Hello everyone!
It’s really nice to meet everyone of this great community.
I started learning japanese around 2 weeks ago with my husband and we’ve been following the great “Learn Japanese” guide by Tofugu’s team.
We have been studying hiragana and katakana together everyday throughout this 2 weeks and now that we finished it, a question has popped out of our minds: What should we be doing until arriving at level 10 in WaniKani?
Since WaniKani is a personal thing, we were wondering if we would have to take a break of our late nights studying together until we reach the level 10 wanikani milestone. So what do you guys think we should do?
Personally, I’d recommend practicing reading the new scripts you just learned. It takes a while until you get comfortable with them, it makes everything easier, and the only way to do it is by practice. For example, you could make little cards with them and see how fast you can lay out the hiragana/katakana tables, which has the additional benefit of teaching you the order (useful as it’s used to list things much in the same way the alphabet is used in English). Then, once you’ve become comfortable with recognising the characters, you can try writing out the tables and see how much you remember the other way.
Additionally, you could pick up a beginner app like Lingodeer and learn some basics of the language – vocabulary, sentence construction, etc.
Particles are easy enough to grasp, even before level 10. Tofugu has a little ebook about particles that is chapter-ized. Or, you could look for sources of vocab that are not written in Kanji, like an SRS deck or app.
Personally I’m playing around with the Duolingo app. Not ideal for learning Japanese, but it got a lot better with a recent update, it is free, and keeping me motivated. I’ll switch to something more “robust” around level 10, and try to pick up sentence structures and verb forms so I feel like I can actually read a whole sentence.
I also saw a recommendation on the forum about just listening to someone speak japanese everyday even if you don’t understand what they are saying, so I have been watching a particular YouTube channel with the subtitles off. No idea if it’s helping accelerate my learning yet, but it is fun…
That’s a good idea. Even if you don’t understand anything at first, your brain will automatically start noticing patterns and will get used to the sounds of the language. There’s a podcast for beginners out there exactly for this purpose where a guy talks relatively clearly and not too fast and each episode is fairly short: https://nihongoconteppei.com/
Thanks, I’ll check it out! I’m currently watching Onomappu on YouTube, similar kind of thing. He speaks naturally, but clearly, and much of the content is about learning Japanese so I learn things when I do understand XD
I’m also a baby beginner and was looking for some podcasts. And the only one I found that I could follow at all even remotely a little bit is this one https://learnjapanesepod.com/
I came back just to thank u for recommending Cure Dolly’s Channel. I think she is a hidden gem amongst all of the japanese resources out there. Her explanations are fantastic and make japanese sound so simple and intuitive. I’m really really enjoying it !! Thanks.
Studying grammar, grammar and also grammar. The guide you mention is a living document but it does not say when it was last updated. I don’t see many new resources listed there. For a crash course on basic grammar I suggest Human Japanese app (1 and 2). Tae Kim guide is a useful reference source for grammar. But later, I suggest the Genki books and a dictionary of Japanese grammar.
I would like to thank everyone for your support. We mannaged to create a daily routine based on the things you recommended us. I’ll come back here in the future to register our steps in this loong journey !
