Do you think playing pokemon is good for practicing reading?

Japanese
#22

Can mods delete the entire conversation please?

I don’t want to deal with personal attacks towards my person like that from easily offended individuals. When there weren’t even any offense in the first place.

And @ulurujamman, if you can’t tolerate simple colloquial english, maybe you shouldn’t be on the internet in the first place.

Though, I do agree, that I could have worded my original message using more formal english without using colloquialisms. This is what I usually do. I guess in this case I was simply a bit enthusiastic about this particular subject :slight_smile:

Either way, I has since edited my original post if it makes you happy :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#23

holy! what a rollercoaster this thread is :japanese_goblin:

and i’m still wondering if mangajin is ok or not :smiley:

2 Likes
#24

You don’t say :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#25

Also keep in mind the notion that “retarded” is a slur was fabricated by Barack Obama in a move to change the world “for the better” and benefit him politically. It is still used in formal medical contexts when used properly, and people have mixed opinions about its use as a slang term.

1 Like
#26

Keep in mind that, no, that isn’t even remotely correct

2 Likes
#27

Personally, I absolutely despise the term and 100% consider it a slur. Nothing to do with Obama, everything to do with how the word is used by people. It’s 2020, there are better words to use than those which are inherently ableist. With that, thank you Kuromaku for removing it from the post - it’s appreciated.

But hey, let’s get back to the topic somehow.

6 Likes
#28

@Kuromaku @ulurujamman @someone2020 @severian

This is not the place for this kind of discussion and it ends right now on this very post. If you wish to discuss the origins of certain words and whether or not they should be used in 2020 or in any other year, please do so in private messages. Whoever posts next, please bring the conversation back to the thread title.
Please do NOT respond with something like “OK this ends here but I’d just like to say…” as we have seen in previous messages - this will simply add fuel to the fire.
If you wish to say something further on the subject, again, the place for that is in a private message.
Also, to whoever keeps reporting people… we’re a better and more grown-up community than that. We can admit where we went wrong and move on without trying to get people banned or whatever happens when someone is flagged.
Debates are a great way of exchanging ideas with people with different opinions, so from now on please keep it that way.
I don’t particularly like coming down harshly on people but I always will if I have to. This is a great community with lots of great people so let’s keep it that way. This ends right now.
PS I have tagged the last few people who have posted, but this whole post isn’t going to be 100% relevant to all of you so if some of it doesn’t apply to what you posted, please don’t think this is fully aimed at you.

3 Likes
#29

Thank you for saying this. I’m not sure what happened exactly but thank you.

2 Likes
#30

Apologies for my contribution!

To get back to the topic at hand, visual novels have been highly recommended to me by friends who also study the language, if they’re your kind of thing. Since they’re text-based, it can take a while to slog through, but they tend to be pretty standard in terms of grammar/vocab usage depending on what the setting is. Often you can glean what’s happening with the CGs too, or pick it up from surrounding dialogue. They can be incredibly dull if it’s not your kind of medium though, they just about barely fit the category of “game” most times.

Of course, if your fave VN is Steins;Gate like mine is, and you’re someone who can barely understand anything even slightly scientific in English, pseudo or not… :pensive: I bought it for Switch here in Japan, thinking “Oh, I’ll be able to change the language!”, and now I’m getting my ass handed to me :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

3 Likes
#31

Speaking about games - Konosuba mobile game is scheduled to release in about a week. And supposedly it includes a story mode and some interactive mode to talk with different characters.

From what I’ve seen in screenshots it doesn’t look too difficult :slight_smile:

I’m definitely going to give it a try!

3 Likes
#32

I’ve never heard of this, what is the game about? Is it like an RPG?

2 Likes
#33

Well, in that case I would strongly suggest either reading the original novels first (even if in english) or watching anime (there are two seasons + several ovas and movies).

I really like konosuba for its unique quirky humor and fascinating world building :slight_smile:

And this new game just expands on all that. It is a mobile game somewhat similar to FGO.

1 Like
#34

@Gorganite

I agree with everyone! The more exposure is better! Though, be careful, if the level of the resource is too high you might get discouraged, and depressed. The most important thing is to have fun. Don’t force yourself to read something you don’t like.

I would start with a rule to read NHK web news easy EVERY SINGLE DAY for 20 minutes. Such a habit will improve your reading in the long term.

Like it was said before, I would avoid adding every single word you don’t know, just focus on those which repeat more often. You will pick some of them naturally. There are some words that are fairly rarely used and you might not see them for years.

Manga and anime are great resources for learning because you can pick the context easily, and this is very important in Japanese. It is harder with light novels, and the like.

I would start with 徒然チルドレン (it also has an anime(、which is fairly easy manga, has many different characters with different ways of speaking. Another I would try would be はたらかに二人

You can also try ともちゃんは女の子 but it is much harder than the other two. A lot of people also read yotsubato.

I suggest using kanji tomo, which recognizes characters that appear on the screen. (it is called OCR)

2 Likes
#35

I agree with the NHK easy part. I did exactly that since last month: Read every new article every single day at NHK ez and my reading really has improved a lot. I also picked out some words naturally like 増える or について, which are so frequent that i just “know” them now.
Also i don´t want to show off but i´m pretty much fluent in corona virus articles now, lol.

5 Likes
#36

I’m actually glad you recommended that. I saw a meme of one of the characters saying “Explosion” and I always wanted to find out where it was from. Now I know haha

1 Like
#37

What would you say is the best way to go through the articles? Do I just read them and then listen? I feel like whenever I try to I get a bit confused on some things which then puts me off doing it.

1 Like
#38

That’s great! I definitely do want to read NHK Easy which I think are 2 new articles each day? How do you go about with it though, do you just read it and then use an extension to see the words you don’t know? I want to improve haha

1 Like
#39

Thanks for the manga recommendations! It’ll give me something to do today, considering JHS kids have exams and I’m on day 2 of deskwarming.

Also thirding the recommendation for NHK easy. I recently hit my first “Oh, I just read that without looking anything up” moment with one of their articles and it really boosted my motivation. I don’t tend to add every word I don’t know to my studies, but I do look stuff up if it hinders my understanding of the text, and sometimes it just sticks with me through osmosis.

3 Likes
#40

Ah a fellow ALT? I think my deskwarming days begin from next week. I will definitely use NHK among other things on days when that will happen.

3 Likes
#41

In my experience there were 4 new articles released almost every day (except at weekends i guess).
Yeah, i just read the article with furigana OFF and utilize rikaikun (dictionary chrome extension) for words i don´t know in order to maintain the flow.
NHK easy almost always uses the same few grammar points (よう、によると, etc) over and over again, so they become kinda samey after a while (which is great for learning this stuff, but the article´s writing might get monotone).
Anyway, good luck!

3 Likes