by falava on 9/22/20, 6:15 PM with 37 comments
by Mediterraneo10 on 9/22/20, 9:48 PM
I am learning Japanese now, actually, and the hardest part is the writing system, but that is really just a matter of rote memorization. (I already learned Chinese years ago, mastering the kanji is just repeating the same process of flashcards, except with the need to learn two readings for most characters and not just one.) Rote memorization of glyphs is something open to anyone with adequate time, but matters of phonology/morphology/syntax might ultimately defeat a learner regardless of how much time they throw at the problem.
by PinkMilkshake on 9/23/20, 3:43 AM
I looked into traditional methods, I also know about Antimoon, AJATT, MIA, RTK, WaniKani, Anki/SRS, etc. But I'm too low in conscientiousness to stick to a plan, and I burn out on SRS and mnemonics after about 500 cards, even with reasonably low card rates. The mnemonics become a frustrating scramble of meaning in my head.
Just last night I learned the words for mirror and crime with almost no effort and I still remember them today. That's two words learned, both only encountered once, in context. I even have the image in my head of one of the in game mirrors. That kind of "fast mapping" just doesn't occur any other way (that I can find). I've also picked up plenty of written Japanese, including kanji, from menu screens, subtitles, etc.
by presentation on 9/22/20, 11:30 PM
But if the author wants to have any chance of understanding spoken Japanese or speaking, this will never get the author there - much better off watching and listening to as much Japanese material as possible. While I don’t necessarily agree with everything in it, the Mass Immersion Approach [1] gives a good overview of how one can reach a good level of fluency relatively quickly without being in Japan.
by majewsky on 9/22/20, 8:18 PM
EDIT: I should add that this method is not the "One True Way". Different people learn in different ways. If you want to see a radically different approach to learn Japanese, check out https://massimmersionapproach.com/
by rtpg on 9/23/20, 6:09 AM
On top of that the shows tend to have a lot of text on screen to emphasize points etc, and will cover really easy to understand topics.
It might be boring/low brow, but you'll absorb a lot more in shorter amounts of time IMO. And like... who wants to read the news?
by robotmay on 9/22/20, 10:06 PM
This time around I'm instead primarily using Anki, and I have 4 main decks. A hiragana/katakana deck, a WaniKani kanji deck, a KanjiDamage deck, and a custom deck for anything else I want to learn. I work through the first three decks each day, but I'm not great at learning through memorisation, so instead the third deck is where I put things I actually want to learn; useful phrases, text from manga that I didn't know, poetry, and regional dialect words. I've bought a moderate amount of Japanese-language manga (CDJapan ships internationally, and buyee.jp is great), and I'm trying to acquire more poetry books (send me recommendations if you have them!)
Ultimately this means I'm learning lots of fairly obscure stuff early on (like how nakagama is a billhook) but as that's what I'm interested in it's far more likely to hold my attention. And my short-term goal is to be able to write in the various Japanese poetry forms.
Kanji is still immensely frustrating to learn, no matter the techniques used. I am ultimately resigned to learning it though; in my lifetime I must learn a second language, and Japanese is one of the few that has ever held my interest.
by Grue3 on 9/24/20, 12:21 PM
Now when I wanted to take an JLPT exam, I realized that my listening skills are awful, and my grammar skills aren't very good either. I started watching grammar lessons on Youtube in Japanese, as well as random videos in Japanese (mostly about trains/traveling). In the end I just barely passed listening (JLPT N2) but my grammar skills were really good.
by buu700 on 9/23/20, 1:14 AM
I've got nothing really to add here, except that I've been using LingoDeer (another app in the same category as Duolingo) based on recommendations in /r/LearnJapanese, which if nothing else has made the process feel less like schoolwork and more like a game.
Hiragana and katakana weren't hard to pick up at all — I can read and type them comfortably now without too much latency — and I'm 62.5% through the intro course that LingoDeer claims to be N5-equivalent. Picking up enough kanji for this to become a useful skill does seem a bit daunting, but as others have said, rote memorization is only a matter of time and consistency.
by kater006 on 9/23/20, 1:05 AM
Now that I’m learning Korean also as a beginner I googled sentence mining and downloaded Korean deck which after 2 months of using seems to work well and now I’m at the point where I will start study of basic grammar once a week to support the anki study
by digianarchist on 9/24/20, 4:50 AM
Arguably more important the reading and writing is correctly pronouncing words in a language and being able to identify what's being said.
by known on 9/23/20, 6:53 AM
by cweagans on 9/23/20, 4:23 PM
by DerekRobot on 9/22/20, 9:37 PM