First of all its my first time posting so its very nice to meet you all
I was wondering if there is a tool/masterlist that lists texts you may be able to read by the kanji you know.
Like an app that takes the list of kanji you can read or your WK level as it’s input and outputs a list of manga chapters, blog posts or news articles that only use kanji you can read, giving you a way to excercise reading native material.
Or a list that displays every kanji used in a book (for example) so that you can be prepared for what to expect before diving into it. Studying the kanji beforehand, giving you a reading session uninterrupted by looking up kanji.
I did some research on reading material in the forum but surprisingly did not come across a demand for such service.
I believe it would be a really good resource if book clubs would make a list of all the kanji they encountered so that there could be a “minimal WK level to read” indicator on the material they finished reading. I understand that it would be just as hard to make as it would be helpful but one can only dream…
So yeah, if there is any similar/equally helpful resource you have in mind I would really appreciate it if you could share it down below.
Thank you so much word reading my word soup and have a nice day (´-ω-｀)。
Some of the beginner book clubs used to have vocab lists on a shared spreadsheet. You have to check the top post to see if one exists. Lately this trend has faded.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that just knowing the Kanji doesn’t mean you don’t have to make look-ups. Let’s take 弁(べん) as example. You know the Kanji and might know 弁当(べんとう). Should the tool tell you that you should read a text containing 弁護士(べんごし) or 花弁(はなびら/かべん) or not?
So whether you know a Kanji or not is not that relevant to your reading enjoyment. It’s actually much more a function of the vocabulary and grammar you know.
Most people go by how “hard” a resource generally is when choosing it. That can mean number of Unique Kanji, total amount of words, Furigana or not, old grammar/Kanji usage or a host of other things.
Tools to help you choose reading materials
And a good help is looking at resources that have Furigana. For example the 青い鳥文庫 from Kodansha or つばさ文庫 from Kadokawa have easier versions of some books for “children” to read.
Otherwise, feel free to also ask people here for helpful recommendations. For example 星の王子様 doesn’t have many Kanji and is a world renowned originally french book with a good Japanese translation (link to 青い鳥 version Amazon.co.jp: 星の王子さま : サン=テグジュペリ,A.D., 三田 誠広: Japanese Books)
There are many beginner reading recommendations. I can give you some if you’d like.
With Satori Reader you can connect your WK API and set it up so it removes furigana for kanji you’ve studied and shows furigana for all others. It’s very flexible, you can also toggle it completely on / off and create custom lists etc etc. Lots of options and all handmade by humans.
The other thing from there is if you start reading children’s books you find kanji strategies by Japanese school grade. I’ve compiled a list of books that work well with this strategy:
I think there was a period for the maybe 2-3 months on either side of the start of this year that I really wished such a resource existed. Before that I didn’t really expect to be able to read any native content, and now, surprisingly, I’m starting to walk into some kind of “after” state where: I would rather know in advance a “how hard” score and prepare to look up more or fewer words accordingly.
Having furigana to hold my hand in manga is great, but I am reminded constantly that knowing how to pronounce a word is a different part of reading than knowing what it means. And weirdly both are improving the more I do my WaniKani, sure, but also the more I just… sit with content that I can both see and hear (and the more comfortable I get with not knowing 100% of what’s going on in terms of content or nuance).
