I’ve been studying Japanese for about a year now but I’ve been watching anime pretty much forever. I’ve used a lot of the content from this site along with other resources but this is my first time interacting.
Read a couple of manga series (finished two so far) and right now I’m onto my first light novel: 魔法科高校の劣等生 (reading at a 亀’s pace )
Starting this little thread to push myself to post and reflect on my Japanese studies. I’ll share progress updates now and then, maybe some random thoughts too.
I’m so used to the conversational language common of manga that every time I hit grammar that’s more literary or narrative it throws me off.
Stuff like nominal sentences (eg. the above) that end with a noun instead of a predicate. It’s the difference between “the girl, for some reason, blushes” vs “the girl that, for some reason, blushes” (and… ?).
Feels like there’s no final punch or conclusion, but I’m starting (forcing myself) to see it as if the writer is painting a picture rather than making a statement.
When I watched the anime I wasn’t expecting that level of closeness between Miyuki and Tatsuya but found it endearing nonetheless. Now that I’m reading the LN I’m impressed by how much more I’m able to appreciate how Miyuki’s whole tone softens for him… the presence of different levels of 敬語 and other subtle details add a depth that just gets lost in the subtitled version. I suppose it will only get better! (not talking about the incestuous relation between the protagonists )
Always nice to see a study log that’s just someone reading and whatnot; that’s all I do at the moment as well. Best of luck to you!
I’m not familiar with the book, really haven’t read light novels much at all, but I’ll keep an eye here and see what you think!
I think I had the opposite experience where I went heavier on learning to read from more full novel-style sentences in the first place, so I had to work through all of manga’s contractions and stuff afterwards haha.
it’s interesting depending on which way you jump. when i was really starting out reading (still atm to be honest) you could miss a sentence or allusion and just be completely lost for pages and pages. (同じ夢’s protagonist referring to a cat as あのこ really confused the shit out of me the first time I read it and didn’t realise they were talking about a cat)
Yeah like I was doing a LITTLE manga too thanks to the clubs here and whatnot, but the original move from graded readers to Satori Reader to VNs was my major focus so I appreciated that the sentences were full and clear, when I went back to manga at that time I always felt like I had to solve for the contractions, or what a small vague utterance was referring to. Doesn’t feel so bad anymore of course, but the two sure are different. I’ve always been particular about really trying to understand every little bit, which didn’t mean I was just gonna magically get some that were beyond me, but it did kinda weaken the advantage of understanding enough to follow from context with manga and the like if I was gonna fixate on any bit I couldn’t figure out regardless.
Of course that kind of attitude has also probably been why I struggled so much with listening haha, but it’s getting better.
I’ve had the experience you described before for sure, at least I could often go back and get the “oh THAT is what they meant!” experience after being confused by the consecutive lines for a bit.
Thanks! Yeah, reading has been my main approach so far, it’s slow sometimes (actually, all the time and for a long time ) but it works. It works because reading stays enjoyable even at a snail’s pace. I tried a similar approach with anime, but fragmenting a visual experience just kills the fun.
If you’re curious about Mahouka I’d suggest watching a couple of episodes of the anime, you’ll know immediately if it’s your thing
I’ve mostly been focusing on grammar and vocab acquisition through exposure but I’ve started to notice how much kanji can slow things down. Figured with enough exposure I’d naturally pick up a decent percentage of the ones I see frequently but turns out you don’t learn what you ignore Kanji are built from radicals and unless you start paying attention to them (through a structured approach like Wanikani) they’re just random strokes that don’t really stick. You might memorize a handful that contain familiar patterns through repetition but you’ll still be relying on furigana everywhere and that gets frustrating.
Right now, I’m reading on Mac and iPad, and thanks to being able to select text (even though Apple Books tries to stop me from doing that hah) and with some tricks I’ve managed to make checking word meanings almost as fast as I would with manga and furigana
Imo an absolute minimum for reading to feel truly fluent would be knowing 9, 9.5 kanji out of 10. Anything below that just drags the pace down. Still got a long way to go from here but it’s a necessary step
Anyway that’s is why I decided to join Wanikani, plus, I really love the community
Possibly the most stacked noun phrase I’ve ever had to interpret, here’s my breakdown:
魔法技能 – magic skills
専門 – specialty
高等訓練 – advanced training
機関 – institution
→ an advanced training institution specialized in magic skills
Basically, “the school’s mandate is to provide the Magic faculty University and the advanced training institution specialized in magic skills with a hundred or more graduates each year”
I had two doubts here: 1) what’s the logical correlation between the two organizations in the sentence? 2) is “institution” singular or plural in this context?
The first one is pretty trivial, but as a beginner, long compound nouns like this make it easy to los track of the sentence’s overall meaning. 魔法科大学 has no attached particles and at first I expected a と to explicitly link the two. Realized it’s just a streamlined listing when I noticed the lack of particles; seems to be a common feature in formal writing
As for the second, I’m still not entirely sure but I feel like if it were plural a や particle would be there or it would just be structured differently
Thanks! And yeah, I think it’s pretty wild too (sorry, gotta celebrate the achievement). If you stay consistent, no doubt you’ll be here in no time as well. Just a few months ago I was spending the same amount of time getting through a couple of manga pages
If you don’t mind a bit of advice, just go for it, don’t overthink. Jump into the material as soon as possible, no matter how little you know. Adaptation will work wonders. Just be patient
without any context my read is a) it’s to provide X university AND X magical institute with y number of grads [a comma relationship to me usually indicates ‘part of a list’ or something like that] and b) 機関 is probably a single institution and not a number of institutions, because I would normally be looking for a たち or something to really explicitly pluralise it. But I could be wrong, eg in the setting if you refer to 高騰訓練機関 or whatever maybe it always refers to plurals! さぁ。。。
I think I agree; it’s kind of unclear but if it was important to make it clear it’s plural they’d definitely rephrase it and just add on more words. I just wanted to comment to point out たち is basically only used with people. It CAN attach to other things but you’d need a reason to want to kinda playfully anthropomorphize them. Edit: was looking into this a little more out of curiosity and inserting たち in non standard places on objects can also imply a strong fondness apparently. But yeah outside these deliberate uses it needs to be for groups of people only.
I agree, and was also thinking… isn’t たち only used with people? But I see @Daisoujou confirmed my suspicions.
Thanks to both for the input, much appreciated
Still getting used to these embedded clauses. When I see a structure indicating causation like A故に, I’m used to expecting it to function as the main clause, where the stated reason is immediately followed by a predicate. But in this case (as in most cases which makes me really hope I’ll get used to it soon), it turned out to be a subordinate clause, with the core assertion coming afterward.
This is probably the biggest difference from manga that trips me up in narration, followed closely by long kanji combinations.
“While that is by no means a bad thing, it is also a fact that, because of that established value system, many children end up getting hurt”
Wanikani’s mnemonics are memorably hilarious laughing out loud at the office right now, colleagues probably wondering if I’m sane.
Found a third party app some users mentioned on the forum and it’s been a game changer! It lets me review readings and meanings in one go and skip typing entirely with a (fairly risky) self-assessment mode so I can do 50+ reviews in ~5 minutes. This is awesome since I’m going almost full speed to hit level 30 as fast as possible and feel like reviews buildup could easily get out of control.
Well, this approach only works if I stay strict, so I’m setting some norms, eg. if I can’t recall both meaning and reading within three seconds, it’s a fail. And being very critical in general. Will report on how it goes
new here.
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Kanji are built from radicals and unless you start paying attention to them (through a structured approach like Wanikani) they’re just random strokes that don’t really stick. You might memorize a handful that contain familiar patterns through repetition but you’ll still be relying on furigana everywhere and that gets frustrating.
which makes me really hope I’ll get used to it soon), it turned out to be a subordinate clause, with the core assertion coming afterward.