Beginner reading material similar to Coscom

Japanese Language Reading
#1

I’m trying to get started with basic reading. Currently trying to read the Nyan Nyan detectives series.

I’m running into the problem where I can read and gleam some meaning, but am not sure if my meaning is the correct one. What would be super nice would be some kind of reading material with a translation and grammar breakdown like in Coscoms news articles.

I have a short story collection with translations, but it’s a bit difficult at my current level.

I’m going through genki 1 as well

Side question: has anyone got membership to Coscom? Is it legit? Worth it? Study Japanese

#2

I don’t know about Coscom, but you should look in the Kitty Detectives! Week 1 Discussion :cat: discussion threads. You can ask questions there to people who’ve read it.

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#3

If you’re reading the first one, you can find the discussion here :slight_smile:

(That link is for the book 2 discussions)

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#4

I’m not familiar with the Coscom site, but I imagine the free articles are a good indication of what you get with the membership.

The sections on grammar (some of which is set up to use in conjunction with their “Building Up Conversation” lesson material, which may be a separate membership to access) seems nice.

I recommend trying out the free material and see what you can get out of it.

This is the most important button to click, by the way:

Screenshot_20210118_100623

It switches everything from romaji to kanji+kana. The article doesn’t have furigana, but the line-by-line below it does.

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#5

Thanks for the correction!

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#6

Also, have you considered looking at something like Satori Reader?

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#7

@Saida @Radish8
I Should have mentioned that even after going through the discussion thread and spreadsheet for that book, I was having this problem. Mostly because the book club seems to start later in the book than the beginning. I could ask questions, but I have a lot, and it would be a lot to ask of people.

@ChristopherFritz yeah I’m asking after looking at the free article about the indonesia earthquake. That was excellent and I learned quite a bit. I was wondering if the rest of the articles keep up that quality and if the site on the whole is on the level (it looks sort of sketchy)

@Radish8 Satori reader sounds like exactly what I’m looking for, thanks!

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#8

Be sure to check out the replies starting from this one.

I recommend trying out the thread search feature, as well. You can type in a few words from the sentence you have a question on. It may have been asked about further down in the thread.

Do it.

I’m saying this as someone who tries to answer a lot of book club thread questions (for books I’m reading along with).

I couldn’t discern whether they had any “members only” articles (but I didn’t look enough). I’d say stick with the free stuff for a bit, and see what you continue to get out of it. Eventually you may reach a point where you can say, “If I pay for a (shortest-length available) membership and there’s nothing better from it for me than the free content, it’s still worth the cost in return for everything I got for free already.”

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#9

In that case, I think I’ll be best off joining the current reading club. Thanks for the advice!

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