What are you able to do at your level?

WaniKani
#14

Kanji wise I’m still feeling at the beginning but I already start to get kind of a silver lining, most of the articles on NHK Easy or the things my Japanese friends write are understandable and get easier to read. I will start soon to try a light novel, I fear that it might be quite the work but hey you have to sweat to get stronger :smiley:

Grammar wise, I worked through Genki 1+2 and practice speaking and listening a lot trough Anime/podcasts/speaking with real people! xD

just keep going, you can slow down as much as you want, but never stop.

3 Likes
#15

I can pretend to read and write in Japanese to people who only know anime stuff.

26 Likes
#16

At level 16 I can read an NHK* Easy article and understand 35-90% of it (depending on the article). I can also read and mostly understand the included subtitles on Ainori. (But that is conversational, and I have been watching things in Japanese with English subs for over 15 years, so technically tons of (mostly passive) listening practice, which DOES help with sentence structure.)

* My phone totally tried to autocorrect that as NHL… Maybe because I’m Canadian?

7 Likes
#17

I will give it a try in a few levels? Although I’ve thought it was too soon to begin learning grammar because of too many unknown words that could slow me down…

#18

most grammar resources teach you the words you’re gonna be using in the basic examples before you do it. Try doing 20 exp a day on Lingodeer. It’s harmless and you can do it in about 20 minutes. Using the words you know in actual sentences will also help retain the knowledge.

5 Likes
#19

True, but it never hurts to start checking out the various resources/information even if it seems “above your level” at the moment. Have you checked out the Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List?

Anyway, I say it’s never too early to start learning grammar, but obviously it’s up to you and what you are comfortable with!

2 Likes
#20

I got to impress my wife (a veterinarian) with my deep knowledge of Japanese the other day. The conversation went like this:

Her: So a woman came in today with a Shiba Inu—
Me: You know, “inu” means dog in Japanese. :sunglasses:
Her: Oh. Um… thanks?

So she’s clearly a lucky woman. Thanks Wanikani!

63 Likes
#21

I tried a few lessons, but the new words doesn’t stick well like it does on Wanikani. I will tried to continue it, thanks.

1 Like
#22

Thank you, I saw this list it’s impressive! There is no end to it lol
I will try to stick to Bunpro, it is very similar to Wanikani I like it!

2 Likes
#23

Well, I can definitely read more now than I could before I started, although I still have a long way to go with grammar. The main difference I’ve noticed is in how much faster my study process has become when working with native materials.
Before, it seemed like I had two main obstacles, which were a) decode the strange runes in front of me, which usually meant constantly fiddling about with dictionaries and then b) work out the grammar to understand what it all means, and I would usually just get frustrated and wander off after 30 minutes.
Now, I can usually jump straight to step b), or if not, at least make an educated guess with a). Which, in the end, means I can now read for…oooh I dunno, maybe a full hour or so before ragequitting and chucking my laptop through the window.

16 Likes
#24

I can read the short stories comming from graded readers.
Finished Level 2 this weekend :man_shrugging: … the plan it’s finishing the whole series and then starting with shounen novels. :nerd_face:

I have my own routine for sentence mining, I’ve made a few posts here about it. Little by little I undertand the lines from my shows and with enough time reviewing many of those I understant full dialogues without subs.

Everything builds on the next thing, Kanji learned in WK, vocab and any grammar structure comes very soon in my sentences. So slowly things are putted together.

Anyway, reading has been a huge boost in confidence and on keep motivation high, I recommend to start at a very early state.:+1:

4 Likes
#25

I’ve read about doing this but never got round to it. Have you found it helps you a lot? Would you say as a goal tackle one a day and make an effort to memorize any vocab that grabs you?

#26

Enough to (more or less) read some of Japans most important literary works

15wa_2
15wa_2.gif980×900 265 KB

Approximate translation (Right to left)
“Waaah! He ate 37 plates! My profits!”
“Hehehe, I’ll come every day during your marketing campaign!”
“Hold it right there!”

(Don’t ask me how I found this pls)

15 Likes
#27

Realize I’m still at Everest base camp. Or maybe still shopping at REI to prepare for base camp. One of those two things. :stuck_out_tongue:

Less facetiously, I can gist out regular newspaper articles with context clues and am making my way through Tobira with decent comprehension. My production is pretty terrible, though.

#28

how you found that pls

4 Likes
#29

At level 40, I can read most of the manga I’m interested in. As a caveat, I’m mostly interested in dialogue-heavy slice of life kind of stuff. Descriptive narration is significantly harder than dialogue.

And I mean, “reading” is a spectrum, not a binary. I still usually have to look up one or more kanji on any given page. Even when I know all the kanji, they may be in a compound I’ve not seen before. Verbs are particularly tricky because you may see two verbs, know both, but not realize that -when combined- they mean something fairly different than you’d expect.

I’ve never studied grammar formally, but I’ve also got nearly two decades of osmosis (aka subtitled anime) to draw on, so I get a lot of basic things about sentence structure. Enough to work through a majority of sentences without having to stop and go “what the heck?” anyway

At first, kanji was the clear bottleneck, so my grammar gaps didn’t really matter. Just chugging along through WK levels added a huge amount of comprehension while reading. But now I’m getting to the point that grammar is becoming the bottleneck to advancement, and while it’s still really important for me to finish WK, the comprehension gains I get per level will understandably face some diminishing returns.

5 Likes
#30

I searched for フードバトル in Google 画像検索 and filtered for animated gifs.

I-I mean:

4 Likes
#31

Wanikani has taught me little at the moment anything practical. Knowing the kanji I know so far i can understand some reading but that’s about it. Genki has taught me far more and I don’t expect waniakni to improve my speaking or listening ability

1 Like
#32

I can read nothing and I wouldn’t be able to understand it on my own, but I can reconstruct 90% of @vargsvans translation of the above vignette and I’m a happy camper.
After quite some time, anything and everything is worth celebrating :hugs:

2 Likes
#33

I am in exactly the same position as what you wrote in the rest of your post.

Finishing level 38 seemed to be the point at which most kanji in slice-of-life manga became known (which was a nice coincidence since I’m not gonna be able to do any lessons 'til June), but now the biggest limiting factors are grammar and speed of recognition while reading.

I’ve been able to play some games, too. I managed to finish the first case in Detective Pikachu today without too many lookups, but reading through the character and item profiles is still hard, despite how short they are.

1 Like