If you could give 'Just starting Japanese' you one piece of advice, what would it be

One thing I did notice that happened more and more as I wrote kanji a looooooot, was that they naturally started to balance out, and I was writing things more like a native would. For example, in handwriting (but not anything else), square shapes tend to be thick at the top, and narrow toward the bottom, while lines tend to be shorter at the top, and get progressively longer toward the bottom.

Noticing little things like this is not going to help you learn the language any faster, but it will give you way more confidence in writing.

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I found that skritter helped with that regard too. It almost encourages a more native type of writing of a character. For example the 糸 stem is never actually written that cleanly, and the stroke number is decreased. Using the default squig settings (senstivity) in skritter, it is actually more likely to accept a natural stroke pattern of 5 strokes instead of the official 6.

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I think the first month is free to try, so that might give you a better understanding of it’s uses. Writing out kanji is a more substantive way of learning them as it forces you to be able to reproduce the knowledge and not just passively understand it. Similar logic to why reading is easier than writing and listening is easier than speaking.

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I will add trying it out to my to-do-list. I don’t really buy into wanikani philosophy nor RTK so I had to made up my own approach. Seems to work but if there is way to improve then I am all about that :hugs:

Thanks :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I’ve definitely noticed I can recognize kanji decently but hopelessly cannot produce most of them from memory. Practicing writing kanji seems like a good idea. In addition to it being good kanji practice I think not remembering the details necessary to write them from memory could become a problem as one learns more kanji that look similar and share radicals.

I’ve just gotten a bunch of notebooks for kanji practice (Genkouyoushi notebooks). My idea is to use Kaniwani as an SRS system to practice writing the kanji I have already learned from Wanikani.

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I also like Skritter for writing… when I get to it that is. In particular, I like how easy it is to make my own vocabulary lists. The words I want to practice tend to be ones I found in a book or somewhere and didn’t read correctly. Usually all I have to do is enter the word and choose a dictionary definition and that’s it.

I’ve run into some kanji it didn’t know how to write even when it knew words using them. But my impression is that it knows more than most of the other apps I’ve tried to use for writing practice.

I use a normal touch screen pen on my phone so it’s not super different from normal writing with a pen.

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I would have loved to know everything Cure Dolly is teaching regarding grammar and particles from the start. She takes away the westernisation and gives you the true (as far as i know) meaning behind everything.

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I remember when I stumbled across Skritter back in 2013 and it was such a revelation for me and my mates, we could pack in about an hour of effective kanji practice extra A DAY as we rode on the train to school. Life changing :slight_smile: It’s easily the single most important app I’ve ever found for Japanese study, as it combines everything that wanikani and anki and all those offer, AND throws in active writing practice, the production of language not just passive understanding of it, which just ties everything together so much more sturdily.

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I could not agree more. Grammar that I can’t understand and internalise means nothing to me. Trying to learn from Genki made me believe Japanese makes no sense, and Tae Kim is hard for me since his explanations often defy basic rules of how grammar has to work (they take a lot of time to teach that in schools in Poland and it one of my interests) so I could have not make sense of it. It does not make any sense to me that basic sentence of any language can be subjectless. I find it impossible to believe… That interpretations breaks our basic understanding of universal grammar.

Are Japanese from Mars? No? So it can’t be that way… Or nothing I “understand” is applicable…

Cure Dolly made me give it another chance and it seems to work so far :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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I would say to myself, “No, you idiot, you won’t ‘just’ pick it up.”

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This made me laugh out loud :joy:, we were all that guy in the beginning.

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I’d tell my high-school self not to even take Japanese classes and just ask the teacher to help me learn on my own time. Japanese is best learned one-to-one, without picking up bad gaijin habits from classmates.

One connection I’ve been able to make with Japanese and Russian, at least, is sort of thinking of Japanese particles almost like Russian noun declensions. I know Polish has noun declensions similar to Russian. Is Polish loose with word order like Russian is? Figuring out each word’s function in a sentence has been a big part of the challenge for me in both Japanese and Russian.

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Even more so. I got a few class at the uni

you may find my view point interesting. have a look at this post, please:

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This is literally the best advice, because my god did I ever just assume that immersion would do its thing without me putting much effort in.

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It is nice falsehood to believe in though! better this kind of start than no start :hugs:

I can’t find out author for this idea (too smart to be me xD) but I find it true unfortunately: “If learning would be pleasant and easy, everybody would be educated.”

(sounds a lot like Friedrich Nietzsche but I can’t find if it was him saying something similar…)

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Hilarious isn’t it, Japan is littered with foreigners who thought that would work and 10 years later are still stuck struggling to hold a conversation. Immersion only works if you work yo’ ass off.

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People forget the most important part of immersion: constant effort to make sense of what you hear and fighting for any chance to try to communicate. It is not passive learning.

For example: just looking at anime will not help. But stopping with every sentence and “unlocking” it meaning will big time.

Immersion in my opinion works, but is hard like hell. To make it easier it is better supplement oneself with some normal studying. In fact it is not possible for normal people to learn by studying and practising alone.

Making sure I get this was hard like hell and took forever but helped a lot:
プリベット通り四番地の住人ダーズリー夫妻は、「おかげさまで、私どもはどこから見てもまともな人間です」というのが自慢だった。不思議とか神秘とかそんな非常識はまるっきり認めない人種で、まか不思議な出来事が彼らの周辺で起こるなんて、とうてい考えられなかった。

But it was maybe to hard reading material for first week… Few sentence more a week worth of reading ended…

(I am not trying to imply I know Japanese. Just that immersion is the hard way not an easy way)

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Harry Potter is actually quite a difficult read, there are also a huge mix of different dialects mixed in to. You’ll find a lot of major Japanese authors are actually easier to read than this. Banana Yoshimoto, Ryuu Murakami, and Haruki Murakami are all good writers that are easier to read than this.

If you like gritty dramas, scandi noirs and that kinda stuff, i’d recommend Hitomi Kanehara too. Definitely not for kids though, very heavy going stuff

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That’s why I opted out for sanity sake and bought Clannad on Nintendo. It is of importance to me to make sure my first read will be of emotional significance. I learnt both polish and english with HP (funny thing: it took much longer to unlock first few sentences in English than Japanese since i had to understand how on earth there are so many meanings to “get” and you guys can make sense of it xD…), and Clannad is my first “proper” anime I like a lot. In my mind naruto and pokemon were just nicer cartoons xD.

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I’m weird as a Japanese learner in that I don’t like any anime or manga whatsoever. My wife watches loads of anime and I just can’t stand it haha

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