Learning Japanese with ONLY vocab and TV?

Oh I see. I guess we’ll see! I just want something engaging to stick with so anything will do as long as I can progress forward :slight_smile:

anything is fine, everything you do will have some effect, and starting with listening is not the worst idea. in fact, i did it myself. you could check out if you like japanesepod101, but even if you don’t, as long as you just continue, you’ll get something out of it.

no shit though, that’s not gonna teach you japanese. it’s gonna help, but it’s like eating soup with a fork.

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I find Genki to be boring, also. I also use Duolingo, several kana learning apps on both iOS and Android, and have a weekly lesson with a tutor via skype. I find mixing the sources avoids some of the staleness of going through just one textbook. One thing I’ll say is that out of all of that, Genki does teach me correct grammar the most. I do enjoy studying the grammar and then discovering I grasp it when I watch TV shows. One of the problems I encounter when watching TV is that I get so immersed in the story, I forget to pay attention to the Japanese dialogue. (I’m not advanced enough to try without subtitles, yet).

I actually went and downloaded all their youtube videos from around 3 years ago onwards haha, well all the Risa ones basically. So I could watch on the go on my phone. Since I found the website is “free” but has so much blocked off for premium members.

I don’t expect to learn comprehensible Japanese from just words or Jpod101 or anime, I was figuring that it would simply aid me in interacting with the real world and the Japanese people I know here, and the learning would occur there.

I think the key is just understanding not to talk super familiar when you’re not, don’t talk like you’re 12 when you’re not, don’t talk like a yakuza when you’re not :wink:

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Cool, yeah Genki is so good of a resource but somehow still feels bland. Ha tell me about it, yeah I want to watch with JP subtitles so that even if I don’t understand the story 100% at least I can focus on hearing the structure.

Skype lessons sound good, but i’m very skint here, Tokyo aint too cheap haha! I’ll try and find a way to stick to a mixture of things or anything. So far no technique has stuck, maybe i’m just a flakey person haha.

i did indeed learn with only jpod101 for a long time. they teach grammar points, and you don’t need any features like the pdf or line-by-line audio to follow.
i did enjoy even the old episodes with peter, but from a pedagogical POV, the podcast really picked up when they hired naomi, who’s a proper teacher. jpod is actually all you need to learn grammar. then WK for the kanji, and then whatever looks fun.

My man. I did use Genki I and II and JFZ books cause thier are really good for grammar. Plus Tea Kim is good too. And ofc JP101 for listening and enforcing grammar, casue you can pick stuff that are not in texbooks but used in daily life phrases etc.

It doesnt seem so terrible a plan, It actually looks pretty much like what I do (15 words per day comming from various sources).

Some caveats about it though. It might be benefitial to study at least basic grammar first (equivalent to the content in Genki I and II for example), no need to do the whole exercises routine though, so a couple of months you could be done with the books. At least that will give you a shallow idea about the grammar you’ll be seeing, and of course you can always go deeper if you have doubts with any particular grammatical concept.

After that I would say just learn grammar like any other vocab. Many of the “grammatical points” taught in intermediate and advanced textbooks correspond to idioms, which can be learn by exposure as any vocab.

I would recommend reading a lot and get into the habbit of doing it frecuently as soon as it becomes a possibility, probably will help much more to recognize grammar, since you can take your time to do so.

Anyway, it’s totally doable, nothing unheard actually. Doesn’t mean it’s easier than with a more traditional textbooks approach though :man_shrugging:

Off course take my advice (and most) with a grain of salt… we’re all learners here…

So inadvertedly my good intentions can become your doom :face_with_hand_over_mouth::face_with_hand_over_mouth::crazy_face:

EDIT:

Oh, and about that… I would almost throw away JP subs. They probably seem like a better resource than they actually are. Remember when you were learning to read in your own language and tried to watch a foreign film with subs… well it’ hard; you are barely crawling in terms of reading comprehension and SPEED… so reading those subs it’s like chasing a rabit in a sack race :sweat_smile:

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michel thomas is great, too, actually, but it’s kinda painful to listen to the 2 students trying to formulate the sentences the teacher wants to hear.
that system usually has one good student and one who struggles with the easiest shit, and i guess there’s reasons for that. it teaches enough so you can jump in at jpod’s beginner and don’t have to listen to their total beginner program.

oh yeah, i totally agree. get the basics down. maybe N4 level, and then expose yourself to all kinds of whatever seems interesting. no need to study till you got N1 down grammatically, and then lack in every other department, but you need a solid foundation to build your house on… and then let it grow organically.

get the dictionary of “japanese grammar” books for reference, there’s nothing that comes close. they’re that awesome. that’s all you need.

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I have to use a tutor because I’m sitting in California trying to make sure I learn correct pronunciation. If I were in Japan, I would try to find a local friend who would like to practice some English, and in return we practice some Japanese also. My only other in-person practice is with my tattoo artist, who doesn’t speak English…

And about that. Well, no. Tae Kim’s it’s not a dictionary or a reference resource neither… it’s a basic resource.

I mention this because there’re are reference grammar books, like the Dictionary of (Basic/Intermediate/Advanced) Japanese Grammar and The Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patters. If you are faced with an unknown piece of grammar, a contraction or a colloquial form of some other gramatical expression, there’s a higher chance that won’t be even mentioned in Tae Kim’s, less chance with a reference book.

And by the way If you totally hate Genki (I know I did) and don’t want to sit and read about grammar or the related exercises there’s a video course (old… very old… but quite good actually called “Let’s Learn Japanese Basic” by the Japan Foundation (the 2 courses cover the same grammar as Genki I and II). I’m not sure if it’s sold anymore, but it’s on youtube and probably some other shady websites too)

First of all - what exactly is your goal and why? What’s your motivation? Regardless I really wouldn’t recommend what you’re proposing - on several levels.

16 words a day - maybe viable, I’m not sure. Before long, Anki reviews can really add up as you add more and more new content every day. If you can’t stay focused on a beginner Japanese textbook or app (like LingoDeer) for a few minutes a day, do you think you’ll have the commitment to do hundreds of flashcard reviews on a daily basis?

Beyond that, it’s one thing to take the WaniKani approach and learn related vocabulary. Like 見る, 見える, 見分ける all sharing kanji and related meanings. But 16 completely random and unrelated words and kanji may wind up being significantly more difficult.

I really think you’re going to put yourself at a disadvantage and learn the language much more slowly by not explicitly studying grammar. My guess is you’d sound like speaking broken Japanese and develop bad habits which will be difficult to break.

Again, to be blunt, I think the biggest issue to stay focused regardless of approach. Gotta address that and figure out why it’s been such a struggle.

I don’t want to sound discouraging, but I think it’s important to be honest about this stuff and address what might be the core issues.

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Like other people here, I think it’s not a terrible idea overall, but you will need to supplement with some grammar study outside of just watching shows. Especially since Japanese is so different from English and other western languages, it’s not as easy to just pick up on the structure of the language.

That doesn’t mean you have to work your way through a textbook if that’s not working for you. You could actually even do a similar thing like you’re planning with vocab - when you run into someone using a certain phrasing, look it up and learn various grammar points as you go along. I think this is more useful after the beginning phase and it would be helpful to get at least the basics down first, but if you’ve already spent some time with Genki maybe that’s enough.

A couple of resources that I’d recommend that I haven’t seen mentioned yet are YouTube videos, Satori reader, and Animelon. Learning grammar from YouTube might be more interesting for you than text books and I recommend KawaJapa CureDolly and Japanese Ammo with Misa. Misa even has a video specifically about anime Japanese that might be useful for your approach, and CureDolly is a fan of the immersion approach and believes her approach to grammar is more helpful to learning that way than the traditional textbook approach. Satori reader can also be a more interactive way to learn grammar, as you read actual stories or articles in Japanese, but you can also quickly get explanations of the various grammar points used as well. And Animelon is a site where you can watch anime with subtitles in Japanese (kanji and/or kana) and/or English, slow down the playback, as well as see the transcripts so you can see more exactly what is going on and it could help you figure out which grammar points you need to learn to understand.

Basically, there are a lot of ways to learn grammar other than just sitting with a textbook, but you will need to put some direct effort into it because, while trying to just pick up on it by listening might not be entirely impossible, it is going to be a really difficult and slow process if you don’t supplement with direct study of some sort.

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Seconded.

Learning Japanese grammar isn’t something that’s easy to deduce using knowledge you already have. It isn’t a Latin language, nor a Germanic one. It’s rules are wholly different than what you know. It would be a million times easier to learn how to use the pieces explicitly versus spending ample amounts of time trying to guess what they mean.

It’s a million times to read something like “In order to make an い adjective an adverb, change the い to a く. Furthermore, to conjugate the い adjective to its negative form, first conjugate it to its adverb form, then append ない”.

Before reading that, it’s entirely possible that you will always assume 楽しく is different than 楽しい rather than the same word conjugated differently.

In addition, as others have pointed out, a lot of Japanese even have trouble with things like kenjougo (humble talk) and sonkeigo (super polite talk). The general idea is that about half of the Japanese population can’t even get it right and are heavily judged for their ability to do so. If you think you’re going to magically have a revelation and understand the complex intricacies of that, when you accidentally use kenjougo on someone of higher status than you, unless they give you the “foreigner pass”, you’re in trouble. lol

edit: Since no one else has suggested this yet, I learned basic grammar via the Minna no Nihongo books. I would also suggest looking into Attain Corp.'s Udemy videos. You can often find them for like $10 every now and then. They aren’t comprehensive, but their explanations are top notch, and it’s entirely in Japanese with subtitles, so you’re working out your ears while you learn.

https://www.udemy.com/japanese-n5-course/

There should be a number of preview videos, so you can check it out to see if it’s your thing.

Only 5% of stuff on Japanese TV is not bollocks, try not to go mad in a few weeks.

You can basically cover the ええええぇ, かわいいい〜〜, 美味しい〜〜, ウソォ within one week, anyway.

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I’m thinking more like 10%

Sturgeon’s law, y’know

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That makes sense, but is actually super different from my own experience. I’m not the best listener, and tend to watch things with subtitles even in my native language (but I don’t have to). Right now I pretty much only watch Japanese shows with Japanese subtitles, because I can read fast when I need to, and I suck at recognizing words when they’re spoken if I haven’t heard them before even if I know them from vocabulary drilling/reading, so subtitles give me a way to kinda bootstrap those words and make some more connections. Then, I might listen to it without subtitles again later (typically at work because I can’t do anything else to study then anyway).

Never mind the bollocks, here’s the…