Well I actually started TextFugu last year and nearly made it to season 4 (I have had a lot of different Japanese training during the nine years prior to that, but it’s been very sporadic). I wasn’t doing WaniKani at the time and was learning the Kanji in TextFugu through Anki as it suggests. I then had a lot of life things that happened that once again interrupted my studies for quite a few months.

Since I was only up to Season 4 last time I decided to start from the beginning again, knowing it wouldn’t take as much time to get back where I was. This time however, I started WaniKani as well. Previously I hadn’t realized that WaniKani was done by Tofugu, so even though I saw a lot of people talking about it, I thought it was a separate system, so I only wanted to focus on one at a time. When I came back, I read a post that said it was designed by Koichi and was a lot better than the content on TextFugu, so I gave it a try, and they were right.

So this time I skipped all the Kanji and Radical decks that were presented in TextFugu and just learned Kanji through WaniKani as it is a much better system.

That said I have now partially changed my mind on it. I’ve found that with WaniKani I’m having a lot of problems remembering Kanji at the Enlightened level, so I’m thinking I need to be doing more reviewing early on before I allow such large gaps without review. As SRS is really effective, but it generally doesn’t take into consideration that different people learn and remember things at different rates. So it really works well for most people, but others (like me I believe) need a little more, where as some others could do well with even less reviews (or more time in between).

So since I have now gotten farther in WaniKani than I have TextFugu (been putting more time into WK as it’s more enjoyable), I’m starting to go back and add the early Kanji and Kanji Vocab decks from TF to Anki. I’ll keep doing this until I catch up, but I’m going to make sure I only add things that I have reviewed first on WK.

That said, the Kanji are presented in a completely different order, but from what I have seen, most of the Kanji on TF are within the first 10 levels of WK. So if I have a few Kanji that pop up in Anki that I haven’t covered in WK, I’ll still do them, but I won’t try very hard to commit them to memory.

I’ve also decided to go ahead and add all of the TF Radicals to Anki, as they are fairly easy to remember and it will speed up my lessons when they pop up in WK.

TL;DR Version:

Started WK, skipped TF Kanji and Kanji Vocab.

Decided I needed more Kanji practice than WK gave.

Added TF Kanji back in, but only ones lower than my WK level.

Added all TF Radicals like a BOSS! ^_^

Welcome to TextFugu!

Answers:

1) Depends, what do you mean by seamlessly?

2) No, no Skype group and yeah the Teamspeak is dead, it apparently wasn’t very good when it was up anyway, I never joined it. You’d be better off looking at the WaniKani forum for something like that.

3) Once you have completed TextFugu, continue with WaniKani.

Continue grammar here: http://www.imabi.net/

Continue vocab with: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1102215805

Practice Japanese writing by creating posts on: http://lang-8.com/

Practice Japanese listening and speaking on Skype through people you meet on: http://lang-8.com/

4) As for the JLPT, there really is no equivalency with TextFugu as TextFugu is specifically designed to teach Japanese differently from other standard methods, which means it just doesn’t line up correctly. So according to a few of the members that have come through here, if you only did TextFugu, you’d probably only be able to pass level 5. But you would have also learned things from higher levels, just not enough that would allow you to pass them without supplemental training from other things.

Check out this thread for some tips on organizing Anki 2 with the early chapters of TextFugu:

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/anki-2-guide-for-the-ocded

You can also use the following thread to 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

がんばって！

I just relistened to the ones you mentioned:

ふたつ Does actually sound like FuTaTsu

ひとり Does sound like HiToRi

That said, I can understand why you think they sound like you said they do, as I can hear that if I try hard enough.

You have to remember that the English sounds we attribute to Kana are a close approximation, so they won’t always sound like you think they should in English. But they are closer than what you think they are in these two examples.

The key is to train your ear to hear the difference. If you actually pronounced those words as Statsu and Stori, I don’t think a Japanese person would have any idea what you wear saying, unless it was in a sentence from context, and they would think you completely mispronounced it. It sounds that way to you, but it doesn’t sound that way to them, or even me, unless I actively try to hear it the way you are.

There are subtleties to the sounds that your brain is actually missing, as the mind will take sensory stimuli and actually modify your perception of it to a degree to make sense of it. Since you are used to hearing speech sounds in a certain way, your brain makes you perceive something slightly different than what it actually sounds like. For example in American English, most Americans won’t notice a difference in saying Pen or Pin, where as someone who speaks British English will pick it up instantly.

This is the same thing that happens with words that you read that have typos, sometimes you will read them without even realizing they were there, as your brain fixes it for you, where as if you go back and search for them, they become really obvious.

You simply need to practice listening to those words until you can hear the subtler sounds that will be closer to FuTaTsu and HiToRi. Also be aware that ふ is not very well represented by Fu, it really is a unique sound from anything in English. Hu and Fu are the closest we come to it, but neither is really accurate.

If you hit “R” in Anki, it will repeat the sound. My advice is to repeat the sounds of these words quite a few times when they come up, until you can hear the difference. Once you hear it, it will become hard not to hear it.

-Cheers

I believe this is due in part to the fact that native speakers of a language don’t always have the most accurate pronunciations. People tend to fall into “lazy” speech patterns. This happens naturally in most languages. As a result the population as a whole may pronounce certain words differently than they learn them. There are also regional differences that will change pronunciation.

Ultimately this isn’t something you need to worry about too much at a beginners level. At some point a lot of your practice will be spent simply listening to how Japanese actually speak, and you will pick up on these nuances. In the mean time focus on how it’s “supposed” to sound, as that will give you a good baseline that you will be able to modify later.

Welcome to TextFugu!

Even if you didn’t need it to teach them, it’s always a good idea to be able to speak the language of the country you’re living in. ^_^

In case you haven’t seen them:

Check out this thread for some tips on organizing Anki 2 with the early chapters of TextFugu:

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/anki-2-guide-for-the-ocded

You can also use the following thread to 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

And here is a thread with a list of additional Japanese resources you may find helpful:

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

がんばって！

Welcome to TextFugu!

Check out this thread for some tips on organizing Anki 2 with the early chapters of TextFugu:

http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/anki-2-guide-for-the-ocded

You can also use the following thread to 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

And here is a thread with a list of additional Japanese resources you may find helpful:

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

がんばって！