What can you guys do in Japanese right now?

  • I speak to my dog lol… 外に行きたい?何が欲しい?何をしている?
  • I can write very simple diary entries regarding my day
  • And obviously I can read the kanji and vocab that I have studied when they are out in the wild most of the time unless it is an obscure reading
  • I am beginning to become more familiar with J-J dictionaries and that is very exciting.
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I’m still at a very very early stage in my Japanese, but I feel like I have a solid start.

I can finally say that I know the stroke orders for hiragana. Maybe I should have learned them right away, but I mainly focused on reading them well at first. Katakana stroke orders are next!

I can make very simple sentences with the most basic grammar. (の です か でした は じゃありません)
I hope I’ll learn a lot more grammar and sentence structure before the year is over.

I barely know any words… I should work on this right away, but I really don’t know where to start. Since I got my textbook for class, I think I’ll start learning the words there. Do any of you guys have any good anki decks or other ways of learning useful and common words? I feel like I should try to learn English to Japanese to get the most out of it.

If anybody has any good advice on where to put my learning energy, or any good learning strategies, please share!

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Reading-wise I have managed to read the first two and a half books in the No 6 series in about a month per book. I’m focusing more on reading extensively and am able to follow the plot without too much use of a dictionary, even though I’m not understanding every sentence.

Listening-wise I still have a lot left to learn, but I’m watching let’s plays from time to time and was stoked that I could at least understand a full minute of speech at one point. :slight_smile:

Production-wise I’m able to get across the gist of what I want to say when writing. My grammar is improving but I still make a lot of mistakes.

Yesterday was also my fourth time speaking with a tutor on italki. My grammar and ability to express myself is a lot worse than when writing, but just the fact that I am able to hold a conversation of any kind for an hour entirely in Japanese still feels like a big step for me!

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For reading, I read as much as I can, however it’s not been as much the last week or so due to being sick and busy. Not sure what I’m reading next, but I’m thinking about stepping into 千本桜.

As for listening, I listen to both podcasts and some YouTube Let’s Play stuff in Japanese, but that is pretty hit or miss depending on the content. I’m also studying history through a couple of Japanese channels, which is real difficult, but I’m getting there, bit by bit.

As for speaking: nonexistent. I do a little shadowing and a little accent study, but that is it.

Considering writing, I do a short composition a couple times a week by hand. Will switch to longer compositions types in a month or two.

Finally, grammar, 2/3rds of the way through Tobira.

What I am going for next is to finish up Tobira then study grammar from a purely J-J perspective and but less emphasis on grammar and instead on improving both speech and writing through practice. Also studying more in Japanese once my academic vocabulary is better and studying accents more after that.

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Download the Anki Deck for JLPT N5. I learned 650 or so words from it in 3 months. You should learn plenty of vocabulary on here since WK contains something like 6000 vocab words.

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I’d recommend the anki core6k deck for vocab. It contains 6000 common words with sample sentences.

For jp->en you could try the fanmade kaniwani.

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Core 10k breakdown
Katakana vocab course in Memrise. Read real Katakana vocabs.
Onomatopeia from Onamato Project

You might also see https://community.wanikani.com/t/some-supplemental-material/8121

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Thank you all so much for the help!

I’ll try to use the core 10k that you (polv) sent, but I’m a bit confused about all these different decks. After some googling it seems like 10k is an extended version of 6k, is that correct? Do you think it’s a bad idea to study many anki decks at once? It sounds good to study the JLPT N5 deck too, but I’m afraid I will be overwhelmed if I try to do too much at once.

I’ve used anki a little bit, but I don’t really know a lot about it. Are the core decks ordered in any way or are they just random? How are new items added into the mix? Is it enough to just check it once a day and review what should be reviewed? Are there any important settings I should change? Sorry for my endless stream of questions…

I’ll eventually check out the Katakana vocab course, maybe in a week or two. Kaniwani seems like a really great tool, but it feels so overwhelming to learn everything both ways around. Maybe I’ll try to do it for a couple of days to get into routine. It’d feel great if I felt like I knew the vocab the other way around!

I’ll check out the onomato stuff too!

Once again, thank you all so much!

Not much at all. I’ve been learning for five months and have only gotten through basic grammar–most of which still need a lot of studying and practice to master.

Aha not much. Can form very very basic ですscentences, recognize words and some phrases in some songs, and common phrases like がんばって、わかった、ううん、うん、おひよ etc. Really need to improve on my grammar so I can patch together scentences with more fluency…

I have just started on the 大逆転裁判 game which I bought a year ago (along with a Japanese 3DS just so I could one day play this game). It’s a part of the Ace attorney installment that was never released in English. It’s going pretty well so far!
I’m not the fastest detective around, but I was able to solve the first trial so I’m already more than pleased haha

Then again, I have been studying Japanese for quite a long time already so it might not be that much of an achievement :'D

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従来、主に漢字を勉強した。それだけじゃないけど、やっぱ文法が下手と思う。さらに、話し方も変な。多分、読書が一番WaniKaniありがとう。続く日本語を勉強しますから、文法改善ね。

took me about 5 minutes to string that abomination together. 独学難しい

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もう英語が分からない ( ´Д`)y━・~~

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I can cry in Japanese

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Lol, you probably meant おはよう? Were you thinking of Ohio?

I can read a chapter of Yotsuba (~28 pages) in about 45 minutes, looking up an average of three sentences. Started trying to read it around level 8 (now 20), when it was closer to four hours, with about a 50% lookup rate, and it took several sessions (like ten pages at a time) due to reading fatigue.

Chapters of Nichijou (~10 pages) take about half an hour each, but I watched it a few years ago, so I can typically fall back on that to decide if a line was understood before moving on. I began trying to read this at level 15.

I’m also playing Atelier Rorona on Vita, using a mix of extensive series familiarity, knowledge of the game from platinuming it seven years ago (which required many playthroughs, making the story and some of the more difficult things very familiar), and its text/voice backlog feature (like a VN) to infer tone and pick out words I know how to say, but not write or read. It’s a challenge, but it gets a bit easier each day, and I’m willing to skip over or OCR stuff I can’t yet make sense of, so there haven’t been any major roadblocks. This effort started at level 18.

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If I’m lucky enough, sometimes I understand an entire sentence while watching anime, which means I didn’t need the sub for that sentence. Granted, it has to be a really simple one, but it still makes me proud.

I want to read the first chapter of Yotsuba by the end of the year.

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I can read manga, play games, read twitter/blog posts/comments, and watch anime/TV/youtube videos without much trouble. However, I have trouble with listening if I don’t have Japanese subtitles. My listening skills need a lot of work.

I can read heavier things like novels or technical essays but not easily, I have to stop and look up vocab/kanji frequently. I’ve started using a J-J dictionary.

I’ve honestly never had a spoken conversation, I’m shy I guess. I think I could have a basic one. I can have a text conversation, but it’s easier for me to read and I have more time to think.

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I can read around a 6th-7th grade level in Japanese. One of the biggest difference makers in reading levels is when furigana stops being used, which is right after those levels. Kanji is the biggest difference maker in regards to reading, but grammar also makes a big difference. I’ve finished all of Tobira and the two Genki as far as grammar goes, and I’m learning supplementary materials in addition to that knowledge.

Right now I’m reading the Orange light novel, which I can finish about 3 pages of in 5 minutes per day. General rule for reading to increase fluency is, if you have to look up more than 3 words per page, you should pick an easier book. While that may seem counter-intuitive to learning new words, that’s what you’re here on Wanikani for and what studying supplementary materials should be for. Reading should be used primarily to become familiar with Japanese sentence structure and being able to smoothly comprehend Japanese sentences.

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Personally, I prefer making my own decks. It does take more time, but there’s also the benefit of having some extra retention from putting it together yourself. I would either find a deck for your textbook or put them in manually, and get started on that. It’ll be really helpful to know the words in a chapter before you need to (specifically, textbooks tend to put the conversation and reading examples at the beginning of a chapter, and then later teach you the vocab and grammar, which seems backwards to me).

Here’s how I study with Anki:

  • I use the mobile app (AnkiDroid) for my primary study sessions. I just don’t like how desktop feels for lessons & reviews.
  • However, I use the desktop app to put in new cards, because I find it’s easier there. I sync the two (AnkiDroid & Desktop) using the AnkiWeb service.
  • I do have several decks, for different things: Pokemon names, Pokemon moves, 3 different Final Fantasy 14 subs2srs decks, a deck for sentences, and one I’ve called “Wild & Hobby Vocab.” This last one is where the vast majority of my vocab goes, regardless of where I got it from, since I could see any of it anywhere. Manga, textbook, themed vocab lists, etc.
  • When you create a card, it gives you the option to give it tags. This is how I handle my “Wild & Hobby Vocab” from getting too crazy - I tag it with where I found it. This also helps me know how useful each resource was to me.
  • Also worth noting, once I get a word in WK that I’ve had in Anki, I suspend that card in Anki, since I feel there’s no point in duplicating it (and can be counter-productive).
  • One of my favorite things about Anki is that you can give it more than 2 fields of data. That is, you can give it a “kanji” field, “kana” field (so you know the reading for the kanji), “English”, “part of speech”, etc. And then you can take that data and make several cards out of it without having to re-input the data.
  • You can also set it to force you to type in the answer, similar to WK, if you want.

Also, you should read Tofugu’s guide to SRS :wink:
Good luck!

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