I’m willing to help out… as long as it’s simple, heh. Hit me up via PM or LINE :masgrin:
1 Like
though my Japanese isn’t that good, I’ll help if my help is needed
1 Like
Just wanted to let y’all know about a Japanese learning resource that’s really fantastic.
It doesn’t do radical, kanji, and vocab building off of kanji like WaniKani does (said website: http://WaniKani.com is a great resource, as well!). Instead, it introduces vocab directly and includes tons of examples and tests you; it works really well and gets a much broader scope of non-kanji words. It also helps include those words in sentences and tests your grammar and verb declinations. I highly recommend it. The main course will eventually get you the “Core 6000” Japanese words and such. You can even take a test to pass by the earlier levels if you’ve already studied some.
If you’re already on WaniKani, you should be able to get a three-month trial; see details here
2 Likes
I tried this just last night and it seems super useful. I did the WaniKani three-month trial too, and I really like their SRS system in general. That everything is spoken is a huge plus.
We’ll see how I fare after these three months are over, but I’m looking forward to the next lessons.
Anyhow, thanks for sharing! I’ll be adding this to the main post.
1 Like
For people that use WaniKani it’s pretty old news but if you didn’t know you can use this doohickey to track your progress and stats and whatnot that you wish WaniKani would just display for you but doesn’t. It’s pretty nice if you want to push yourself and keep your level up times low, or just check things in general.
Just grab your API Key from your Settings menu on WaniKani and you’re set.
3 Likes
I’m gonna go ahead and share some of the resources that I currently use since I’ve got a lot of free time in my hands to learn Japanese. For people who are really and absolutely new to Japanese, I recommend Memrise (specifically the “Introduction to Japanese” course) since it’s the best way to get very used to dealing with a new language and to have it stick to your long-term memory. It’s a multi-platform app and has a lot of Japanese courses. And for those with at least some experience in trying to learn Japanese, I quite like Yuta Aoki’s ‘Japanese with Yuta’ video lessons (that get sent by email 
) which has a difficulty selection as well and mostly focuses on little tidbits and small lessons (in my experience) to improve the use of Japanese.
2 Likes
Oh hey, I’ve seen a couple of his YouTube videos before. They were mostly just cultural things and stuff like that. Didn’t know he actually had a subscription service setup though. I’ll go ahead and add that and Memrise into the main post. Thanks!
Hey, nice work collecting everyone’s info and links into one post!
I would like to make an addition to the list. It’s a webpage named Kanji Damage. It’s basically a kanji dictionary, but it’s information is optimised so that you only get the jukugo you really need, the onyomi that is really used, etc, while non-used aceptions are ommited. Also, kanjis are organised in special groups, for instance, the kana group, which includes kanji that are actually written more in kana form than in kanji.
Not sure if it’s the best online dicitonary out there, but it is surely helping me study.
Hey there,
I have been to my japanese class one day and saw those ads and asked if I could have them so you guys can look at it and possibly work with it. I’m sorry if it has been already posted.
It seems cool and stuff and it has animu girls so there’s that. But more options for studying is definitely a positive thing imo.
I hope you get a kick out of it :).
3 Likes
My Japanese Language is growing up a little, so i hope that I can read JP VN by myself in the future.
This is helpful!
I’m not making a serious effort to learn Japanese - but I am interested in having more familiarity with the language, I knew about the three writing systems but that was about all. So I have a learning book which I am just starting (got as far as memorising the 5 vowel hiragana!, and a very few Kanji!).
I have no great hopes of learning enough to play VNs that are Japanese only,I know that…just simple things like being able to read signs or posters seems to add to the fun.
The one thing I notice straightaway is that there is no word spacing ( like Thai and other SE Asian languages it all runs as one long line/block) so how do you actually make out individual words? Is it just a matter of experience? E.G if you type half a line of Hiragana into an online translator you get one meaning, and if you complete it with the other half it can change completely…
Is it just a case of having to commit strongly rather than just “dabbling”?
I’ve been using http://jisho.org to work out Kanji although my drawing is poor and identifying radicals is hard.
Also, I don’t know if there is a thread or just discussed by character but I’m interested in the translations of the character names, e.g. when Nagisa said her name means shore/beach I found that piqued my interest. Then I worked out Fujibayashi appears to mean wisteria grove which was unexpected!
1 Like
Kanji save the day.
But with enough experience you can more or less easily go through long hiragana or katakana only walls of text as well.
Still, you rarely even meet them.
For learning hiragana/katakana I would suggest you to just write the whole thing down and put it on the wall behind your monitor. That would help you to get accustomed with characters and you will progress faster.
As for reading signs and so on… without knowing kanji that would be mostly hard.
So, learning at least some kanji is a must.
Cheers o/
3 Likes
The combination of all 3 writing systems in a sentence makes it easier for you to separate words. With Hiragana being mainly grammar structures and some very easy and common words, most of the time you can identify Kanji and katakana as words, and have the hiragana with grammatical meaning separate the strings of kanji, as if the hiragana itself was the spacer. I don’t know if it made much sense. Here’s an easy example.
今年、車でマドリッドへ行きました。
Kotoshi, kuruma de madoriddo he ikimashita.
This would literally translate to:
This year, by car, to madrid, (I) went
However, you shouldn’t read it like that. I really don’t know how to teach how to read it, it’s something that comes with time, but it’s like you keep reading and storing information, and then, when the sentence ends, everything makes sense in your head. This is one of the reasons why Japanese is so difficult to translate to English.
We see two kanjis at first, then a coma. This provides spacing. In this case, when you state a temporal information (“this year” in this case) you don’t need to add any hiragana to declare its function, although you could as far as I know.
Then we have another kanji: the one for car. After this kanji, we have the hiragana which is pronounced “de”, which means that the car is an instrument you used. It also helps separating it from the next piece of information.
Following is the katakana string that means Madrid (the city of Madrid). Next to Madrid, is the hiragana pronounced “he”, although in this situation it is pronounced just “e”. It means that Madrid is the place that there’s gonna be movement towards, it’s almost telling you that something is going there. Once again, the hiragana separates the katakana string from the next kanji, which would be the verb.
Finally, we have the kanji for “to go”, followed by a string of hiragana that is basically the verb conjugation in formal, past and affirmative.
I might have explained too much grammar, but that’s not the point, the bottom line is the following:
As you can see, while hiragana are the gramatical core of the language, they also do this function of separating words. Still, you can find some very fucked up sentences with amazingly long kanji strings that you have to decrypt, but those will most likely be used only to represent complex vocabulary.
Translators are shit when it comes down to Japanese. They’ll only somehow work if you input info in kanji, and for that, you should use a kanji dictionary to check that all the kanjis you are using are the ones intended and you don’t end up mixing up god and hair, which have the same pronunciation but different kanji.
Recognizing radicals is something that really comes with experience, but is one of the easier things after a bit. One of the methods to learn kanji is to learn the simple kanji that are also used as radicals before the full kanji with many radicals, even if the basic one aren’t used. An example would be this kanji 曜. It looks horrible at first sight, but if first you’ve learned that the part of the left is just like 日 (sun, day…) the two things on top are just like the katakana ヨ and the thing at the bottom, ⾫, is a small bird, when you come across this kanji you don’t see it as an abomination, but rather like a sum of things that you’ve already learned. Of course, 日 and ヨ are one of the first things you learn, but ⾫ on the other hand is rarely used outside its radical form, so you would only learn from this if you follow the method I described at the beginning of the paragraph. Otherwise, you’ll just learn over time that this part of the kanji is used in other kanji and, therefore, it is a radical.
Well, this is true for pretty much everything. If you want to learn something to a certain level of expertise, you’re gonna need to commit strongly at some point. This is especially true for kanji though, as you need to burn them into your name if you want to remember them during the rest of your life. This means drawing them several times, using them in sentences or reading them often.
Nonetheless, don’t feel overwhelmed by the initial shock of seeing text walls of unreadable information. I’m sure that if you follow along that book you’ll get the basics just right. However, it wouldn’t hurt to have someone expert in the language to talk to since people normally get things slightly wrong (nothing catastrophic though) when learning by themselves.
3 Likes
@Mogaoscar wow, thanks for such a detailed reply. I have at earlier ages learned French ( good qualification achieved), German and Spanish but Japanese certainly works very differently to the Germanic and Romance languages. I can also read Russian and Serbian Cyrillic so I hope that the reading is within my capability too though it’s clearly more complex.
I need to apply some time to my learning book, that’s certain.
Super useful reference page for various Japanese dialects:
2 Likes
How much Japanese would I need to know before I start practicing and learning on the fly with Japanese VNs?
I’m currently taking classes in college, and I already know hiragana, katakana, basic grammar, and basic every-day conversations. Unfortunately at the moment, I have a difficult time staying motivated and disciplined for self-study, which is why I’m in college among other reasons.
N3 or better N2 level pretty much gives you that ability, though you will still have to check dictionaries from time to time.
If you know a lot of words, but not enough kanji, then consider installing something like “Visual novel reader” which gives you a subtitle window for VNs with furigana of kanji.
2 Likes
With basic grammar, hiragana, katakana, and conversational phrases, that is already a great start. The great thing about Japanese that no matter how complex the sentence is or what kind of vocab, the sentence structure is pretty much the same.
It really depends on what you wanna do. If you want to understand the VN and not worry about reading the english translation or the written language, that is enough to enjoy the VN. That is probably the most basic way to enjoy Japanese.
As for resources, the Youtube Channel: Abroad in Japan is a good channel. If you like sarcasm and daily life along with some occasional Japanese lessons, he is funny and at times useful resource.
If you want to practice with some natives (either with talking or writing) HelloTalk is a good app. I know it is on Android (pretty sure it is on IOS as well). It connect you with people who know the language and learning another that you know. Great way to practice with people and there are learning functions such as correcting the sentences that you write.
2 Likes
Duolingo Japanese for English Speakers will finally be launching on May 15th.
6 Likes
