How much grammar should I learn before reading?

I agree with @Radish8 even though it can be a little pricey, I find it extremely useful. I don’t think it’s ever too early to start reading as long as what you’re reading is near your knowlege level (+1)

I also found a similar thread that has useful information When to start reading?:
https://community.wanikani.com/t/when-to-start-reading/2835/21

I bought the complete set from White Rabbit Japan

I hope this helps :blush:

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I mean, half of Genki is literally devoted to Reading Comprehension, and it’s graded down to each chapter.

I personally started reading (very simple things NHK Easy, shounen jump) before I dove into grammar. For the most part I feel like you can kind of piece together the gist of things if you know the vocab (which is what WK does). Knowing that the sentence structure is Subject (semi-optional)-Object-Verb as opposed to the English Subject-Verb-Object, will get you pretty far.

I’ve been using mangamura.org for my raw manga. Shounen Jump stuff is nice cause they have furigana but you can start learning reinforcing kanji that you’ve learned in WK.

I would reccommend getting comfortable with the basic verb forms and a handful of particles before starting, even with graded readers. It will help you to pick out what’s what and see the boundaries between words.

Late to this party… but with just level 6 complete on wanikani and the basic section of Taekim grammar I could read grader reader level zero. Felt really good to get though the five little books in the first set.

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Just read as much n+1 (or n+2 or 3 or 4) stuff as you can. You’ll probably want to settle with just focusing on the Genki textbook dialogues for right now, but even by the time you finish Genki II, you can start throwing yourself at, say, manga with furigana and try to get something out of them.

Better yet, pick something your familiar with in translation, and you’ll be surprised how much you can pick up, even if it’s very slow-going at first. And as others have said, you don’t have to understand everything, so long as you understand just enough to make it worthwhile learning.

If you have a smart phone, look for the app Tangristo. It’s an assistant to help you read NHK easy. Just read my first full article today!

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That’s also a great piece of advice - the first manga I tried reading was one where I’d previously seen the anime. I didn’t realise how unbelievably closely the anime was made to follow the manga, so this was even more helpful to my understanding than I’d anticipated, and I could re-watch the anime to get help from the subtitles if necessary.

(it was still quite hard work to get through though!)

I’m doing the same thing with Dragon Ball currently, a series I’m intimately familiar with. I’ve also read/am reading some manga I haven’t read in translation alongside it, and the difference in reading speed is remarkable (without feeling like I’m skipping over anything; I just spend less time questioning my understanding of what I’ve just read). It can help provide more learning opportunities too, since you have more context to help pinpoint the grammar or vocabulary you truly aren’t familiar with.

Still tough, obviously, but it’s helpful.

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Nice the Japanese Constitution… I Agree

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