I have been using wanikani for about half a year and had a lot of fun. Though I havnt been able to find otherresourcesthati have loved as much that help with grammar and words that don’t use kanji. A couple of weeks ago I started using Duolingo again since I not have a basic understanding and it helps a lot with understanding be grammar I have studied earlier. I also took my first jlpt 5 test today and barely passed with 84/180.
In this test, most of the words were written in hiragana and many of them I didn’t understand since I haven’t rly been working with those simple words.
Where would I find a resource that could help me learn these words? Or how did you learn these words?
I read Japanese articles on easy Japanese (the app) that have a built in dictionary and often have translations for the articles so I can check if I understand correctly though many of these words are also with kanji and few are hiragan words than are used in jlpt 5 test. I feel the need to know the most basic words before going on with my journey
TLDR I need a resource that help me learn basic hiragana words.
I’m not sure exactly what comes up on the N5, but I think that most of the words that are written in hiragana do have kanji equivalents, and you should be able to learn these words in almost any textbook or basic Japanese course (including the one on Duolingo), just that they may not be written in hiragana. Perhaps what you should do is continue working with Duolingo (or get a textbook if you can, because it’s honestly better than Duolingo) while making an effort to learn how to write each word in hiragana as well. That should give you sufficient knowledge of these words. In any case, at the higher levels of the test, hiragana will be less commonly used for words that can be written in common kanji, so it’s not a must to learn them in hiragana first as long as you also learn how to write them in hiragana at some point (ideally when you learn the word). One way of doing this if your learning resource doesn’t provide furigana is by looking up these words in a dictionary like Jisho.org or https://ejje.weblio.jp
I think you learn them naturally through grammar lessons, no? I’ recommend Renshuu and Bunpro if you are into web based learning resources rather than textbooks.
I’m pretty sure you will learn them relatively quickly since you are already on level 17 on Wanikani.
Or you can take the boring route (for me) and use Anki.
I agree with @Jonapedia that you should really be trying to learn the kanji when you learn a word. After all, you’re going to have to learn the kanji at some point.
Nevertheless, I can see your point; if kanji is really slowing down the rate at which you learn new words, you can always come back to it later (but you will need to come back to it later).
I’m not a great fan of Anki, for some reason it doesn’t work for me. However, I do think it is a good way to revise vocabulary at the beginning, where you may not be exposed to it again through reading. So, if you’re not against entering in your own vocabulary as you go, I would really recommend Wokabulary (I’m not sure if it’s on Android, sorry).
I might have phrased it wrong… My problem is that I haven’t learnt a lot of simple hiragana words that do not have kanji or where its often written in kana instead of the actual kanji for those words like "あなた” which has kanji but is often written using kana. I will most likely just read more articles from easy japanese, sentences from Renshuu or something like that.
As you mention it’s a lost cause to learn hiragana and then kanji afterwards, thanks for your response
Try the Migii app. It has quite a lot of N5 test examples. The roadmap is a gem.
You might also want to get some books. For example, N5 mostly comes in hiragana, but the grammar point does not always use N5. Some at higher levels might show up. So learn higher grammar points too. For grammar, try BunPro/BunPo and Lingodeer.
For vocab, you can use iKnow shared course N5, which has 800+ words. or use Anki. I think the biggest hurdle is the lack of vocabulary. I don’t learn how to read the kanji at first, as it would limit how many kanji I can read based on the current WK level. So I just went through new words as fast as possible, without thinking about how to read the kanji, but only by the sound and the hiragana. Eventually, the kanji reading will catch up as I progressed the level on WK.
For this, I use iknow.jp. There is some overlap with WK words, but on iknow.jp you can choose to ignore words if you want (e.g. if you know them well enough).
Basically, I wished it had more examples, though. BunPro is better as you can insert your own example sentences into it.
I never like book for learning vocabs because of no SRS. How do you suppose to remember all those words? You might be able to get it around by creating an Anki deck based on the book. However, I think it’s unnecessary work that you can do just by using iKnow.
Agreed. You can also use this to sync with your current WK level: iKnow sorted by WK level, which I think is pretty cool.
