How to study with very little vocabulary

I thought this was a reference to the childrens book :smile:. I remember that being read to me so many times. Not sure if it’s been translated, though.

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ネットでやっぱり犬だったらだれも知らない。

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Edit: I completely misunderstood. I thought we were talking about Lovecraft (kinda stretching the definition of “children book”, but I did read some of his stuff at 10, so…)

There are listings on Amazon, so it has been translated, but they look pretty recent. I’m pretty sure there was a mention of the books in ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖 (mentioning a much older edition), but I might be misremembering. That, or “the Whisperer in Darkness” wasn’t one of those translated at the time.

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Though i do agree there is no serious need to wait, they aren’t trying to gatekeep.

They are saying it might be a good idea to get some vocabulary drilled in before you start, that way you aren’t spending a ton of time looking up new words. They are working off of the 80/20 principal, and if you have some kanji/vocabulary knowledge then learning grammar will be that much easier. Also it was based on a particular guided approach they were presenting, for those that want it, not as a hard-fast rule, of "if you don’t study vocabulary and kanji for 6 months and have a mastery of 3000 words, you can’t start grammar.

But again, no need to wait that long. I’ve been studying grammar and vocabulary off and on for a while now, and I’m still only level 5. Wanikani is a tool, not a measure of Japanese proficiency.

If anyone wants to look at the post in question Learn Japanese: A Ridiculously Detailed Guide

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Yessss somebody got the joke! :joy:

TBH I was just trying to make sentences with level 1-3 kanji and as soon as I saw 母 was on there… :sweat_smile:

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Hello my fellow level 3, I would personally suggest just giving it a try and see how it goes for you. I find that as long as you’re willing to put in the work of going through the exercises and go over parts that are difficult, it’s not that bad to grasp the basic grammar concepts. I’ve been using Genki 1 (3rd Ed.) which I find accessible even to those without much knowledge in Japanese. I’ve also heard people recommend Minna no Nihongo but I haven’t used it so I can’t attest to its effectiveness.
Whatever you choose to do, I wish you luck in your studies! :crabigator:

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I started with Rocket Japanese level 1-3. It costs money, like most others, but provided a good baseline to start from, at least for me. I couldn’t read any kana or kanji, nor could I even say hello. That was a while ago, I’ve since branched into several resources, can read, write, speak, and listen pretty well, and could provide my recommendations. I find that a broad use of sources provides overlap and fills gaps between each other. Consume, consume, consume!

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Oh! I completely misunderstood their reply. I have never heard of that book.
Which make sense, too. It seems it never got translated in my native language and I wasn’t a kid anymore by the time I could read English :sweat_smile:

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Except it literally says at the beginning of the essay that this is “the hard way (i.e. the correct way),” and that you’ll be “doing it right” with their method.

I had a detailed reply but I got called away in the middle and now I just don’t have the energy to edit it down (and probably nobody would read the whole unedited thing lol!)

So basically

  1. There’s already this stereotype that Japanese is a really difficult/weird language for Westerners/English speakers and a big reason for that is kanji.
  2. Rote memorization is, let’s be honest, necessary but boring. The part of language learning that feels rewarding is when you can use or understand it. (Which is why beginning language classes start you off with “good morning how are you I am fine” so you can have baby conversations on day 1)
  3. Learning a language is very different from learning how to learn a language and most people don’t know much about the second, which is why we have teachers and classrooms and experts.

IMO the “learn 300 kanji first rule” is gatekeeping because it puts the newbie through a gauntlet of weeks of tedious not-rewarding study BEFORE they can get to the “real” language learning that they want. It may save time later on but it makes learning way harder at the beginning when a lot of people are most uncertain.

And going back to point 3, how many first-time language learners will have the insight to say “I’ve done three weeks of this, it sucks, I’ll find another study method” and how many are going to say “well this is the ‘correct’ way so if I’m having trouble then I guess Japanese is too hard for me” and give up entirely.

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As many others, I strongly disagree with the fact you need a lot of kanji and vocab to start studying grammar. That makes no sense at all.
For example, you can start Minna no Nihongo with no vocab at all. You just need to be able to read hiragana and katakana. If you use the grammar translation book, you will get a full page of vocab for the current lesson :slight_smile: So you will have some vocab and grammar in one lesson ^^
So no, no need to wait to study grammar. I actually started doing grammar before doing Wanikani. You just need to find beginner aimed textbooks, and there are plenty out there :wink: As I mentioned above, I think Minna no Nihongo is good for self studies and beginners (careful, I am talking about the grammar translation book !).

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You don’t even need to really know Hiragana first, if you have an audio CD. Just learn the written letters along the way.

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I see. It is highly recommended though. When I was living in Japan, my university offered Japanese classes from complete beginner to advanced levels and we were using Minna no Nihongo. However, even for very beginner we had to know hiragana and katakana.

Definitely agree on the overlaps and gaps.

I started with and stuck with just one grammar resource for a while, and in my head I always imagined they’d all teach the same things, as if JLPT was some sort of set in stone pathway. But Genki has grammar points Minna no Nihongo doesn’t and vice versa, and AIAIJ has grammar points Tobira doesn’t have. Sometimes I find out something I learned isn’t even in any of those (ショック)! Now I kinda like to devour lots of different materials for where I think I’m at.

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A lot already commented on the (non)sense of learning some vocabulary first, so I don’t add to it in detail (I think it has some merrit, but as usually in life it depends on the kind of person you are; if you feel overwhelmed with learning Grammar, Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, on and kun readings and Vocabluary, then focus on Vocab and/or Kanji first could be a decent way to start; if you however feel bored, want to be able to read, talk, listen or form your own sentences, go for it!).

If I went the Vocab first route, then I’d try to get some kind of usefull vocab list beside WK, e.g. core 2000 words. If you already know the text book youl be working with on Grammar, then search for a vocab list for that book. If uts a common one like Mina no nihongo or Genki you’ll find them fore sure. Add them to Anki, the de facto completely configurable SRS system and start learning :slight_smile:

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I started years ago with the Japanese from Zero books. You don’t even need hiragana or katakana to start, they introduce it as you go along, same with vocab. Right from the start I could make simple sentences in Japanese, which was what I wanted to do. It wasn’t until much later that I tried to learn any kanji and then I only learnt what I needed for JLPT N5. After that I started on Genki book 2 (I’d done most of the content from book 1 already). It was only when struggling to learn kanji from Genki that I decided to give WK a shot. With hindsight I would have switched to Genki much earlier but for an easy, fun, no-pressure way in, I really liked Japanese from Zero.

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Totally agree to this. A lot of people here have highlighted the benefits of starting grammar study soon, so there’s no doubt about that. However, there are also advantages of doing as Tofugu advised.

I feel that learning Japanese is like running in a hurdle race. The barrier of entry is high (e.g. even just learning hiragana can sound daunting to 1st timers). The moment you pass 1 hurdle, there are more to come… hiragana, katakana, vocab, kanji, grammar, etc. Everyone’s learning style is different, so we need to find what suits us best. To me, learning too many different facets of the language at the same time feels overwhelming, especially I don’t always have the luxury to spare many hours a day just for studying Japanese. So, the prioritization method suits me well.

For example, I didn’t learn how to read and handwrite hiragana simultaneously because it’s hard to draw something that I can’t remember well enough. So, I prioritized being able to read and type the characters first. I only started learning how to handwrite hiragana months after I’m comfortable with reading it. It became sooo much easier to remember the stroke order because I didn’t need to spend much effort to comprehend each character. The drawback is just that during the time I didn’t know how to handwrite hiragana, I could read them perfectly if it’s in front of me but couldn’t conjure them out of thin air in my mind.

Similarly, for grammar study, having done WaniKani until late level 9 (plus years of watching anime and listening to J-Pop songs lol), I was able to go through early chapters of genki in a breeze. For early level vocabs that genki introduced using hiragana, I already knew them in kanji since WaniKani has pounded them into my head (of course, like many others said, learning WaniKani vocabs alone is not enough). I guess the drawback of this method is that, without knowing grammar, I couldn’t fully comprehend the context sentences and word combinations for the vocabs in WaniKani (though at least I got a feel of how Japanese sentence structure looks like). Also at some point, I got a bit bored to just keep doing the same stuffs over and over in WaniKani. That’s why I decided to start grammar study in late level 9 instead of waiting to reach level 10 officially.

So, in short:

  • Doing WK and vocab first before going through grammar textbooks will help making the textbook learning feels easier.
  • Doing grammar textbooks first or concurrently with WaniKani might make going through WaniKani levels easier since you might have encountered the kanji or vocabs beforehand.
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This is the point I don’t think many here are taking into consideration. the time involved.

If you are busy, or have other priority’s other than learning Japanese, and you are taking the scenic durtle route, then waiting 1-2-6 months to drill some kanji and vocabulary first isn’t a huge deal. you can make future study easier on yourself if you have a stable platform to work off of.

If you have plenty of time or are making this a priority, then no, don’t wait on your kanji/vocabulary, go out and learn grammar, get some immersion in, and you’ll see results sooner.

Everyone is going at a different pace. I’ve been studying off and on for the last 3 years, but am only just now about to level up to 6. I have some extra vocabulary knowledge and some basic grammar down, but I’ll honestly probably be at this for another 5-7 years before I pass beginner level, if I don’t find more time/motivation that is.

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