Slooshy’s Study Log 🦑

[Slooshy]

Some important infoes – thank you @Vanilla!!

@Vanilla

1. Novels are the hardest medium ime. They come in a wide variety of difficulties, but on average they’re definitely the hardest. Manga and Anime with JP subs are significantly easier to consume and you’ll feel comfortable reading them a lot earlier.
2. If you’re the one speaking in japanese, you’ll obviously stick to words you are familiar with and the person you’re talking to will be aware of the fact that you’re a learner. They will likely use easier language and you can always ask to clarify. Compare that to books meant for fluent native japanese people where you can’t even ask for clarification. So again, speaking will also be more doable in general.
3. You can still have fun while reading at that early intermediate level (and even beginner). Some of the most fun I’ve had while reading was when I sucked and had to break each sentence down.
4. If you stick to one series, comfortable reading will come a lot sooner for that particular series. I think it took me 3 volumes of oreshura and like 2,500 learned words from that series and I was comfortable enough to just read it laying down on my bed using my kindle rather than on my computer with jisho and google. Just keep in mind the difficulty will go back up when you move to a different series.
5. How comfortable you are also depends on how ok you are with not knowing something. Some people have a much higher tolerance for missing stuff or not being able to read words.

I especially appreciate that 3-volume description of how long it can take to reach relaxed reading vs. jisho-and-google style reading. Thank you!!!