for sure ! this is defo something i’ll prioritise going forward ^-^
when i say intensive reading, i suppose it’s just bc there are lots of kanji i still don’t recognize so my reading still heavily involves going on jisho and using the radical input to find the kanji and its meaning (even if a lot of times i know the word just not the kanji!) This will inevitably reduce the more i 1) read and 2) level up in WK so i don’t feel too bad about the big part it plays in my reading right now (at the beginning) – ultimately, i think it’s still helpful for me to get exposure to different fonts of kanji, deconstructing the radicals, reading native content etc.
I read on my phone, but same difference. Looking stuff up requires putting the phone down and either typing it into Jisho or trying to click/draw together the kanji I’m looking for. It’s enough of a barrier to stop me from doing it for the stuff I’m at least 90% sure I know
Things like Twitter, Wikipedia and the Japanese Sentence a Day thread though, I do have a tendency to overuse Yomichan sometimes. I’m getting better at just trusting myself though.
for sure x luckily on Bookwalker you can’t use it ^-^ so no ‘cheating’ there from me!
sometimes i wonder if reading a physical book is easier in some instances than digital bc i’ve found a lot of digital books the kanji ends up super pixelated / blurred / harder to read - i wonder if a physical copy would have clearer lines !
was to lazy to read other's comments so they probably say the same thing
Option 1: low hanging fruit
Go back to the 1st volume. You already know the story. Look up 1 word per page or one sentence per page. Or If something seems familiar, look that up
Option 2: tanuk draining method
Look up everything and set a timer for 10 or 20 minutes so you don’t overdue it and get exhausted.
A physical copy, especially recently printed will have much clearer lines, yes. I have a recent copy of Death Note and the lines are absolutely pristine. Forget about your eyesight if you’re going to read furigana, though . With older manga copies your milage may vary.
I’m currently (slowly) reading my first manga in Japanese (よつばと！) and that’s pretty much what I’m doing a lot of the time. But I always make a “best guess” first pass at translating a sentence before looking up words and grammar (trying to guess the meaning of unknown words based on context, and leaving them as a blank “something” when I don’t have a guess), I feel like this makes the translation process feel less “mechanical” if you get my meaning, and I also think it helps me remember new stuff faster🙃
Ah, I also don’t use translators, just Jisho and various grammar resources.
I quite like the idea of this! right now i’m reading a as i learnt its called in this forum yonkoma so i read four boxes each session – but i think reading based on time > reading based on amount would better take into account that some sentences are harder than others! i’ll experiment ^-^
this sounds DREAMY !!! i have a digital copy of Akira and the strokes can get reeeeeally blurred together it might as well be an ink splodge lol
More than that, you’ll get a better intuition for when something is a set phrase. Those can get pretty tricky depending on what you’re reading.
The first real book I tried to read was Harry Potter, and I found that having English translations helped a lot in nailing down the understanding, especially with things like に and trying to figure out who’s doing what. Same deal with DeepL. It’s definitely not something to abuse, but I can see a point where I won’t need it anymore.
my personal recommendation is limiting how many words you look up per page (like maybe 1-3). Learning to tolerate this ambiguity will help you try to figure out what words mean in context better, help you keep moving, help you learn the words you do look up better (as you’ll prioritize words you see more frequently), and help you keep the flow of the Japanese in mind overall. Not as fun, but I found this approach incredibly helpful!
Also, you learn best things that are just a little bit above your current Japanese level. There’s only going to be so much low-hanging fruit for you to learn on each page. This means you spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out stuff you prolly won’t learn that well that day anyway. Just move on and do your best on each page. I bet you’ll find pretty quick you’ll start getting more out of each page than you even did during your initial approach. Last year I read roughly the first 300 volumes of Naruto, and this approach helped me a lot
I adore this !!! I feel like it’s a good stance for life as well as reading in japanese haha – but in all seriousness the limiting looking words up thing makes total sense
this is so impressive !!! you’re only a few levels higher than me so i’m so amazed maybe a little intimidated haha at your reading level! so cool
I was thinking to do the same with blade of the immortal, the new one, there are 2 volumes translated into english and the volume 3 I think I will get in japanese.
But looking at learnnatively, it is wk level 32 in vocab, I think it is quite hard to my current level and grammar as well (finished n4 on bunpro only)
There were definitely many times where I had to shrug my shoulders and move on! But going back to the first ones again I’m amazed how much more I understand
My grammar level is above my kanji and vocab level, so that might help with the reading?
頑張れ！
Oh I had never heard of the learn natively website before ! I just looked at the book i’m currently reading and it’s two levels higher than my level whooooops but we move ! I still stand by one of the biggest motivations being genuine interest in the story and if you’re interested enough in the characters/world/plot, you’re likely to persevere even if the language level is higher than your own ! Maybe I’ll learn that’s not the case in the future, but at the moment I’m choosing optimism !
that must be soooo satisfying hehe I’m excited for the future day once I’ve finished this book to come back to it <3
So cool that your grammar level is above your kanji+vocab levels, do you mind me asking what resources you use?
my grammar journey early on was mostly srs (similar to bunnpro, but lower quality), then at some point, I read like 1/3 or maybe 1/2 of shinkanzen (N3) level. I managed to pass the N3 test, stopped studying Japanese for about a year, then started studying again by almost exclusively reading (Naruto, other manga, Satori Reader). Introducing myself to loads of written content (and more recently listening content) the grammar of the language began to feel more natural to me. Additionally, I think I picked up some grammar concepts this way that I had never previously learned.
To keep growing in new grammar concepts, I love Nihongo to Tabi’s youtube channel. It’s pretty much dedicated to N3 and N2 level grammar, and he makes everything super easy to understand. I basically just watch his videos to learn about a concept, then hopefully it shows up in my reading
Recently I started WaniKani again to grow my kanji/vocab knowledge back up. I had to go back from level 28ish to level 20ish. I prolly would of had to go back more, but I saw and reviewed a lot of kanji in my reading period.
To reiterate, my ability to do anything in Japanese is still pretty poor, but I’m happy with my current trajectory. I feel like I’ll be really excited to achieve what I can by the end of the year if I keep up my current disciplines, which include:
-A little wanikani everyday (never more than 14 lessons in a day to keep reviews incredibly small)
-Listen to an audiobook for about 20 minutes every evening
-spend 20 mins to an hour reading in the evening (either from manga, novel, or satori reader)
-try to engage in some new grammar concept each day (usually reviewing n3 stuff or looking at n2 stuff)
I could be wrong, but I think the level you see in LearnNatively is unrelated to your WaniKani level. It’s more based on the difficulty of grammar and commonness of vocabulary, and the numbers shift higher or lower as people compare one book as easier or harder than another.
Over time, the numbers should slowly give a better idea of the difficulty between books. Then, for example, if you find that a “level 30” book is too difficult for you, and a “level 20” book is too easy, you may want to look through books around “level 25” for something that looks interesting to try out.
. Which was kind of my excuse to buy physical manga.
. With older manga copies your milage may vary.
