I had a question about when I should start delving into my textbook alongside my WaniKani lessons.
Quick background for reference; I have some plans to potentially move to Japan for a year sometime at the beginning of 2026. Because of this (and because of a genuine interest) I have just started delving into the Japanese language just under 2 weeks ago. I began with Tofugu’s Japanese guide starting with memorising the kana and after about 2 days I was able to read all hiragana & katakana (albeit after a few seconds of processing). I’ve been doing WaniKani since, and I’ve just reached level 2 on WaniKani. I’m sticking with WK for a little bit to get some Kanji down before digging into my Minno No Nihongo textbooks.
The thing is, I’m so excited to eventually get to the point of reading, and understanding Japanese sentences. I know this is still a while away but I was curious what you all think. How long should I use WK (or what level should I get) for before getting into the grammar, and textbooks? Also what should my expectations be for time it takes before I can start reading Japanese with the help of a dictionary?
If I were you I’d start with grammar now. If your goal is to be able to read, grammar will be more of a limiting factor than kanji for beginner-level stuff. Getting to level 10 or something like that of Wanikani before starting grammar won’t help you at all with the grammar. Better to do both at the same time. Good luck!
I think you can decide for yourself how you want to pace it, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to focus on WaniKani for the first ten levels or so given that a good kanji foundation will make it easier to engage with example sentences in grammar books. You can also do both side-by-side starting now, or do some “light” grammar on the side while you still mainly focus on WaniKani (which is what I did personally).
By the time you reach level ~25 you should really be seriously studying grammar and getting into reading Japanese but before that just do what feels right for you.
Exactly!
When I started with WK, I too thought to first finish it and then start studying the grammar. But just after a few levels I changed my mind and started studying grammar in paralle. Turned out to be the right decision, because, thanks to that, by around level 20 I’ve learnt enough of both kanji and grammar to be able to start reading simple resources like
Just be aware that many easier reading materials for young adults have Furigana, meaning that you might able to read it with just recognizing pronunciation.
However, the end goal might be reading things without Furigana, or when Furigana is another word not matching the Kanji.
I would either grammar and basic random vocab first, or grammar and WaniKani alongside.
I think that trying to decipher some text from now on would be beneficial. The most difficult thing when you start readingdeciphering is to parse/group the words and guess their nature.
Trying to split a sentence is a skill on its own and WK won’t help you at all with it.
If you have online material that you’d like to try you can go for sentence to sentence parsing and check how you did on https://ichi.moe/ for example (you need to be able to copy / paste your sentence in the different services to benefit from them easily).
If you already completed the other tooling in the guide (Learn Japanese: A Ridiculously Detailed Guide) (especially the IME part typing is very beneficial to learning) you’re good for the early stages.
As a new leaner myself i found these community posts:
It’s a little jarring at first but it’s really purely focused on core grammar (unlike something like Genki for instance that does a bit of everything) and I thought it was quite good at it. You also really don’t need much vocab and kanji at all to follow along. Don’t expect to remember or even understand everything at first, focus on getting the big picture and a general feel for how the language works. You can work on the details later. I don’t recommend using only Cure Dolly in the long run, but it’s a decent entry point I think. And don’t believe her when she says that her method is the one true way to learn Japanese and everybody else sucks.
I think the priority is to understand how sentences are constructed, how Japanese lets you string sentence fragments together very freely, how basically every part of a sentence is optional and a lot is left to context. Understanding elementary particles, basic conjugations, conditionals etc… Japanese grammar is fairly simple overall, just extremely different from English. Therefore it takes a lot of practice to get used to.
Remember that everyone learns differently. You can try grammar but don’t be affraid to put it aside if it is too hard. I started with grammar around WK level 5 and I realized I know so little that the grammar was not sticking at all. I waited few more levels and came back around lvl 10-15.
The basic idea that you don’t need vocabulary to learn grammar may be true in core, but it is very discouraging to not know 90% of the words. You need to have something familiar to attach the grammar to. At least I do.
You can start right now with level 0 graded readers. It will be a struggle, but reading is a skill all of it’s own and it’ll be a struggle whenever you start.
You can also start grammar right now too. Simias has already mentioned Cure Dolly (plus most of what I would have said) and still, whenever a textbook explanation leaves me blank, I see if CD has a video on it - there are other YouTube beginner grammar channels that are easy to find.
There are other youtube channels that offer absolute beginner comprehensible input (Y’know, picture of a cat, presenter says ねこ, 猫 appears on screen, etc) which might be worth a look as an intro to reading and listening.
I use the Minna no Nihongo textbooks as well. I would say that as soon as you know hiragana and katakana, it would be fine to start. You may have to spend more time learning the vocabulary at the beginning of the chapters, but it will only help with your Wanikani lessons later on.
For reference, I made it up to around level 20 on Wanikani before I reset, and I know almost all of the vocabulary in Minna no Nihongo so far (I’m on chapter nine).
