Diving into Japanese

[Ndub91]

Hey everyone. I am into my third week of Japanese Self-study. Ive always been a huge anime fan growing up and I do alot of Fan-art dedicated to my love for it. If you ever want to check the art out its on insta at nik0-Retr0…haha sorry for the spam anyways the real reason I started this topic, I was wondering if anyone had any tips on me learning this language. I got my Hiragana and Katakana down to a pat. I am doing this wanikani for Kanji. I will be honest; my goal is not so much reading/writing as it is comprehension and speaking. I am using Genki 1 but only got through greetings so far. I am planing on maybe using tae kim or Japanases AMMO youtube channel for intro to grammer. I know for speaking and comprehension listening is going to be most important but idk if I should dive into immersion methods yet. Any suggestions on some study outlets for me?

[ekg]

@Ndub91

I will be honest; my goal is not so much reading/writing as it is comprehension and speaking.

Well, you don’t really need to learn how to read kanji for this. But, it certainly helps with giving your brain something to cling onto when faced with new words and speech patterns - kanji is like the hidden clue to listening comprehension I feel.

That being said, you don’t have to start off learning kanji right away. It’s more like, once you’ve hit a wall in what you can comprehend, you’ll need it going forward. So, eventually, you’ll likely want to study kanji too.

But for now, now how about just learning grammar in any study book you prefer and do listening comprehension? It’s a start for speaking as well.

Maybe something here will catch your fancy? ^^

The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List!

This post is a list of Japanese resources and stands as a collaborative wiki gathered by the WaniKani Community. If there’s a resource you feel is missing from the list, please add it by clicking the edit button above. Include an edit reason by clicking the button at the top of the edit window. Many of the resources here are free, however, the ones that aren’t are marked with a dollar sign $ or otherwise noted. Click on the triangle symbol ► to open a section’s resou…

Listening Practice What do you listen to for Japanese practice?

This thread is for talking about your favorite resources for improving your Japanese listening comprehension. That could be YouTube, radio shows, podcasts, Drama CDs, interviews, video games, JP dramas, western movies dubbed in Japanese etc. I dunno! I’d just love to see all the resources gathered in one place that is easy to find, and to let people talk about it. ^>^ I hope that everyone that has any question to do with listening practice dare to post here! Have fun! ^>^ [chillhop-st…

[Ndub91]

Thanks so much! Yeah I figured it probably wouldnt be necessity to focus on kanji too much at the moment but I figured eventually I will need it to truly be somewhat proficient in the language. Maybe I should put less focus on wanikani and just focus on the grammer and vocabulary to start and immerse myself alil more with listening to conversational situations.

[ekg]

Doing WK nice and slow sounds like a good option. You’ll gradually learn more and more kanji, but your main focus is elsewhere: grammar and general language comprehension.

Knowing more vocab helps you get going faster once you do wanna make learning kanji a focus. It’s all part of the same learning journey really.

Meanwhile, listening and any kind of production (speaking or writing) are separate skills you just have to expose yourself to and do a lot of to get good at). Well, same with reading in the end, but yeah, that one also starts with learning kanji to boot.

Knowing a ton of vocab is a great foundation for any comprehension, but you do need grammar to parse actual sentences, so immersing oneself is a good way to get both of those things.