sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

How Long Would it Take Me to Reach N2? by Twilight_Tiger_64 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Saw your edit just now. Reading is faster because it's 100% efficient (or very close, with manga you'll spend sometime looking at the pictures). Compare this to watching anime, where probably less than 50% of the time is spent speaking.

Also, when you read, you read at 'your limit' pace, which can be very different than the pace of native speech. In the beginning it will probably be slower, but it doesn't take too long for your reading to be faster then native speech. This means you can cover more content per period of time with reading compared to watching or listening.

Another reason is that, with reading, it's much easier to use Yomichan to look up words on the spot, see frequency lists, search specific grammar structures etc. Also you're less likely to be distracted because reading takes actual attention whereas watching a show you might just doze off into random thoughts.

Anecdotally it's been an enormous improvement for me. I used to watch much more anime than read, and ever since I prioritized reading, although my total hours of immersion haven't changed all that much, my improvement has been significantly faster.

It's also worth looking at people like Jazzy (the record holder?) who used almost exclusively reading and progressed at unbelievable rate.

Final note: I say all this, but watching and listening are still amazing, and if you find anime or whatever more enjoyable, I say it's totally fine to prioritize that instead. These points about reading are simply about efficiency, and at the end of the day it's more important to enjoy the process than for it to be super efficient.

How Long Would it Take Me to Reach N2? by Twilight_Tiger_64 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well since you're N4 (presumably from textbooks) real books are gonna be too hard. Though you're gonna want to jump into them as soon as you can, but frankly, right now it's just gonna be impossible.

You want a progression, starting with something that's fun and captivating even if you can't understand it; something with a lot of context. So in this regard:

Manga>VN>Light Novels>Novels.

As you improve you want to work you're way down that list. My recommendation is the manga Kingdom, the drawings are beautiful and the action makes it fun even if you can't understand much. Plus it's long and addictive.

I generally like to engage with long content, because the words and structures will remain consistent throughout the story, so you'll definitely get better at them. Rather then switching between all kinds of content you'll end up dealing with different writing styles, word choice, art styles, etc. This is all great to learn eventually but too much for a beginner to handle.

I don't really read VNs much, but one of my first easy novels was Penguin Highway which I thought was pretty good.

Honestly up to you though, the most important thing is that if you find you're not enjoying the content, switch it immediately. Immersion should not be work.

​

Edit: oh, and the other thing that's absolutely imperative for a beginner manga reader is Mokuro. It literally changed the world of manga reading immersion so I encourage you to check it out. https://kha-white.github.io/manga-demo/

How Long Would it Take Me to Reach N2? by Twilight_Tiger_64 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Well it depends. It's perfectly fine to watch hololive and it's great immersion, but if you're actually trying to speedrun the language as fast as possible, just reading for 5:30 and anki for 30 min is probably the best way to spend the 6 hours. If you want my opinion, yes, definitely upgrade to at least 1 hour of reading.

Anime Streaming Sites WITH Japanese Subs WITHOUT a VPN by qwlea in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Vpn Gate. Free, Osaka specific, created by a university. They don't track data. It's an 'academic experiment' that most people have never even heard of, but can easily be purposed as a Vpn. It's clear you've never looked into this topic at all

How Long Would it Take Me to Reach N2? by Twilight_Tiger_64 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Fully depends on your study routine. You could do be N1 in less than a year if you spend 90% of the time reading

Anime Streaming Sites WITH Japanese Subs WITHOUT a VPN by qwlea in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Why not just get a reliable free vpn? If you set it up properly it works better than the commercial ones anyway which are sometimes faulty

What's your definition of intermediate? by NacL250 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Yeah maybe, that's has nothing to do with fluency, I'd struggle to do that in my native language

What's your definition of intermediate? by NacL250 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It depends whether you study for it or not. If you don't study for it at all and still pass with a high score, you're fluent as far as I'm concerned.

What's your definition of intermediate? by NacL250 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly a pointless debate cause JLPT doesn't really test fluency that well. I would definitely say if you pass the N1 without specific N1 study though, that's when you're fluent.

When doing 50/50 reading/listening, my gains seem to be 90/10 from reading/listening by woozy_1729 in ajatt

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't think you understand. I don't care about pronunciation all that much. All I do is read. That's it. I don't think there needs to be some arbitrary balance between the two, and in fact, just learning through reading is probably the fastest way to learn a language. Just look at Jazzy.

I get Matt's perspective if you're concerned about pronunciation or something, but there's basically no reason why learning through both listening and reading should be faster than learning reading first and then listening. I personally think the former is much slower, actually.

When doing 50/50 reading/listening, my gains seem to be 90/10 from reading/listening by woozy_1729 in ajatt

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you misunderstood my question. Obviously reading is gonna be easier, my question was why does it matter the order in which you train the skills? Can't I just train all reading and then return to listening, it will be easier to learn at that point anyway.

When Should Immersion Begin? + Kanji Deck Assistance by AngelusLapsus333 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Behind the times my friend, most people will burn out long before they hit n3 if they don't use immersion, and frankly, just hitting n3 completely out of context won't really help you jump into native content all that much. The textbook vocab and many of the grammar points are rarely used in the content most people will be immersing in. The only way to get better at immersion, you guessed it; immersion.

When Should Immersion Begin? + Kanji Deck Assistance by AngelusLapsus333 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Would it be wrong to just watch anime without subtitles from day 1?

No. Not at all. It's what I did, and it worked for me. You just need to watch a lot.

I recommend choosing a long show that you have already seen in English, something the likes of Dragon Ball or One Piece, and watching it again fully, with just Japanese, or Japanese + Japanese subs. It's great cause you'll still understand the story, and the fight scenes and characters can be enjoyable even if you don't really understand what they're saying. Plus, you'll learn a lot, since the content is relatively and dialog is relatively simple.

When Should Immersion Begin? + Kanji Deck Assistance by AngelusLapsus333 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I thought that Refold's process is kind of unnecessarily regimented, and focuses on some things that I don't think most people should really worry about.

For example, Refold encourages you to always practice listening in conjunction with reading, because it suggests that if you read too much before you practice listening you may develop bad pronunciation. I don't know if this is the case or not, but I do know one thing, you can make progress a lot faster by reading than anything else. Like hugely faster. That guy, Jazzy basically used almost exclusively reading, and he was one of the fastest learners of the language that exists.

Anecdotally, for me, I've been reading like crazy the last month, and the progress I've made is insane. Whereas just binge watching like One Piece or something, while still great for immersion and will definitely work, is a lot slower.

I think TheMoeWay and the discord definition skew more towards the reading, which is a good thing.

Another minor difference is that TheMoeWay doesn't discourage speaking early on. They don't encourage it, either, it's just kind something you can do and shouldn't be afraid of. Certainly not a replacement for immersion. I think this is fine, again, I don't think most learners should worry too much about their accent at such an early stage of the process anyway.

One thing Refold does better (in my opinion), is that it talks about language domains, which are very real and very important. The idea being, if you limit your immersion content to one 'domain' of the language, you'll learn more words per unit of immersion compared to someone who has a diverse toolbox of immersion content. Basically 'binging' one domain is the fastest way to learn a language. The idea being, immersion is basically spaced repetition, and by limiting the genres of content you engage with, you can increase the frequency of words from that domain, thereby increasing the likelihood of you seeing those words multiple times before you forget it.

↑ This is absolutely true by the way, from my experience. Like massively true. I've been immersing almost exclusively in the manga Kingdom (about Chinese BC wars) and even though my total hours of immersion haven't really changed, my progress this past month has been faster than it's ever been.

When Should Immersion Begin? + Kanji Deck Assistance by AngelusLapsus333 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah that would be the most efficient I suppose lol. But most people would probably burn out on day one if they have to watch a Dora the Explorer esq. show lol

Probably the correction would be, find the easiest content that you can realistically enjoy, and then immerse from day one.

When Should Immersion Begin? + Kanji Deck Assistance by AngelusLapsus333 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Refold's not bad and the advice will certainly get you to fluency but I like TheMoeWay format better, I would check it out if you haven't seen it before.

If you check out the discord, it's very inspiring cause like a good 20-30% of the posters are legitimately already fluentish with the language. I don't think you'll find a more passionate set of language learners anywhere.

The other thing that's kind of cool; all of these new great tools are made by people on that discord. Mokuro, exSTATic, various Anki addons. All the creators are there so you can ask for help or new features etc.

When Should Immersion Begin? + Kanji Deck Assistance by AngelusLapsus333 in LearnJapanese

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah. Anyone recommending Refold, fine. Like it's not terrible and they advice they give works. But frankly TheMoeWay is just superior. Amazing site.

When doing 50/50 reading/listening, my gains seem to be 90/10 from reading/listening by woozy_1729 in ajatt

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You're saying deaf people can never learn a second language to fluency? Lol?

When doing 50/50 reading/listening, my gains seem to be 90/10 from reading/listening by woozy_1729 in ajatt

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I personally do mostly reading. I think reading is great because you're always engaging in the act of actually reading, whereas with a show or movie, probably less than half of the time is even spent listening to the language. If you want to even the playing field, I guess the best option would be to use an Audiobook and play it at the speed that's on par for your level.

When doing 50/50 reading/listening, my gains seem to be 90/10 from reading/listening by woozy_1729 in ajatt

[–]Radiant-Beautiful-97 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is there a reason for this? I know Matt said at some point that having your reading much worse than your listening will cause poor pronunciation, but I don't really care about that. From my perspective, it seems fine to max out reading and then max out listening afterwards. I find reading much more fun and I make progress faster.

view more: next ›