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+--- Thread: Fluency to be able to read light novels (/thread-11947.html)
Fluency to be able to read light novels - kasugano - 2014-07-23
My listen ability is quite well from over 3000ep of anime and some Japanese drama but that listening does not translate to understanding exept for the hiragana and katakan.
Also I have read Visual Novels with machine translators for over a year. Well I can comprehend the story 85%-90% if its just simple story. Well it did help me with lots of grammar.
I also finished RTK1 and am currently doing Core 10k. The LN I would like to be reading is Koakuma Teeri to Kyuuseishu!. Anybody here read it? Tomose Shuunsaku art for this LN is popular. . . .
So after core 10k can I read light novels with some help of a good dictionary? Or ill have to SRS like up to 20k words . . .
Fluency to be able to read light novels - Linval - 2014-07-23
The numbers are irrelevant. If you want to read a light novel, then learn vocabulary relevant to the light novel. The core decks are fine and all, but they can only take you so far - you'll have to learn vocabulary that matches your interests at one point or another, and do it on your own.
You could know up to 50 000 words, if all those words are juridic / paleontologic / oyster farming vocabulary, then they won't be of much use to you, unless your light novel is somehow about a lawyer who happens to have a PHD in paleontology and who ditches all to build an oyster farming empire in Jordan.
Fluency to be able to read light novels - Odin89 - 2014-07-23
What Linval said, many of the words included in Core are not exactly what you can expect to find in a juvenile LN, I seem to recall it doesn't have much literature-based vocabulary either. It would be easier for you if the LN had furigana but they don't add it to every word (that's something shonen manga usually do).
Going back to a work that gave you problems in the past is a good way to gauge your progress though.
Fluency to be able to read light novels - jcdietz03 - 2014-07-23
I am now reading Zero no Tsukaima Vol. 1 and nearly every word (I don't already know) is "among approx. 20,000 words deemed to be common in Japanese" (see the link). There are some words that are not; nearly all of these are nouns.
http://www.edrdg.org/wwwjdic/wwwjdicinf.html
Fluency to be able to read light novels - yudantaiteki - 2014-07-23
Yeah I don't really know how much "literature based vocabulary" there is. It just depends on the genre and what the novel is about. Even a sci-fi or fantasy novel will have mostly standard vocabulary with only a small number of specialized terms.
Fluency to be able to read light novels - jasberg - 2014-07-23
I'm not sure what qualifies as a light novel. I'm at somewhere between 5-6k in the core 10k. I'm currently reading まよわずいらっしゃい from the 七つの怪談 3 book series. Each book is about 170 pages long. There are about 1 or 2 words per page that I need to lookup. I find it fairly readable even without a dictionary. I like the books by this author because they don't use hiragana for most words that could be written in kanji (something that annoys me with books aimed for young kids), and it also only adds furigana to the first occurrence of a word per page spread. I also have some of the ルドルフ books by the same author, but haven't gotten into those yet. They seem to be at a tad bit higher level from what I've glossed over.
Fluency to be able to read light novels - sholum - 2014-07-23
I agree with the others: the Core decks, while useful, aren't the best resource to prepare for reading fiction, unless the story revolves heavily around topics you'd often see in the newspaper (which is what Core is based on).
I'd say that you should focus more on reading than Core after 6k (maybe more, maybe less; I don't have a concrete number), since the number of words that frequent among all topics will drop dramatically as you continue. Also, some really basic fantasy words are either really far into Core or not there at all; for example, 魔法 doesn't show up until Core 10k, but if you read fantasy, you'll come across it constantly (heck, if you're into anime and manga, you probably already know the word due to prevalence of 魔法少女).
Anyway, my point is that Core has an abundance of business and political words that, while useful, are not immediately so in most youth readings.
Fluency to be able to read light novels - Chronopolis - 2014-08-04
Let's see.
I don't think watching anime with subs or without helps that much without learning on the side. You'll only pick up very most commonly used words. Once you know the vocabulary, then I think it's quite good for improving your listening.
I came from reading VN's for about a year total with Aggregation Translation (use this instead of a machine translator, you should know your grammar anyways) to reading a LN. VN's and LN's overlap more in vocabulary then say, the Core10k, as they both are fictional mediums. For me, the biggest hurdle was the lack of voice and visual cues. It was hard to tell what tone people were speaking in based on the gobi, who was talking, what was addressing what, and what was going on. I had already read VN's with more difficult language, so part of it wasn't so bad.
If you have N2 grammar, can read simple VN's without looking up too many words (this means you know the common vocab that is used for narration and movements), can sorta use a Japanese dictionary, I would say you are set to move on to light novels.
You can do so earlier, but it may be overwhelming.
Fluency to be able to read light novels - Splatted - 2014-08-04
If I understand correctly you already have good aural comprehension but are having trouble transferring that over to the written language? If that's the case then I don't think learning new words should be a priority for you.
How did you learn all the words you already know? If they're in an anki deck then perhaps you could make a new card format that focuses on reading. If you learned mostly from exposure and looking up words then do the same with reading: Just binge on a load of furigana manga or convert a light novel to HTML so that you just have to mouse over with rikaisama to get the reading/meaning. I'm sure there are people who could suggest a more learning-centric visual novel setup than simply reading a machine translation as well.
Most of the knowledge is already there so you should see good progress once you get going.
Fluency to be able to read light novels - howtwosavealif3 - 2014-08-04
Instead of training yourself to read the light novel just read it. Look up stuff and trudge on. If you think that's too difficult, time-consuming, and inefficient based on thr first few pages etc than read something easier
Fluency to be able to read light novels - kainzero - 2014-08-04
howtwosavealif3 Wrote:Instead of training yourself to read the light novel just read it. Look up stuff and trudge on. If you think that's too difficult, time-consuming, and inefficient based on thr first few pages etc than read something easierYeah this pretty much. Why debate on how to read something when you can just read it?
I dunno the difference between a light novel and a regular novel. I can say that in my experience reading Kokuhaku (a popular mystery novel) was a lot easier than reading Sword Art Online.
Fluency to be able to read light novels - TsugiAshi - 2014-08-04
Linval Wrote:if all those words are juridic / paleontologic / oyster farming vocabulary, then they won't be of much use to you, unless your light novel is somehow about a lawyer who happens to have a PHD in paleontology and who ditches all to build an oyster farming empire in Jordan.That's actually not a bad idea. Mind if I use that idea and write a story about a former lawyer who strives to build an oyster farming empire in Jordan?
It'll be kind of like the movie "There Will Be Blood." But instead of conflicts involving the discovery of oil, it'll be about oyster farming.
Fluency to be able to read light novels - howtwosavealif3 - 2014-08-04
So u have to familiarize with the vocab in the light novels and the best way to do that is to actually read them. The core deck sure as hell do not contain the vocabulary useful for you in that case not to mention its hella boring. I've been in our shoes where I liked something but had to put tremendous effort with looking up stuff just because of the sheer amount of stuf I didn't know and my desire to understand it. All I can say it'll get easier and there's lots of great resources in this century ( thank god we dont have to deal with paper japanese dicitonaries... its just awful with all them homophones) with looking stuff up and I do not regret taking this road. I understand the appeal of core and other premade decks but when it comes to it I really find what I did much more effective in the overall long run and fun, enjoyable, and rewarding. Especially with doing this kinda stuff audio is VERY helpful ( pretty much the glue for me to have the word stick to my brain) maybe also do anime with Japanese subtitles whether its watching with the. Or going over the episodes with subs with difficult scenes, or use it to help you associate the reading with the kanji or hiragana etc.
Fluency to be able to read light novels - erlog - 2014-08-05
Also, you'll start to learn reading strategies even from only the first few pages. The first thing I ever read in Japanese from start to finish was the first volume of the Dragonball tankoban. It took me like 7 hours or something. The next volume I read took me only half that.
The same thing happened with the first novel I read. It was taking me like 30 minutes per page, but then over time that figure went down to a pretty reasonable time scale.
Fluency to be able to read light novels - Aikynaro - 2014-08-05
Just start reading stuff. Be unambitious and you'll soon work out your comfort level.
If you have a particular book in mind, just having a read of the first page should tell you how far you have to go. If it's too hard - unless you have some kind of pressing need to read it, drop it on the backlog and go read other stuff while you wait for your level to get up there. There is always something out there at your level you can read (although I think children's novels are a better place to start than LNs - at the very least try light novels that have been republished for children such as some of the books in the 角川つばさ文庫 imprint. Furigana is handy stuff)
Fluency to be able to read light novels - rich_f - 2014-08-06
What everyone else said.
What tripped me up a lot at first was the "stuff in hiragana" that I'd skim over, but that stuff is just as important as the word made up of 4-5 kanji, because it tells you how it all relates to each other. So while it's important to have a big vocab, it's just as important to know all of those grammar phrases that glue sentences together.
Also, if you find you can't hack LNs (I couldn't at first), there are children's novels, which are easier to read. Aoi Tori Bunko is one publisher that comes off the top of my head. Look for the books with the medium-blue borders. Their books are aimed at elementary school kids, so it's a good refuge.
Finally, there's always the Kindle (Paperwhite or the iOS app-- the Android app is bad). If you get the Paperwhite or iOS app, it has really fast/easy word lookup in as many dictionaries as you want (or buy). (Android app doesn't let you do that. :\ ) The Kindle has been a lifesaver for me in 3 ways: 1) Shipping. 2) Word Lookup (Fast!) 3) Text size (tiny furigana was killing my eyes.)
Fluency to be able to read light novels - Flamerokz - 2014-08-06
Everyone here has already said a lot of good information. To get better at reading, you gotta read.
That being said, if you are uncomfortable with the idea of running into too much unknown vocabulary (and also don't want to deal with looking things up on the fly), you could use cb4960's excellent Text Analyzer tool to parse through a text file version of something you would like to read. You can find it here: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=9459
If you have the patience you can go through the generated output and take out all the words you already know/don't care about. Then dump it into Anki and learn it that way before you actually start reading the book in question. If you know some programming language you could also write your own script to automatically remove entries that are represented in your anki collection.
If you're willing to deal with the monotony of the Core series, then this is a pretty decent solution in my opinion to the issue of learning vocab that will actually help you read what you want to read.
Of course, learning the vocabulary and actually being able to read and understand is not the same. But hopefully with this way, you can focus more on understanding the grammar and by extension the sentences as a whole.