I’ve reach the point that I understand 70-80% of reading material that around Tobira level (N3 difficulty I guess) However, my reading speed is really really slow. I have no problem when I open the audio file and have the read the material along side with it.
So it would get better over time? Does what I’m doing is good for my Japanese learning? Or should I stop relying on audio file and start practice reading skill seriously by stuff like light novel or manga.
I would use light novels or visual novels to practice reading if you’re ok with that. You’re still quite a bit early on to be worried about speed, so I’d just focus on comprehension and you’ll naturally build a lot of speed as you acquire more language and get used to reading. Later on if you hit a plateau, the autoplay feature in VNs and just forcing yourself to read faster will be your friends.
Just to be clear, it is not wrong to write 「言」 with all horizontal lines; there are writing styles that do it like that (but they are easier to do with a brush).
So, while it can be a deliberate stylistic choice, I don’t think that was your case (particularly as the overall looking show you are beginning in writing, rather than doing stylistic calligraphy).
With the first stroke going as a vertical dot, it is easier to write by hand, and the kanji looks better (that’s probably the reason that shape developed to begin with).
Is it just reading or do you have a similar problem as me that you read the text several times to make sure every nuance of it sinks in and read it aloud to get sentence rhythm right?
When I feel like I’m spending too much time on reading, I just skim through the text, glacing at the kana and kanji and just getting the gist of it .
Reading shorter pieces like NHK news articles might also be a good idea.
I read aloud and I feel like my brain can’t process what they mean when these texts are scrambling together lol. Strangely, when I practice listening I don’t have this problem. Or perhaps, I just have an illusion of understanding when I’m listening Japanese and I’m not yet truely understand them.
Yeah news article is fine. They are short and easy to understand.
The good thing about picking DDLC is the translation from English to Japanese is pretty much 1-1 translation. So if I don’t understand any sentence, I could just check the original English dialogue on my PC while I am holding the switch version in my hand.
Ah yeah, they’re really not games. They’re just fancy books.
And if you care about having English translations to check while you play (which isn’t a bad idea for your first read), nekopara can toggle show English translation with shift+e and hide with shift+n. Plus it’s native Japanese and not a translation.
Also, is there anything you especially want to read in Japanese?
It sounds like you’re arriving at the long intermediate stage where reading is possible but tough and the main thing is just persistence and slow improvement.
What’s fun about that stage though is that your options really open up, since it’s less a matter of whether you can read something and more a matter of how much work it would take. I think at that point genuine interest is gonna be more important than making sure the material is the exact right difficulty level.
Yes, it means “to” as in “gateway TO a higher level”.
Oh whoops, jumped the shark again . You were asking about the sentence as well.
Some combinations of particle + の have the added property that they anchor an activity or relationship with the preceding clause to a noun. For instance:
社長とのミーティング - a meeting with the company president
One wouldn’t be able to say 社長とミーティング, because と would need to be followed by a verb or a する compound, but the use of の anchors the meaning.
The の after で, へ or と just indicates it modifies a noun, in this case とびら
So it makes 上級へ a qualifier for とびら - “the gate to a high level”
Or in your example sentence, 差別 - meaning 障害がある人への差別 is one continuous part of the sentence meaning “discrimination towards people with disabilities” - rather than へ indicating directionality for 泳ぐ.
(and also please feel free to point the errors I may have made in the Japanese text)
EDIT: I put the sentence in Deepl, and indeed it translated it quite nicely: “It’s the First Surgeon’s Office’s traditional White Hoon Body Lift Festival.”
(If that’s considered as a game)
.
. You were asking about the sentence as well.