I wrote an article on learning Japanese. It is good

Is it? That makes sense. Like I say, the title of the OP article just instantly made me think of the other.

No, and I actually agree with it. I’ve lived in Japan for almost ten years, been studying Japanese for 3 years now (for the first 6 or 7 years here I didn’t study at all) and can say the author is spot on. I don’t think I’ve ever once needed to use Japanese in my daily life, and every time that I do try to use it, the other person constantly wants to switch to English, even my elderly neighbours.

But that is all off-topic!

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The positive is that I like the attempt to distill into tables and schematics in order to make all the comparisons among the many teaching tool options available to the student of Japanese. Effective illustrations are a plus in these types of articles and I can tell a lot of thought went into them. What feels more like a good but still rough draft is the writing in between. You may try another draft and consciously remove any cliches (e.g., “sharpest shovel in the shed”) and you have to remove the shortened Japanese reference, which is a longtime slur. You wrote it unintentionally to be short and quick, but likely belies your youthful “blue year” age because that word stopped being seen regularly in print since the late 1940s (it was used commonly in U.S. newspaper headlines, of course, during WWII, and part of the daily and acceptable lexicon). So my feedback? Tighten the writing between the effective illustrations. Hope this helps!

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I can’t speak to the usefulness of the content, but I really enjoy the casual, conversational, somewhat blunt and aggressive tone of your writing voice.

First of all, I have to say I very much agree with @darkness_rising that your target audience is not really clear. Your writing seems to jump all over the place in that aspect and makes it harder to engage with. Figuring out who exactly you’re writing for and making adjustments to suit that audience would help people make more sense of your guide.

Another thing that makes your article a little jarring to read is that it seems to project an attitude of “This is how you learn Japanese and any other way of learning isn’t going to get you anywhere so only follow this guide and nothing else if you want to see progress.”

Everyone learns differently, and combinations of resources that worked well for you may not work for someone else. It’s helpful to provide tips and tricks for people who don’t know where to start but you should make it clearer that while these resources helped you, they themselves may find other things more useful and that’s okay.

Regarding the Dr Moku app for kana, there are definitely free alternatives out there that can work well too. I myself used an app called Just Kana on android and it was great for quick rote memorising (I don’t see an issue with rote learning for kana because once you know them you’ll have so much exposure through textbooks and reading materials that it really won’t matter how you learnt them). Also, considering that learning Japanese to any degree of fluency is going to take years, spending an extra week or so on learning kana is a just a small drop in the ocean really.

In terms of Japanese pronunciation, I would not say it’s particularly difficult or confusing in comparison to English. Once you can read kana, you should technically be able to read aloud any text that has furigana over the kanji. Of course, that doesn’t mean you will understand what you’re reading, and your pitch accent will likely be off, but disregarding that, Japanese pronunciation is usually pretty consistent and the way something is written is how you would say it when speaking.

When it comes to reading, I agree with what you say about consuming native materials to learn, but you can definitely start doing that before level 40. Even at level 10 you can make an attempt at Graded Readers if you have some very basic grammar under your belt. It’s not native Japanese but you have to start somewhere, and when you do jump into reading your first native material it’s likely going to be something aimed at children that you probably won’t find particularly engaging or interesting. Sure, we’d all love to be able to read a VN, or a Japanese novel, or our favourite manga series. But you can’t start out with that material at a beginner’s level because you won’t even make it past the first sentence.

In regards to your comment about not needing to use WK past level 40; I haven’t made it that far yet so I can’t make any claims on how useful the content is after that point, but considering you’re writing this on a forum of loyal users who swear by WK’s teaching methods, you might find yourself on the receiving end of some pretty strong criticism for saying so (particularly since you have not made it that far yourself yet either).

It might be better to make the suggestion that it’s okay to slow down after that point and direct more of your focus towards consuming native content and grammar study, but when you’ve already made it that far there’s not really much point in stopping completely. Even after finishing WK you’re not going to be able to understand a thing if you didn’t study any grammar. That being said, 2, 100 kanji and 6, 000 vocab is no small gain from a single consolidated resource and as long as you are making time for other things as well you will learn a hell of a lot.

That’s all for now, I guess. It’s just my (very long) opinion FYI, don’t feel like you need to agree with it or anything :eyes:

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I guess I understand the utilitarian outlook of “what will I get out of this” but, what’s so wrong with learning a language because you like it and you have fun learning and understanding it? It opens up a whole new realm of media that you might never be able to experience due to lack of translations, it lets you experience works that have been translated in their original language, it can help you to expand your outlook and think in different ways… I guess what I’m trying to say is, what’s so bad about learning a language just for the sake of learning something new and having fun? I’ve seen so many of these “you shouldn’t learn Japanese 'cause Japanese people just want to speak English and will make fun of you anyway, and it’s hard so you should just give up” and honestly I’ve never liked this kind of argument because it can honestly be used to discourage anyone from doing anything. Just focusing on the worst possible outcome and that it’s difficult.

Anyway, your article isn’t really like that, it’s more of a messy anecdote of your learning experience (that’s just prefaced with one of these arguments as an afterthought), except stated as if it were objective fact, and with lots of sarcastic jokes about how “awful” Japanese is. Idk I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t get why people who hate learning Japanese both continue to do so while trying to dissuade others from doing so, instead of like… listening to their own advice and not doing something that they don’t feel is worth it. 'Cause there’s so much you can gain from learning a language, and I think it’s silly to try and extrapolate one’s own lack of motivation and good reasons for starting to learn to other people as if it’s a universal experience.

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“Unless you truly want or need Japanese, don’t.”

I like that you started the article like this. I think it will intrigue people to read more. Plus, it’s based on truth!

Overall, nicely put together.

I used Rosetta Stone a few years ago and I think it is a great place to start, but as it is severely outdated (and requires you to write romaji for many exercises, etc, which is a massive headache) I think something like Busuu could be an even better alternative for people who want to go down that route.

Another thing is Tampermonkey - might be good to chuck in a security awareness note that people install this extension at their own risk (it’s a very powerful plugin - and here’s a general post of why it can be dangerous).

Yeah, I really dislike this statement. It’s never qualified as writing is useless for them. Some of us actually want to learn to write for various reasons so it’s kinda silly when people make a subjective statement like this as if it’s some sort of objective fact. Especially when I’ve actually heard people claim, pretty much universally someone who is not Japanese, that no one in Japan writes kanji anymore. Which is just mind-blowingly false.

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The Tofugu guied is iconic <3

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That’s really interesting because my experience is totally different and I found the article pretty annoying because of it.

This might be a point worth considering when writing a guide, that because motivation and experience vary so much, if you’re writing a polarised article, you may want to consider that you represent it purely as your opinion.

I agree with this, any reason is good enough for you to learn Japanese, and I don’t think anyone has truly wasted anything by even just attempting to learn a new skill or language.

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There are also plenty of people who come to places like the US and don’t speak any English, and some never really learn it, and can get along in their daily lives just fine. But I think it’s a bit over-the-top to say that knowing the predominant language of the country doesn’t confer a non-trivial set of advantages over not.

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Yes, once someone from downstairs knocked on my door and I had a genuine conversation in Japanese. It was a real boost to my confidence but, really, the only time I can remember having used the language in a real-life situation, and the only time the other person didn’t speak to me in English.

Every day of my life I want to quit Japanese. I really don’t enjoy it at all, and really don’t need it. I study because (1) I feel it is a waste to lose the progress I’ve made so far, little as it is, and (2) one day I’ll be old and in a hospital bed with some doctor coming at me with a tube or needle or something and I want to be able to tell him to leave me the heck alone unless it’s to give me more painkillers. And that’s truly it.

(And I do, sometimes, get small glimmers of enjoyment as I participate in the bookclubs here).

But, again, apologies to the OP for taking all this off-topic.

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Totally get that. I grew up in San Antonio, Texas where everyone emphasizes that you must learn Spanish, yet I can’t remember using it more than a handful of times outside of classes or “clubs” in the 7+ years I studied it. So it just sort of fell by the wayside once I stopped studying. And like you said, looking back it just feels like a total waste that I lost all those years of progress.

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Nah, but a Roman language
I learned English in the military
I guess it really helps when people point guns at you

New WaniKani script - at gun point
memorization speed +1000%

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Hmm fair enough, probably just me then but I heard from a lot of friends around that level (30-40) that that was when they really made progress from reading

I will have to re-do the entire piece, I am so off! :frowning:

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Fair enough, Tofugu should be part of the article
will have to rework it —
Moku is pretty swell though. I mean I am a poor student but $10 doesn’t seem that much. That’s like an hour of work at the gas station to get a pretty neat app. I genuinely enjoyed it but I understand why one might not want to use it.

did people try it tho? like the first few symbols are free

haha the lunchbox, no idea why I chose that one

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You die if you fail a review session.

A person that wants to learn Japanese that does not speak any asian language, is impatient, cheap and generally bad at learning

I assumed mentioning the time spans several time in hours needed to do x would work, it didn’t
perhaps a second paragraph on that

I was also assuming most people taking the jlpt do this for a work or visa related reason
the article is meant as supplement, but obviously my writing style was way too all-over-the-place and unclear

poor choice of words a lot of times too it seems

I write from a one person perspective when it is really a few people that talked over it in an izakaya and me putting it together so that makes sense

that was the point, we dont say konichiha, we say wa right?

getting the rest through acquiring it with the jeff method

I am curious, how are you solving the quite intimidating task of reading japanese? do manga’s really explain everything well enough with pictures? It seems to barely work with rosetta stone and most manga’s are not exactly every day life material right

isn’t it very vocabulary look up extensive?

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This isn’t related to what seanblue quoted though, right? In that part you were talking about kanji.

So こんにちは is an exception of pronunciation, sure, but it doesn’t really clarify the part you were talking about with kanji “often” not being “spoken” the same way they are “read.”

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