@michicachan999: “The guy in the first video” is missingno15 himself ;)

@missingno15: You said in your video you were taking a year off to focus on programming. What exactly are you working on? Just curious :)

Also, it’s weird seeing you on video for the first time after having “known” you for a few years already!

Also, thanks again for Tobira, it’s pretty good :D Still not finished it as I’ve been busy with uni stuff for most of the time since I got it, but I’m getting there; about halfway through atm.

@MisterM2402 Please excuse my untidy hair in that video. I should have gotten a haircut when I had the chance. I’m working as a Junior Full Stack Software Engineer contractor on a project for a startup in which if I were to divulge that information, I would have to kill you. And then commit sudoku. I’m primarily a Rails dev (because that’s all I know…so far at least). I am however, rebuilding my personal website so that it’s a Rails app which may very closely resemble Danny Choo’s website in layout so that its not a goddam static single scrolling page.

@michicachan999 Unfortunately, I don’t normally make Youtube videos, but when I do, it’s stuff like this. Anyway it’s basically the reverse of what you said earlier: “…in knowing what a kanji sounds like you can get a gist of whatever vocab comes your way?”. Learn a ton of vocabulary, then you will naturally start to pick up the readings for kanji because you will start to see trends. If there’s a word with an irregular reading, then just straight up learn that word’s irregular reading and remember that its read differently. And then by knowing kanji readings by learning a ton of words, you can more or less guess like 75% of the time how to read a word even if you encounter a word you haven’t seen before. If you read this article from Tofugu , I am heavily opinionated towards the “Vocabulary & Experience” Camp and my video is an attempt to explain that within my 5 minute constraint. Koichi argues that the latter, (the bit after: “You can see the logic there, and why this actually does end up working. But, I’d like to argue that it’s better to go the other direction.”) is the better way, but I argue that this way is better because the way that Koichi describes presents a kind of n+1 problem, you will do something like as memorize meanings and then readings for kanji separately which is a bit redundant and can slow you down whereas you do something a little bit more complex by compressing that all together by learning words since you can learn both meanings and readings through learning vocab AND you have usable knowledge which makes this way is more efficient. Also even after you go and learn all the meanings and readings of kanji, you still end up having to learn vocab anyway.

n+1 problem doesn’t make sense to the layman so let me use a bit of contrived numbers.

The amount of 常用漢字 you need to learn is about 2200. That is 2200 meanings or more, but let’s just say 1 meaning per 漢字, so 2200. Then you need to learn the readings, let’s assume that half of 漢字 has one reading and the other half has 2 readings. 1100 + 4400 = 5500. Then you go through the process of learning vocab. Let’s say that was 10,000.

So that’s:
2200(漢字の意味) +
5500（漢字の読み） +
10,000（語彙） =
17,700 items you need to learn.

As opposed to:

10,000（語彙）=
10,000 items you need to learn.

So why go through 7,700 items first before going into the meat of the 10,000 useful items when you can go straight to the 10,000 useful items and you’ll pick up the other 7,700 items along the way.

NOW I UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS A BIT OF A CONTRIVED EXAMPLE AS THERE ARE MANY HOLES TO THE NUMERICAL EXAMPLE, but this is the best way I can explain it’s efficiency at 2:30am in the morning. I also like how explaining methodology turned into me debating instead of explaining so I apologize for that. I do hope though that it was a little bit more understandable. Also @MisterM2402 will help me out with this.

tl;dr for everyone: vocab – efficient. heisig – inefficient

tl;dr for Developers, Software Engineers etc. : Heisig approach = N+1 problem, learning vocab = eager loading.

To wrap up, an unrelated video. Speaking of Tokyo Girls Style, anyone going to JPOP Summit this weekend in San Francisco? We can totally meet up if you want. Or if you’re in LA and want to talk about Japanese learning (OR MAYBE IDOLS ALSO..!??!??!) in person, I’m here until the beginning of August. Just go to my website which I linked in the beginning of this post and let me know.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 4 months ago by  missingno15. Reason: since when do href tags need absolute paths

Everything you need (I hope) is here
http://newschoolkaidan.com/learn-japanese-vocabulary/

@michicachan

The best way to find out is to try it, methinks ;)

@missingno15

Oh excellent, thanks! I will definitely give that a lookover!

@Ryuukun

You’re 100% right that it’s a highly individualised process! There is no right or wrong. Although I think it is good for people to share what worked for them. It can give you ideas. What I’m going to call the “learning through exposure” method is great for some folks, but people like you or I (I’m guessing you’re similar, anyway) thrive on the structure and order of the Heisig method.

I found the RTK method to be really engaging and easy, which is probably why a lot of people do it. It may well not be the most efficient way but it can give a sense of accomplishment and establish good routines and habits that can be applied in later study. I think trying to dive head first into heavy vocab study is daunting and difficult especially if you haven’t established the practice.

For some though (an I include myself here), RTK probably was the most efficient way to get me to know what I really needed to know. Most of us have a goal of fluency (however you define it) and RTK may not be the most direct path to that, but others also have some intermediate gals that deviate from the straight line path from complete ignorance to perfection. I was living in Japan when I started learning and, though conversational fluency was a goal, I had more immediate problems; reading labels in the grocery store, train schedules, road signs, the buttons on my washing machine, etc. RTK really helped me there; it gave me the ability to deduce meaning from the short bits of written Japanese that were scattered all around me.