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Reccomended Manga? - TheTrueBlue - 2009-07-19

kumadondon Wrote:やばい、外人だ！アイツ出させたいけど英語さっぱり解らんぞ？！どうしよー
Lmao. Do you really think they want to throw you out just for standing around and reading some manga? I thought Japanese sales personnel were generally more polite than that, both in thought and deed...

Reccomended Manga? - QuackingShoe - 2009-07-19

No one's polite in thought! The whole point of politeness is not letting people know how horrible your thoughts really are!

Reccomended Manga? - strugglebunny - 2009-07-19

thorstenu Wrote:Im starting to feel really stupid when everyones here is talking about how easy Yotsuba is for beginners...
Whew, I thought I was the only one. I got some Yatsuba and Shinchan and recommendation from here, and I for about one page each I was like "oh, hey, I can read most of this!" and then for the next 10 pages, I can understand nothing (especially Shinchan since it has no furigana, which makes finding the kanji a pain in the ass in a dictionary.)

I was starting to feel real terrible when everyone as sounding like "oh hey, I read this manga to completion and understood everything on my first day day of studying Japanese!"

Guess I have to just keep plugging away at it. God, I hate having to look up crap in a dictionary without the aid of furigana or cut and paste.

Reccomended Manga? - QuackingShoe - 2009-07-19

strugglebunny Wrote:I was starting to feel real terrible when everyone as sounding like "oh hey, I read this manga to completion and understood everything on my first day day of studying Japanese!"
It's not that at all. What makes yotsubato a convenient first manga is that it's really enjoyable to go through even if you don't understand the dialogue. In most stories, particularly written stories, if you don't understand most of what's being said, it's largely confusing and unenjoyable - for me. But Yotsubato is fun and straightforward regardless, which gives you the motivation to keep going through it. And the contexts are so clear that they provide huge clues as to what people are saying - you can often guess what a person is saying before even trying to read it.

It's also relatively simple, real, spoken, colloquial Japanese with furigana, and after some degree of practice it is in fact easy to read through the whole thing. But that's not what's important primarily, and you're not supposed to understand it all when you crack open the book. How could you possibly? If you're going straight from RTK, or straight from a textbook (or textbooks), or, well, let's face it, straight from any learning resource targeted to foreigners, you're not going to be able to easily understand any kind of real Japanese. You have to practice with real Japanese to understand real Japanese.

When I started reading, I was forced to ignore most of what the adults said to each other entirely - apart from basic grammar (I didn't even know how to make conditionals, I learned how through yotsubato), the barest vocabulary, and a rough idea of what 2024 kanji were, I had no Japanese ability to speak of, so there was a whole hell of a lot I couldn't get. It doesn't matter, you just keep going. It's ok to start with a really terrible batting average.

Reccomended Manga? - TheTrueBlue - 2009-07-19

Also, as I first read Yotsuba I had the Microsoft Japanese IME Toolbar that comes in Windows XP on.

If there was a kanji I didn't know I could just draw it in the "IME pad", then RikaiChan supplies the definition once I insert/copypaste it into Firefox, et. voila!

Also if Rikai doesn't show anything, search google with it, even if you mess up the hirgana and kanji "code" because some kanji compounds are coded differently than their separate "IME Pad" kanji-alone selves than when they are typed all together at once in kana.

But searching in google will get you the proper code, because google will automatically search for compounds in webpages where they are written correctly.

Also wiktionary can help with supplying readings, if you're interested.

Hope this helps!

Reccomended Manga? - QuackingShoe - 2009-07-19

TheTrueBlue Wrote:If there was a kanji I didn't know I could just draw it in the "IME pad", then RikaiChan supplies the definition once I insert/copypaste it into Firefox, et. voila!
This is something that I generally do as well, if I really need to find a word, don't know the kanji, can't copy-paste, and there are no furigana. But why would you do that with yotsubato? It's a lot of unnecessary work(well, I'm lazy); the furigana is right there. Just type the hiragana in, convert, and voila. Don't need to write 土曜 one by one into the pad, just type 'どよう'.

Reccomended Manga? - igordesu - 2009-07-19

thorstenu Wrote:
wccrawford Wrote:
TheTrueBlue Wrote:For those starting out in the Kanji biz, I recommend the bestselling slice-of-life manga Yotsuba.

It's geared towards younger readers and has only simpler everyday kanji, used in a slow but steady pace that you can then look up and learn as you read and laugh along.

Huzzah for being as kanji literate as Japanese grade schoolers!
Yotsuba& is definitely my recommendation for a first manga. With no vocab, it's hard to read, but possible. With some vocab, it's fun to read. Once you can read it easily, it's time for some shounen manga... Which will start the cycle all over again.
Somehow I am really afraid that I am doing something wrong. I learned Japanese for around 8 months... RTK, Tae Kim (Basic+Essential) and now Im doing ko2001. Overall I have around 1500 sentences.
I own the first Yotsuba manga and I don't find it easy at all because it is (or appears to me) "spoken Japanese" that doesn't seem to have much similarities to the nice sentences I learned. Everything looks fragmented, is full with te-forms and many っ, so I cant even look up things when I have to.
I read some Chapters in an English translation, there were a lot of play on words and Yotsuba seems to use a weird language sometimes. I can't believe a beginner or even intermediate can understand that much from those constructions, if any.

Im starting to feel really stupid when everyones here is talking about how easy Yotsuba is for beginners...
That's because you just haven't gotten used to reading yet. I'm of the opinion that a person could possibly even get 10,000 sentences from learner resources and still have trouble reading. Just read, read, read. You would have most likely ran into the same trouble whether you would have started reading before you started mining sentences from learner sources or now, so don't worry about it. Just read. Look up a word or two when you feel like it, and gather sentences along the way so you don't forget what you learn, but make sure you're reading. You'll get better.

Reccomended Manga? - QuackingShoe - 2009-07-19

igordesu Wrote:I'm of the opinion that a person could possibly even get 10,000 sentences from learner resources and still have trouble reading.
Which isn't to say that they're of no value, only that actual Japanese is different and one will of course need to adjust what one knows to practical application.

Reccomended Manga? - igordesu - 2009-07-19

QuackingShoe Wrote:
igordesu Wrote:I'm of the opinion that a person could possibly even get 10,000 sentences from learner resources and still have trouble reading.
Which isn't to say that they're of no value, only that actual Japanese is different and one will of course need to adjust what one knows to practical application.
Oh yeah. I didn't mean like, "haha, 10,000 sentences in themselves will get you no where! mwahahaha!" lol, no, you'd get lots of experience, vocab, etc from those sentences. Just, like you said, actual application is important.

Reccomended Manga? - Tzadeck - 2009-07-19

Doraemon - Hey, it's quite easy, and it didn't make me want to shoot myself in the face. Every story is just 2-7 pages or so, and always ends with a bad joke. Bad jokes are great. Not many kanji, though.

Azumanga Daioh - Very very few furigana. A very weird comedy about high school girls, though its targeted for male audiences. It's a 4-panel comic. Lot's of 突っ込み　and ボケ, so if you like manzai, woot.

For fans of the animes, I'd recommend Neon Genesis Evangelion and Trigun providing that you've never read them in English. Both great stories. Evangelion has enough differences from the anime to keep someone interested. I'd recommend watching the show and then reading right afterwords, that way you've got some of the often-used vocabulary burned into your brain. Trigun is quite different in its original manga form, and of course runs way past where the show ends. Unfortunately, I find it pretty hard to read compared to my other recommendations.

Reccomended Manga? - QuackingShoe - 2009-07-19

To make a post on topic,

Ranma 1/2 was just about my first anime when I was young, and I still find it entertaining now, in manga form. Nobody really seems to talk about this series these days, but it was very popular like over a decade ago, to the extent that most Japanese actually seem to know what you're talking about if you mention it. Which is interesting, because usually I avoid the subject of anime/manga entirely since they never know what the hell I'm talking about.
Although, the anime is probably more enjoyable, purely because you get to hear Hayashibara Megumi constantly yelling like a man...

Lovely Complex is probably one of my favourite things, proving that despite how much I make fun of shoujo, it's probably my genre -_-
Potential difficulty is that it's written entirely in the Osaka dialect, so if you don't want to deal with that, whoops. It's about 40% of the charm, for me, so.

Reccomended Manga? - TheTrueBlue - 2009-07-20

QuackingShoe Wrote:
TheTrueBlue Wrote:If there was a kanji I didn't know I could just draw it in the "IME pad", then RikaiChan supplies the definition once I insert/copypaste it into Firefox, et. voila!
This is something that I generally do as well, if I really need to find a word, don't know the kanji, can't copy-paste, and there are no furigana. But why would you do that with yotsubato? It's a lot of unnecessary work(well, I'm lazy); the furigana is right there. Just type the hiragana in, convert, and voila. Don't need to write 土曜 one by one into the pad, just type 'どよう'.
Not all of the Kanji had furigana though, and I knew less than 50 Kanji when I started Yotsuba (as in Japanese readings/meanings of Kanji characters). And I was hoping to try Azumanga Daioh next, but as a former poster indicated, if there isn't much furigana, it may prove more difficult than I previously anticipated. o_o

And RikaiChan has 突っ込み = penetration as the first definition and "digging into something" as the second. Curious that it also means "straight man"-style comedy. o.0

QuackingShoe Wrote:To make a post on topic,
Ooooh, now I get it. lol...

On that note: Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen *anything* to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. 'Cause no mystical energy field controls *my* destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.

Reccomended Manga? - thorstenu - 2009-07-20

Codexus Wrote:1) Simply read it. Don't worry if you don't understand just read. And not just the first volume read the whole thing and read some other manga too. Just reading will help gain the experience needed for better understanding. Watching anime can also help.
kumadondon Wrote:Agreed. The first ever manga I ever read (Doraemon) I couldn't understand a single thing. I read the hiragana ever so slowly, I had no dictionary... I was confused as hell (what's all this hoo-ah, where are my 私's and ですか's darn it this isn't Japanese this is hullabaloo)

Just keep going, man. Before you know it, you're in the conbini 立読みing while the clerks are thinking やばい、外人だ！アイツ出させたいけど英語さっぱり解らんぞ？！どうしよー
iQuackingShoe Wrote:When I started reading, I was forced to ignore most of what the adults said to each other entirely - apart from basic grammar (I didn't even know how to make conditionals, I learned how through yotsubato), the barest vocabulary, and a rough idea of what 2024 kanji were, I had no Japanese ability to speak of, so there was a whole hell of a lot I couldn't get. It doesn't matter, you just keep going. It's ok to start with a really terrible batting average.
igordesu Wrote:That's because you just haven't gotten used to reading yet. I'm of the opinion that a person could possibly even get 10,000 sentences from learner resources and still have trouble reading. Just read, read, read. You would have most likely ran into the same trouble whether you would have started reading before you started mining sentences from learner sources or now, so don't worry about it. Just read. Look up a word or two when you feel like it, and gather sentences along the way so you don't forget what you learn, but make sure you're reading. You'll get better.
Ok, thanks for your answers... so I just have to read. I am not exactly shure how to learn without understanding but I give it a try.
Perhaps I was a little missguided because some people claim you should having fun and its definitly not fun to read a good manga and dont understand a thing or only the half. I feel like wasting a good story this way, like drinking your best wine when you have a cold and dont taste that much. Yeah, yotsuba is fun to look at (only pictures) but its nothing compared to the fulll experience. So it makes more sense for me to just abuse some boring manga for the first reading experience and not some good ones.

Reccomended Manga? - thorstenu - 2009-07-20

Codexus Wrote:1) Simply read it. Don't worry if you don't understand just read. And not just the first volume read the whole thing and read some other manga too. Just reading will help gain the experience needed for better understanding. Watching anime can also help.
kumadondon Wrote:Agreed. The first ever manga I ever read (Doraemon) I couldn't understand a single thing. I read the hiragana ever so slowly, I had no dictionary... I was confused as hell (what's all this hoo-ah, where are my 私's and ですか's darn it this isn't Japanese this is hullabaloo)

Just keep going, man. Before you know it, you're in the conbini 立読みing while the clerks are thinking やばい、外人だ！アイツ出させたいけど英語さっぱり解らんぞ？！どうしよー
iQuackingShoe Wrote:When I started reading, I was forced to ignore most of what the adults said to each other entirely - apart from basic grammar (I didn't even know how to make conditionals, I learned how through yotsubato), the barest vocabulary, and a rough idea of what 2024 kanji were, I had no Japanese ability to speak of, so there was a whole hell of a lot I couldn't get. It doesn't matter, you just keep going. It's ok to start with a really terrible batting average.
igordesu Wrote:That's because you just haven't gotten used to reading yet. I'm of the opinion that a person could possibly even get 10,000 sentences from learner resources and still have trouble reading. Just read, read, read. You would have most likely ran into the same trouble whether you would have started reading before you started mining sentences from learner sources or now, so don't worry about it. Just read. Look up a word or two when you feel like it, and gather sentences along the way so you don't forget what you learn, but make sure you're reading. You'll get better.
Ok, thanks for your answers... so I just have to read (or force me to). I am not exactly sure how to learn without understanding but I give it a try.

Perhaps I was a little misguided because some people claim you should having fun and its definitely not fun to read a good manga and don't understand a thing or only the half. I feel like wasting a good story this way, like drinking your best wine when you have a cold and don't taste that much. Yeah, yotsuba is fun to look at (only pictures) but its nothing compared to the full experience. So it makes more sense for me to just abuse some boring manga for the first reading experience and not some good ones.

Reccomended Manga? - nicksan - 2009-07-20

I don't have much manga, and I can't read much at all, but I still like flicking through Doraemon and Death Note. Doraemon is just lots of short stories and the writing is relatively simple, so it's nice to flick through. Death Note is harder, but it's more interesting for me. I read even though it's tough though.

I'm going to try and pick up some more Doraemon and Death Note, and maybe find some Yotsubato next time I go to London, since that's the only place that sells manga for a decent price.

Reccomended Manga? - Tzadeck - 2009-07-20

QuackingShoe Wrote:Lovely Complex is probably one of my favourite things, proving that despite how much I make fun of shoujo, it's probably my genre -_-
Potential difficulty is that it's written entirely in the Osaka dialect, so if you don't want to deal with that, whoops. It's about 40% of the charm, for me, so.
I LOVE Lovely Complex. But I didn't mention it because it's shoujo.^^

Reccomended Manga? - QuackingShoe - 2009-07-20

thorstenu Wrote:I feel like wasting a good story this way, like drinking your best wine when you have a cold and don't taste that much. Yeah, yotsuba is fun to look at (only pictures) but its nothing compared to the full experience. So it makes more sense for me to just abuse some boring manga for the first reading experience and not some good ones.
I understand what you mean with this.
I used to be some kind of.. I don't even know what to call it. Obsessed with the integrity of a work of fiction? It would drive me completely insane if people would skip episodes in a series, or read a book starting from the back, or whatever, because they were damaging how the story was meant to be experienced, and were greatly damaging their experience as a result. So the idea of going through some story I didn't understand, say, one I hadn't at least already experience in English, seemed like some kind of crime.

Yeah, well, that's all bullshit. My advise: get over it. The only shame in wasting wine is that it's expensive and consumable, and it's still not much of a shame. Fiction is forever; if you really like something that much, you can go back and read it again later. However, you're not going to understand anything you read to it's fullest extent until you are, in fact, fluent and steeped in cultural information, so it really is necessary to blow through a billion series you just don't quite understand. And you can't spend all that time (and it will be a lot of time) only going through stories you don't like; that kind of torture will burn you right the hell out. I can't even learn things from stuff I don't like. I've tried. What you said about fun isn't a misunderstanding; it is necessary.

Your experience is also made pleasurable and unique because of your present condition. There's a certain joy in not really understanding everything, and there's so much glee in realizing that you understand what you do understand. It creates lasting memories of not only the stories themselves, but how you were when you read them. When I think of most of my vocabulary, I always have memories of where I learned them - always in some story I enjoyed - making them absolutely charming.


Tzadeck Wrote:I LOVE Lovely Complex.
Word.

Reccomended Manga? - strugglebunny - 2009-07-21

TheTrueBlue Wrote:Also, as I first read Yotsuba I had the Microsoft Japanese IME Toolbar that comes in Windows XP on.

If there was a kanji I didn't know I could just draw it in the "IME pad", then RikaiChan supplies the definition once I insert/copypaste it into Firefox, et. voila!

Also if Rikai doesn't show anything, search google with it, even if you mess up the hirgana and kanji "code" because some kanji compounds are coded differently than their separate "IME Pad" kanji-alone selves than when they are typed all together at once in kana.

But searching in google will get you the proper code, because google will automatically search for compounds in webpages where they are written correctly.

Also wiktionary can help with supplying readings, if you're interested.

Hope this helps!
Didn't even know that this existed in IME. Awesome. Thanks!

Reccomended Manga? - TheTrueBlue - 2009-07-21

strugglebunny Wrote:
TheTrueBlue Wrote:Also, as I first read Yotsuba I had the Microsoft Japanese IME Toolbar that comes in Windows XP on.

If there was a kanji I didn't know I could just draw it in the "IME pad", then RikaiChan supplies the definition once I insert/copypaste it into Firefox, et. voila!

Also if Rikai doesn't show anything, search google with it, even if you mess up the hirgana and kanji "code" because some kanji compounds are coded differently than their separate "IME Pad" kanji-alone selves than when they are typed all together at once in kana.

But searching in google will get you the proper code, because google will automatically search for compounds in webpages where they are written correctly.

Also wiktionary can help with supplying readings, if you're interested.

Hope this helps!
Didn't even know that this existed in IME. Awesome. Thanks!
[Image: ocha.gif]
がんばれ！　

Reccomended Manga? - Codexus - 2009-07-21

thorstenu Wrote:Perhaps I was a little misguided because some people claim you should having fun and its definitely not fun to read a good manga and don't understand a thing
There is an exaggeration about this whole idea of fun. It's like it has become mandatory to have fun "all the time" v___v (I blame the usual suspect for those misguided ideas) Learning Japanese is work and it isn't much fun until you start understanding things. That doesn't mean you should hate every second of it but it isn't bliss either.

thorstenu Wrote:So it makes more sense for me to just abuse some boring manga for the first reading experience and not some good ones.
It's OK to wait for a few selected favorite manga but if you aren't going to read anything that seems interesting it's not going to be very motivating.

Also it can be more motivating to try to read things that aren't available in translation yet. So that you don't feel like you're being punished for learning Japanese by not allowing yourself to read the translated version. (Unfortunately with all the scanlations available these days, this has become impossible for all the popular manga series).

Reccomended Manga? - bombpersons - 2009-07-21

TheTrueBlue Wrote:[Image: ocha.gif]
がんばれ！　
Those emoticons from JCafe are awesome =D

Reccomended Manga? - TheTrueBlue - 2009-07-21

[Image: herov.gif]
ただいま紹介に預かりました

Reccomended Manga? - kumadondon - 2009-07-21

thorstenu Wrote:Ok, thanks for your answers... so I just have to read. I am not exactly shure how to learn without understanding but I give it a try.
Perhaps I was a little missguided because some people claim you should having fun and its definitly not fun to read a good manga and dont understand a thing or only the half. I feel like wasting a good story this way, like drinking your best wine when you have a cold and dont taste that much. Yeah, yotsuba is fun to look at (only pictures) but its nothing compared to the fulll experience. So it makes more sense for me to just abuse some boring manga for the first reading experience and not some good ones.
Oh, that's why you keep the manga and read it after you improved some more. (lol)

Look, man, we've all been there (regular manga readers). It's SOMEWHAT fun, but it's still study/work, man. You should look up words, and grammar as well. I see words sometimes which I don't understand the meaning of. Pop out the 923SH with the built in dictionary, and check it. Bookmark it, and keep reading.

That's kinda what I was doing for a year and a half. It helps, although not quickly.

My suggestion? Pick up a good Intermediate Japanese textbook

http://www.3anet.co.jp/english/books/text_e_il_301.html
http://www.3anet.co.jp/english/books/text_e_iu_501.html

These two books helped me with my reading comprehension/vocab/grammar very much. I'm sure they will help you. After you master those two, the manga get easier. And that's when you start to have fun.

This is all from my own experience, so YMMV. Other people do it differently (NO TEXTBOOKS DAMN IT) but for what it's worth, you should study Japanese more as well as read manga.

Reccomended Manga? - Nuriko - 2010-05-09

Ginga Tetsudou 999!
[Image: 2i0f39x.jpg]
Every chapter is so unique and different from the others~ there's always some new world being explored.

Reccomended Manga? - Javizy - 2010-05-10

すごいよ！！マサルさん is epic!
伝染るんです。is a good ギャグ漫画.
デトロイトメタルシティ is funny. The language is horrific, but you do need to learn those kinds of words at some point.