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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜

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kraemder
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 Message 361 of 1702
26 May 2012 at 11:45pm | IP Logged 
g-bod wrote:

Good question! What really got me started was a combination of Basic Kanji Book and Anki. Basic Kanji Book does have a lot of useful information about how kanji work, however I didn't pay this as much attention as I should have done when I started out as I was too eager just to learn lots and lots of words. But over time I seem to have worked things out somehow.

"Let's Learn Kanji" is quite a nice introduction to the building blocks of kanji with a more traditional approach. It gives Japanese names for radicals and components where these exist which is really helpful if you want to learn how to talk about kanji in Japanese! As a method it is not so good because they suggest memorising all the components first, which I think is unnecessary, but as a reference and a general introduction to kanji, I would recommend it.


The more I think about it the more I think she'll just do it your way and somehow work things out over time heh. I'll run that book by her though.
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g-bod
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 Message 362 of 1702
27 May 2012 at 12:16am | IP Logged 
Yeah, I think whatever method you settle on there's no escaping that learning kanji just takes time and memorisation. Heisig didn't appeal to me because I wanted to learn how to read more common vocabulary as soon as possible. Learning unusual kanji early on just so it could fit into a mnemonic system seemed superfluous to me, even though it seems to have done wonders for other people. I guess either way, the best method is going to be the one you will stick to :)
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kraemder
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 Message 363 of 1702
27 May 2012 at 12:33am | IP Logged 
For me it's about being completely illiterate. I can't stand it. It's kind of silly maybe but looking at text or credits on an anime and seeing letters that are completely foreign to me (lots of them) was just too disheartening. And if you simply learn kanji as presented by a textbook you still won't know how to read/write most of the basic vocabulary they teach. They don't want to give you too much kanji at once so you end up just knowing the hiragana spelling instead. I want to get beyond that so I can read/write it too. Especially read it. I don't know how many times I've shown Harry Potter to more advanced students at my school (and tutors) only to have them say to me that they can't read it because the kanji is too hard (and yes it has furigana over the "difficult" kanji). I don't want to be that person who has studied a language 3 years and can't read an adolescent level book. It's a big concern for me heh.

You could say pure terror of kanji drove me to study Heisig like the Bible XD.

Edited by kraemder on 27 May 2012 at 12:39am

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Brun Ugle
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 Message 364 of 1702
27 May 2012 at 10:31am | IP Logged 
kraemder wrote:
For me it's about being completely illiterate. I can't stand it. It's kind of silly maybe but looking at text or credits on an anime and seeing letters that are completely foreign to me (lots of them) was just too disheartening. And if you simply learn kanji as presented by a textbook you still won't know how to read/write most of the basic vocabulary they teach. They don't want to give you too much kanji at once so you end up just knowing the hiragana spelling instead. I want to get beyond that so I can read/write it too. Especially read it. I don't know how many times I've shown Harry Potter to more advanced students at my school (and tutors) only to have them say to me that they can't read it because the kanji is too hard (and yes it has furigana over the "difficult" kanji). I don't want to be that person who has studied a language 3 years and can't read an adolescent level book. It's a big concern for me heh.

You could say pure terror of kanji drove me to study Heisig like the Bible XD.


When I started reading Harry Potter, I had a vocabulary of about 2500 words (based on iKnow and my own estimate, which were pretty much the same). Because of Heisig, I had very little trouble reading it. There were probably quite a few words that I didn't actually know, but a combination of Heisig and context gave me the meanings. The few times that I wasn't sure and it seemed somewhat important, I checked against the English book. And as you say, most of the kanji have furigana, so even the pronunciations present few problems. Of course, I wouldn't say it was "easy" to read. It took me about 5 minutes per page. But I had no problems following it and felt that I understood most of the words even if I hadn't seen them before.

Now I'm about 3/4 of the way through the fourth book. My vocabulary is about 3000 words and my reading speed is about 4 minutes per page. I still wouldn't call it easy. I think the books get a little harder as the series goes. But I have no more problems reading it than I had with the first book since my skills also improve as I go.

So, if you want to read Harry Potter -- go for it.



Edited by Brun Ugle on 27 May 2012 at 10:32am

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kraemder
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 Message 365 of 1702
27 May 2012 at 6:12pm | IP Logged 
My vocabulary isn't that high yet... I would guess at about 1200ish, not including cognates that don't get used
too much. I know more kanji than I know Japanese heh. Since I have potter in the computer and can use
rikaisama I could get through it but its competing with other stuff I wanna do...
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kraemder
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 Message 366 of 1702
27 May 2012 at 6:27pm | IP Logged 
I'm scrapping my n3 vocab list. I was looking at an n4 one and at least on this one I don't know a lot of the
words. Which is weird since I've looked at other n4 lists and I knew most of them. Anyway I'll do the n4 list
and this time I will be disciplined about adding words to the list in a reasonable manner. Gradually. Not 200
on a Saturday because I have tons of time to study heh. I'm thinking 20 per day is more reasonable but I
might go as high as 50 on the weekend (and none on a weekday) but more reasonable. I'm going to use
example sentences from online for every sentence too. I think it will help if just to visualize the meaning while
studying. If I'm actually looking for more Japanese to do instead of vocab I'll read potter maybe or grammar or
something.
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Sunja
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 Message 367 of 1702
27 May 2012 at 6:38pm | IP Logged 
1200 is awesome! Try to get some usage so you don't forget any. I didn't use anything and I'm having to relearn it now.
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kraemder
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 Message 368 of 1702
27 May 2012 at 6:59pm | IP Logged 
It would be a lot higher if I included vocab I've forgotten lol. This is why I'm gonna discipline myself so I can
properly review it to get it into my long term memory. And use sentences.


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