First of all, exactly how many kanji are taught in WaniKani? I did a quick count and it looks like a weird number, about 80 or so away from all of the Jouyou kanji. If that’s the case, what resources would be good to utilize to learn the rest? Even if it isn’t the case, what about the Jinmeiyou kanji? Well, anyways, I’m only on level 4, so I’ve got quuuuiiite a ways to go before that’s relevant.
What is immediately important, though, is a different question. What resources should I use to learn Japanese grammar? I’m not worried about supplementary vocabulary, I can learn more of that once I start reading things, and via osmosis from anime and stuff in the meantime, but what about grammar? What are good resources/self-taught approaches for learning grammar?
I think it’s around 2100. Once you learn those I am positive that learning the rest will be easy, heck even at my level I’m finding it much more common finding vocab I don’t know than kanji. I’d say when you encounter a word that contains kanji you don’t know just memorize the vocab word itself with a flashcard app like Anki or similar. Learning all the kanji from jouyou or jinmeiyou or wherever else isn’t important (unless you’re taking a test which focueses on that category) what’s important is being able to read and so WaniKani teaches those which you are most likely going to encounter.
As for grammar, well that’s a tough one, I don’t think I can really recommend a single place to learn from since my grammar knowledge came from all over the place. Here’s a good place with several grammar resources you can look into.
There’s no particular reason to want to do exactly the jouyou kanji.
Unless you just want to be able to say that you know things like 蚕 (silkworm), which don’t appear in the top 15,000 most frequently used words in Japanese.
I would say if you complete WK and want more kanji, just consume real content and add new kanji as you encounter them. That will be more productive than just doing a list of name kanji.
Note that WK includes over 60 Jinmeiyou kanji already.
I wouldn’t worry too much about it if you don’t plan to for example take a test where all Jouyou kanji are expected. The Jouyou list just reflects what a bunch of old guys considered to be important 70 years ago, it sometimes doesn’t coincide with what you would call “frequent use”.
Yeah, I think people often see N1’s kanji list described as “all jouyou kanji” and worry they haven’t learned all of them, but there are a lot that I would be shocked to ever appear on the test, because they’re obscure cultural things or just barely ever used.
But if you take level 5 of the Kanken, then you should know 蚕, because it has a good chance of appearing.
Yes, I was wondering about that worry as well. It is extremely unlikely to fail N1 only because you had problems with obscure kanji. It is good to have a look at them of course, but there are more fruitful ways to spend your preparation time. Even the people designing the tests would know it was just malicious to keep asking foreigners stuff you don’t need in daily life.
On the positive side after you reach level 60 (or rather say 30–40) it is easy to learn any missing ones (it’s not a shame to be a completionist). You already know all parts the kanji are constructed of, they are often semantic-phonetic compounds, and they are more regular in that regard. You won’t ask yourself the question “how do I learn the rest?” then, you can just do it.
Yeah, there are a grand total of 6 questions in the N1 kanji section. They are sure to use them on hard, but not super obscure, kanji.
Everything else that involves reading kanji (like in the reading comprehension section) is going to be influenced by if the words themselves are considered N1 words.
I’m pretty sure if 蚕 appeared it would be one of those things with a note explaining it.
I quite like Japanese for busy people as a resource for learning grammar and expand vocabulary/listening skills. Having tried Genki as well, I find Japanese for busy people much better for the self learner as it doesn’t assume you’re a teenager in a classroom environment. On top of that I’d suggest Lingodeer, a free app that also helps a lot.
Some unconventional aproach to learning grammar could be the one I do. I’m not sure if right away if you don’t have any background, but at least after the most basic of textbooks you should be ok to give it a try.
I do sentence mining using this method with Anki and some plugins.
I keep both the first 2 volumes of the Dicitonary of Japanese Grammar series and Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns at hand and resolve doubts as they appear in this terrific reference books.
Japanese the Manga Way serves as a great companion book for having actual samples with the use of those grammar points while explaning nuances in their use. I read it every week, it’s fun and a light reading, yet really clarifying in some aspects.
As far as grammar and learning it, I would limit all the SRS and nice apps to a minimum and just start reading (graded readers for japanese learners, basic japanese tales aimed at children, etc; and move forward as you see possible)
The SRS apps are great for memorizing… yet grammar it’s something your have to experience over and over to come through and get the actual uses for each grammar point.
