Kun’yomi is often the same as how you would write the word in hiragana.

e.g. 犬’s kun’yomi ＝ いぬ (Dog)

There’s exceptions to this sometimes but once I noticed this learning kanji became a lot less daunting.

The readings can change a little when mixed with other kanji, but if you think about a word like 今日 this doesn’t even use the on’yomi or kun’yomi for either of the kanji (as far as I know!), it’s just the word きょう in kanji form. When you learn new vocab, if that word has a kanji associated to it then you can just write the vocab down and have it converted to kanji, it’s still pronounced the same. This is my understanding of things anyway and in practice it hasn’t caused me much grief yet.

It gets easier, I used to absolutely hate tackling even just 5 kanji, but now it’s 10-15 at a time and I’m getting through them quickly and remembering them well too.

• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.
• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.
• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.
• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.
• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.

I’ve adopted a slightly slower pace, as me and my friends have been glued to Battlefield 3 lately. I’m still reviewing all my decks every day, today I went through the colours chapter, and tomorrow I’ll start season five. I’m actually quite comfortable like this because moving too quickly through chapters is bound to make me forget things, I’m also reading the Tae Kim grammar guide.

I posted some sentences on Lang-8 earlier too, as I wanted to practice using some kanji, using でも＋けど and making compound sentences. I made very few errors on the 5 sentences I put up, 2 of them passed with flying colours!

• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.
• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.

I think the word you are looking for is “うん” as an equivalent to “Mm”

http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E3%81%86%E3%82%93&eng=&dict=edict

On my phone I upload my decks to Ankiweb and then download them as personal decks, I’m not sure if that’s exactly what you are asking but that’s the easiest way of opening them I think, since then I don’t have to transfer them over a USB cable.

I know a few Japanese people that would say the exact opposite; English is more complex than Japanese, and if you think about it from a speaking perspective they are 100% correct.

Some of the Asian languages just look incredibly intimidating which is why I think a lot of people look at Japanese and apply a whole other level of difficulty to it. I did the same initially, it’s a lot harder to get started with a language using different character sets than it is to know English then start learning a bit of French.

• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.

2-3 years would be good! Realistically though 4 years would be fine to be at least semi-fluent, I want to teach English in Japan but I need a degree first, so it’ll be 4 years before I even maybe get to live in Japan for real. I’ll be living at Tokyo University on placement for a year on my uni course which will be mighty helpful for language learning!

At the moment I tend to do a chapter of Fugu a day, then all my Anki reviews and sometimes I spend 2 or so days just reviewing if I’ve learnt a bunch of new vocab lately. I’m not having too many issues with motivation, but learning lots of vocab makes me feel dumb sometimes, I always beat myself up over not remembering stuff fast enough. I did however get through the nouny adverbs list really fast which was surprising!

I have a Read the Kanji subscription so I’m going to dig deeper into that soon too, and I wrote my first Lang-8 journal last night; I was pretty surprised at how much feedback I got and how quick it came in, will be reviewing all of that later.

…now though I need to play some Battlefield 3, it just finished installing!

• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.

I’m still waiting for Swiftkey to be updated with Japanese support, I love that keyboard. I don’t really need to type in Japanese from my phone, will come in handy when I live in Japan for a year for university though!

• This reply was modified 13 years ago by  Luke.

The only thing that has really changed for me is I’m always on my phone using Anki if I’m outside, or away from my laptop or PC. I talk to some Japanese friends on Skype and through email. I’m looking forward to playing Shenmue 2 again, as that is entirely in Japanese with English subs. I just need to get ahold of a copy.

• This reply was modified 13 years, 1 month ago by  Luke.