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You will start to learn the different readings naturally. The more vocab you study, the more you’ll see a particular kanji used and you’ll soon find you just know the readings.
I never learned on or kun readings before starting on vocab. Though I did do RTK, which helped me to recognise the characters and made it easier for me to attach the readings to them when I did do vocab (but your mileage may vary).
You should really be trying to learn new words every single day. Set Anki for 15-20 new cards per day and stick with it.
10 words per day would be my absolute minimum.
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This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by
Elenkis.
I haven’t watched any of those films since I started learning Japanese, but I’ll just say that they’re classics and I’m sure you’ll enjoy them.
I don’t think I’ve seen Late Spring, but then I always forget which Ozu films I’ve actually seen, so I can’t say for sure. I find some of his work samey enough, and his style minimalistic enough that they blend together in my memories somewhat.
I also recommend checking out Ikiru, Ran, Woman in the Dunes and the movies by Kenji Mizoguchi.
http://www.bk1.jp/ for books and manga.
I don’t have a problem remembering which is which.
The problem is when you see just one of them in text like a manga or something, in a word you aren’t familiar with. Without seeing them both side by side, in some fonts it can sometimes be quite hard to tell which one it is. ツ in particular really doesn’t look so upright in some text that I’ve encountered. Or maybe it’s just me and my poor eyesight :)
It’s not like it’s a big problem, but sometimes it causes my brain to pause and think about it instead of just skimming over it and knowing what it says without thinking.
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This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by
Hiragana took about a week using Heisig’s Remembering the Kana method.
Katakana took 3 hours one afternoon just drilling repeatedly with the iKana flashcard app on my phone.
Though it took longer than that until I could read them without thinking about it, and I still have to think about Katakana sometimes simply because it’s used far less often and some of the characters are so similar (darn you ツ and シ!).
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This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by
It’s from the 時をかける少女 movie. If you’ve seen it you will know that something happens which causes Makoto to have a fall near the beginning. Afterwards she is talking to her friends and Kousuke recommends going to the hospital to get a CT scan, she replies that it isn’t a big deal and then Chiaki responds with that line while still laughing at her. He is making fun of her.
I would read that as: “But despite being nothing, you fell over?” However the complete line is actually:
でも 何もねえのに ブッ倒れるか 普通
I left the 普通 off the end as I figured it might cause unnecessary confusion to anyone reading and I’m not really sure how to explain it myself. The official subtitles give the translation as: “But people don’t fall over for no reason.” and a fansub translates it as: “But you wouldn’t normally fall over if there was nothing.”
So…yeah… It’s one of those sentences where I grasp the meaning from reading it, but perhaps struggle to explain why or convert to good English :-\
ブッ倒れる was written that way. Sometimes katakana is used as a stylistic choice to provide emphasis or make something stand out more. Not sure what the motive was here.
Yup, it’s very common in anime and manga too.
The most recent example from my anki deck:
でも 何もねえのに ブッ倒れるか
どっか = どこか = somewhere, someplace, anywhere etc
The ending I’m not sure, but probably just be the sentence endings ね、べ and かな together. From what you say of the following sentence it sounds to me like he has seen a light up ahead and is speculating that it might be a place to stay at.
ない also gets changed to ねえ a lot colloquially, but I’m not sure if that’s what’s happening here or if it’s just a lengthened ね :-\’,
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This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by
“And you’d read “All About Particles” if you wanted to know “about particles” – it’s not really intended for the same role as the Dictionary of Grammar.”
Actually I would read A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar if I wanted to know about particles as it does that much better (compare its 7 pages on the を particle to the 3 in All About Particles) ;-p
All About Particles is also a reference book. It’s just ordered in a different way and only covers particles. It’s a reference book for particles. Neither of them are textbooks written to guide you through Japanese from beginner to advanced and neither of them are ordered for that purpose. For example All About Particles doesn’t cover the basic direct object marker を until half way through the book, after the likes of など and とか, yet the example sentences use it right from the beginning of the book. So it is clearly intended to be a reference.
By the way, you certainly can read DoBJG from cover to cover and learn an awful lot that way, but doing so would probably be a bit dry. I recommended DoBJG over a textbook because you already have a structured textbook here at Textfugu and Tae Kim’s website is a free solution that also covers things in a structured order.
However if you do want a physical book that’s more structured then I’d suggest looking either at Japanese the Manga Way (note: this not the same as ‘Japanese in Mangaland’, they are different books that people sometimes confuse) or the Genki series. I think ‘Japanese the Manga Way’ might be a better complement to Textfugu; it’s a grammar book, but a structured one and the usage of manga in examples adds something unique.
The first Genki book would likely cover a lot of same stuff you’ve learned on Textfugu and it’s expensive as you’re buying into a series. However combined with the workbooks it has the best exercises I’ve seen in a Japanese textbook series and once finished with Genki 2 you can move seamlessly on to An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese (or my personal favourite textbook: とびら) and then ‘Progressing from Intermediate to Advanced’. It’s great if you’re looking for a beginner to intermediate solution.
I still think you should own A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar though, even if you buy any of the other suggestions listed in this topic.
I don’t find the romaji any more or less noticeable than it is in All About Particles and don’t really think it matters much in reference books. But then I find it significantly easier to read Japanese in kana and kanji than in romaji now anyway, so I barely even notice the romaji exists. I actually find romaji rather difficult to read as I have to think about it for a moment instead of just looking at it and knowing instantly.
It’s a dictionary so naturally it is in A-Z order and not whatever arbitrary order the author believes should be right (which is usually different in every book). It’s not a textbook you read cover to cover (though it wouldn’t hurt to do that) but a grammatical reference that you use when you come across a sentence that you don’t understand or have a question about. So being in an A-Z format is logical and easy to look up.
“Say if you wanted to learn vocabulary, you wouldn’t open a dictionary, start at “A” and work your way through – you’d be best using some sort of list like Core 6000 or Koichi’s anki decks.”
Right, but when you want to know what a word is you don’t go to your Anki deck and search through the cards trying to find it (if you even have it as a card).
I find that All About Particles doesn’t have enough depth or content to be useful to me, it glosses over the grammar with very little explanation and only includes particles. But I’m glad that others are getting some use out of it. I agree that going to a bookstore and looking through all the books is probably the best idea if possible.
Core 2000 followed by Core 6000 is a good start. It also has professionally voiced sentences for each word.
I’m not sure what you mean by “mostly in romaji” but every sentence in the Basic dictionary is written in both kanji/kana and romaji versions. The Intermediate and Advanced dictionaries are in kanji and kana only.
I own the ‘All About Particles’ book and that too has romaji for every sentence, so there’s no difference there. ‘A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar’ is a far more comprehensive book with much better grammatical explanations. Not only does it give numerous example sentences for every grammar point but also has examples of incorrect grammar/how not to do things (which is sometimes even more valuable!) and has lots of usage notes. It does a nice job of explaining nuance differences between similar grammar as well, which is something thoroughly lacking in most books. At over 600 pages it has far more content, compared to the 150 of All About Particles. Combined with the following two dictionaries in the series you will have over 2000 pages of grammar reference, not to mention the useful bonus articles and appendixes like the excellent 24 pages on improving reading comprehension and analyzing sentences accurately that’s found in the Intermediate Dictionary.
I own an assortment of Japanese reference and textbooks and I’d pick the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series over all of them if I had to choose the most useful and then get rid of the rest. I believe that everyone learning Japanese should probably own them.
Spend a bit more that that and get ‘A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar’ by Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui.
Along with the Intermediate and Advanced Dictionaries it should be required owning.
Most people (including me) start with the Core 2000 created by iKnow and then progress onto their Core 6000. These are supposed to cover the 6000 most frequently used words and you can find decks for them in the Download area inside Anki. I’m still making my way through the Core 6000 myself.
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This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by
