Learning Japanese to Read

[Anonymous No.14979050]

Yesterday I saw an anon say that he learnt Japanese to read in it. I've wanted to do the same for a while, but I haven't found anyone else with the same motivation. If you're reading this, or anyone else that has done the same (for Japanese or any other language), do you have any tips on how I can go about doing this? How long did it take? What resources did you use?

[Anonymous No.14979112]

>>14979050
I learned Japanese to read eroge and Light Novels. It took me around a year or two to get to the point where I could pick up anything at random and easily get into it, but even longer than that to get to the point where I actually could feel 'confident' with my abilities, if that makes sense. I basically just went over some grammar sites and then started to read native material. Immersion is the main key to language learning. Listen and read to anything in the language that interests you.

Japanese is notorious for being hard to learn for English speakers, but to me I find that it is way easier to learn something like Japanese over Spanish, there are way less tenses or conjugations you have to keep track of.

[Anonymous No.14979117]

>>14979050
I'm still learning, but if you want a partner to help you learn the fundamentals Japanese and a bit more, I'm willing to talk with you and help you through it. I know resources and other things and I can answer all these questions if you drop a contact. You'd be helping me by doing so if you choose to because I'm very bored during this quarantine.

[Anonymous No.14979131]

>>14979117
fundamentals of Japanese*

[Anonymous No.14979755]

>>14979050
Anon pls

[Anonymous No.14979785]

>>14979112
I think its usually said its harder do to the aids writing system. Also I guess its partially what you find harder. IF tenses or conjugations arent hard for you (there isnt even that many in spanish) spanish is 1000x easier given its more familiar vocabulary and latin writing system. Of course, if you have been inundated with weebspeak through anime, may not be the case.

[Anonymous No.14979794]

>I haven't found anyone else with the same motivation.

Isn't there DJT and itazuraneko?

Also you don't have problems of language, you have problems of willpower. I reccomend you to read Baumeister's Willpower.

[Anonymous No.14979813]

>>14979112
>Japanese is notorious for being hard to learn for English speakers

What about non-English speakers? Is it any easier for other groups? I'm from Hungary and agglutination and such are quite familiar to me already. The linguistic distance between any European language and moon is obviously huge, but still, I imagine some languages are more like it structurally speaking than others.

[Anonymous No.14979824]

I can read a little Japanese. Use the >>>/int/ wiki of free resources. Get a notebook and teach yourself hiragana and katakana, just take a few hours a day and write five letters down 200 times or 300 times, however many you can fit on a page, subvocalizing the pronunciation. Once you've gone through the whole alphabet make some flashcards. Try a hiragana/katakana app like Memrise. You have to study this shit every day or else you will forget everything you learned.

Skip "Remembering the Kanji" or whatever. I did that whole fucking book. Took me months. Don't remember anything. It's crap. Instead work on your vocab with Anki 2000 core deck. Do it every day. Then once your vocab is good try using Genki to learn grammar.

I can't really read adult books yet, but I can read and type Japanese text messages pretty well.

[Anonymous No.14979830]

>>14979813
Does Hungarian present any differences between transitive and intransitive verbs like Japanese does?

[Anonymous No.14979841]

>>14979824
>I can't really read adult books yet, but I can read and type Japanese text messages pretty well.
Useless and gay Reddit-tier post.
Get back on the grind before you try giving others shitty tips.

[Anonymous No.14979883]

>>14979841
Well I live in Japan and I can speak Japanese so...

[Anonymous No.14979889]

>>14979830
Kinda, but not really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitive_verb#In_Hungarian

[Anonymous No.14979892]

>>14979883
>so...

[Anonymous No.14979916]

>>14979050
After 2 years I can read Harry Potter in Japanese.

My theory is there's a level you reach where it becomes self-sustaining. It's the point at which reading is comfortable enough that you can read enough to provide for both learning and upkeep of your knowledge. Before that is pure suffering. It's the beginner hell where you know enough to see it as a serious investment of time, but with all that knowledge you can't do anything with it, so it's discouraging and useless. After that point, however, you can learn by reading actual books, and it's both useful and engaging. I remember vocab a hell of a lot better when I need to remember it because it'll come up in my reading again soon, rather than just anki grinding. but you need the anki grinding just to get to this point.

(HP is widely recommended as babby first book in any second language. It's a graded reader--so it starts being written simply and ages up through the series. Plus you have enough context cues to figure shit out. Manga isn't good for it--it's primarily just dialogue, which is far simpler than actual prose and has more limited vocabulary.

I can watch grammar videos or read grammar books all day, and it just doesn't stick until I see it used in the wild. Then it clicks. "Oh, that's what that shit is for."

[Anonymous No.14979945]

>>14979112
I was a linguist for the military. I'm no longer fluent in any of these languages but I have studied Japanese and Korean to the point of fluency. I'm currently working on German and have dropped Hebrew, Vietnamese and Chinese. I didn't drop them due to difficulty, more lack of interest. I can confirm Japanese, at least for me, was the easiest to learn of all the languages though I believe that was due in some part to learning when anime was taking off in the late 90s/early 00s. Hebrew, last I checked, was categorized as a level 3 language. Which is strange because it's by and large the most difficult language I've tried to learn in almost all facets. Korean is supposedly a cat 5 with English because of all of its slang and honorifics but honestly it's pretty fucking cake in terms of being able to speak it and understand it relatively easily.

[Anonymous No.14979949]

>>14979916
>My theory is there's a level you reach where it becomes self-sustaining. It's the point at which reading is comfortable enough that you can read enough to provide for both learning and upkeep of your knowledge.

I think that applies to like first time polyglots. I learn languages pretty easily now because I'm in this mode even if I don't know any of the language.

[Anonymous No.14979953]

>>14979883
If you can't read Dazai or Soseki, you don't know Japanese.
Also, I've never heard of or seen a non-Japanese people who lives in Japan who's not either a former delusional weeaboo or an idiot.

[Anonymous No.14979962]

>>14979916
>After 2 years I can read Harry Potter in Japanese.
>Harry Potter
>in Japanese
What kind of shitty reddit-type thread have I jumped into?

[Anonymous No.14979964]

>>14979945
Why did you find Hebrew the most difficult? Also is Hangeul the best writing system?

[Anonymous No.14979976]

>>14979964
>best writing system
Best for what?

[Anonymous No.14979986]

>>14979962
>dude you can't start with doctor suess. you have to jump right into moby dick! you redditor!
nice kneejerk. i already gave my reasoning.
>>14979949
yes, it is babby first second language, outside of attempts to be forcefed spanish in school (i proudly cannot speak a word of it. fuck you i didn't want to learn spanish.)

[Anonymous No.14979994]

>>14979953
I can read this, so I do know Japanese.

[Anonymous No.14980010]

>>14979964
Hangeul is incredibly efficient for pronunciation but it's not so much the writing system that is the best as much as Korea has an actual language board that makes sure people honor that shit and doesn't start making up bullshit pronunciations. Hebrew is just a fucking pain in the ass as I can't find any similarities to it and any popular languages. Usually when you are learning languages you draw from experience. Even if a grammatical rule is different in said language, you can say oh it works like that but is different. Hebrew has so much shit that modifies pronunciation and grammar, that combined with a unique alphabet, it's just an overall pain in the ass. It's practically alien compared to every other language I've studied and I've even dabbled in Farsi and Arabic, though not enough to claim I studied them.

[Anonymous No.14980018]

>>14980010
>practically alien
hmm.

[Anonymous No.14980033]

>>14980018
Trust me I've thought about it lmao. But seriously when I started learning last year I was like what the fuck how is this possibly a medium difficulty language? It has virtually nothing in common with any other world language other than vague similarities in script while the rest are very similar.

[Anonymous No.14980036]

Mattvsjapan

[Anonymous No.14980043]

>>14979964
He's bullshitting

[Anonymous No.14980053]

>>14980043
How am I bullshitting?

[Anonymous No.14980084]

i know this thread is about japanese specifically, but im wondering what language(s) would be best to learn for reading non fiction/philosophical/historical/religious pieces of work
I've studied many different languages but haven't used the majority of them outside of /int/, other socialization websites, and occasional online games so my vocab is mostly slang, video game termonology, and slightly above conversational level topics.

the answer can be japanese, but any other answer with reasoning would be very welcome. thinking russian, latin, greek, french, msa arabic and/or hindi
it would be very easy to start Japanese or Russian because I own quite a few language learning books in them and I've got a foundation in Russian already

[Anonymous No.14980089]

>>14980033
do jews have good /lit/, though?

[Anonymous No.14980097]

>>14980084
Latin or ancient Greek.

[Anonymous No.14980100]

>>14979986
I don't think there's any problem with reading Japanese children's fiction like 銀河鉄道の夜 or LNs like Haganai and Haruhi as a beginner-level learner, but what I do object to is reading translations of foreign works because of how written works of fiction are tied to both the culture and the language in which they were created.
>>14979994
I can read emojis and IKEA manuals too.

[Anonymous No.14980112]

>>14980036
(((matt)))
>>14980097
Are there any methods for learning those languages besides the traditional memorize declensions tables-read-consult the dictionary-translate method?

[Anonymous No.14980127]

>>14980100
>Uuuuuh muh translations dey loose soooo moch uh da meeening! Da Qu'oran is da most bootiful book in all da wurld u just gotta study 4 ten years n den u will no! Hurrrrrrr!

[Anonymous No.14980143]

>>14980127
I mean, I think it’s pretty counter productive to learn a language to then only read something that’s translated from another language with it. You are learning it for something, right?

[Anonymous No.14980145]

>>14980089
Nah I just do it because of delusions of having foreign waifus unironically. I'll likely just move to Germany and fuck a couple girls and die single.

[Anonymous No.14980154]

>>14980145
>calling 3d sluts "waifus"
Please step off this site.

[Anonymous No.14980159]

>>14980154
Well they are waifus on TV then I find the best I can irl. Stop being pedantic.

[Anonymous No.14980162]

>>14980112
He's not a Jew. I suspect he is Irish ... He's got that celtoiberian phenotype

[Anonymous No.14980171]

>>14980143
I'm learning a language for my girlfriend, and we can already communicate well. So I'm at the level of proficiency I want.

[Anonymous No.14980174]

>>14980162
His grandfather was buried in a Jewish graveyard. I'm pretty sure he's Jewish.

[Anonymous No.14980217]

>>14980145
>Nah
kikes btfo

[Anonymous No.14980354]

>>14979112
Complete bullshit. English is a European language closely related not just grammatically but semantically to the others. The difference for you was solely in motivation. Japanese is completely alien and its verb conjugations are alien too. Everything in Spanish is comparatively readily understandable and intuitive, most of the concepts have exact equivalents in English (of the same root).

[Anonymous No.14980366]

>>14979813
Nah if you don't speak and East Asian or Southeast Asian language then it'll be very alien.

[Anonymous No.14980373]

>>14979813
No, Japan is pretty hard for most languagues universally, except maybe those who use chinese script. I assume he is talking about reading, because linguistic wise, its not that hard, but their character system is completely fucked due to tradition and using multiple different character sets.

[Anonymous No.14980487]

>>14980174
Source

[Anonymous No.14980506]

>>14980354
Nah it's not bullshit. I also found Japanese easier than germanic and latin based languages. When it comes to overall communication it's way easier to pick up japanse than some even closely related to English. Their rootwords are so consistent you can infer the meaning hundreds of words you've never heard before regardless of conjugation.

[Anonymous No.14980519]

>>14980084
English, don't listen to the other anon. Analytics are the only important philosophers today

[Anonymous No.14980606]

I studied it mainly because I wanted to read untranslated visual novels but in the process it also rekindled my interest in literature in general.

Started with Anki Core 10k, Tae Kim's Grammar, and Heisig's first volume of Remembering the Kanji.
Tae Kim was good for a quick crash course but didn't cover everything so I ended up using an Anki deck based on the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar to supplement it.
Remembering the Kanji is good as a crutch to remember kanji at first but I wouldn't call it necessary. Honestly I've forgotten 90% of the mnemonics by now and a lot of them didn't even correspond to the actual meaning of the kanji.

After a few months of grinding I started reading Yotsubato. I used the reading pack for volume 1 (probably still linked on the DJT page somewhere I'm guessing) which contained explanations for the vocabulary and grammar points in each chapter. It was pretty painful and slow but after the 1st volume I managed without the reading pack and just looked stuff up on Jisho when I saw a word I didn't know. Think I read like 5 volumes or so before putting it down for other stuff.

After that I moved onto other shounen manga. Basic harem shit like To Love Ru. I think I also read a few volumes of Cromartie, which was surprisingly easy. For listening at that point I was mainly still watching anime with English subs but I'd always try to turn them off when possible and go as far as I could without relying on them. Usually only succeeded with simple SoL stuff, anything more complicated than that I could only pick up bits and pieces.
I also started a new Anki deck in addition to the Core10k one in order to start mining words. Jisho + Rikaisama addon made it easy to import new cards.

After a few more months I started reading some basic moe visual novels like Flyable Heart and Amagami. Moved on to some slightly more complicated stuff like Maruto. after another month or two. Also started reading some light novels (Spice and Wolf).

After I pretty much just read a lot of manga and visual novels every day while mining new words and grinding Anki. Didn't start reading books much until last year when I finished Tanizaki's Naomi, Kawabata's Snow Country, Ranpo's 孤島の鬼, a few Akutagawa stories and some contemporary stuff. Now reading Dogra Magra by Yumeno Kyūsaku after hearing about it from a denpa game. Still reading visual novels and some light/web novels pretty much daily as well. I stopped using my mined deck because I wanted to move on from drilling Japanese-English associations and have started just using Japanese to Japanese online dictionaries and encyclopedias instead.

Anyways my best piece of general advice - pick a study method and stick with it. Don't obsess about optimal methods like DJT autists, but feel free to revise your methods once you've gotten experience to know what works for you and what doesn't. Be patient the first few moths - after you start reading native material studying becomes pretty fun.

[Anonymous No.14980700]

>>14979050
https://itazuraneko.neocities.org/learn/learnmain.html

[Anonymous No.14980839]

>>14980487
Some post on Warosu
>>14980519
All of the world's wisdom is contained in the Vedas, so no point in reading re-stated thoughts about Beings and flow and the One.
>>14980606
beginning is literally me.
except that I ended up getting deeper into moe SOL manga/VNs and ecchi stuff after telling myself I was originally planning on learning Japanese to read pre-war philosophy and literary fiction.

[Anonymous No.14981956]

>>14980839
>All of the world's wisdom is contained in the Vedas
in the Holy Bible*

[Anonymous No.14982343]

>>14981956
The Upanishads contain more explicit metaphysical discourse than the Bible does.

[Anonymous No.14982454]

>>14979794
I never said anything about willpower. I was just looking for guidance so I know how to structure myself.

[Anonymous No.14982486]

>>14982454
Just learn kana, skim thru one of the grammar guides on the itazuraneko site, read this stuff
https://djtguide.neocities.org/reading%20list.html
and consult the dictionary.
Flashcarding optional

[Anonymous No.14982497]

>>14980354
For me the alienness is what makes it easy though.

[Anonymous No.14982546]

>>14982497
I'd say Japanese is foreign enough to never be mistaken for a European language, but not foreign enough so as to be impossible to pronounce or to have extremely complex declension or agglutination rules. In addition, kanji don't really look as pictorial as Egyptian or Maya hieroglyphs, so they're easily recognized as words, rather than as pictures.
Then again, maybe I'm just a dumb weeb.

[Anonymous No.14983097]

>>14979824
Did you follow Heisig's method for Remembering the Kanji or did you wing it by doing your own thing? I'm going through the book right now (I can confidently recall and write about 620 kanji after learning them through Heisig's method) and I've found it pretty useful not only for learning kanji but for figuring out vocabulary. I tried doing Anki first but memorizing words with kanji without knowing any was hard because they all looked like nonsensical scribbles. Now that I know a few I can sometimes guess the meaning of a word based on what its kanji means by itself, which makes memorizing vocabulary a lot easier and much more pleasant.

[Anonymous No.14983114]

>>14982546
I think the ridiculous ease of pronunciation really helps, as opposed to something like Russian where I just can't make those sounds with my mouth

[Anonymous No.14983131]

>>14983097
I did follow his method. Made a flash card for every single kanji. Made a stupid little story for every single kanji. While I was reading the book and doing the method I felt like I was making real progress. I even stopped a few times and went back to check and see if I was retaining the knowledge. But by the end of the book I had a stack of flashcards and stories but couldn't remember shit. Anki was much more useful in learning kanji, and Anki was 10x more useful because of the listening aspect.

By the time I moved to Japan my listening comprehension was shit, but thanks to Anki I could pick out certain words because they had been read to me over and over.

[Anonymous No.14983154]

>>14979117
my discord is Joe Swan#3146 can you help me with japanese?

[Anonymous No.14983161]

>>14983097
I never get why people learn Kanji by itself when studying Japanese. It's way easier to learn Japanese the same way you'd learn any language: learning vocabulary. When you learn a lot of vocabulary, the different readings of the kanji all come intuitively, plus you feel like you are actually learning the language rather than simply brute-force memorization.

[Anonymous No.14983164]

>>14980354
cope

[Anonymous No.14983202]

>>14983161
Usually one already knows the "alphabet" of a language before starting to learn vocabulary. I think kanji is somewhat of an exception in the sense that trying to learn absolutely everything about them (radicals, stroke order, readings) is too much and too hard to do in a vacuum (I do think vocabulary is particularly great for learning kunyomis/onyomis), but learning their basic meaning and maybe how to write them through Heisig or whatever other method before diving full-on into vocabulary seems more comfortable and logical to me.

[Anonymous No.14983880]

So many anons who learned Japanese, congrats to all. I've been quitting and then restarting constantly for years without ever leaving beginner hell.

[Anonymous No.14984914]

>>14982343
No.

[Anonymous No.14985271]

>>14979050
Learned Japanese for a few years in high school along with doing a long-term exchange there towards the end, before becoming an LDS missionary to Japan (Yes, mormons, reeee, whatever. If you work in a linguistics field for a government organization, ask your boss about the inexplicable language tuition anomaly that is the MTC).

Japanese has a relatively low barrier to entry but it is one of the most difficult languages to master for english speakers. That makes everyone scared to death of studying it, which is understandable but still stupid. You just need to want to study it. I don't care what form that takes - Light novels, novels, "I wanna know what Naruto's saying," whatever. Just have a specific goal in mind. If you really want to learn Japanese, you can, but don't bullshit your way into thinking you do, "Oh, it would be fun I guess", you need to actually want to. Expect to spend years studying it.

You're learning primarily for the sake of reading. Get Hiragana and Katakana down as soon as you can. You should be able to do this in two weeks or less. In the meantime, cram grammar, sentence structure, verb conjugation and adjectives. Switch from romanized material to Hiragana and Katakana as fast as you can - Romanization standards are numerous and inconsistent. Learn the damn writing system. Duolingo... caaaan help you, but it is supplemental at best.

[Anonymous No.14985331]

>>14985271
Ok but what exactly lies in that space
Hiragana, katakana -> Tae Kim/Genki/Core6k -> ??? -> Close enough to fluency
that nobody ever talks about?
I’m sure it takes years of stuff, but what exactly happens between that time when you can kind of start to understand some sentences in manga n stuff and when you can actually easily plow through real literary works and have natural-sounding conversations about complex topics?

[Anonymous No.14986041]

>>14985331
> -> ??? ->
reading and listening to lot of material. obviously you shouldn't wait to finish core6k to do this.

[Anonymous No.14986979]

>>14986041
>reading and listening to lot of material.
If I wanted some vague-ass advice like that, I'd have just gone back to reading Khatzumoto's blog entries on the power of tiny gains and epic brainpower.

I was expecting something a bit more detailed.

[Anonymous No.14986990]

>>14986979
Khatzumoto is based. Just watch more anime and read eroge (pref. kyounyuu but loli is fine too) and you'll eventually get there.
If you still gotta ask till when, just do it more.

[Anonymous No.14987007]

>>14986990
>kyounyuu
It's kyonyuu, not kyounyuu, you dumb failed JSL

[Anonymous No.14987127]

>>14986979
>I was expecting something a bit more detailed.
There is no general answer more detailed than that, we don't know your tastes. Start with easier manga and ramp up the difficulty as you go.