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Fun material for a beginner in Japanese? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Melya68 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 4289 days ago 109 posts - 126 votes  Speaks: French*, English | Message 1 of 15 19 February 2014 at 2:54pm | IP Logged |
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I've just started studying Japanese. So far, I've found the experience very relaxing, since I've been working through hiragana slowly but surely.
I'm looking for material in English+Japanese, or written in extremely simple Japanese with either hiragana or complete furigana. I've only been working on Japanese for three days, so I don't know many kanji yet. My main goal is to have fun. If I can discover children's stories at the same time, great! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5764 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 15 19 February 2014 at 4:35pm | IP Logged |
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My library had children's books in many languages when I started out Japanese. Maybe yours has, too. But I found them surprisingly difficult, because those were stories that assumed the reader was maybe a four year old child with a parent to help, and the child knew the words, knew the kind of stories a Japanese child gets told, didn't know kana and would probably love to re-read the same book over and over again, like many children of that age.
I memorized the kana quickly, didn't like too much repetition - and in the beginning, I couldn't tell where one word ended and the next began to find out what exactly I needed to look up in a dictionary. So I switched to material aimed at middle schoolers - some kanji, most with furigana (I could look up the ones without and memorize them, because those were obviously the most important ones), relatively easy language, content that wasn't as removed from my own experience and interest as what is interesting to a preschooler or young primary school kid, and I could actually figure out where words began and ended, so I could look up the words I didn't know. So, I read manga and idol magazines at that stage. (And looked at the pwetty pictures.) There's also a 'learn Japanese with manga' series that seems to exist in German and English, maybe also in French? But in the end, the question is rather: Is there some kind of material that is so interesting to you, that you really, really want to read, so you are willing to work a bit more for it? There's a couple of tools to make life easier - pop-up dictionaries for browser if you read text online (or text files the browser can read), websites where you can look up kanji by radicals, or even Japanese IME that have handwriting recognition (windows does, and when you're good you can draw the character with your mouse, or if you have a graphics tablet that's even nicer to use), so not having complete furigana doesn't have to be a problem. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Melya68 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 4289 days ago 109 posts - 126 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 3 of 15 19 February 2014 at 7:56pm | IP Logged |
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I don't know if I have children's books, but I think I have a couple of Japanese graded readers somewhere. However, they're probably too difficult for me at that stage.
I really wanted to start reading Mirumo de Pon!, but I can't seem to find the raw manga on the web. I enjoy reading Fairy Tail (in both French and English) and watching the anime, but I believe the story is aimed at older readers (12-15 years old). Then, there's Death Note (which I also read in both French and English, though I'm not done with this manga, or Fairy Tail). I guess it's probably much harder, as it's aimed as a mature audience. I'll take a closer look at Detective Conan, but I think most of the dialog will be much too difficult. However, maybe I'll be able to understand some speech bubbles? I need to find manga for young kids. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hasi Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 6114 days ago 120 posts - 133 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 15 19 February 2014 at 8:28pm | IP Logged |
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I personally wouldn't start out with Detectie Conan because there is A LOT of text in each speech bubble which, to me at least, was very discouraging because it took me forever to read through a page.
I highly recommend Yotsubato! which deals with the daily life of a 5-year-old girl. The stories are fun and interesting and there isn't a lot of text per page. I do think that a lot of native material will be too difficult for you so I think you should start off with graded readers. The ones by White Rabbit Press are really good and the Level 0 texts can be understood after a few weeks of studying. As Bao has mentioned above I don't think that children's books for Japanese children are the best way to start. Since they only use hiragana they can be quite difficult to understand sometimes. Texts that use furigana are rather helpful though because you can (usually) tell where I word starts/ends and seeing the kanji makes looking up words in the dictionary easier. All in all I do agree with Bao's post that you should pick something you are interested in. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4770 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 5 of 15 19 February 2014 at 9:30pm | IP Logged |
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About kana-only children's materials, there are some out there that deal with the word boundary problem by putting in spaces. There's a few of those here, with the added bonus of audio.
I'll also definitely second the recommendation of Yotsubato! It might not be as easy as children's books and graded readers, but personally I think it strikes the perfect balance between being easy to read and being enjoyable to read for an adult learner. I've also heard others say similar things about Crayon Shin-chan, but I haven't read that one myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Melya68 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 4289 days ago 109 posts - 126 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 6 of 15 19 February 2014 at 10:53pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks! I think I found Yotsubato! raw. The girl is really cute. I had a look at Fairy Tail in Japanese, and it's complicated. I'd say that a good half of it is written in kanji. Then again, since it uses advanced vocabulary in the French and in the English version, I should have known all along...
I need more practice with hiragana, but I'm getting there. Does anyone have the list of kanji for N5? I'd like to start with the most important kanji, obviously. Kanji scares me, but I've learned over 60 hanzi in Chinese and since I've heard they're similar, I probably already know some. I might have a look at Kana de Manga and Kanji de Manga later, but for serious study, I should probably use Heisig. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hasi Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 6114 days ago 120 posts - 133 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 15 19 February 2014 at 11:37pm | IP Logged |
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N5 Kanji
Don't be scared of kanji they can actually be very helpful and after you get used to them you wouldn't want to live without them. :) As far as Heisig is concerned: I personally have used the book (using the lazy kanji mod) and I thought it was very very useful and really helped me out. In retrospect I think I should have done RTK Lite (which conntains only about 1000 kanji used for JLPT 2) instead of studying all the kanji in one go. That being said, if I were you I'd download the free book sample to see if Heisig really works for you and if you can see yourself working through it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Melya68 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 4289 days ago 109 posts - 126 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 8 of 15 19 February 2014 at 11:56pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for posting the list! :) The first few kanji don't look so scary.
I'll listen to you and start learning kanji tonight. It's not midnight yet, so I'm going to stay up to study. I'll print out the first pages of the book to see if I like it, or I'll just put the pdf on my Kindle. I'm pretty much done with hiragana. I quickly looked at Kanji de Manga, and while the pictures are pretty, the authors don't seem to be using a good method to teach kanji. They just use it in a speech bubble (in a sentence). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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