I’ve just started learning Japanese, not even level 1!
I’ve also just joined the WaniKani community, so this is my first post!
I looked at some lvl 60 celebration posts, not to admire them but to learn from them what to do as a beginner and what not to. And something I’ve seen a lot is to READ!! But I’m a beginner! What can I even read???
So I wanted to ask if I should start reading, use a dictionary, and learn to read while using Wanikani and other varied methods to learn Japanese!
And if so, what should I read? I like manga, anime, books, and such.
the first are the Tadoku graded readers. Start at either level 0 or the “pre-level 0” that they have. What I did was I went to Kinokuniya, which I’m fortunate to have in my city, and read part of one of the books at level 0 and was surprised and delighted that it just felt like reading, and as a result I delightedly bought the whole volume (of 4 or 5 very small paperbacks) Depending on your background with Japanese, this might not happen for you. If not, don’t fret, it will eventually.
the second is to pick a manga or a book that you like already in English (or your native language), and read it in Japanese. If you pick a book which is popular enough to have an audiobook, or a manga which has been made into an anime, you can double up and practice listening (or what I’ve heard called “scuba” reading) by playing the audio (or the anime) and doing your best to read along. If you’re anything like me, this will be extremely difficult at first. You’ll probably want to keep a dictionary extremely handy, particularly one with a “drawing” input in case there are kanji you don’t know and the book doesn’t provide furigana for them. It might feel like you have to look up every single word at first. As much as you can stand of that, do. If it gets to be too much, ease up. Sometimes you might be able to grok all the words but then making sense of the sentence as a whole will be difficult. Still try, but don’t push too hard. By the way, you can use Natively to see how the community has rated the difficulty of your book or manga of choice. That’s kind of useless at first because you have no reference for yourself about how the levels feel, but it might be useful for choosing a second book.
My final suggestion is something like Lingq. The advantage of Lingq is that you can click on words and get their definition, and get some idea in advance of opening something how many words are new, which is a rough metric of how difficult you will find it. I’m not totally clear on how they deal with things like copyright though, and I like practicing under conditions that are more similar to how I like to read in English.
The WaniKani community hosts an Absolute Beginners Book Club, which mostly reads manga but sometimes children’s stories. (We just started Yotsuba a few weeks ago.)
At one point, I gathered up my recommendations to first-time readers and assembled them into a post here:
Even if you don’t join a book club, you can read through everything on there before the “Participating in the Absolute Beginner Book Club” heading, and it’ll be applicable.
The basic rundown is:
Learn hiragana and (at least somewhat) katakana. Let WaniKani help you out with the kanji.
Learn some common vocabulary words.
Learn basic grammar.
Start reading by not reading; pick something you’d like to read, and start picking it apart:
Look up any vocabulary words and grammar you don’t know or recognize (which will be a lot to begin with).
Focus on learning the vocabulary and grammar if they are common. If you see them come up a few times, you’ll know they’re common.
Expect your initial reading experiences to be a form of study and learning until you have basic vocabulary memorized and basic grammar learned.
As someone with a toddler in Japan I can actually recommend starting with some children’s books. Usually pure Hiragana and perfect to get a first sense of the language. They are also really short so it doesn’t turn into a slog right away. It also increases your speed of reading hiragana which can come in handy especially if you intend to take the N5 or N4.
I didn’t start reading until about Level 5-6. I did study grammar and vocabulary as a preparation for reading, and got sets of graded readers (Level 0). By the time I was ready to try graded readers, I was able to read some of them. The feeling of success (even if only partial success) was tremendous.
Do you have any recommendations for a dictionary?
I found Jisho and it seems like a good one, having audio pronunciation, searching in both English and Japanese, and more I haven’t looked at.
Any recommendations? Here are some I’ve read in English/watched in Japanese:
One Piece (both read and watched), Chainsaw Man, Dr. Stone, and as for books, I like me some sci-fi, fantasy, tragedy, etc.
I started reading the novel for omniscient reader’s viewpoint a couple weeks ago in English.
Maybe I’ll start reading it in japanese sometime when i get better at reading
I kind of want to dive into the hard stuff right away, but i need to slow down with some easy stuff so I won’t read these things until later
Thanks,
I do actually have an app called “Shinobi,” which has short, easy stories, BUT it’s a mobile app, so OF COURSE it will be full of ads, subscriptions, and annoying stuff.
Do you have any suggestions of where I can read them online or any apps?
I totally understand this feeling, but you risk feeling frustrated and giving up.
As others have mentioned Tadoku readers (many of which can be found on this website for free), I think it’s worth mentioning that Tadoku is a method of learning how to read Japanese, as detailed on the website here.
The idea is that you start with things that are very easy to read, things that you would even consider below your level, but you read a lot of them, and you progress from there.
With consistency you’ll be reading native material in good time. Good luck!
When you reach that point, if you want to read non curated content, I recommend heavily trying something you have the raw Japanese text for (really need to be able to copy / paste) and to use services like https://jpdb.io/ (double as a customisable SRS, freemium) or https://ichi.moe/ (pure parser) to parse the sentences components by components.
Other services like https://marumori.io/ (All-in-one) or https://bunpro.jp/ (Grammar) are also a good source of simple example sentences to ease into reading.
I actually have downloaded Shinobi in the past, and I still have it, but I haven’t used it much. Should I?
About grammar, I’ve heard good things about Bunpo. Is it worth buying? I’ve tried the first three lessons, and I liked the app.
And for listening and speaking, I’m using Teuida Premium, which is great imo.
Well, I’d say, it’s really helpful for the very beginners.
Unfortunately, I found out about it too late, but I still enjoyed reading the first two levels.
After that, the stories became significalntly longer and I stopped using it, but the beginner levels were nice.
As for grammar, I started with TextFugu (an online textbook from the creators of WK; unfortunately, no longer available), then read Japanese the Manga Way. For quick references, I’m using A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about BunPro too, but never used it myself, so can’t say anything about it.
I should check it up, thank you
As for me, for listening I’m using
Jisho.org is great. On my phone I use the app Shirabe Jisho (which I thought for sure was 調べ but upon putting my phone in Japanese I see it is 白檜, which I’m guessing is also a pun in addition to a plant). It does “draw kanji” input pretty well, especially if you can get the broad rules for stroke order down.
As for recs, I can’t tell you what you like that’s the key part of the whole equation. That being said, I’m reading Chainsaw Man currently and enjoying it. Denji and Power might be a bit tougher to understand at first because of the way they speak than, like, prissy Yagami Light, but you get the hang of it.
Manga is currently not my level, but i found a website with lots of little books that I think will be good to use : tadoku so ill use them and a dictionary for a bit
I’m sure you’ll be ready to attempt manga before you know it!