🍃 Shenmue Tree - a Study "Lounge!" 🍂

Good luck!

One tip: try reading as much as you can, but don’t get discouraged if it’s too much of a hassle to be worth the effort for now. Build a bit of a foundation and try again. Just pick up some simple manga, read some NHK Easy news, try graded readers, whatever works for you, but don’t expect to learn the language just from learning the individual parts.

And I recommend having a source of vocabulary to start you off. WK teaches you vocab, but it doesn’t teach you the most common or useful vocab first, it teaches you whatever vocab is good for cementing the kanji readings/meanings - and it doesn’t teach kana-only vocab at all. That means that using WK as your primary source of vocab isn’t likely to give you good results. Something like Anki with a Core2k, Core5k or Core10k deck is good, or Torii if you want something you can type in WK-style.

Though I will say, learning all 10k most common words that way is probably a waste of time. By the time you’re a few hundred words in you’re probably good to start reading simpler manga like よつばと!, at 1000-1500 I’d say you’re probably better off just learning vocab from whatever you read and listen to than you are learning more of the most common words (though, side by side is an option, of course). But just that boost from the first ~1000 words can open up a whole world of possibilities.

For listening: anything works, really, as long as it’s not too advanced to be helpful. There’s a listening practice thread with a bunch of suggestions, and if you’re even halfway interested in VTubers all you have to do is tell me what kind of content you’re like to watch and I can recommend some :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: Finding JP-subbed content can be very helpful as well, because the subtitles can add some context that wouldn’t have clicked from sound along (through kanji for instance) without resorting to translations.

Games and anime can work for sure, but do keep in mind they’re not the most natural source of dialogue. But that’s not limited to games and anime - other kinds of sources vary in that - some VTubers for instance have very prominent quirks in how they speak. Just something to keep in mind, if not something to be overly worried about early on.

For manga recommendations beyond the ones you already have, I recommend the reading clubs on here. And don’t be afraid to challenge yourself a bit - if you find you can read the absolute beginner stuff fairly well, go for the beginner book clubs. If those become even a little comfortable, try an intermediate book club. No shame in dropping out if you’re out of your depth, but give it a try, you might be surprised.

And write! Get your butt to the Japanese Sentence a Day thread and write stuff. Doesn’t have to be complicated, doesn’t have to be deep and meaningful, doesn’t even have to be correct. Just write stuff. Do your best to express what you want to express, ask questions about what you’re not sure on, and if you like there are some people regularly in there who’d be willing to give you some suggestions/corrections on grammar, word choice, etc. - myself included, but as always take what I say with a grain of salt, I’m still learning too, after all :slight_smile: And if you don’t want corrections, that’s fine too - but write all the same! You might even strike up a conversation from time to time.

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