progress "fast enough" (I am in no rush, this is purely a standard that arbitrarily set for myself) which adds another layer of difficulty whenever I have to start over with the basics again.

Because of these reasons I've really tried to take the time I need and make sure that I absorb everything before moving on to something else. I've honestly had a lot of fun relearning even the most surface level concepts, and I think this sort of repetition that I've been required to do be able to progress is something that I really lacked when I've been trying to learn previously. Granted, letting go of the language completely for 2+ years isn't necessary. But I think going forward that I will make a bigger effort to backtrack whenever I feel a little unsure of something and repeat concepts until every part of it feels solid.

—

Hiragana & Katakana (sort of)

So far a lot of my time has gone toward practicing hiragana until I'm completely confident in my reading abilities again. Something new that I've done this time, embarassing as it is to admit, is to go through every character's stroke order and learn them that way. Previously I haven't given stroke order much thought. This is mostly because I don't even write that much by hand in swedish/english so it didn't seem that important to me at the time (I know, I know...). Another reason is that I am left-handed. I haven't seen this ever be discussed that much so I don't know if this is just something I struggle with, but I find the correct stroke order to be difficult to write with using my dominant hand. But yes, this time I've made an effort to actually learn the characters the right way! I must admit that I still find it to be a clumsy way to write left-handed (and sometimes I still cheat, forgive me) but I must admit that practicing hiragana (more recently kanji) as steps that must be done in a specific order rather than just little pictures to memorize (I did practice writing them previously as well of course, I just kind of improvised the way I did it) has made the characters stick way quicker than they did previously.

A video that really helped me with stroke order, and generally making my hiragana look nicer and less "fonty" is this one by the channel ToKini Andy! It's a nice, long video of him and his (native japanese) wife going through each of the hiragana where he first draws the character and then she corrects any mistake he makes (which I think are very common mistakes to make, I related to many of them) and shows how she draws the same character. From what I gathered she is a calligrapher, so her handwriting might be a bit fancier than the average japanese person, but I still think it's a very good video. Andy himself stated that he has been writing hiragana for 12+ years, so regardless of where you are in your journey I would recommend checking it out!

Before moving on I'd like to quickly mention katakana: I haven't practiced katakana nearly as much as hiragana. This isn't because I don't think katakana are important, but not as immidiately mandatory as hiragana. While hiragana are necessary to know for every other step of learning japanese; katakana is something I can practice slowly over time, either actively or passively. The app I've been using to practice kanji also lets you practice katakana, so I've gone over them a few times on there (practicing stroke order as well, bonus), especially the ones I'm less confident in, and I will probably do this every now and again to make them stick.

—

Currently I have made way more progress than just hiragana, but this entry ended up being very long so I won't detail every single thing I've crossed off my list. Instead I'm going to list off the resources I've been using, and also what I think the next steps on my journey are going to be!

My resources

My physical resources at this moment is my (very old) Genki 1 text book, a very cheap grid notebook, and my Goodnotes 5 app (I'm going to have another section with the apps I use, but it felt better to group goodnotes with the rest of my notetaking things? Even though it isn't a physical resource... Oh, well). The cheap notebook is just for writing practice. I don't like combining my nice looking notes with my practice scribbles so I need a pressure free space to just scrawl as much as I want. I use goodnotes to make more put together notes where I go over concepts and write down anything I learn in detail for future reference. I didn't get the app for this purpose, I've had it for a long time and used it for all sorts of studies and hobbies. I'm not using any particular template for this purpose either, I've been using the normal grid template.

App-wise I started a bit with duolingo, mostly when I was practicing hiragana. I got annoyed at basically everything with the app very quickly though (surprise!) and decided to look for something else. At the moment this is what I have downloaded:

HeyJapan – This app is in the "duolingo-category" of language apps but it's just for japanese. It's a little janky but I like it way more than duolingo. I haven't used it as much as the other apps though, mostly because I've been using my Genki-textbook to structure my learning and it felt confusing to have two different sources at the same time.

Ringotan – This is the app I've been using to practice kanji! I've actually loved it. First you pick a source to base your lessons on (you don't have to own any of the sources to use this app, this is mainly so that if you own a textbook you can practice kanji as they appear in the chapters you're studying); I chose Genki. Then you get lessons with groups of kanji based on the source you picked! The lessons consist of drawing the character using the correct stroke order with less and less guides as you progress. There's also a "Custom Review" option where you can freely pick which kanji you want to practice. This app has been great for me in particular. Since I've decided to repeat everything from the beginning (down to the concept of XはYです) I've actually used the app to study ahead in the textbook. This keeps me from getting bored while going over and reminding myself of simple concepts, and also means that I already know the kanji when I get to a new chapter in the book.

Shirabe Jisho – A dictionary. This is just the first dictionary I found when looking for recommendations, and it's been great for me so I haven't tried any other. You can search by english, romaji, hiragana and kanji. When looking at words you get direct links to the different kanji in the word, their stroke order and ON/kun-readings. Just a great dictionary!

Time to finish off this beast of a journal entry with my steps going forward. As it stands currently I have two main goals: 1. Relearn verb-grammar 2. Methodically work through the entire Genki textbook. When I last stopped actively practicing my japanese I had a pretty good grasp of the different groups of verbs and how to conjugate them. Grammar-wise I feel like that's the next big step to allow me to write more in japanese. As for the Genki textbook; I've owned this book for a long time, and I've probably read through most of it at least once. But I haven't actually ever used it in an effective way, mostly because I'm not the greatest at organizing my studies. Because of this I've made a section of my japanese notebook in goodnotes an index/checklist of the different chapters and their contents. As I'm studying a chapter I'll write down any important concepts, notes and examples in goodnotes. I'll also practice any concepts I feel shaky on, and when I feel good about a section I can cross it off the checklist. This lets me see exactly what I need to do next, and will give me a good backlog of detailed notes to look back on whenever I need to remind myself.

Hopefully this method will stick, and otherwise I'll just have to adjust it and find a way to make it work for me. But other than that I have nothing to add so:

さようなら！

[songsoftoday]

Learning Languages Makes Me Wanna Tear My Eyes Out...

I have been learning french for as long as I can remember, and it’s a little embarrasing how little french I actually speak. If anything I am fluent in Frenglish. I am currently learning Japanese cause its something i’ve always wanted to learn and always gave up once I actually memorize the Hiragana.

You cannot pay me to be consistent. This summer im gonna FORCE myself to at least learn katanana.

[nyadversary]

oh whatever i guess it's been a while since i did a "progress update" so lemme talk a bit about how it's been goin

so in the past 500 days of using duolingo they've had some big website overhauls. the lesson map has definitely been reworked multiple times since i started. recently i went back to do the "legendary" levels for some of the earlier lessons and found they've added entirely new vocab that i wasn't taught when i started learning. recently they finally added kanji lessons (i'm still annoyed they don't let you test out of the beginner lessons. right now it has me trying to learn 小, 土, 曜, 買, 話, etc and I Already Know Those). they also reintroduced the feature where you can see how many words you've studied. i'm apparently at 2,364, but i'm pretty sure it's counting different verb forms as separate words or something because that feels a bit generous to me.

anyway: the way the lesson plan is currently set up, on the mobile app anyway, is that there's four "sections" (rookie, explorer, traveler, trailblazer) with each section being divided up into units. i'm on unit 36/40 of the traveler section. rookie section only has 8 units and i'm not positive how many trailblazer has so i'd guess that i'm around two-thirds of the way through the course, but that's just an estimate and they might restructure the entire lesson map again before i finish the course anyway.

the other main resource i'm using for practice rn is renshuu.org, where i think i'm currently level 70-something. i just remember that when i hit level 70 kao-chan got fucking electrocuted

like i just fucking killed this guy i guess. 残念だよね

last time i made an update post i mentioned still having trouble with katakana. i am better at katakana now. like, i think i am no longer significantly worse with katakana than i am with hiragana. (i still second-guess myself with katakana a lot but i really don't need to be doing this. it's habit ig.) it probably goes without saying but my main stumbling block with reading comprehension is my limited knowledge of kanji. i have been getting better, it's just by far the toughest part of all this.

i think my listening comprehension has improved considerably since i last posted about it — i feel like i follow along much better with spoken japanese now. not to a particularly impressive degree, my comprehension level is like "can more or less follow along with relatively simple conversations," but i think my definition of what constitutes a Simple Conversation has expanded since the last time i said that. things are feeling a great deal more automatic now. i'm not sure how to put this exactly, it's like... the amount of words/phrases i can understand without having to pause to think about what they mean in english has grown significantly? this goes for reading too, there are more and more words i can recognize on sight without having to consciously think about reading them.

also as a consequence of getting better at listening comprehension i am finding it suddenly much easier to memorize japanese song lyrics. i know all the words to dead or lie (the dr3 future arc opening theme) and that was, like, an accident, i just had it stuck in my head really badly for a couple months and this happened. my roommates are probably sick of hearing me singing it in the shower lol

whee

[x0401x]

Is there an app or routine you recommend in learning japanese? I am currently studying but I find it hard to memorize the letters

I recommend reading manga, tbh. The ones with furigana at first. I memorized hiragana, katakana and basic kanji that way. I’d also google character names to memorize the more recent additions to katakana and different types of kanji that you don’t normally find in text.

[annasstudyspace]

April 25 - May 1 Week One Goal Setting

こんにちは

Hola

안녕하세요

Hello Loves🥰

We have made it to the end of April! Give yourself a pat on the back for making it to the end of another month! I hope all of you are well. Now lets set some weekly goals! Every Monday I will be posting a weekly goal post for myself and for anyone else that would like to share their goals.

Japanese

Memorize hiragana again.

Start learning katakana.

Work on sentence structure

Spanish

I want to practice speaking every day.

Learn 25 new vocabulary words.

Practice my sentence structure.

Korean

Memorize Hangul.

Learn common phrases.

Learn to count to 20.

Since I am learning three languages, I am only doing three goals for each language a week. Throughout the week I will be posting tips and tricks I use for studying. I will also be sharing my music playlists that I listen to on Spotify. It’s currently finals week for me so I have a lot of studying for school to do. But I can’t wait to hear from you all to hear how your goals for the week go! So tell me, what goals do you want to set for this week? Wherever you are in the world, I hope that you have a great week and know that you are loved🥰 .

💕Talk to you soon Loves💕

- Anna, your study pal💕

[noxiatoxia]

how did you learn to speak japanese?

It's a bit of a complicated answer! My starting point was Yuta's Japanese course, which does cost money to initially buy but is free once you make the payment. It has been incredibly invaluable to me and taught me all the basics for me to get started! Worth every cent.

I used realkana to help me memorize hiragana/katakana; it's a free site/app that's basically just a memory game. Jisho.org is an amazing Japanese to English dictionary that I use all the time. And, sites like GuidetoJapanese, kawakawalearningstudio, and maggiesensei all have amazingly in-depth lessons about very specific words/particles in Japanese that can be kind of tricky to get the hang of - and they're all free!

Watching Japanese shows with Japanese subtitles is also very helpful. It's equally as helpful to watch JP shows without any subs, since real life conversations (unfortunately) do not have JP subtitles. I recommend Paboo Project. It's cute, and all the characters' voices are clear and don't speak too fast. I prefer it over something like Doremon, since Paboo is made for a veeery young audience, meaning they will use very simple words good for beginners, and I personally find Doremon's voice hard to understand if you are unfamiliar with Japanese. I'm also currently reading Death Note in Japanese :) I got the JP manga for Christmas, and since I already read it in English, it's helpful to be able to subconsciously already know what the characters are talking about, so if I'm stuck on a word, I can make a pretty good guess on what it means already.

And, once you feel ready, give conversationexchange a shot. This is a site where you can connect with people from around the globe to talk. I've met several Japanese language partners who are looking to improve their English, so we converse half in English and half in Japanese. Because as great as all these resources I've shown you are, the real key to becoming fluent is to talk to natives and actually use your skills, especially in voice-to-voice speech. I'm very terrible at verbally speaking Japanese still, even if my reading and writing is good, so that's what I'm working on.

Learning a new language is never easy, but it isn't impossible. Even though it's been kind of frustrating at times, I absolutely love Japanese linguistics so I'm keeping at it. I've been learning for 2-3 years now, and though I am not at all fluent, I can say I am improving everyday and can hold very simple verbal conversations, which is a lot better than it was even a year ago :3

[jadegreenimmortality]

wahh i saw your answer for another ask about learning japanese :O im currently in 11th grade (going into 12th) and am in a japanese school, although its not located in japan... i have so much trouble memorizing hiragana (we're still learning it as of now) and i despise trying to write "あ" 😭😭 its so hard, but it makes me feel relieved to know somebody who is learning like me

do you have trouble writing it too? :"D

Hi Mikka! 🙋🏽‍♀️ I hope you're doing fine 💫

It's fascinating to me that there are japanese schools outside of Japan, would you like to explain the way they work to me? I'm really curious. ❓🙇🏽‍♀️

And ah yes, the struggle of writing japanese 🥲. Believe, I absolutely get it. It took me forever to draw write anything similar-looking to あ (and all the other hiraganas). Practice is the key here, there's noy way around it 😂.

Take care love! 💕

[sootbird]

Hi sootbird :) I was wondering how you study Japanese, like, what materials or books do you use, do you attend a class or are a disciplined self-study person? I've tried several methods and apps and such and so far, nothing really turned into a routine for me...

Hello!! To answer your question about my own personal Japanese study, I took five years of Japanese classes at my university and have a bachelor’s degree in it. Right now, I’m self-studying, because I’m still not where I want to be in terms of fluency. It takes a fair bit of discipline, but I think it’s fun and I’m a big nerd so I like to study it every day. ;;

I’m so excited you’re interested in learning Japanese!! It’s such a neat language. I’m not entirely sure how to advise self-study straight from the beginning, but I can try! I’m sure there are lots of resources online for learning Japanese (it’s a fairly popular language to learn these days), but I also have a slew of books that I can recommend to you. Some are books that I used at school in my classes, and others are books that I acquired on my own over the years. The textbooks tend to be more expensive bc they have a lot of material, but I do think they’d be useful for beginning self-study, because you do need some sort of foundation before you can branch out on your own. I do think that having materials made me feel like I was properly studying it and I think has encouraged me to keep up with my self-study!

Textbooks:

Nakama books

These are the textbooks I used in my beginning classes. Nakama 1 was for first year, and Nakama 2 was for the second year. I think they’re pretty good books, and you can rent them for a semester on Amazon it looks like.

Genki books

I haven’t used these textbooks, but I have friends who did use them in their Japanese classes, and I’ve heard good things about them. I recommend checking the reviews and seeing which book series (Nakama or Genki) you wanna go with. Of course, if you feel like splurging, you can always get both and cross-reference them.

Other books: These are other books that I use to supplement my study. AKA you don’t need them right away.

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar -- Makino/Tsutsui

A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar -- Makino/Tsutsui

The Handbook of Japanese Verbs -- Kamiya

A Dictionary of Japanese Particles -- Kawashima

All About Particles -- Chino

The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs -- Kamiya

Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication -- Kamiya

The first step you wanna take before anything else is learning how to read and write the Japanese syllabaries. Japanese doesn’t use an alphabet like English does. Instead of the written characters representing individual sounds, they represent syllables. Let me illustrate this with an example: the Japanese word for “heart” is こころ. As you can see, there are three characters there. When written in Roman letters, it is spelled “kokoro.” Six letters in our alphabet, but only three Japanese characters. The syllables in that word are “ko,” “ko,” and “ro.” You can see how the writing system is syllable-based.

Japanese has two syllabaries. The first is called hiragana. The second is called katakana. The syllables represented by these two systems are exactly the same, but the syllabaries are used differently. Hiragana tends to be used more, and katakana tends to be used for loan words (words from other languages that have been integrated into Japanese). I’ll use “kokoro” as an example again.

Here is “kokoro” in hiragana: こころ

Here is “kokoro” in katakana: ココロ

The use of hiragana versus katakana is something you’ll get used to with experience, but it’s important to know BOTH syllabaries. I didn’t learn katakana well enough at the beginning and it haunts me to this day. Don’t rely too heavily on romaji (the writing of Japanese words in Roman letters) because the Japanese don’t use it. Only use it as a pronunciation tool at the beginning. I do use romaji on a romaji-to-Japanese keyboard I have on my phone, but that’s really just a matter of convenience and for quicker typing.

Learn both of the syllabaries and practice writing the letters as you go. I recommend using a fun pen! After that, the textbooks can tell you what to do next. (The textbooks do tell you how to learn hiragana and katakana as well at the start, if you need more guidance than the internet gives you.)

Here are some other important resources that will be a big help to you:

Dictionary app: A Japanese dictionary is gonna be really important and I find that it’s handy to have one on your phone. I don’t know about Android, but the App Store has a few of them. I use one that’s just called “Japanese Dictionary” and it’s got a red icon.

Online dictionary: If you can’t get your hands on a dictionary app or if you’re on the computer, you can use this great online Japanese dictionary called Jisho. I use it frequently when I’m on my computer.

Flashcard app: Flashcards are gonna be your best friend. I recommend getting a good flashcard app. The one I use is Anki, and I have it on my phone and on my computer. You can download it for free on your computer and I think it’s free for Android. I have an iPhone and I had to pay 25 bucks for the app but I’ve heard that there’s a free version on the App Store too? It might just have ads, but I’m not sure. Anyway, Anki is great because it will make note of the flashcards you’re having trouble with and give them to you with more frequency. There are also a lot of decks that people have uploaded to the Anki website, so you can find all sorts of community-made Japanese decks that you can import (I think you have to import a deck on the desktop version, but then you can sync it up to your phone). 

And finally, some things to keep in mind before starting Japanese. 

Japanese is generally agreed upon to be a pretty difficult language to learn (for English speakers at least). As a native English speaker, I would agree that it is kinda hard. The general sentence structure of English is subject-verb-object. In Japanese, that structure is subject-object-verb. Since the verb is at the end of the sentence, it can be tricky to switch your brain around to the order.

A lot of people will also tell you that kanji is a nightmare. Kanji are the third element of the Japanese writing system, and are characters borrowed from Chinese. In fact, Japanese did not have a written form until the 5th century, and all of it came from Chinese. Kanji characters however, have mostly retained their resemblance to Chinese characters. They more closely resemble traditional Chinese characters, and visually look like a step between traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters.

Anyway, they may look quite complicated and there are a lot of them. But you will learn to love them, and they’re so fun to write. This is a kanji-positive zone so if you ever get stressed about kanji come chat with me and I will reassure you.

Here is a book I am currently using to effectively memorize kanji, and I highly recommend it. It’s beginner-friendly.

So, you may get stressed out by Japanese and maybe by all the information I just gave you, but don’t worry!! It’s a very fun language to learn and anyone can learn it if they put their mind to it! I believe in you! Come back and ask me if you have any questions.

Thank you for the ask and I hope this helps!!

[rigelmejo]

Reflection on Japanese Progress (so far)

I wanted to make something more coherent on my thoughts on how my japanese progress has gone lately, because in some ways its better than I expected. I think part of it has to do with better study methods being used right now compared to the first time I studied japanese, but another large part of it I think is my experience with chinese affecting my japanese. 

Prior Japanese Progress (2.5 years)

When I first studied Japanese seriously I took 1 college class, then continued to self study. Generally 30 minutes to 1 hour per day, some weeks/months no study, sometimes more study. I studied like this for 2 years. Then the final portion, year 2 - 2.5, I immersed and studied more like 2 hours per day and that’s when I saw the fastest progress as far as milestones. 

The reasons my progress went so slow up until year 2 are pretty clear to me. I had very little study time per day and japanese simply takes a lot more hours to hit milestones than french. The other thing slowing me down is that japanese has few cognates with english (compared to french). 

When I read The Word Brain recently, it said for languages similar each other (like english/french) you need to learn around 5000 new words, and for less similar languages like chinese and japanese you need to learn 15,000. So for Japanese I needed to learn more words before I could hit the same milestones of “read a comic ok with a dictionary” or “read a comic comfortably without a dictionary” or “read the news with only occasional word lookups” etc. French having more cognates and similarities benefited me quickly - I could start reading comfortable with occassional dictionary look up (and follow the overall main idea fine) after learning ~500 words. For Japanese, I was expecting the same kind of results from a few hundred words when that wasn’t realistic. 

I also remember I held myself back a lot with Japanese - I didn’t want to learn more words until I’d learned 1000+ kanji lol. Guess who never did. The closest I got was I borrowed a Tuttle book from the library and learned the meanings of 300 kanji. I tried Heisig’s RTK book and barely learned any, I never got past a couple hundred. I tried KKLC and my tendency to “over memorize until I’m perfect” meant I also never got past a couple hundred. In 2 years, I knew a few hundred words and a few hundred kanji, and it was not nearly enough to hit the same milestone I’d hit in French in 6 months with 500 words. 

I didn’t make progress until year 2 in studying japanese, when I started Nukemarine’s Memrise LLJ decks and got through around 500 kanji, 500 other words, and a few hundred example sentences. It’s not surprising in retrospect that its at that point when I saw the same milestone I hit in french 5 months in. I finally had ~1500 ish words I knew from various resources. 3 times as many words as I knew in french when I could hit the same milestone (very basic reading skills with a dictionary of overall main idea). 

At year 2 I made another major change that helped a lot - I started immersing. Before that, I’d “assumed” japanese would be too hard until I “learned more kanji, more words” and basically refused to challenge myself. But I learn best by doing. I remember best by doing things that make what I’m learning necessary to know. So immersion helped a LOT, it made remembering kanji much easier because I constantly needed them, it made picking up words easier too because I had reasons to know them. 

I also started using more audio materials. It wasn’t a significant part of my study, but I remember I’d started using JapaneseAudioLessons.com’s lessons. I did 20 of them during that time period. What was useful, is I was practicing listening (which I later learned in Chinese really helps me specifically remember things better), and I had found a study method I could do when walking or doing other things. I’m very bad at sticking to flashcards or apps, which is why I always burn out on srs flashcard courses after a few weeks to a month. But just listening to files? If I manage to remember to, I don’t get burned out as easy, and its a good way for me to review and do new study regularly when I can’t carve out the time to sit down. Also again - in retrospect I think listening helps me learn a LOT better, which is something I didn’t really realize about myself until studying chinese later. But I think the regular audio exposure of japanese from year 2 - 2.5 helped a lot. Just like when I started japanese, my beginner college class made us listen to dialogues and shadow them constantly - which really helped.

So in retrospect, year 2 to 2.5 I made the quickest progress in japanese because I started prioritizing learning a LOT of words over learning them ‘perfect,’ and I got willing to just challenge myself and actually use the language regularly by trying to read manga and play a video game. I also realized at that time, that japanese was going to need more hours of study on a regular basis if I wanted a faster progress rate.

After 2.5 years, I stopped studying japanese. Because I was going to school full time, working 50 hours a week, and I knew I had no time for it. 

During the study gap (2+ years)

I only engaged in japanese a little bit during the break where I no longer actively studied it. Every few months I’d try to read a manga - either one of mine or ones I found in thrift stores. I think I was hoping that like my french, reading once in a while would maintain it. But I knew a lot more french before I went down to not studying and only reading occasionally. So I did lose a lot of japanese. 

I stopped remembering some verb endings, although in the middle of reading I could still recall a lot of them in context okay and understand what they meant. I forgot some particles - which again came back ok while I was reading. Word order I somewhat forgot. Hiragana-only words I FORGOT the most. Kanji for the most part I managed to keep remembering, so I suppose reading helped me keep remembering them. I am not sure if this occasional reading helped me review japanese year quicker and get back to progressing from where I left off. 

The most noticeable thing was when I started learning Chinese, about 1 year after stopping Japanese. When I started learning chinese, some of the hanzi I learned ended up making manga more comprehensible to me. I remember maybe 6 months into chinese study, japanese manga (especially easy ones like School Rumble, Ranma 1/2, fan comics) had started to get understandable enough that I could sometimes follow chapter main overall ideas without a dictionary. So not the specific details - although sometimes I could pick up a few. But I didn’t need a dictionary to follow the main idea with simple manga anymore. Whereas at 2.5 years into study, I could follow the main overall idea of some simple manga chapters with a dictionary - that was the extent of my reading comprehension. So this was a significant improvement, a milestone I noticed. I know chinese hanzi study was indirectly benefiting my japanese reading skill a little bit. 

In retrospect, I think it was giving me more ‘near cognates’ to rely on when reading. Since I didn’t know the new japanese words, but knowing the meaning if it were a hanzi gave me an idea of what to Guess the word might mean in the context of a manga chapter I was reading. Which helped a lot compared to having no information at all to rely on to figure out new words. With french, so much having latin and english similarity gave me a lot more tools when I was trying to figure out new words in context. So I think hanzi knowledge in the same kind of way was giving me more information, more related meanings, to pull from and make guesses. For me, that kind of information helps a lot when I study. its how I learned a lot of words in english - I’d relate them to english words I already knew, that they seemed similar to or written with something in common etc. So I could finally start relying on the same strategies I am more used to using for vocabulary figuring-out in japanese.

Current Japanese Progress (picking it up after a couple years gap)

I started trying to study japanese again I think in March or April 2021 - the exact month’s on this blog somewhere. So that’s 4 months as of now that I’ve studied japanese again. It took about 1 month to review the information I already knew - I just reread the beginning portion of Tae Kim’s grammar guide, and did the old lessons I’d done before in Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise decks. 

At the very start of review, I just reread the intro of Japanese in 30 Hours (which I’ve read before), and listened to the first 15 lessons in japanese pimsleur. This was all audio or romaji so I didn’t confuse it with chinese. And it reminded me of the particles and general basic grammar. This mainly-audio portion of review was easy to just do while I was walking or playing video games. 

After that, I went and reviewed old words and specific grammar using Tae Kim and Nukemarine’s memrise decks (which had text). 

Then I was doing new stuff.

I had a goal to play a video game within a few months of restarting japanese - I met that goal about a month after reviewing. So May I think? I wrote down the exact month in previous blog posts. 

It was easier than during my initial study at 2.5 years. It was still intense and draining though lol. However, I realized I didn’t actually need a dictionary to follow any main ideas. The biggest issue was either taking a long time to read for detail directions (very draining mentally), or trying to speed read for key info so I could get to a save point faster (draining mentally because I have less info and time to comprehend the info I’m reading). Anyway, not needing any dictionary for following the main overall ideas was a HUGE difference from my last japanese comprehension milestone at 2.5 years into study.

I am pretty sure its hanzi recognition that really boosted my reading comprehension in japanese. I know around ~1500-2000 hanzi in chinese right now, and a decent amount more I can comprehend pretty well if they’re in compound hanzi words (so context clues to figure out which word the ‘unknown’ hanzi is making the new compound word) since I read in chinese a lot. So in japanese, many of the most common kanji are similar to hanzi I’ve already learned well, and a lot of the compound kanji words are also pretty easy to guess a meaning for. And when the kanji doesn’t mean the same thing as the hanzi would, the prior context I have for these video games such as setting (and some knowledge of them in english playthroughs) and a similar-hanzi’s usual general meanings, means I can usually guess what the new japanese word might mean. Like japanese uses some kanji for somewhat different meanings than chinese (but a speech radical still means its probably talking related) then I can figure out from the scene how it might be a different speech-related word etc. 

This past month, June 2021, I did two more things that boosted my japanese comprehension.

1. I’m playing a video game now that I know the story of really well. So I know the english lines almost by heart for most scenes, so if I don’t know a word in a sentence or don’t know the grammar pattern going on? I have a much better chance of figuring out what it might be. As a result I’m comprehending nearly all the details and words, nearly all the grammar roughly, so there’s very few portions of the game that I’m running into where I don’t have a good guess about every single part of a sentence or at least nearly everything. It’s Kingdom Hearts 2 I’m playing, and I am not surprised lol to realize I played that game So Much growing up I really do know all the lines by heart once I see them. KH2 is the game I initially played 2 years into studying japanese, and could somehow manage to function playing - probably because I know the game so well. So now? Now of course its the first japanese video game where I can follow nearly every part of it in japanese. It’s? A fun experience?? It’s kind of bizarre to me?

This is my favorite game, THE game when I was little that initially made me want to learn japanese. The game I wanted to play in japanese one day and understand and get to see the differences. It is an odd experience to be actually DOING what I wanted to do since I was 11. Over half of my life I’ve wanted to play this game in japanese! ToT I learned to draw people because of this game! It is absolutely surreal to me to be able to DO it. To be doing it. 

Anyway back to study reflections ToT

2. Katakana english cognates and near cognates are galore in KH2 which makes navigation and playing easier than it could be, and my hanzi knowledge also helps with a lot more ‘near cognates’ I can recognize now compared to when I played 2 years into study. Reading Tae Kim’s grammar guide and Cure Dolly (and @yue-muffin telling me iru gets used like ‘ing’ in verbs like ‘doing’ versus to do) also have made the grammar somewhat easier to parse.

2. Clozemaster has ultimately been helping a lot. Clozemaster is definitely a contributing factor to having made KH2 easier to play for DETAIL understanding. I’ve been reading manga lately - which helped me practice parsing grammar in real life versus in textbooks a bit. Grammar and formality in manga like Yotsuba is informal and has these like slang-mood endings to sentences that I never see in grammar books I’ve read or in Nukemarine’s memrise decks (because they’re made from learner materials). But manga is easy to figure out context now, so I was getting used to grammar used in Reality. 

Clozemaster is actually really good for practicing this too - and like with french or chinese, I think an upper beginner will be able to use it much better than a beginner. It changes formality, it changes how much slang is in a sentence or how polite, at random. Not all the translations are literal. You need a basic comprehension already to use clozemaster sentences somewhat. I did 632 sentences in clozemaster this past week. That was a LOT of practice with actual words regularly used in sentences, in dialogue, in various levels of formality and with words being hiragana or kanji depending on the specific sentence. So when I started KH2 again? Now a lot of endings that seem to convey moods, and words that I struggled with (like ‘a lot’ ‘always’ ‘because of’ ‘from’ ‘until’ ‘but’ ‘kedo’ ‘dakadesu’ ‘dakada’ etc) I am more used to following what they mean in a sentence. I’ve just seen a LOT of examples of them. Clozemaster also highlights verb endings sort of like their own ‘helper verb’ and while I don’t know if its actually grammatically true, it helps conceptualize stuff like verb tenses for me a lot easier. So now I am having an easier time recognizing them attached to verb stems, and recognizing the point the conjugation is getting across. 

The main thing though is its just a lot of very focused practice on recognizing words and grammar in the context of regular sentences instead of learner material. Learner material tends to show one aspect at a time, not mix lots of things together since its giving examples, etc. Clozemaster does mix up the examples a lot - but while still generally having an easier ‘difficulty curve’ than an actual web novel or visual novel etc. Clozemaster will have a lot going on in a sentence but it will all be very common basic stuff where at most half is new stuff, and eventually only 1 is a new thing. Whereas if I just dived into regular materials it could be a bunch of “I know very little” sentences. Manga is good practice for this too - its just you see less text per minute in manga. In Clozemaster you see a lot of text and its generally at my reading level so it feels ‘graded’ but less learner-material perfected, which in this case makes it good for getting used to the variety. I think overall THAT is how Clozemaster is helping right now. Its also helping because of common words - but a lot of what I’ve seen so far has been review too, so I think its the exposure to different sentences and odd things in them that’s been most helpful in translating to making video games feel a bit easier.

I’ve been doing the “most common” word tracks in Clozemaster’s japanese lessons, and I think they’re more useful to me immediately than the JLPT track. The fast track is kind of useful, but it doesn’t expose me to as many sentences to really drill aspects. I took someone’s advice and have been doing listening mode, so I listen then listen a few times and identify words THEN read it and answer the cloze. They also said to do the full ‘most common words’ tracks, and so far that advice has been good. The JLPT track is good too - and matches up more with words I had to learn in my other lessons and textbooks, combined with more complex sentences with more stuff going on in them at once than some learner materials. But since I’m trying to study to understand japanese games, not take the JLPT, I think right now that track less useful to me. In the Common Words track I immediately learned a lot of ‘filler’ words that imply meanings and are important but weren’t in my textbooks, even though I hear them constantly when watching things or playing games. So because of that, right now I’m sticking to the common words track. 

Summary: using kingdom hearts 2 is a good immersion material right now since I know the context well, it feels almost ‘graded’ for me since I can comprehend it much easier than other things I know less well (like Crisis Core which I love but requires much more focus and is more mentally draining since I have to re-figure out the initial context of scenes before i can focus on what the specific words mean). And using audio materials, clozemaster, has helped. Also just... I was wondering why lately handling japanese stuff has been easier (compared to previously for me) and I think a huge part of it is that for me hanzi knowledge really helped give me more near-cognates from kanji i can rely on now. Which makes japanese seem much less opaque as far as me trying to use context clues to understand things and learn new words. And since I prefer to learn by DOING, its valuable to me that now I have enough surrounding context and context-hints from kanji to start learning by guessing words in context a bit more. Also, in KH2′s case a huge benefit is the large amount of katakana words that I know what they’re meant to be in english, which are pretty much cognates, and both recognizing kanji a bit and also knowing the rough-english they Should be corresponding to (if its different than the chinese hanzi meaning). 

I’m going to keep playing KH2 lets see if its the first Game I can finish in Japanese (which it may well be lol). Also I just... genuinely think that for myself, among the other things I learned about How I personally learn through the years of trying to learn this, I think for me learning some chinese first really helped. 

I know books I used to have used to encourage me to learn kanji first, but that always just ended up holding me back from studying more because I just could Not handle a kanji with no sound attached solidly in my mind. And then when I did brute force just study words anyway, it helped, but I still had a much fuzzier way of handling and relating to kanji. And in general just was learning them from nothing as a prior basis.

With chinese, just one sound matched to most hanzi really like clicks with how I remember? And when there are pronunciation changes in my brain it just clicks a lot more like how english word-parts change pronunciation depending on the word - it makes a kind of pattern sense to me I guess? And the logic of sound+meaning for most hanzi formations means I finally get why certain radicals are in things - because it got simplified, or used to hint at sound, since they don’t All have all radicals relating to meaning only. Whereas when I studied kanji prior all the books would try to get me to associate all the radicals with meaning (but sometimes if a radical in hanzi come from a sound they don’t have to do with the meaning). And I guess it was just so much harder for me to stick the information solidly in my brain.

Now? Now I’m finding putting kanji pronunciations to different words is making a bit more sense to me. Like I already have a base to attach it to, so its less hard to add “this extra pronunciation for japanese word X” rather than just “this ONE pronunciation for this BRAND NEW kanji+hiragana word!” Because attaching an extra pronunciation to something I Already know? Is not too hard - I did it in english word-parts for my whole life, I did it with hanzi occasionally in chinese. So now attaching sounds to kanji feels more like something I’m used to doing and know how to do - instead of learning lots of new stuff with no idea how to mash it together and remember it. 

Also now the ‘chinese like’ pronunciations for some words stick out to me much clearer in japanese, since I can tell when the pronunciation is similar to a hanzi in chinese versus not. Which makes those words much easier to remember, those pronunciations easier to remember, and it much easier for my brain to distinguish between ‘when to use this pronunciation versus another for this kanji.’ Also just grammar of course, knowing how the pronunciation changes in different forms also helps make it easier to think ‘ok this might be why the kanji sound changed when this verb is in a new conjugation.’   

I just. If I would have told myself over 2 years ago that 1. I’d even learn some chinese, and 2. it would help my japanese this much (to a noticeable amount) I would have been really ???

Another thing I think helped is a Decent Solid sound base in chinese - I generally have a sound associated to all hanzi already that I know so I do not ‘confuse’ them with japanese words. Which would definitely happen if my listening wasn’t as solid. I worked on chinese listening a lot the past few months and it helped a LOT with keeping the languages as very distinctly different so I don’t mix up kanji/hanzi (also the fact kanji don’t have tones the same way helps me separate the sound when I hear so I don’t mix up what I’m listening to, which if me listening wasn’t as practiced I think mixing up would happen more - tones really help me clearly keep my brain from even thinking I’m hearing chinese when I see a kanji and hear pronunciation).

[letitrainathousandflames]

I don't mean to be invasive - but I just wanted to say I *LOVE* your comic! So so so much because this is how I feel too; and its really relieving to see that I am not alone in this feeling. I was actually wondering if you'd gotten your diagnosis test results back and how you feel about them now? And how difficult was the process of getting a diagnosis if you don't mind me asking? If I am being too forward please dont be afraid to tell me! <3 Well wishes to you!

[warning: this will get long, i’m so sorry...]

Hello! I haven’t yet... I just finished taking the tests yesterday, so it might take a little while for the psychiatrist to “grade” them because there are a LOT of tests.

If I am ADHD, I suspect I am at the innatentive part of the spectrum - which made me a daydreaming, homework-forgetting child but not a loud or disruptive one at school. Being a woman also makes it more difficult to get diagnosed.

But the signs, GOSH the signs. They were everywhere. I was too shy and didn’t talk to anyone - unless to my family and close friends, whom I left exhausted because I talked too much. I kept forgetting my homework. I didn’t write down anything in class bc I was either doodling, daydreaming or sleeping - ADHDers have a different circadian rhythm, so at 7am my brain was still lethargic.

The green coat in the comic? I rescued it from my school’s lost and found box about three times every month bc I kept forgetting it in the classroom. In college, it was my flash drive filled with the entire semester’s assignment. I get lost very easily. I have a cold cup of tea next to me right now - I forgot to drink it while it was hot, about two hours ago.

I could continue listing my many many many symptoms here, but I guess you get the gist of it. Needless to say, I hated school. They wanted me to understand math when all I wanted was to learn topics of my own interests. So I had terrible grades and a confusing paradox: bad grades meant i was dumb. But I was learning basic japanese and two fictional languages and their structures as a hobby. I liked studying how to conjugate verbs in lord of the rings’ elvish for fun. My classmates were struggling with basic english while I was already at intermediate level just because I really wanted to understand the plot of my favorite video games, which were all in english.

I was twelve, juggling four languages in my brain for fun just because words fascinated me, and in spite of that, the adults at my school and the grades on my report said i was dumb. I could already make out song lyrics in english by ear, I had memorized the hiragana alphabet in japanese and I could even hold a small conversation in elvish with a fellow nerd.

But I was dumb to the world, and obviously to myself as well because you internalize that shit when they say it over and over. I perceived my entire worth as my grades, and since they were quite low... yeah.

I’m 30. I only started thinking about the possibility of me not being lazy and having terrible time management skills and just not caring about anything at all around 2-3 years ago, tops. I spent nearly my entire life thinking that I’m just... defective, because everyone else around me seemed to be doing fine.

Still, I consider myself lucky because I live in the age of the internet. I stumbled upon a few posts about dealing with constant disorganization, executive dysfunction, rejection sensitive dysphoria, etc. and it just blew my mind - “other people are dealing with that? other people are suffering with that? and it has a name?? and this condition can be treated/understood/improved???”

About what led me to finally getting my diagnosis - I have this super cool psychiatrist that was helping me with my anxiety (which, haha, might be a symptom of my untreated adhd), and when I told her about my suspicions she said “hey, I wouldn’t suggest this if you were a kid, or a younger person but since you’re a full grown adult, I can prescribe you some ritalin and you take like, half of the smallest dose, just to try and see if it helps you focus.” And it did. So I was like “oh. oh, I need to look deeper into this.”

Now I’m waiting for the results and... trying not to freak out, haha.

If you can, try to find a good therapist - not only therapy might be highly positive to you as it is to me, but your therapist can also point you to the right direction. They’ll be glad to refer you to a professional that can have you tested for any disorder you might have, and will also help you find ways to cope with your shortcomings (for example, to help me stop procrastinating, my therapist made a deal with me to show her at least one new page of my current project on every session ^^”)

Sorry for this being so messy, half-personal confession, half-advice. I hope I didn’t ramble too much. Good luck, dear! I hope you find your happiness soon! <3

[etto-etto]

Do you have any tutorial on learning the characters (kanji, heragana and katakana) easily for the very beginners?

(I’m apologizing in advance, because I didn’t realize I would end up writing something this long! I also linked my reference page, which I’ll organize and add to soon—promise.)

It’s not a tutorial, but I was recently asked for help regarding hiragana memorization and I talked about how I learned it here. I hope it may be of some use to you! The only new thing that I can think to add is to find a means of exposing yourself to kana and kanji in a way that is convenient to you. I mentioned using phone apps, which I did when I first started learning, but I also see/read Japanese with

studying — it’s unavoidable when you learn from a Japanese textbook, complete workbook pages, and write notes (handwritten or digital). this is also why I say not to worry about memorizing kana 100%. as long as you study consistently, you will see and reference characters at least several days a week, and the longer you keep this up the less you will need to reference the kana charts.

sites like satori, NHK web easy news, Japanese IO, and other places listed on tab three of my resource page!

follow Japanese natives/accounts on social media (: (This is my twitter list, for example.)

books – for me, I have checked out children’s books from my local library in the past. I also have some additional sources linked on my resource page.

have a Japanese song that you like? learn the lyrics! (bottom of tab five of the resource page for lyrics sites.) 

for the very beginner, looking at content like this may feel frustrating since your vocab is likely limited and there will be LOTS of kanji that you can’t read. (my vocab is limited and I don’t know lots of kanji either, so I’m with you.) but the point is to expose yourself to the characters and hopefully pick up some new words along the way. 

as for kanji specifically, they say there’s around 2,000 characters to learn until you can consider yourself literate. you can start learning kanji before you begin grammar or pair it with grammar. I spent some time learning kanji characters before I started Genki I, and I was glad to have some pre-exposure even if I didn’t recall the readings. so to recap what I did/am doing:

shortly after finishing the kana charts, I started to learn stroke order and the meanings of kanji characters with Remembering the Kanji. I paired this with Kanji Koohii for SRSing but also referenced Jisho to find out the readings. (If you’re unfamiliar with on and kun, Tofugu’s got you covered.)

I chose to halt RtK and switched to Kanji Garden as a beta tester. last I saw, it costs $5 USD per month—a cheaper option than WaniKani. I think it’s a great SRS alternative to pricier options that also provides a small vocab list with context as it doles out new kanji.

currently, I am only learning kanji as I learn vocabulary. I pick up new words as I study each lesson in Genki + I write random stuff regularly at my JPN twitter where I kind of hammer in certain words and grammar structures!

I also use this anki deck to help me learn Genki vocab. It drills you on character recog, audio, spelling, and the english meaning. it’s seriously an amazing deck.

there is a lot of kanji out there, so it will be an ongoing process throughout your studies—don’t wait to start grammar because you want to cover a bunch of kanji or vocabulary first. you can take some time before picking up a textbook like I did, but I don’t recommend waiting too long. I have found that as I learn more Japanese grammar, the more I am able to communicate and understand—and this is ultimately a huge part of what helps me memorize new words and their respective kanji. 

I wish you the best of luck starting out in your Japanese journey!! (: Always feel free to shoot me a message if you’re having difficulties.

[taylorlearnsjapanese]

How did/do I learn vocabulary?

How did/do I learn vocabulary?

This is a question I’m asked quite often and I usually have a different answer each time. The reason is because I have no set way I learn vocabulary. This post will focus entirely on my experience and journey with vocabulary. Grammar will be a topic for another day. ;)

In my opinion, there is no set way to learn vocabulary. I can’t stare at lists and lists of words and suddenly they’re memorized, but I have! I can’t use flash cards because they take too much time, but I have! Kind of see where I’m going with this? I’m the perfect example of an informal or unstructured learner/studier. 

I am a lazy learner. THE LAZIEST. I’m all for fast and easy ways to learn without so much as lifting a finger. Insane, right? Totally. Extremely insane for a beginner like I was. Butttttt, I did it though. Was it smart? Probably not. Did it work? Well… kinda?

I also want to point out that I’ve never studied Japanese in a classroom setting nor have I had tutors to teach me. 

Okay, what I did:

I started learning Japanese on June 11, 2018. I’m going to list the resources I’ve done roughly up to this point in time that this is posted. 

Please don’t take my views on the apps and resources listed as final say. Everyone learns differently and I suggest you try all of these resources out! Things that don’t work for me, may work for you and vice versa.

DuoLingo. It was the only app I really knew of that was credible. I drilled the crap out of that app! That’s how I got my foundations in kana, my first words, and first kanji! 

DuoLingo is good in some ways, but bad in others. It’s perfect for repetition and getting you to think about those words over and over. But that’s also why it’s bad. Each step makes you go through like, what?, four or five tiers or whatever they’re called? By the time you reach that fourth of fifth tier, it’s just annoying to do that pattern over and over again before you can move on. This is just my opinion though, some people thrive off of that. Don’t knock it till you try it, ‘kay? I’ve heard the app has changed some since summer of 2018, so I’ll have to check it out again. 

LingoDeer. Gosh, I love LingoDeer. I really need to use it more. It is the best app ever to introduce you to grammar when you have no idea where to start. 

Workbooks. I got my first workbooks (not textbooks) at the end of June 2018 (I had been learning for roughly 3 weeks by that time). It was Learning Japanese Hiragana and Katakana and Learning Japanese Kanji Volumes 1 and 2, all published by Tuttle. As I worked through the kana book I managed to learn many vocabulary terms from the exercises in the back with the writing exercises (all spelled in hiragana and katakana, there is no kanji in that workbook). I tried and dabbled lightly in the Kanji Vol 1 book, but I wasn’t ready for that just yet back then.

I ONLY used those resources until the end of August 2018 and added Memrise too my list of apps during that time. I gained A LOT of vocabulary knowledge (and some basic grammar but that’s a post for another day) just from using three apps and a kana workbook over two and a half months. 

It was nothing fancy like some people tend to think? I didn’t somehow learn all these words over night.

Textbooks. Genki 1 and it’s workbook was my first ever textbook. This is one of the most widely known textbooks out there for learning Japanese from scratch. Most people know how vocabulary works for that resource. Each chapter introduces vocab and you learn it as you study the grammar and do the exercises.

Um, so, I’m gonna be honest for a second. I HATE TEXTBOOKS. I hate them with a fiery passion. *clenches fist* I stopped using Genki after completing half of the book because I felt like I learned nothing. It just wasn’t the resource for me.

At this point you’re staring hard at your phone, tablet, or computer like WHAT? Yeah… I didn’t hate them at first!! But because of my laziness and informal learning style, I grew to haaaate them. Textbooks are too “cookie cutter” in my opinion. But Taylor, don’t you use one right now? Yes, and let me explainnnnnn. I find that textbooks don’t give you freedom to expand! 

Remember when I asked on Instagram what were some things you’d like me to discuss or talk more about? One user messaged me and wrote,

“How [do] you apply grammar and vocabulary? Because I try to come up with sentences on my own then look up examples of its usage but I continuously use the same type of examples. But when I look at other example there is so much vocab and other grammar structures that go into play that I don’t understand, so it’s hard for me to find a balance that will make me push myself but also know that I can decently understand…”

That’s EXACTLY what I struggled with, with Genki! Textbooks only provide examples for that lesson and the grammar it teaches at that point. So you only know those words (and grammar) in those contexts only. You try to make your own sentences but you end up only using those words and those grammar points over and over. 

There’s simply no opportunity to expand.

Then when you look up other examples you see other new words (and grammar) and it freaks you out because suddenly you don’t feel like you’ve learned anything! This is the e x a c t reason I hate textbooks. 

My answer? For me, I don’t depend on textbooks anymore for vocabulary. They’re amazing for referencing vocabulary and pulling grammar structures, but textbooks only give a limited amount of vocabulary and if that’s all your rely on when learning grammar, it’s going to be rough. It stagnated my learning when I did that. 

When I make my own sentences now, I pull vocab I've been learning from apps, social media, reading, etc. I could go on and on about this, but that’s not the point of this post. I’ll discuss my more of my hatred for textbooks later. Same with grammar and how I make my examples and such. I’ve already gone off on a tangent long enough, hehe. (I hope that answered the above question though! If not, I hope future posts will! Or just message me, lol.) 

Other textbooks I have used after Genki for vocabulary gain is Basic Japanese by Tuttle and the にほんご90日 series.

YouTube. Japanese Ammo with Misa is my love. I love her videos and her personality. Her teaching style is relaxed, but she gets the job done. She has a wide variety of grammar videos along with lots of other videos related to Japanese and Japan.

After my downfall with Genki 1 and some discouragement that led to a nearly three months hiatus of studying, I started using her videos to get the grammar knowledge I needed in January 2019 (I have been learning (counting the hiatus) for about 6 months at this point). 

It’s the perfect things for a lazy learner like me, hehe. I could sit down at my desk and watch one of her videos (they can be anywhere from 8 to 40 minutes long) and watch, pause, and rewind as much as I wanted to write notes with ease. I was learning the grammar I needed to know and learned SO MUCH VOCABULARY. 

She uses common words you find in textbooks, but she also throws in culturally relevant words. She references Pokemon, manga, TV/anime, music, etc, vocabulary all the time! She even teaches the informal/casual variations of words along with formal/polite variations and that’s where I gain so, so, so much vocab! I still use and reference those videos to this day!

PRESENT DAY:

Okay, I just explained what I did to start learning vocabulary from the beginning to about ~5 months ago. I rambled a lot, I know… But did you kind of see the point I was hoping to make? I did not stick to one resource for learning vocabulary (and kanji). 

I didn’t not, nor do I still, learn vocabulary in a “traditional” way. There is no one way to learn everything you need to know. Over that course of time I learn about ~35-40% of my current vocabulary knowledge. Wait… Taylor… You learned ~35-40% of your vocabulary over the course of 10 months, but you’ve learned the other ~60-65% in less than 5 months? Yes, and I’ll explain below~~~

What I mainly use now, app wise, to gain vocabulary knowledge is Memrise, Quizlet (rarely though), Kanji Tree, and LingoDeer. I even use Instagram to learn new vocab too! I follow users who teach vocabulary (and grammar) with their posts. Yes, you will see lots of repeated terms but that’s exposure and review! 

Here are some profiles I really like for introducing vocabulary (new or review): boxofmanga, japanesepod101 (Instagram infographics only), japanese_language_mlc, j_aipon, blue_aoi, and _urabanashi_. 

I also suggest you find native Japanese Instagram users. Not just celebrities or idols. I mean average natives who use Instagram the same way we use our private accounts. I follow larger profiles (500+ followers) for the fact that I don’t want to be a creep and follow someone who only has like 100 or 200 followers. So, I follow some “mommy blog” Instagram's because they tend to use simpler vocabulary when referring to their kids. I also follow some book reviewers, writers, and one guy who loves camping! You get to see lots of natural Japanese this way and it shows common words that are used. I don’t understand a lot of it, but I’m being exposed to the language!

And by now you’re asking, “Okay, but how do you learn vocabulary NOW?” I’m going into N4 if you’re going to look at this from a JLPT stand point, but I don’t only learn strictly N5, N4, N3, etc level material. (That’ll be another post too, lol. Pssst… it’s another “cookie cutter” issue with me.)

Well, those apps mentioned above, obviously, but those only make up about ~30% of my vocabulary gain now. I use my textbook にほんご９０日 Vol 1 as a reference and gain some vocabulary there and I have a couple JLPT related vocab/kanji lists I use too, so that’s like another ~5% of where I get my vocab. 

I get the other ~65% from reading. Yup. Reading. Literally that’s it. I read all the time. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to learn Japanese! 

I have a short story digital bundle I read often from TheJapanShop.com and it’s aimed at beginners and becomes “harder” as you move to the next book and so on. I read through them and when my brain sees a word I know I’m like, “Cool.” But when I don’t know a word I see, I either look it up quick and write it in the margin or I continue on. I learn a lot through context clues. 

Here’s an example sentence from Story Two in Book One of the Japanese Reader Collection offered from TheJapanShop.com. 

「この傘は、雨が降るといつのまにか傘が開き、晴れると傘が閉じている…」

Roughly translated to “This umbrella opened unnoticed when it began raining and upon it becoming sunny the umbrella closed…”

When I read that sentence, I knew all the vocabulary except いつのまにか. The stories have lovely vocabulary guides, so when I looked it up, it said that it meant “before one knows; while unaware” and I took what I knew from the rest of the sentence and managed to learn that new word as a result! This is the best way I could explain how I use reading to expand my vocabulary… ^_^” Just taking what you know and expanding on it over time. I use this same method for grammar, but that’s saved for another post, lol.

I also use NHK New Web Easy to read articles about current events in Japan. It’s set up for native elementary and middle school students so they can read within the kanji and vocabulary they’ve learned so far in life. Guess what? That’s PERFECT for a language learner who has an okay-ish foundation with vocabulary. I learn so much everyday vocabulary that way.

Lastly, I read books and manga. Yup, manga. I don’t use these resources much right now because they’re bigger and more intimidating. I haven’t “officially” started a book but I’ve opened and read passages quite often to sort of test myself. Manga is simpler since there are fewer words than a novel, but they’re bigger than a short story or a news article. You’ve seen on Instagram that I’ve begun reading よつばと！ and so far I’m having a blast! I’ll talk about specific things I’m reading later.

Sooooo…. That’s basically it.

Most of my vocabulary gain now is through exposure to Japanese through social media (bless the internet), reading, and some usage of apps like Memrise and LingoDeer. I use no formal education or study plans or any structure at all. 

My word retention grew to be nearly double these last ~5 months because I built on what I knew and it grew easier and easier for me to learn and retain those words over these last few months. I never believed it, but there is definitely a language hump. Once you crawl over that, things simply become easier. It just takes A LOT of time and effort (and tears) to get over that hump. But, I believe anyone can do it, you just have to be determined and eager enough.

One tip I like to give is to learn through context. Don’t just learn lists of words and kanji. What’s the point? You can recite them, but can you USE them?

Oh, quick thing, I want to point out about how I personally learn vocabulary. I failed to realize this right away when I started learning Japanese, but quickly caught on and now hold onto this belief firmly.

I learn vocabulary and kanji together. 

I do not separate the two. I do not have a separate notebooks for vocabulary and kanji. I don’t even have a notebook at all actually for them, lol. When I post on Instagram that I’m focusing on kanji today, it means I’m just learning vocabulary or reviewing it. The 1026字の正しい書き方 book I use that teaches “kanji” is mainly for vocabulary expansion and how to write those kanji (stroke order). I don’t study the individual meanings of the kanji character, I study the example words it lists. That’s one way on how I’ve been expanding my vocabulary so rapidly.

Kanji is vocabulary. 

Kanji should be treated the exact same way that hiragana and katakana are treated in my opinion. Jokingly, kanji is just fancy kana. ;)

If you “fear” kanji, you’ll have a bad time. I joke and say now when I see an insane kanji or a difficult one, “Damn, that’s some angry squiggles right there.” and it makes learning it that much more enjoyable. :)

For example, 食 means “eat, food.” Okay, cool that kanji has a food related meaning. But I’m not going to do that for thousands of kanji especially since each kanji has multiple readings depending on how it’s used. It’s simply impossible! I found I personally learn better when I learn the kanji in it’s “true” form, aka, in WORDS. 

食べる - to eat / 食べ物 - food / 食事 - meal / 朝食 - breakfast / etc.

Holy crap, not only did I learn the kanji 食 effectively, I learned four words and THREE other kanji! (I’m over dramatic, I know, lol.)

Vocabulary is all interconnected. You can’t learn one thing without stumbling and learning other things by accident. Learning through exposure is the best in my opinion. It’ll be tough to begin with when you don’t know much and it will cause you to doubt yourself and your ability to learn this language. But, just be patient. Learning five, three, or even one word a day is progress.

Small progress eventually builds up to big progress as Yuta says. ;)

Words are meant to be strung together and form sentences for you to read, enjoy, and react to. That’s why books exist. You read those words and sentences and they make you feel warm and fuzzy or cry or laugh. Don’t keep them at an arm's length and treat it like it’s some delicate flower. Language is a not just lists of words, kanji, and grammar points. It’s a culture and way of life for people. Treat it like an old friend and play with it (or go get a beer with it, ya know, whatever gets this point across, lol)!

I tend to treat language learning like I’m a curious five year old. I’m constantly asking questions and discovering new things and it just sparks that fire that makes you want to explore more and more. 

I don’t take it seriously (from an academic view) and that’s why I find some stuff so easy. It only becomes difficult if you make it difficult. Everyone learns differently. There is no one way to learn Japanese and there is no one way to learn specific parts of Japanese. Also, don’t compare yourself! It only ends in self doubt and discouragement. 

Explore and try out all sorts of things. Try out the free apps, read articles online, watch YouTube videos, just do SOMETHING. Don’t look for the “perfect” resource or routine. Just. STUDY. You’ll find in time what works for you and what doesn’t.

Language learning is no race. There is no ribbon or trophy at the end for becoming fluent overnight. Take your time and enjoy the process, you’ll be learning your whole life, ‘kay?

I’ll talk further on how I review it in another post. :)

[watersportz]

hey are you learning korean or japanese? if so, what do you recommend for starting to learn the language(s)? books, websites, apps etc? it would help so much.

yes!! i’m currently learning Japanese at university but it’s extremely plausible to learn on your own with some diligence and dedication. i’ll happily share some tips…

this is gonna be kind of long winded so stick with me (✿ヘᴥヘ)

1) Print out a hiragana and katakana chart and memorize each character! This will help significantly with reading AND writing. You pretty much can’t learn Japanese without having these two alphabets down first so it’s a great place to start. I recommend teaching yourself hiragana first and then moving to katakana. When doing this process, I made index cards. I would write the hiragana/katakana on one side then the romaji on the other side. This helped me a lot. I also highly recommend using Quizlet. On Quizlet you can study other people’s hiragana and katakana charts and take quizzes as well as make your own quizzes and flashcards. This app can be downloaded on your mobile device and also can be accessed on a computer. 

- Here are some charts for hiragana and katakana that I think are most useful:  hiragana chart … katakana chart  

for example: on one side of an index card write あ and on the other side write a 

2) Duolingo is available and reliant! This is an app provided in the store on both iphone and google phones (I believe). The grammatical structure of some of their stuff is a bit off but honestly it’s good for what it is. It’s completely free as well so that’s a bonus. It’s great for learning vocabulary and scattered kanji. There’s basic grammar structure as well which is super helpful. I’ve used it for fun and I have a lot of friends who use it often and love it. 

3) So, at my university we use a textbook called Genki. This book comes with super awesome grammar lessons as well as an extensive list of vocabulary for each chapter. In my opinion, I think this book is great and if you feel inclined, I would totally go ahead and purchase it. There are two versions. I would get the first version and if you feel like you want to move on with Japanese, you can get the second version.  Although, my professor as well as other kids who have studied Japanese recommend using minna no nihongo. I’m not really sure what this book consists of grammar and vocabulary wise but it’s what they use for foreigners in Japan to teach them Japanese. For minna no nihongo you have to buy an English translation of the book because it’s all in Japanese. Also with minna no nihongo, I believe they only have an english translation of it.

genki version 1 / genki workbook / minna no nihongo / minna no nihongo english translation 

4) I am going to warn you now- kanji is a bitch. This is the third component to the Japanese alphabet and it’s probably the most important. According to a few sources, someone who is fluent in Japanese will know roughly around 2,000 kanji characters. That’s a shit ton of kanji. Don’t let this discourage you though. Only allow it to motivate you because when you can start reading and writing kanji it’s super awesome. The way Genki puts kanji is AMAZING. They teach you stroke order as well as ON and KUN readings. If you’re not interested in buying Genki or can’t afford it then honestly just look around online. There are a bunch of free sites that will help you with kanji. Once you get the hang of it, it will become a lot easier. Please please do not let it overwhelm you. 

5) SPEAK. IT. OUT. LOUD. Repetition is so so so important. Especially with Japanese. Practice your pronunciation and if you say it out loud over and over you will remember. I’m telling you. I can almost guarantee it. If you have any Japanese friends that speak the language fluently, DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK TO PRACTICE WITH THEM! It helps so much to actually speak it. Even practice with a friend or family member and have them correct you on a vocab or a sentence that you got wrong. I can’t stress enough how important repetition and speaking the language out loud is. 

6) Find anything within Japanese pop culture that interests you. Whether it be music, movies, dramas, books, interviews or anime… SURROUND YOURSELF WITH IT!! I find this extra helpful because you learn while you’re doing something you enjoy. If you shoot me a message I can recommend you some good anime, movies, or music that you can listen to. I would write out a whole list but honestly that’s a lot of time. Just remember that with anime that it is NOT how actual Japanese people speak. It’s very dramatic. Do not base your Japanese learnings off anime. If you want to use anime to help, you are more than welcome. But don’t make it into a fetishizy weird thing. Interest is good. Obsession is not. 

I think this is a pretty good place to start. Just remember that with any language it takes practice, patience, and hard work. Don’t stress yourself out. Because you’re learning the language on your own, do it at your leisure. It’s a super beautiful language to know and it’s incredibly impressive if you’re able to even pick up a little of it. Please remember to also touch on other aspects of the culture if you’re interested in it! The Japanese culture and heritage is so beyond words. 

Feel free to message me if you have any questions at all! Good luck!

がんばっ~  

Disclaimer: This is how I learned Japanese and how i’m still learning it. If you don’t agree with any of my ways, it’s okay! If i’ve said anything that was wrong then please let me know. Thank you so much! 

[jpn-langblr]

こんにちは！i was searching for japanese langblrs and stumbled upon your blog~ it's so neat and pretty! your langblr posts are relatively easy to understand (for a beginner like me) i like it so muchhh ^^ please keep it up ^^ also, may i ask for some tips about learning/practicing kanji for beginner? thank you! hope you have a wonderful day!

ah thank you, i’m glad i am posting something you can use, and that you like the blog

as for kanji, yes: the easiest way to memorize them is to write by hand. a looot. so grab a kanji learning utility, and get to writing. if you’re entirely new to it, i suggest you check out wanikani. it’s paid, but the first three levels are free, so you can check it out and see if it works for you. what wk does is that it teaches you radicals, the little parts of kanji, as well as the whole kanji. this is to make memorizing them easier! be aware, though, that wk does teach you some radicals that don’t actually exist if you want to use them to look up a kanji in a dictionary. recognizing radicals comes in really handy if you need to look up kanji where you don’t have the pronunciation available, as not all dictionaries have the function that allows you to simply draw the kanji on a screen and have the dictionary recognize it.

if you want to create you own “curriculum” of sorts, you can always go by the Jouyou kanji list (the 2100 or so kanji that are permitted in government and official documents; they’re often used as a baseline for the kanji a learner needs to know to be able to fluently read/write japanese), or the JLPT kanji as sorted by level (start with n5). i recommend that you learn a word or two containing the kanji you’re currently studying. doesn’t matter if the other kanji in the word are ones you haven’t learned yet (of course it’s best if they are); you can just write those in hiragana for now.

but yeah, really it all comes down to a) writing by hand, every single day, and b) making a buttload of flash cards to practice and test yourself with.

i hope this helps! thanks again for your lovely words!

[nightskiespony]

Loneliness and hopelessness

This holiday weekend was ugh... I lost all motivation to work on my projects, just about. This could be the effects of being off of meds perhaps but I think it’s situational (the meds didn’t feel like they were doing anything while I was on them).

I dunno how it all started but I began feeling very lonely for lack of a girlfriend sometime between Weds and Thurs, and that grew into feeling that all of my project pursuits were doomed to fail and become meaningless. Perhaps this grew out of that feeling of meaninglessness I was feeling about my projects from the weekend before (I think). I had just finished the micro-spool gun earlier last week and so maybe I was feeling a lack of excitement after the end of a project.

All weekend I kept trying to make connections with people via Garry’s Mod Prop Hunt, Trouble in Terrorist Town, and EquestriaRP (mainly there). In EquestriaRP there are girls on that server, and I kept wanting to ask one out (even if it was virtually) - probably because I haven’t been on a date in a long time. I hung out with my best friend a little bit but I don’t feel like it did much for me. Missed church again too. Didn’t mean to but my bed felt really good (and I had been staying up late alot so it was hard to get up naturally). I also hit the dating sites a bit, send a couple messages and likes, and received no replies of course.

Regarding the projects, I just feel like the 3d metal printing is gonna fail and the japanese learning game I’m working on is going to turn out with shitty art quality and have poor gameplay and ineffective teaching techniques.

For 3D metal printing, I haven’t proven that I can print with fine-filament strands yet, and my attempts so far have failed. Because I ran out of gas, everytime I attempt to melt the wire it immediately oxidizes and the tip becomes non-conductive. I then touch the side of the wire on the side of the sheet metal and it just melts off at the tip (and sometimes inside the tip I think??). I kept having to disassemble the spool gun to feed the wire back into the tip or something. I also oughta reprint the overlapped spool half so that the midsection matches the dimensions of the bearing that’s in there. Currently the spool is separated into two halves and the filament can get stuck between the halves, but it doesn’t seem to do this normally luckily. Also the filament gun doesn’t work too well unless I hold the tensoner edge down (it was supposed to have 2 tensioner screws but I reamed out the hole for one too much so it’s tensioned in a crooked fashion). Anyways, my only hope for getting this working right is getting gas I think. But if it keeps melting off inside the tip that would be very bad. That would be a contact problem. I believe it melts off to the contact point, which could be inside the tip. Maybe I need a little V-cut piece of metal at the very tip that puts the contact point as close to the tip as possible. Perhaps I will re-print the main part of the filament gun, fix the tensioner and the spool half so that I have a reliably working spool gun first, and get gas and maybe I’ll have much more luck with this. Trouble is, Maine Oxy is only open limited hours on the weekend (8 am - 12 pm), and I have had trouble getting up. They’re only open 8-5 weekdays afaik and I’m prettymuch never home or not working during those times.

Japanese learning game: Anyways, regarding the Japanese learning game, I haven’t talked about that here at all. I’m working on a 2D hack & slash platformer that has blind quizzing integrated in that helps you learn Japanese writing and language without any memorization. You basically learn by failing. It takes after a model based on how kids learn language - by tripping and stumbling through it. It doesn’t teach all of Japanese, just a basic survival level and Hiragana. The hiragana part of it is effective but I haven’t play-tested some of the heavier Japanese learning parts. Progress on the game programming is going fairly well honestly but the movement and jumping and stuff feels a little too loose. And the combat is a little bit too easy maybe. I can study other games and tweak the gravity and movement and such, but there is a larger problem with the game: the artwork sucks. I did it all myself and I’m not the greatest artist honestly. Much less pixel art. I haven’t been able to get anybody I know to commit to helping me with artwork and I don’t have a plan for finding that help online. I am willing to pay someone too. Anyways, I won’t be confident about this project until (a) I have better art (b) I tune the gameplay and (c) I test the heavier learning portions for effectiveness. Until then I consider it a steaming pile of crap. I feel better now that I’ve written about it though. At least I know what is bugging me about it and now I can solve these problems.

Hm. Writing about these things gives me a little more excitement about this stuff... dispelling the sense of meaninglessness. This stuff is important to me because I feel it gives meaning to my life - a mission to help people with these things. I’m not planning to productize the 3D metal printing, so I feel that that is just a hack-job project... but I would release the source code and CAD files that would allow somebody to make the same modifications to the Prusa i3 MK2S I have. The welder modifications would be just a set of instructions, and they’d have to get the same gear as me (20A variac and harbor freight welder). I feel like somebody is going to come out with exactly the same thing as a product in the coming years though, but it would be nowhere near as cheap as the thing I’m building. $700 printer + $100 welder + $50 in welder electronics + maybe $50 in control electronics = $900. I’m guessing that Desktop Metal is going to come out with a $25,000 desktop metal printer. That’s way out of range for a hobbyist or hobby maker organizations.

So what’s my todo list for this?

(a) Demonstrate micro-printing by hand and record techniques

(b) Mechanical print-head design in CAD based on Prusa i3

(c) Mechanical design of print bed (may have a problem with the auto-alignment points since the bed will be metal)

(c) investigate Prusa electronics for ways of controlling the new print head

(d) investigate prusa firmware for the same

(e) build print head control hardware

(f) build variac power controller (I’m pretty sure I’ll need to change the power level during printing sometimes)

(g) investigate slicer code for parameters like width of the laid-down material and also modifying instructions based on the welding techniques it needs to use (how to print in mid-air is probably going to be different, and it may need to hover for a second to start a molten pool when welding to a cold layer)

Anyways that’s it for now ... so much work to do on just that project. And this is all just a gateway to printing parts for my main invention that I do plan on making money off of and taking it as far as I can. That idea is even bigger than this.

I thought I would feel awful today, being at work and all, but I’m sorta looking forward to fixing code problems. Its something to do.

Anyways that’s all for now. I need to start working.