I bought two mangas in japanese and that seems cool at a bookshop, both having hiraganas writed for kanjis, should l start reading them now, or waiting that i get more levels in wanikani ?
The hiragana reading for kanji is called âfuriganaâ, itâs very common in all sorts of media targeting kids and teenagers.
I say try and read them now, although ideally Iâd recommend starting with manga that youâre already familiar with. Maybe see if you can find English translations online and read that first?
There are a few benefits to trying to read very early on IMO:
-
While you wonât be able to understand virtually anything if you donât have prior knowledge of Japanese, it can still be useful as practice to read kana (especially the English loanwords in katakana) and the common kanji that you already know.
-
It will be good motivation to keep studying. You can look up unknown words and kanji and see at what level youâll learn them on WaniKani. That should motivate you to keep studying and leveling up.
-
Itâll give you a good way to gauge your progress. You can try reading the first few pages every other week for instance, and as you improve it should become easier and easier. Youâre also creating memories for later: I still remember the first time I booted up Final Fantasy VII in Japanese and I couldnât make sense of the very first lines of dialogue. Now I can read them effortlessly, and that feels nice. Itâs good motivation.
-
As you progress itâll also give you some feedback on what area of the language you need to work on. If you focus on the kanji with WaniKani currently, youâll probably find that by the time you near level 30 itâs no longer the limiting factor to read the manga, and instead you should focus on grammar and vocab.
-
Finally some people overthink switching from curated textbook content to ârealâ Japanese and are terrified of failure when they do so. I think this is a very bad mindset because IMO the earlier you switch to consuming real content the better. If you start doing it from the very start the transition will be smooth and natural, at some point youâll realize that you can actually understand the manga fairly well and will just keep on reading. Thereâs no pressure or objective, and therefore no fear of failing.
But keep in mind that if youâre a complete beginner in Japanese you wonât be able to meaningfully read anything for now. Donât overdo it. At this point your time is better spent studying content for learners (assuming that your WK level is representative of your overall proficiency in the language).
If you have some basic understanding, sure why not. you can re-read it later and see how much more you can understand. If your only Japanese knowledge is WaniKani lvl 2, it might be a bit hard, but if you enjoy it, keep at it!
Depends â if the manga has full furigana, then your WK level will not be the limiting factor. You will want at least some basic idea of grammar (like having done most of a beginners textbook, or similar content), and youâll need to be prepared to do a lot of vocab lookups. If you donât have any grammar basics then youâre probably better off starting to work on that aspect first. The good news is you donât have to wait until youâve got to any particular WK level before you start studying grammar â the best thing is to start right now and study alongside WK.
Ye i was considering buying at least the french edition of genki 1
Youâre right of course although I want to point out for the beginners that, even when furigana is present, knowing the kanji helps a lot to guess, memorize and recall the meaning of words. Like I just encountered the word ç±æčŻ (ăăŁăšă) meaning âboiling waterâ and while the meaning is easy to guess from the kanji, thereâs no way I would have guessed that if it had been written just in kana.
Not a bad idea although personally I found it a bit too âscholarlyâ for my taste. I ended up using Tae Kim and Cure Dolly, which also have the advantage of being completely free.
Then once I had the basics I mostly used Bunpro (not free, unfortunately, but really great for grammar IMO).
I got a bit of duolingo too, idk if that fit with basic grammar
I never used Duolingo for Japanese but I did use it for other languages years ago, itâs pretty useless as a primary resource IMO. If you like it then keep using it, but you should probably consider it extra practice on top of other more âseriousâ courses.
I stopped it