Recommended learning resources

Thank you for this!

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No worries mate!

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Thanks for this! I bought my first monolingual dictionary just around a week ago, but in general found it to be a few steps above my level still, these look absolutely amazing! I can only imagine how much work this took!

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You’re welcome! There are a few grammar terms in there (usually just single kanji in brackets) that I didn’t mention in the key. If you need to know what any of them are, be sure to let me know. In general they are just grammatical terms that aren’t too helpful or relevant to understanding the word.

I will however do a full grammar guide soon for people that want to know the real ins and outs of Japanese grammar in an easy to swallow format.

Edit: 100% agree about the monolingual dictionary. In general Japanese people rarely use them outside of school. Some of the descriptions can be extremely challenging even for Japanese people that study linguistics at a university level. Most people would use a concise dictionary. What my sheets are is pretty much a concise dictionary… but even more concise hahah.

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Seeing as we’re sharing resources here. Just saw this posted on the learnjapanese subreddit, and it’s just too good not to share.

That’s right! Hundreds of grammar points all explained in Japanese (most of them including helpful illustrations)! Enjoy :slight_smile:

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Todays recommended video. Level- Intermediate to advanced.

This video is from one of my favorite youtubers that teaches about many different topics. This video is one of my favorite though if you want a very comprehensive guide to how grammar works in Japanese, and what different word types there are. It is very different than how English text books teach Japanese grammar, so the distinction is definitely important for anyone past beginner stage.

The main reason this video is intermediate to advanced is because of this guys speed of speech. I recommend you turn on Japanese subtitles and pause frequently if needed, because this video will help you patch together how Japanese words actually fit together.

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This brings up a good topic about using subtitles on YT. Generally, I don’t like them because they are inaccurate. Something like this however, I think it helps more than hurts given the speed and when things like 明治 come up we know it’s 名詞 or 福祉(副詞) given the content. It’s good lesson on you can’t always pick your speaker to listen too (well, you can ignore people of course or pick a different channel :slightly_smiling_face:) but there is that calibration of someone’s delivery that takes some extra time.

Here is a fun and practical one I saw recently. It’s actually a nice gesture if you can argue in one’s native language (as there is less thinking on their end when they are already heated) but phrases which might seem benign may be more biting to them so watch out! Honestly, I can’t argue well in Japanese so always looking for more ammunition (hehe).

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Yep, it is either hit or miss. Like 動詞 regularly becomes 同士 etc. abut grammar terminology is usually spevific enough that it is accurate the vast majority of the time. Videos with lots of casual language is terrible, the subs are always bad. Hence why most Japanese comedy youtubers/ gamers have their own imprinted subtitles.

Haha interesting video, thanks for posting! :smile:

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Another resource I really like is the videos from the エビル図書館 and related channels. These are great videos to read along with. Weird stories most of the time, but great practice none the less.

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Haha definitely very strange. Although I tend to like stuff like that. It is easier to remember things that are a bit odd :rofl:

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Recommended video of the day. Level- Beginner.

This video covers one of the most important yet most confused things in Japanese learning. Conjugation. The most confused thing being that Japanese in fact has no conjugation, what it does have is a system of helper verbs that are designed to change perspectives, rather than conjugate.

This video should be very helpful for anybody that is getting lost with how to change words to change meanings. This is based around the concept that, apart from い adjectives and verbs, which are very easy to identify, nearly all other words in Japanese are actually nouns.

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I’m glad you’re working on making more resources like this, I think this is really important. There is a resource called Jalup that does this too, it helps you make the monolingual transition by giving definitions for new words in Japanese using words you’ve already learned. it’s very good but the problem is its extremely expensive. I don’t know why the guy who made it charges so much for it, more people would pay for it if it cost less.

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Recommended source of the day is the 眠れなくなるほど面白い book series. (Level- High intermediate to advanced)
This is a series of books covering a gigantic range of topics in a presentable and easy to digest manner. An amazing way to pick up a lot of functional vocabulary.

This is a hugely popular series in Japan, but is also available for download from the Google Play book shop as e-books. Think of these as half way between a kid’s book and an academic text book. They are made to be understood. In the series there are books on Kanji, weight lifting, stargazing, computers, Chinese three kingdoms, biology, food, nature… Pretty much anything you can think of.

This is the only book series I recommend that is ‘outside’ of the novel/fantasy spectrum. If you purely want to build vocab in a specific field and have a good time simultaneously, this series is your jam.

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For today I have updated this previous post, as I have added new content. Being that N3 is the first level that takes a massive leap in vocabulary and the expectations on students, I have decided to split the vocabulary into 2 parts. Part 1 of N3 is now available for download. Note that both the original English, and the 100% Japanese versions are both available.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1joX75kc4Ws4GjElLpv4dxWbFyjHckgI6

At the moment I have up to N1 and then 6 more ‘additional’ lists that are comprised of about 1200 words each. I aim to have these all available in both English and Japanese eventually. The ‘additional’ lists came purely from my immersion in Japanese and should be taken with a grain of salt. Although I did try to immerse in a wide variety of content, whether these words will be useful for you or not will be up to you to judge. Also, I included a lot of slang, swear words and crude words in the ‘additional’ lists, as I feel that those kinds of words (though they should not be used) are equally as important for understanding.

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These are a bit too high level for me, bought 眠れなくなるほど面白い 図解 大人のための日本語と漢字 because I have more than enough coinson bookwalker, and hope to be able to read it soon, but am putting it on the sidelines for the moment.

Also, thanks for the new files on your google drive! They are great as always!

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Once you are able to go through it at reasonable pace you will really enjoy it! They are really well written books! The one you bought is one of my favorites. It has so much interesting Info on how the Japanese language developed and why certain changes were made along the way

Recommended source of the day. Sambon Juku. This guys channel is much similar to 日本語の森, but is a little bit better for beginners (also great for advanced learners). The pace he speaks at, and his perspective towards many grammar points is really unique and easy to understand!

While all of the videos are in Japanese, they are superrrr easy to follow along with, as he repeats important words and speaks very clearly. This is the ideal channel for anyone that wants to even think about trying to adjust their study to ‘Japanese focused’, rather than relying on English sources. Thanks goes out to @Pushindawood for this one. While I did not use it when I was initially learning, I definitely wish I had. I probably could have jumped into monolingual a bit sooner!

Hope Y’all enjoy

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Recommended source for the day … spent the last few days making this. This is a monolingual N5 deck arranged in a way to support people wishing to slowly transition into monolingual Japanese. First time I have publicly released a deck so any feedback from anyone that ends up using them would be great.

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1369107187

Unlike the word documents/PDFs that I have already made available, I have formatted this in a way that different meanings are displayed on separate lines, and additional separations are made to show the verb types, if the word can act as a prefix/suffix etc, to make reading as easy as possible.

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These look absolutely stellar! I’ll give them a bit of a run for a couple of days and give a proper reply then, but on first look absolutely amazing!

One potential change (seeing as you made this to help transition to monolingual) is to change the English sentence to a “hint”, this way you have to click to display the actual English, thus encouraging people to first attempt to understand the Japanese text, rather than just glancing at the English.

So, to be exact, this would mean changing the English sentence portion of the back template from :

{{Back lower English}}

to

{{hint:Back lower English}}

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I put the English in very small font to prevent people being able to read it accidentally. Basically you cannot read the English unless you really go out of your way to do it. For me that was enough, but your idea is good too! Let me know what you think after you give it a run.

Also let me know if anything is confusing about the card layout. There are a few things such as (*)appearing on some cards which may not make sense without adding a ‘user guide’ to the deck.

Edit: actually that is a really good idea. I will give it a test run tomorrow and then re-upload it. :blush:

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