Learning Vocabulary

Does learning vocabulary get progressively easier as you get a better grasp of the language?

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How’s your kanji knowledge? I see you’re level 1, but have you learned kanji elsewhere?

What I’ve found is that as my knowledge with kanji would go up, so my ability to learn better and more words would improve.

If you’re just starting to learn kanji (and WK is a great product for it), then I’d say make sure to stick to it :slight_smile: The fact that you’ll be able to understand and read the kanji would allow words to feel less overwhelming over time.

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Yes and no. I think anyone who sticks with it will get better at learning new words, but the farther you go, the harder the nuances and usage of the words you are learning gets. So it’s always somewhat challenging.

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I wouldn’t say “easier” because you’re learning vocabulary in Japanese and that comes with all of the spelling and sound challenges you’ll find in any language. But I will note that while sometimes kanji/vocabulary seem to directly correlate with English, this is not always the case. I mean sometimes you’ll get car + wheel = car wheel/tire but other times it’ll be lively + task= conjugation


So, I wouldn’t get into the mindset of easy because as you know from your own native language, and what Leebo wrote above, there are nuances that require some mental leaps.

I started my Japanese learning last week and and just want to maximise my effort and time for the best results! also thank you for the response :slight_smile:

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it also gets easier as hiragana/katakana are more ingrained in your head. Like for words that are hiragana only, I couldn’t remember them at all when I was just starting out, but now it’s easier because I can connect the sounds to the letters automatically

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Yes, for me absolutely. Was doing 50 vocab lessons a day at one point and i could have gone even further but the limit of the app i used didnÂŽt let me. The key to this was knowing the Kanji, though. If you happen to know the Kanji of a word, you will probably get it correct most of the time. Certainly so the reading in my experience, maybe a bit less when it comes to nuances in meaning. And even if you donÂŽt get the exact nuance - while reading it out in the wild through context you will understand it often anyway.
This is from the perspective of someone who for the most part is interested in reading japanese though, not producing. So depending on your goals this might no apply to you.

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In my experience, if you don’t fix the vocabulary that you learn (reading in real life) you’ll lose it sooner or later. What i do is to learn the kanjis and vocabulary in WK and then i use the Todai Easy Japanese to read real news and burn everything learnt. Also you can watch real news from ABEMA TV, and there are some good japanese learning channels in Youtube, for example: æ—„æœŹèȘžăźæŁź (nihongo no mori)

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Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve been suspicious that even if I feel comfortable with the first 17 levels of words right now, I’m only really learning the ones with kanji that pop up multiple times in these levels and therefore get reinforced. I know I need to try to read stuff, but I haven’t found anything like this yet that I would actually enjoy.

For anyone else searching, it doesn’t come up as Todai in the iphone app store. Just “Easy Japanese”.

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Definitely, and the kanji will really help you break words down into manageable chunks too - I spent the first six months of my classes trying to remember which of じどんしゃ and ă˜ă©ă†ă—ă‚ƒ was bike and which was car, but once I learnt the kanji I never confused them again.

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