Welcome to TextFugu and Happy New Year!

How long did it take you to learn Swedish?

Check out the following links:

Guide for using Anki 2 with TextFugu:

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/guide-to-using-anki-2-with-textfugu/

Track your progress and share your ideas/concerns when you finish a season (gain a level ^_^):

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/textfugu-season-completions-for-great-motivation-of-heart

List of additional Japanese resources you may find helpful:

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/japanese-learning-resources/

List of Common Errors in TextFugu:

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/common-errors-in-textfugu/

がんばって！

I you’ll find that reading Hiragana isn’t so hard if you keep practicing. Katakana tends to be harder as you generally have less exposure to it, but Kanji is the real pain of Japanese learning. It will make you want to melt your eyes so you don’t have to worry about them any more. LOL.

Welcome to TextFugu and Happy New Year!

Check out the following links:

Guide for using Anki 2 with TextFugu:

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/guide-to-using-anki-2-with-textfugu/

Track your progress and share your ideas/concerns when you finish a season (gain a level ^_^):

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/textfugu-season-completions-for-great-motivation-of-heart

List of additional Japanese resources you may find helpful:

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/japanese-learning-resources/

List of Common Errors in TextFugu:

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/common-errors-in-textfugu/

がんばって！

A much more simple explanation for “Japanese to English, NOT English to Japanese,” and more in line with what most people mean when they say that is as follows:

When using something like Anki you’ll be presented with:

ありがとう　(Japanese)

You respond with the translation:

Thank you (English)

This is Japanese to English. Reading Japanese and translating it to English.

Where as if you had:

Thank you (English)

And you respond with:

ありがとう　(Japanese)

This is English to Japanese.

The difference is between what is called ‘recall’ and ‘recognition’.

English to Japanese is recall. This is harder because you have to actually generate or recall the Japanese fully yourself; so you have to know every syllable of it and exactly how it’s put together. And if you are typing/writing it, you’ll also have to recall which characters to use as well.

Japanese to English is recognition. You simply need to recognize the Japanese word and come up with the meaning. This is easier because the Japanese is already there. You don’t have to generate abstract sounds and characters yourself, you already have all that there, you simply have to link it to the English word it represents, which you are already familiar with.

By doing this you’re able to learn greater volumes of vocab at a time and by using them often enough the recall will eventually happen on it’s own without much added effort.

Of course the natural result of this is that you can read and understand others Japanese well before you can speak and write your own Japanese. But that’s typically how it happens anyway.

I know this is a really long post, but please read it all if you are having trouble, as it will help you a lot. I say this confidently as someone who has studied linguistics and taught English to non-native speakers. It works.

There are two ways you could deal with this. That said, Option 2 is best.

Option 1: Stop doing lessons and focus only on doing your vocab and Kanji for now. Once you have a grip on these and the number of reviews you have each day becomes fairly breezy, then you start your lessons again. If they start to become overwhelming again, stop your lessons and repeat as needed.

Option 2: Keep doing Anki every day, maybe skipping a day occasionally if you must. Continue with your lessons and keep adding new decks to Anki as they show up. The big key to this option is making a conscious decision to stop caring how many items in Anki you get wrong. Take on a ‘whatever’ attitude with your Anki deck. This makes a huge difference and is key to this option.

Option 1 is the slow methodical method, which suits some people just fine. Where as others will feel like killing themselves to make it stop. If you really like Option 1, go for it, but otherwise stick to Option 2, as it’s actually more effective.

That said, you should use Option 1 regardless of which way you prefer until you hit Season 3. As the content in Seasons 1-2, including vocabulary, needs to be learned well, which requires you to be thorough and methodical.

Once you hit Season 3, switch to Option 2, unless you really like Option 1 (and don’t care how long it takes for you to become fluent).

Now to fully explain Option 2 and how it works:

As I said before, the key is to keep doing Anki regularly, but to quit caring about your results. Don’t spend much time on it at all. Don’t stare at a card until you can remember what it means, as that tells you that you don’t know it well enough yet. So if it doesn’t come to you immediately, mark it as wrong and move on. When they come back up, don’t mark them as wrong again, mark them as hard so they’ll show up again tomorrow. If it comes to you immediately, always hit Easy. Don’t worry about how many you get wrong, at all. Set a certain time for Anki review, say 10-15 mins, and then stop. Focus on going through as many as you can, rather than getting them correct.

What this is doing is simulating immersion, to a degree. If you were in Japan, you would be bombarded by heaps of words and would have no idea what most of them meant, but eventually as you see/hear them over and over they will start to stick. Once again, don’t worry about how many do or don’t. It’s not important at this stage. As for Kanji, focus more on the meanings than the readings, but still don’t worry too much about them.

Your main focus should be the grammar that’s being taught in the lessons. That’s the important stuff. This is what you focus on.

You don’t need to know many words (or any Kanji) to be able to practice grammar. As long as you know 5 nouns, 5 adjectives, and 5 verbs, you’re all set. Write them down in a list and learn them extremely well (Might want to use your passion list to choose the words).

If you know grammar well, you can speak or write anything you want, you’ll just have to look up the specific words you need for the situation to fill in the blanks, which is really easy to do, and something you’ll still be doing occasionally even after you become fluent. Grammar is key.

Even if you learn every single vocab word available on TF, they won’t do you any good, unless you can string them together to form functional sentences. So focus on this part first and when you can say anything you want using what limited vocab you have, then you can start focusing on expanding your vocab and will be able to actually use all the new words you are learning, so you won’t forget them and should be very confident in practicing with them.

I don’t know if Koichi actually says any of this, as most of my time is currently being spent focusing on WaniKani (as I’m paying by month) rather than doing the lessons here, but I believe this is similar to what he has in mind when he starts adding so many vocab. He’s not expecting you to remember it all, but wants you to start being exposed to a lot of vocab so your brain will start to slowly absorb it through exposure as you go.

You will never become fluent if you spend all your time perfecting a relatively short list of words (2,000 is short when compared to every word in a language). You need to get to the point that you can start reading or listening to native Japanese. At that point you will be blown away by how many words you start learning with little effort, as you come across them time and again and your brain realizes there’s actually a practical reason to remember them. The key to getting there is grammar.

In the mean time, make sure you download Rikaisama (firefox) or Rikaikun (Chrome) as this will translate any words you can’t remember that are in the lessons, by mousing over them. Once again, don’t focus on the word, focus on how it’s being used, and practice the usage by inserting your own nouns, adjectives, and verbs.

Once you have grammar down well, you’ll need to focus your attention on Kanji next.

If you’ve been focusing mostly on Kanji meanings in Anki, while learning your grammar, you’ll find that your brain will store meanings much easier than readings, so you should have been able to absorb a lot of meanings for a lot of Kanji, just through the constant quick reviews I described earlier.

You won’t know most of the readings very well, but that doesn’t matter. If you know their meanings, you will still be able to understand Japanese sentences that use them (just can’t read them out loud yet :P).

So now that grammar is solid for the most part, you can start focusing on the readings of the Kanji. If you know grammar and the meanings of a lot of Kanji, you can start reading actual sentences, which will help you retain the readings so much more than simply using Anki or even WaniKani.

Nouns, adjectives, and verbs are mostly wrote in Kanji, so as you learn your Kanji, you are expanding your vocab as well. The rest is mostly particles and grammar stuff, which you should already know by now.

So keep learning more Kanji at this point and continue looking things up in native sentences or while constructing your own on Lang-8. Get on Skype and start talking to native speakers, or find them in your own town. If you do these things and keep with it, you will become fluent! ^_^

If you were after just 4 months I think I would kinda hate you… LOL.

I’ve been learning Japanese for so long, but I haven’t been able to stick with it long enough to get anyway solid.