This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.
3 Likes
Please no more discussion along these lines either of you @JCee94 @ErLouwer. There is just really no need for it. I am not saying either of you are wrong, just that the Bunpro forums are not really the place for this kind of debate. For now I am just going to flag both of your posts to hide them so that other users don’t need to read something that is better suited to the setting of a private discussion.
5 Likes
Manga has furigana 
What do you folks do when the the urge to comment on someone’s opinion rises because it contradicts your worldview and how things work?
I mean there is absolutely no need in it, have someone found a way to find a peace in mind so those though won’t rise?
I think anyone can do whatever they want, do what works for you.
All I am trying to do is simply help others by pointing out flaws in this certain approach so they can make their own educated decision.
I understand why you deleted my discussion with the guy because I definitelly reacted emotionally, thats on me.
But with all due respect, Im a bit confused why you deleted my response to you, too, though? You yourself joined the discussion with your personal opinion on the matter, and then deleted my response critcising you.
I should maybe clarify that I was at no point attacking anyone, or even saying that OP should stop doing what he is doing.
I only made A simply recommendation and a structured reasoning as to why OPs approach is not recommendable to others.
By the way, I dont have anything against people doing whatever they want, but as soon as they start recommending it to others they are susceptible to constructive criticism. And that is all I did.
I think we can both agree that this is how a healthy community works, that constructive critcism is important, and that is why Forums exist.
1 Like
I apologize if I made my comment a little confusing.
The problem is not the post, nor the comments.
The problem is my inner feeling that start pushing me into writing and defending my own opinion when another person presents their own opinion that contradicts mine. My purpose was to question people who has or had the same feeling while reading forums, and how they deal with it.
1 Like
To throw in my own opinion;
I had a very similar way of getting into the language, passively learning from anime with subtitles basically. My pronunciation was apparently near perfect the first time I spoke to a Japanese person, although they were quick to point out I was animespeaking (which translates to needlessly rude).
I ignored Kanji for the most part of my learning as well, my early learning being in a university voluntary small lecture on Japanese for people who are not majoring in it. My then Sensei gave the best advice that I think is appropriate for the topic:
“Most of you will be here for a max of one year, and it’s not certain you will ever master the language. We will focus on the most useful and fun parts that you may be able to use when you take a trip there.” Essentially, it’s a very good idea to put a scale on what you want to learn, and how to get early results that encourage you as to not eventually burn out with nothing to show for it.
Fast forward a few years later, and my speaking is maybe between N3-N2 but I can read only hiragana, katakana, as well as a small selection of basic kanji. I then opted to start with the big foggy Himalaya Kanji mountain. It’s arduous, not very rewarding and to this day I still misread stuff and am sometimes left feeling like an illiterate 5 year old. Just how much more difficult this language is to learn compared to, say, a European one is maddening.
So yes, not learning kanji from the start irritates me now, but it’s spilt milk and I did not know back then that I would commit to this. On the other hand, there have been numerous Japanese people that sincerely told me I don’t even have to learn anymore, they mistake me for an N1 chad anyhow.
4 Likes
The hardest part is noticing and realizing one should take another action. I recommend just closing the browser and get some real connections with friends or family. Going outside gor a walk is also a good one. Making a coffee and reading a good book also works for me. Basically, get some real tangible sensory input and real tangible connections.
But as I said, realizing that you would be better off without getting closure on some internet discussion is the hardest part usually. Happens to most of us from time to time 
Edit: Which is actually quite the interesting discussion, just not a japanese learning one. You could consider making a new topic to get more varied answers 
5 Likes
This is such a good piece of advice! The first few steps in any language are hard and easing into it in a way that works best for you, your personality, your abilities, your goals and your motivation is key. Feels like this is especially important for japanese as the beginner stage here easily takes a year or two (or even longer).
2 Likes
Everyone should study how they see fit as long as they enjoy it and self-evaluate if they are reaching their personal goals.
I paraphrased it a little, but in my subjective opinion, it’s objectively good advice. Heck, you don’t even need to enjoy studying if you’re trying to reach some goal with your studies.
However, in the Japanese language learning community, that’s also a guaranteed way to start a shit storm in the comments. Happens every time
5 Likes
I generally feel like disagreeing on a forum should be allowed. Otherwise what’s the value of participating in one? When I put an idea online, it’s normal that someone will eventually voice disagreement. In the best case, such disagreements will lead to respectful debates where all participants expand their horizons and grow from it.
In theory at least… I realize this is often not the case.
The tone is very important though and there’s a fine line between firmly and respectfully disagreeing and something that starts feeling like an attack. It doesn’t help that a lot of nuance and intention often gets lost over text.
My thought process here is, I think I’ve grown more from people being critical, than from people being overly supportive in my life. And I’d assume most are here to grow (in their Japanese abilities, at least)
5 Likes
The thing is when it’s about language learning, there is no “one approach fits all”. Which I think is actually really wonderful and I love reading about all the different approaches and ways And that’s why I really like to look at all those study logs and ramble blogs
But some people (not only here, but kinda everywhere) really have trouble understanding that what works for them is not the best approach for everybody and feel the strong need to help people who actually don’t need or want help at all, dishing out advice like it’s an universal truth. This can be a mentality problem (like: oh no, somebody is wrong on the internet. I got to help!), but could also just be a communication problem (like accidentally coming off as having the only true answer when they just wanted to talk about what helped them). In most cases it comes from trying to be helpful (or at least, that’s what I like to think about those online people I don’t know anything about).
If you put a bunch of people like this into a discussion board it’s bound to get heated. It’s your choice to try to intervene, ignore or get the popcorn ^^
4 Likes
I agree with this post, despite the fact that I spend half an hour on kanji every day (through wanikani). I don’t like learning kanji, but I started reading books in Japanese and it’s been very rewarding. What helps for me is seeing my hard work pay off. If you don’t want to do anything that requires kanji you might as well save it for later. I would eventually tackle it though, being able to read supports all other parts of learning Japanese.
1 Like
I’ve got a take on this that most people dislike.
Paradoxically I’ve learned to embrace my inner child that yearns for drama, which is what fires up the “passion”, if you will, inside of you in the first place that then prompts you to “prove someone wrong”. That happened after some while when I noticed that my youthful need to “correct people” had zero effect on a personal scale and merely made people dislike me, but my body / mind didn’t care.
You’re right in how the less tactful way of going about this will more likely lead to someone getting fired up, but I would definitely state the claim that it’s also dependent on your partner’s mood and how much drama consciously or subconsciously strikes them fancy at any given moment. I dare suggest that you won’t find any person that survives for too long without vigorously complaining about less and less meaningful things as the need arises more and more.
If you ask me, there’s a reason all of these TV shows like to put a headlight on all things negative, combative whilst claiming that you can just smile your way through life. Hypocrites, all of them, whether they realize it or not. Nothing is wrong with your confrontational 5 year old self that wants to one-up people, it is part of your nature. Admitting to it and allowing yourself to find a healthier outlet for it - which is what I did - will then allow you to try and stay cool throughout your day.
This is true, however, it comes from a more primal and instinctual place than most people know, or would like to admit.
I could write an entire dissertation on this topic but I will do my best to truncate it as much as possible, and I will apologize in advance if anything comes off more crude than it seems it should. In addition, I will make it clear, I in no way condemn OP’s choice of learning method and am glad OP found a way to progress at their own pace. As an atypical learner as well, I know how hard it can be to find your own path.
The primary problem is the result of someone saying something along the lines of, “Don’t allow people to gatekeep you from doing anything.” “Or nobody should let the opinion of others dictate how they choose to direct their own learning,”
Now these type of statements, on the surface level, do not seem that big a deal. However, humans are amazing creatures with insane instincts. Most people would never be able to explain why there is a problem with these statements. But instinctually, they know something is wrong and when a human instinctually knows something is wrong but intellectually does not know what or why something is wrong; they tend to have and create a great many misunderstandings.
So, why are statements like these a problem? It is because when you take these types of statements and bring them to their logical conclusion, they are brought to a place where most people will agree is terrible, horrific and unacceptable. Now I need to preface, I do not think 99% of people who make these statements are even considering these ends nor do I believe they endorse them.
However, the logical conclusion these types of statements end in are things like: there should be no laws, I can commit any level of horrendous acts and no one has any right to “gatekeep” me or “dictate how i choose to direct” my actions, and a whole host of other societal problematic conclusions. And as a society we have deemed these things unacceptable, so many people get combative to protect the societal good on an instinctual level. While, at the same time, not being able to correctly identify the necessary intellectual reasonings.
Now many, at this point, will want to say, “But hey we are just talking about learning a new language, none of that applies here.”
To this I ask, what would you say if someone came in here and said, “Hey guys I found my best way of learning is to torture myself when I get something wrong. You guys should try it to. It works super well.” This is also an end case of “no gatekeeping.”
Now many will point out, “Hey of course we wouldn’t condone that. That is outside of common sense so that doesn’t count.” However, the problem is not everyone is on the same wave-length. Not everyone is of the same mental capacity. And the problem isn’t even about the here and now.
Like I said already, humans have an insane instinctual understanding and instinctually humans know; given enough time and freedom, the logical conclusion WILL be reached. And it will happen in small, unnoticeable increments. Humans have already dealt with this type of problem many times over and over for our entire history. And that is the instinctual reason people push back on these types of statements.
The OP (and you) are making explicitly prescriptive statements for others yourselves, they are not outside of scrutiny
OP picked a path that works for them, that is great, genuinely, but OP will never know how their learning could have progressed if they had stuck with learning kanji at the start. Encouraging people to give up at the first hurdle is bad advice in any case and with any wording
5 Likes
While I don’t disagree that kanji is very important for most, the idea that you would learn those 3 kanji in 5 minutes and never have to touch them again is a bit disingenuous.
3 Likes
I’m not gonna get into my opinion on all this but I will say it’s a bit wild how consistently people are strawmanning ErLouwer’s comments.
3 Likes
We all have the same goal, right? We want more people to study Japanese and not give up!
I think many here are trying to say that starting immediately in the targeted application of/motivation for study from the start is remarkably harder than establishing a foundation. It’s kind of like learning division before learning numbers. Not impossible, but certainly not efficient or recommended.
That being said, building a foundation when motivations don’t match that efficient methodology can be even more difficult. There’s often an inverse relationship between efficiency and motivation. This is the main cause of burnout for most folks I’d imagine.
I think a lot of people here are worried that someone might read posts like this, look up that famous video titled “studying kanji is a waste of time” and go down a path from which they may never return. Though sometimes not so eloquently put, it’s well intentioned.
Point being - it’s OK to be sub-optimal on the efficiency side, but it probably should be acknowledged as such. It should be encouraging that sub-optimal methods work and keep people learning!
For the record, my sub-optimal learning was the reverse of this post - I did nothing but study Kanji for the first year, and I didn’t even mean to; it just sort of happened! That’s kind of like learning about “all the numbers” before learning addition!
I acknowledge this and when asked, encourage folks to take a more measured approach . Learning only kanji for the 1st year may suit you like it suited me, but please… don’t use me as an example! !
… or do. Maybe Kanji’s the only way you can stay motivated.
2 Likes