Hi there. I just signed up for the lifetime subscription and this is my first post. I am currently using Wanikani for Vocab and LingoDeer for Grammar. I’m very happy to be part of the community. Please bear with me if this has been asked before (I’m sure it has). I’m curious what level of comprehension you are at by the time you are close or at level 60.
Do you feel comfortable reading a Japanese website or newspaper for example? Does your Japanese speaking and listening compare to your reading comprehension? I hope to one day live or at least visit frequently and be fluent in Japanese and maybe even use it in a career so I ask out of planning as well as curiousity. Thanks for any response and I look forward to being part of the community!
So something to keep in mind: WaniKani is really for kanji, not vocab. While it does teach a lot of useful vocab, a lot of it is primarily to reinforce kanji readings and will be more common in reading that in conversation.
As for reading a Japanese website or newspaper, I can’t really say because I don’t do either of those much. But I read books with the WaniKani book clubs and can more or less read manga on my own (depending on the manga of course). As I’m sure you’ve guessed, this depends largely on grammar knowledge in addition to kanji and vocab. Not surprisingly, my speaking and listening abilities lag far behind my reading ability since I spend most of my time reading.
I’m only level 51, but have no problem getting through newspapers and (most) prose fiction. Obviously there are unknown words, but kanji is never the primary hurdle.
I’d say that’s actually the case (that kanji won’t be your biggest hurdle) starting around level 30.
You’re not going to get any exact, universal answers here, though, because ease of reading depends on the level of practice and grammar knowledge people accumulate outside of Wanikani. I made at least a dent in the N1 last month, but there are people who have gotten to level 60 while still studying early intermediate grammar. Obviously our reading comfort isn’t going to be the same. (There are, on the opposite end of the spectrum, people who are near fluent in all but kanji-reading prior to WK, and my reading comfort wouldn’t at all compare to theirs.) All that can be promised is that kanji won’t be your primary hurdle after around level 30.
With newspapers, when you have finished WK, you’ll be able to look at an article and recognize nearly all of the kanji. But there will be many words that you haven’t seen before, assuming you weren’t using other resources in parallel.
That’s not nothing, though. Being able to recognize the kanji on sight means you’ll likely be able to take a guess a how to read them, perhaps a guess at what they mean, and if what you’re reading still doesn’t make sense, you’ll be able to look up the word quickly.
Beginners struggle mightily with new kanji words because they don’t have the tools to even look up words with kanji they don’t know.
If you have studdied grammer, then NHK web easy you will be able to read most articles, sometimes there may be like 1 - 2 words you might not know.
as for for regular NHK news website there will also be about 1 or 2 words per article probably every article you read. also the grammer they use is different from NHK easy.
if you watch an Anime like onepeice or Dragonball with subtitles you will understand most of it. but Wanikani will not help listening skills that much so you may find yourself pausing quite a lot to read the subs. but the more you do it the less you have to do it.
Thank you for all the quick responses. I misspoke when saying vocab. I meant Kanji with the associated vocabulary given in WaniKani. I see what all of you mean and get that everyone is different as far as learning rate and prior experience. In fact although I’ve been studying grammar a couple months before starting Wanikani, I’ve already seen some Kanji and Vocab I recognized, mainly the Kunyomi readings. Learning the Onyomi for these (or whichever Wanikani finds the most important) is a fun task.
Finding inspiration and studying daily isn’t too hard for me sense I have such appreciation for the culture and am motivated by it. My biggest concern is not having anyone to speak Japanese with in person which limits the speaking portion. But anyways thank you for the answers. It’s cool to see like minded individuals studying and gaining more knowledge with the language. It gives me even more motivation to get where I aspire to be!
