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Learning How to Learn Japanese

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Re: Learning How to Learn Japanese

#31

Post by 3np »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #4

I wish that people referring to Japanese as "the most difficult language to learn..." could add the important caveat "...among major global languages". There are thousands of languages spoken on Earth, and some of them involve complexities that would daunt speakers of English or other Standard Average European languages more than Japanese. As just two examples, I remain daunted by the morphology of Skolt Saami and Ng…

I absolutely found Mandarin more difficult than Japanese - mostly due to pronunciation and tones.

The consistency in phonems in mandarin probably makes it a bit less demanding than Japanese, but I find that difference marginal on the whole.

(Studied Japanese 1y+, Mandarin 6 months)

Re: Learning How to Learn Japanese

#33

Post by desuq »

imtringued wrote: post #26
wodenokoto wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t fully agree with the trope of learning the writing system in one day kinda false. I mean you can learn to map it to alphabet in one day, but unless you can grasp the subtleties of the pronunciation of the similar sounding vowels and consonants have you really learned what the characters represent?

Are you trying to create a strawman? How do you learn characters without their pronunciation? There is nothing else to learn other than that. If you know the "alphabet" equivalent then you can pronunciate words written in that alphabet. Nothing more. Nothing less. There is one exception which is Japanese where many characters merely have a meaning associated to them which need to be combined to form words. Sure, you…

In my experience, I have found learning Korean more difficult than Chinese/Japanese. I've lived and studied in China to provide some background. My difficulty in Korean stems from the nuance of how the characters interact with each other in terms of pronunciation and grammar. Still interesting nonetheless, each person holds their own perspective on how challenging a language can be to learn.

Re: Learning How to Learn Japanese

#34

Post by digianarchist »

Two fundamental aspects of learning a language largely missing from the article. Speaking and listening.

Arguably more important the reading and writing is correctly pronouncing words in a language and being able to identify what's being said.

Re: Learning How to Learn Japanese

#35

Post by hackerman123469 »

musicale wrote: post #10
presentation wrote: post #7

Depends what your goals are - it sounds like the author is aiming to be able to read a newspaper, and for that kind of challenge this stack seems OK so long as they index much harder on the NHK Easy News after getting a basic level of kanji and grammar knowledge (they already claim to know 1000 so they should be fine). But if the author wants to have any chance of understanding spoken Japanese or speaking, this will…

> Depends what your goals are - it sounds like the author is aiming to be able to read a newspaper Newspapers? How boring. I would want to be able to read the text in video games and manga! On a semi-related note, I heard of someone who learned English largely by playing Final Fantasy 7 with a dictionary in hand. [Also learned practical bonus vocabulary like "mako energy" and "materia" I assume. ;-) ]

> Newspapers? How boring.

I think that's a matter of interest. I personally like reading the newspaper but I am more of a fan of online news than newspapers, my personal favorite being: https://news.tv-asahi.co.jp/

Re: Learning How to Learn Japanese

#36

Post by Grue3 »

I'm using 2 Anki decks to learn Japanese: one was something named "COREplus" with keys in kana and the answers showing kanji and definition of the word. I figured it would be useful to pick out words from their pronounciation alone, despite the amount of homophones. The second deck I generated myself [1], it includes kanji and words containing kanji, and also statistics on how often each pronounciation of kanji is encountered. Finishing this deck allows you to read quite a lot of things (although it doesn't cover words containing non-Joyo kanji).

Now when I wanted to take an JLPT exam, I realized that my listening skills are awful, and my grammar skills aren't very good either. I started watching grammar lessons on Youtube in Japanese, as well as random videos in Japanese (mostly about trains/traveling). In the end I just barely passed listening (JLPT N2) but my grammar skills were really good.

[1] https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/831167744

Re: Learning How to Learn Japanese

#37

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #21
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #4

I wish that people referring to Japanese as "the most difficult language to learn..." could add the important caveat "...among major global languages". There are thousands of languages spoken on Earth, and some of them involve complexities that would daunt speakers of English or other Standard Average European languages more than Japanese. As just two examples, I remain daunted by the morphology of Skolt Saami and Ng…

You either really missed out on something when learning Chinese or you are in for a realization in Japanese. (Probably you just simplified your explanation) The problem with Japanese kanji vs Chinese Hanzi is not just that Japanese has two (or more) common readings for every character, it’s that they don’t follow the phonetic element to nearly the same degree as Chinese. In Chinese you really do have a fighting Chine…

> In Chinese you really do have a fighting Chinese of reading a word out loud that contains never by you seen before characters.

Not really. Sometimes you can guess the root without the tone, but you won’t get the tone itself, and so you can’t really claim to recognize the word. Tones are not optional in Chinese.

Re: Learning How to Learn Japanese

#38

Post by tinus_hn »

majewsky wrote: post #2

I started learning Japanese four months ago and slowly converged on the same toolbox as the one in TFA. My only gripe is that SRS works much better for kanji and vocabulary than for grammar. Learning one kanji has a much more stable difficulty than learning one grammar rule, so it's much easier to set a goal of "learn X kanji per day" than "learn X grammar rules per day". At some point, I'll have to force myself to t…

Apparently there’s ‘some’ recent drama going on at massimmersionapproach.
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