In short, I've learned kana but don't know where to go next. I've looked here but everything is confusing me. I just need some plan on how to do this.
I've also never used Anki so I'm kinda confused on that as well.

Well, you need to learn the kanji now. So, you should not worry about the lack of stuff to do for few months yet. As this webste suggest I also suggest to buy a copy Remembering the Kanji I by James Heisig and try to study 30 characters per day.
Keep this number for two-three weeks and after evaluate if you can keep it, increase, or lower it.

I strongly suggest to keep 30 for at least two weeks, even if in the beginning you fell you can do more, otherwise the reviewing phase might overwhelm you.

After studying the kanji, you should start studying the language.

The other approach is to start learning some basic vocabulary and grammar and then starting to use Japanese. This will entail learning some kanji too, but rather than try to learn all the kanji at once, you can start making friends with the Japanese language of which kanji are a part, picking them up as components of real words.

Personally I would balk at learning hundreds of kanji out of context, but other people thrive on it, so it is really a question of your personality type and learning style.

I'm weary of suggesting learning Kanji using the a different method ( learning all reading associated with a Kanji ), but I feel better about it because the thread attracted some opposition. Meaning, you can see what others think about RTK vs another method. Here: http://forum.koohii.com/thread-13547.html

What I've done:  I read through a basic Japanese book, which gave me a little to start writing and understanding Written Japanese. I would also suggest writing your own index into the book, because sometimes the index doesn't have everything you'd like it to have. (good reference when you need). Tried making flash-cards, but I wouldn't suggest it. 
https://plus.google.com/photos/photo/107...125327b00a

From there, you need a Kanji Dictionary, I'd suggest a digital one, as you will spend a LOT of time with this dictionary and you don't want to have to look up Kanji in a LARGE paperback book! I use a Gameboy DS as my dictionary of chioce: Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten (漢字そのまま楽引辞典 ).  Sometimes amazon or ebay will have it ( about 30 usd ).
A phone dictionary for non-kanji words is also handy. Or if Windows pc: 'wakan' is a nice dictionary.

I'd suggest learning Kanji (whatever method) after a basic 'learn Japanese' book, because you want to be reading Japanese while learning Kanji, I think. I use lang-8.com for this. You post your Japanese, then natives will correct you. (You're supposed to correct others' entries also (your native language) ).

That's all I got. Though, if you really want to become fluent quick, I hear it's best to start speaking to natives as soon as possible. At least, this is what I have done so far.

[s0apgun]

I recommend the Genki textbooks. Use that everyday and make flash cards in Anki of the vocabulary.

I did not go this route but looking back now its what I would recommend to someone just getting started.

I would say start with Remembering the Kanji 1 and Tae Kim's grammar guide (http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar), but that's what worked for me. I think it can be a a bit naive to say that one method will work for everyone, so the main advice I'll give is to try a ton of things. Drop whatever doesn't work. When I struggle with something, it's usually because I haven't found an explanation that works for me yet, rather than the thing itself being insurmountable.

If you go for the Heisig way I would share my experience. Usual boring disclaimer: I am speaking for me, your experience and obstacles can be different.


The experience was positive and I felt the method works fine, however here some stuff I'd wanted to know forehand.

First, if you are not a English native speaker try to get the book translated in your language. The kanjis have names/meanings that use obscure and technical words that will hardly stick in your brain in English.  If the the book is not available in your native language, buy it in English and translate all keywords first. It's somewhat long, but worthwhile because there are many synonymous and "translate as you go along" as I did might bring bad clashes.

Second, Heisig suggest an image for every radical. I found better to have two: a static object (e.g., an iron ingot, a missile) and related living one (e.g. Ironman, Chun-li); even if they represent the same radical I found it very useful to have the possibility of using one or the other depending on the surroundings and other characters.


Third: in the stories keep lots of attention on the position of the characters/items. In my experience the most difficult part was (and actually is) remembering the relative position of all components of the kanji. " E.g., the teenager has a curse! He have to runs away RIGHT from the ugly floating mouth, that is on his LEFT. Always running, poor him..."


Finally, even if you study the Heisig book you can also start something else. As you feel more comfortable. For example I finally started a real course and I feel a little cheated as the teacher uses pretty much only hiragana. I could probably start the course well before finishing the book.

(2016-01-31, 9:06 pm)xVENUSx Wrote: In short, I've learned kana but don't know where to go next. I've looked here but everything is confusing me. I just need some plan on how to do this.
I've also never used Anki so I'm kinda confused on that as well.

You should start right here: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/gra...troduction

And then continue with the other introductory articles. Read them all very carefully, they only contain 100% essential knowledge that you absolutely need before you start studying Japanese, or even just want to talk about studying Japanese.

Afterwards, you have some options:
1. you can move to the basic grammar guide on the same site, which teaches you actual Japanese
2.  you can buy/acquire some other basic textbook, which does the same
3. you can learn more about various study methods by visiting some blogs, or threads on this here forum...I will list a few that helped me, early on. Keep in mind that this is people's opinions, and they should be used to help you make your own decisions, not as a list of instructions for you to follow:

http://japaneselevelup.com/about/ This covers the "Kanji First" method a lot of people on this forum used to get started. It bills itself as "the impossibly in-depth guide to take your Japanese ability from nothing to everything. This was originally the core of JALUP, and has been repeatedly organized and reorganized, to provide the ultimate guidance to anyone with the drive to master one of the coolest languages in the world."

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/archives - humorous anecdotes about a (controversial) young man's journey to Japanese fluency; this is my favorite blog about language learning. It's a hard site to navigate, and the articles contradict each other regularly. Good luck, and don't buy anything.

Krashen's Input Hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis Makes sense to me, but, again, judge for yourself. You'll probably need to read up on it beyond just that wikipedia article.

Users' study methods: http://forum.koohii.com/thread-4943.html self explanatory

NukeMarine's suggested guide for beginners: http://forum.koohii.com/thread-5110.html

Nayr's Core5000 Deck related thread: http://forum.koohii.com/thread-12092.html?page=7 Best Anki deck there is. If you need a link to it, PM me. I'd rather not post one here...since I see the author also chose not to post any direct links...it's some kind of copyright issue.


Oh yeah, and if you're not using http://jisho.org yet, do. It's an online dictionary. Learn how it works, use it often. Don't rely on google results, or dictionaries that use romaji, for translations. They suck, and you will get nowhere using them. Jisho is all you'll need.

Since you already know kana it is probably not a good idea to revert to romaji because no system of romaji properly represents Japanese sounds or structure. The usual Japanese system of romaji looks very different from the usual Western system (Hepburn) and neither of them is "correct". They just trade one set of plus and minus points for another, because no romaji system can accurately transcribe Japanese.

However, since the OP has taken the eminently sensible step of learning kana first, this is not a problem.

I would agree that Denshi Jisho is the only dictionary you need, but would also recommend installing Rikaisama. Rikaisama essentially does almost everything a dictionary does and a lot more. For example it will deconjugate words for you on the fly, which is really helpful at beginner level.

(2016-02-02, 3:25 pm)john555 Wrote: Jisho lets you use romaji, if you prefer.  And no, they don't "suck" if they use romaji.

Jisho lets you -input- in romaji, which is a convenience if you don't have an IME installed on your current device.
The results are the same as any other dictionary that uses the EDICT database, which is most web-based J-E dictionaries.

Some of the more commercial (but still free to use) web based dictionaries (like http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/en/ ) use Shogakukan's Progressive dictionary, which is a pretty decent J-E dictionary.

I don't remember ever seeing an online dictionary that gives romaji results. I do know that all the paper dictionaries that I've seen that are printed in all romaji are in fact pretty terrible. The fact is that all serious students of Japanese learn to read Japanese writing, so all good dictionaries are written in Japanese writing.

It's theoretically possible to have a good romaji dictionary, but because all serious students of Japanese learn to read Japanese writing there's no demand for it, so it doesn't exist.

The original Denshi Jisho let you select romaji output but they dropped that from the new version even though they mostly added features, as they probably came to the conclusion that romaji output isn't a good thing to include.

The original is still online, but I wouldn't recommend it. Romaji output doesn't make the dictionary suck, but it really isn't a good idea to use it. It just gets the mind into all kind of habits that you will have to unlearn later.

Also, having learned kana, it is important to be using and getting used to reading it.

Wow why did I just got to know JALUP now... excellent site!

And CureDolly for some reason I remembered you had a blog too, just signed up for your mailing list. I mean how else can I receive emails from a porcelain doll?

Thank you for signing up. Happy to have you aboard!

You are right. Most porcelain dolls are not very computer literate. They write lovely calligraphy letters with teeny-tiny brushes. Which is nice, but hard to do to a whole mailing list.

(2016-01-31, 9:06 pm)xVENUSx Wrote: In short, I've learned kana but don't know where to go next. I've looked here but everything is confusing me. I just need some plan on how to do this.
I've also never used Anki so I'm kinda confused on that as well.

Unlike other people here I recommend another approach
if you learn hiragana ant katakana you can start reading manga and learning kanji on the go.

there are not that many kanji which you really need to learn and everything else you can translate with OCR
Biggest problem is to actually stay in learning mode because it is very tempting to read romanji version and simply look up all words without even trying to remember them.
but this way is much more fun than plain memorizing of completely irelevant and useless words.

also it will still take lots of time to get used to japanese grammar. without that vocabulary will be pretty much useless.

I highly doubt on normal humans ability to learn 30 kanji symbols and along with 30 japanese words each day.
For me it took more than month to learn japanese alphabet alone which is incomparable in size and complexity.
it takes something like one day for one symbol on average.

(2016-02-07, 6:43 pm)Digix Wrote:

(2016-01-31, 9:06 pm)xVENUSx Wrote: In short, I've learned kana but don't know where to go next. I've looked here but everything is confusing me. I just need some plan on how to do this.
I've also never used Anki so I'm kinda confused on that as well.

Unlike other people here I recommend another approach
if you learn hiragana ant katakana you can start reading manga and learning kanji on the go.

there are not that many kanji which you really need to learn and everything else you can translate with OCR
Biggest problem is to actually stay in learning mode because it is very tempting to read romanji version and simply look up all words without even trying to remember them.
but this way is much more fun than plain memorizing of completely irelevant and useless words.

also it will still take lots of time to get used to japanese grammar. without that vocabulary will be pretty much useless.

I highly doubt on normal humans ability to learn 30 kanji symbols and along with 30 japanese words each day.
For me it took more than month to learn japanese alphabet alone which is incomparable in size and complexity.
it takes something like one day for one symbol on average.

Clearly you have not used an SRS like anki... 30 is on the high end, but certainly possible. Especially if you learn kanji first via a method like RTK or something.

Yes I was using anki. And while it is not that hard to learn clear those 30 symbols, next day I cant remember any of them.
even now I occasionally for get some katakana symbols and still cant distinguish between シツソ ン no matter how many times I review those they just dont stick
I was not even trying with kanji because each manga seem to have its own set of common kanji. and when you read manga you eventually learn them on the go just like with anki (while I forget them next day as usual)

If you want a textbook like experience (organized), without breaking your wallet, Japanese the Manga way is a good next step. You can work RTK with this too.

Japanese the Manga Way at Amazon

Reviews of "Japanese the Manga Way" from Tofugu

Also, reading manga is a fun way to reinforce the vocab you've learned from textbook, anki, etc.

(2016-02-07, 7:24 pm)Digix Wrote: Yes I was using anki. And while it is not that hard to learn clear those 30 symbols, next day I cant remember any of them.
even now I occasionally for get some katakana symbols and still cant distinguish between  シツソ ン no matter how many times I review those they just dont stick
I was not even trying with kanji because each manga seem to have its own set of common kanji. and when you read manga you eventually learn them on the go  just like with anki (while I forget them next day as usual)

It really is necessary to understand the elements from which kanji are made up rather than try to memorize them as abstract symbols. One can do that with a systematic method like Heisig but it can also be done on the fly, learning kanji along with the words you encounter them in so you are actually working with Japanese as an organic whole.

However, if you regard kanji as a set of separate abstract symbols in the sense that kana are it really would make remembering them difficult I think.

 シツソ ン can be awkward at first. The thing to remember is that　シ and ン align more or less along the left side (exactly in many fonts) while ツ and ソ align along the top. Imagine putting a ruler against the left side and the top and see which edge more-or-less lines up and which one doesn't work at all. This is a good way of distinguishing them.

I agree with you about beginning simple manga, anime or perhaps graded readers at this stage. A lot of material uses furigana, so one can take kanji at one's own pace, though I would recommend trying to pick up the simpler ones (which in many cases will also be building-blocks of the more complex ones).

(2016-02-07, 9:09 pm)CureDolly Wrote:

(2016-02-07, 7:24 pm)Digix Wrote: Yes I was using anki. And while it is not that hard to learn clear those 30 symbols, next day I cant remember any of them.
even now I occasionally for get some katakana symbols and still cant distinguish between  シツソ ン no matter how many times I review those they just dont stick
I was not even trying with kanji because each manga seem to have its own set of common kanji. and when you read manga you eventually learn them on the go  just like with anki (while I forget them next day as usual)

It really is necessary to understand the elements from which kanji are made up rather than try to memorize them as abstract symbols. One can do that with a systematic method like Heisig but it can also be done on the fly, learning kanji along with the words you encounter them in so you are actually working with Japanese as an organic whole.

However, if you regard kanji as a set of separate abstract symbols in the sense that kana are it really would make remembering them difficult I think.

I somewhat agree, but i dont like that approach as in your link. 
I prefer to use http://kanjinetworks.com and when I find some interesting kanji I check all kanjis that use same radicals to get some clue about it's meaning and logic. so that you can at least make some guess what unknown kanji is about or it will provide some clue which will help to remember what you learned

problem with シツソ ン is not visual but because they are made from same components. one arc and one or two commas. what makes it hard to remember.

There is no need to limit yourself to simple mangas you can just lookup unknown words online using OCR. it is better to read what you like no matter how complex it is as it will be more fun or even translate it into English  doing good job for other people.  Furigana is pretty much useless for learning since you don't know those words anyway and OCR will provide that for you in any case.
in the very beginning you have to check every word in the dictionary and eventually you just start learning them until finally you are capable to read some sentences without assistance.
Anime is not much useful because all that fast speech is just noise when you don't know words and you can't look up anything.

(2016-02-07, 9:50 pm)Digix Wrote:

(2016-02-07, 9:09 pm)CureDolly Wrote:

(2016-02-07, 7:24 pm)Digix Wrote: Yes I was using anki. And while it is not that hard to learn clear those 30 symbols, next day I cant remember any of them.
even now I occasionally for get some katakana symbols and still cant distinguish between  シツソ ン no matter how many times I review those they just dont stick
I was not even trying with kanji because each manga seem to have its own set of common kanji. and when you read manga you eventually learn them on the go  just like with anki (while I forget them next day as usual)

It really is necessary to understand the elements from which kanji are made up rather than try to memorize them as abstract symbols. One can do that with a systematic method like Heisig but it can also be done on the fly, learning kanji along with the words you encounter them in so you are actually working with Japanese as an organic whole.

However, if you regard kanji as a set of separate abstract symbols in the sense that kana are it really would make remembering them difficult I think.

I somewhat agree, but i dont like that approach as in your link. 
I prefer to use http://kanjinetworks.com and when I find some interesting kanji I check all kanjis that use same radicals to get some clue about it's meaning and logic. so that you can at least make some guess what unknown kanji is about or it will provide some clue which will help to remember what you learned

problem with シツソ ン is not visual but because they are made from same components. one arc and one or two commas. what makes it hard to remember.

There is no need to limit yourself to simple mangas you can just lookup unknown words online using OCR. it is better to read what you like no matter how complex it is as it will be more fun or even translate it into English  doing good job for other people.  Furigana is pretty much useless for learning since you don't know those words anyway and OCR will provide that for you in any case.
in the very beginning you have to check every word in the dictionary and eventually you just start learning them until finally you are capable to read some sentences without assistance.
Anime is not much useful because all that fast speech is just noise when you don't know words and you can't look up anything.

Uhhh... if you can only learn like one kanji a day, and doubt anyone could learn 30, maybe your methods aren't the best and you should try out suggested approaches by people like curedolly who have reached higher levels of skill?

I used those methods you suggest and with those methods results were even worse.

http://41.media.tumblr.com/8255eaa33be1e...1_1280.jpg

This helped me with those difficult to remember katakana characters.

For me, the best way to learn to distinguish ツ, ソ, ン, and シ quickly was to practice writing them and remember them based on the strokes. For ツ and ソ, the strokes are all primarily downwards; for シ and ン, they're primarily rightwards. For me, that distinction is far more apparent when writing them (motor skill) than when just looking at them (visual recognition), so I learned 'writing this way is this katakana' and used that to assist my visual recognition.

Even now, if I'm tired or run across a bunch of them next to each other, I sometimes have to look at them and confirm the direction of the strokes to get them right; really sucks when it's a character in a game or manga that 'speaks' in katakana... Especially when it's the King of all Cosmos: the text boxes scroll automatically (quite fast in 僕の私の塊魂) and the bulge in his tights is right there... They did that on purpose, I'm positive of it!

Anyway, as for kanji, I learned them after learning the kana and tried pretty much everything out there (of course, my choices were: cram, learn as you go, and RTK; the first two were boring as hell, took too long, and didn't work well). A lazy version of RTK was what finally got any of it to look like writing instead of squiggles. Basically, I just looked over the book and used an Anki deck. Would I do that again? Probably not exactly the same way, since there was no actual Japanese learning at that point (AJATT days). I would try to incorporate actual Japanese words into it somehow, because keywords are a pain (I don't remember any of them now, and I didn't even bother with them as anything more than labels to begin with; went on gut recognition instead of 'do I know the keyword!?' for the last half), or maybe only do half of it or something; maybe not, though...

And anyway, I've always thought of kanji study as a visual primer: kanji didn't look like writing, so I studied it such that I could recognize it as writing. It only took me a little over three months to get through it this way, and I didn't even do it everyday, but the effect it had on my ability to learn vocab was enormous; I went from struggling to remember a word in kanji to remembering words because of the kanji; after all, I could finally recognize them as characters instead of squiggles!
I don't know how long it took me to actually acquire that benefit, because I was studying kanji almost exclusively at that time, and so went for RTK 1 completion so I wouldn't have to go back to it (you know the drill, everybody saying how horrible learning kanji is, and all the horror stories claiming it's impossible for a Westerner to learn kanji... bunch of bull; point being, I wanted to get kanji 'study' out of the way before I moved on).



What I'm trying to say is:
I think your problem might be similar to what mine was if you're having that much trouble learning kanji: that it's difficult to make your brain see kanji as writing; as presumptive as that sounds, it's the best I can manage for clarity at the moment (tired, in pain, feel like I might be getting sick, all the shit that makes language skills go out the window). I don't know how long you attempted to use SRS and RTK, but I remember it taking a week or so just to get into the groove of it.

The thing about SRS is that hardly anything is seen short term that you can't get from other methods; it's designed for the long game.

I think it is personal preference.
So far there are those methods listed.

memorizing symbols as whole pictures.
memorizing  stokes and their order 
and my way is memorizing collection of individual features regardless of their place order or other aspects. 


in that aspect learning kanji may be not that hard if you split it into radicals and learn that  "clothes" and "cut/sword" is "begin" or "person + tree" is rest