HI all, i was wondering what level should i reach before being able to take a random text in japanese and start figuring out the content? I’m currently level 6 with a daily massive 100+ reviews to be done (usually i end between 75 to 90%) right and i was wondering what level to aim to before expecting to feel progresses.
One thing that i find a bit saddening are the japanese threads tagged level 1-5 in the forum; i’m level 5 and most of the words and kanjis used in the answers haven’t popped up yet for me
Also i was wondering if attempting to read some simple mangas with furigana could be a way to burn more kanjis in my brain. Thanks for your time!
PS: i have rendakus, they kill my session accuracies
I’d say this is more dependent on your grammar level. You can always look up kanji and words, but grammar is much harder to grasp. You should be seeing improvement right away, though.
Just a tip, but try to do your reviews as quickly as you can. If you don’t know an item, don’t spend time trying to figure it out. The workload is only going to increase, so you should get comfortable doing a (few?) hundred reviews a day. I think you should aim to complete 100 items in less than 20 minutes, at least, but to each their own
They (used to) ask us to put furigana on kanji above level 5 for these thread, so users to have to limit themselves if they know more kanji. The level 1-5 tag is more so that the staff making the threads and responding to the answers know which kanji to use. Reading other users answers will always be more difficult.
More exposure is always good! There are plenty of simple mangas out there. Yotsubato is a fun one. Check out some of the book clubs on here
Do you study grammar? Many common words, and the structure of the language, you will learn from grammar study, not from WK. I use Genki, but there are many other options. Just choose one.
If you want to read books, joining in on one of the old or current book clubs can be a big help.
I think I’d be able to do that, if you took out the time I use to refresh the forums, set up study music, do a couple Bunpro reviews…
help
The more exposure to the Japanese language you have, the more you’ll be able to “feel” when something should rendaku (there are a couple of typical rules too, which you can read up about, and I can also recommend the Rendaku Information Script). But of course, there are times when the language just goes ahead and does its own thing…
To be honest, I feel like people at higher level use those threads often and there is a lot of kanji or words I don’t know yet, so don’t feel sad about it, they aren’t as easy as it seems !
(Highly personal opinion, I tried them only few times but had the same feeling)
I don’t know if you only use WK, but Kumirei is right about the grammar level. You can know all your kanji, if your grammar level don’t match, you won’t be able to read anything. (Maybe you will grasp what it’s about, but damn that’s hard)
Why not just start now? Pop over to NHK Easy News and start perusing things. Might be able to start getting the gist of bits and pieces of headlines or articles.
To disappoint you, it is possible to reach Level 60 while skipping all vocab, and not doing any grammar.
As a result, you may misunderstand even basic sentence completely, since negation is expressed by adding kana to kanjis (so it is part of grammar), and instead of “not cold”, you will read it as “cold”.
I think you misunderstood my question, i read various guides that strongly suggested avoiding going in too deep in grammar until you have a decent vocabulary that won’t make you stop 10 times per sentence searching for kanji and vocabs… I think it was suggested on tofugu
In my opinion tofugu is wrong about this. I’m not sure exactly when that advice was written, but nowadays there are plenty of grammar sources that are mainly english-based and won’t require you to look much up. When you are level 10 on WaniKani it’s going to require a lot more of your time and attention, leaving less energy for grammar study.
My favorite grammar source is Cure Dolly’s Unlocking Japanese course on youtube, but there are lots of other great options.
Oh the easy days. Been a long time since I only had 100 reviews per day.
One problem with ‘simple’ manga, is their lack of kanji. It seems that a lot of the time, they don’t even bother with kanji+furigana. Stuff is just straight up kana. Not only do you not get that kanji exposure, but you may also (or at least I do) find yourself looking up words, that had their been kanji, you would have been able to recall.
What you might be looking for is wkstats
Use the API key (check your profile settings on WK to generate one) and go to Charts > Reading
At level 6, you’re hovering around 35% of recognisable kanji on some popular sites.
Very recognisable - although for me personally even added furigana on unknown kanji didn’t help much - I simply didn’t know enough words and grammar to read any replies. It is different for people that already have a baseline of Japanese before they start WK though.
I read the same and while I understand that the ‘studying’ part of studying grammar is easier once you know some kanji and vocab, I found that familiarizing myself with some concepts was perfectly doable before that time. Especially YouTube videos (be it Cure Dolly or Ammo with Misa or …) tend to be explained in English and give you an idea of some basic concepts without ever needing to understand the examples in Japanese. It gives you a head start once the studying starts.
I highly suggest signing up for Satori Reader and connecting to WK’s API to sync their stories with your current kanji knowledge. They will show kanji along with furigana as long as you have learned at least one of the kanji through WK. For example, at level 6, 不思議 will be included in the story even though WK has only introduced 不 and 思 at that point. This is a great way to practice and also add to your vocabulary.
They should all be viable. Just make sure you go to https://www.satorireader.com/preferences first, scroll down to Custom / Import, click on the blue (configure) link, and input your WK API key on the next page (at the bottom). “Import from WaniKani,” then “Save Known Kanji” at the top & make sure you “Save Known Kanji Settings” back on the preferences page.
In all the initial preference settings, too, choose the “Use kanji and kana representations according to my knowledge (recommended)” option.
I’ve entered the review madness today with 170+ reviews… It’s honestly overkill but i have like 70 new unlocks ready… Should i stop unlocking new words and radicals until the review lowers a bit (maybe burning some stuff?) or should i just keep up and try to get as much into my head as possible no matter what?
It is best to spread out the lessons over several days to avoid massive piles of reviews. If you study everything at once they will come back as reviews all at once many times over.
