How do i word this.....
After you finished RTK, how could you have read the sentences without knowing the reading? If you simply drilled it into your head wouldn't it have been better to just skip RTK and go straight to Core2K?

I don't understand what you are saying: reading is hearing the sounds of what you read in your head, you can't read without knowing the reading. Looking at sentences in a foreign script isn't reading. That said Core sentences are here for context, what is important is the word you're studying, you should focus on it. Understanding the sentences is secondary in Core, but it helps to understand them, especially since they reuse a lot of Core vocabulary.

As for going straight into Core without RTK, I wouldn't recommend it because RTK wires your brain to start receiving direct kanji input, in form of vocabulary. Core is already enough of a pain as it is, no need to learn kanji from it while you're at it (and it wasn't meant for that).

With furigana. Not necessarily: RTK makes it easier to remember the kanji.

You learn the readings from reading the furigana.

What is your current Japanese ability? Do you already know basic Japanese grammar and vocabulary or are you coming straight from learning hiragana, katakana and Rtk?

Rtk, just makes it easier for your brain to decifer the kanji by associating a general meaning of it in your head. It makes the thousands of kanji you will see in your sentences less daunting. I think you would find going straight into core2 without doing Rtk alot more difficult, but not impossible.

Also if you are a absolute beginner I wouldn't recommend Core2 as a good starting point after Rtk. I would recommend getting a good beginner textbook series like genki 1 and 2 and then starting Core2 after that.

murtada Wrote:How do i word this.....
After you finished RTK, how could you have read the sentences without knowing the reading? If you simply drilled it into your head wouldn't it have been better to just skip RTK and go straight to Core2K?

After I finished RTK1 I went back to finishing my introductory Japanese textbook.

I draw on the kanji I learned in RTK1 as I need them.

Now, this textbook is all in romaji, HOWEVER, I am doing the exercises in both romaji and kanji/kana. This is a great way to learn the pronunciations of each kanji.

And if anyone wants to know why I would use an all romaji textbook? Because in terms of depth of treatment and quality of grammatical explanations etc. it's simply the best textbook I've come across.

So I'm using this textbook but supplementing it by learning the kanji equivalent of the vocabulary items in each lesson. And then, doing the exercises in both romaji and kanji.

murtada Wrote:How do i word this.....
After you finished RTK, how could you have read the sentences without knowing the reading? If you simply drilled it into your head wouldn't it have been better to just skip RTK and go straight to Core2K?

I started out doing vocabulary cards with furigana. I would do 3-400 vocabulary cards before you start sentences so you have a vocabulary base to build from. You need to know most of the words in the sentences before you can learn much from them. And make sure you get an optimized deck so there'll only be one new word for each sentence.

Quote:After you finished RTK, how could you have read the sentences without knowing the reading?

You couldn't. You should mostly study words you already know. I'm sure that even if you're a beginner you know some, like ai, kawaii, watashi, neko, etc. Start with those. If you don't know enough of them, find easy materials online, go over them.

Core2k (done straight up, without picking and choosing only the easy words), is way too difficult for a beginner. There is plenty of easier material out there. And easier is always better. In language learning, struggling to learn vocab and grammar that's above your level is a waste of time, since the more advanced the vocab and grammar, the less value it actually has. Going for the harder stuff won't make you progress faster, it will actually slow you down.

The most common and obvious words and grammar also have the most value. So it's those you should be SRS-ing, until you know them like the back of your hand. Instead of 電子辞書, just start with words like 犬, 猫, 多い etc. There's hundreds of such basic words, with a one on one correlation between the word and the Rtk keyword. There are also plenty of easy compounds like 彼女, 学校 or 椅子 (椅 is not an Rtk1 kanji, if I remember correctly, but it's still an easy word: just add the Kanji to your deck).

Even if you recognize these words and with a little thinking can read them, you should still review them until you know them perfectly, before you try anything more challenging.

If you want to use Core2k (because it's the best quality deck), a lot of these simple words are in there. But you need to suspend everything else to get to them, because they're hidden among the more difficult stuff. Don't be shy about suspending 50-60% of the stuff that comes up. If you haven't heard it before, and have no easy way of remembering it (it's not a compound that has an obvious meaning and reading, based on the Kanji it's made up of), click suspend. I still do that, and I'm not a beginner anymore. There's just no point in making things difficult for yourself, language learning can and should be easy.

In my case 2 weeks after I finish RTK 1 and I was still reviewing I immediately took Core 10k in recognition format where I test my self the reading and meaning of a kanjified vocab. It was not difficult, but this maybe because I prior know many of the vocab from watching lots of anime and reading eroge(with machine translator).

Well RTK 1 really helped me recognizing and distinguishing similar kanjis. It helped me so much on Core 10k. You can naturally take up the all the joyo kanji without RTK 1 but it wont be very efficient. Also RTK 1 just took 3 months and its rewards are beyond applaud able.

Stansfield123 Wrote:

Quote:After you finished RTK, how could you have read the sentences without knowing the reading?

You couldn't. You should mostly study words you already know. I'm sure that even if you're a beginner you know some, like ai, kawaii, watashi, neko, etc. Start with those. If you don't know enough of them, find easy materials online, go over them.

Exactly. As the old textbooks point out, the more spoken Japanese you know before attempting to learn the Japanese writing system, the easier and more efficient it will be.

john555 Wrote:As the old textbooks point out, the more spoken Japanese you know before attempting to learn the Japanese writing system, the easier and more efficient it will be.

Even considering the most ideal scenario this really only is helpful up to somewhat of a low bar. Given the number of homophones that do exist there is a point where trying to force one's way through with romaji hardly makes sense.

I know you really love pushing your agenda regarding romaji and what-not, but citing the same assertion from those old textbooks over and over again, to substantiate your insistence that this is, in general, a better/great/etc. method than just jumping into kana and kanji does not change the inherent flaws in pursuing a romaji-first based instruction in Japanese. While you clearly still prefer this method regardless of this flaws, for at least the sake of the other casual visitors, it would be nice to be a little less biased in this regard. Assuming you have tried learning through methods most people use here, it would probably help your agenda more if you actually explained how those methods failed for you. That's just my own opinion of course though.

Flamerokz Wrote:

john555 Wrote:As the old textbooks point out, the more spoken Japanese you know before attempting to learn the Japanese writing system, the easier and more efficient it will be.

Even considering the most ideal scenario this really only is helpful up to somewhat of a low bar. Given the number of homophones that do exist there is a point where trying to force one's way through with romaji hardly makes sense.

I know you really love pushing your agenda regarding romaji and what-not, but citing the same assertion from those old textbooks over and over again, to substantiate your insistence that this is, in general, a better/great/etc. method than just jumping into kana and kanji does not change the inherent flaws in pursuing a romaji-first based instruction in Japanese. While you clearly still prefer this method regardless of this flaws, for at least the sake of the other casual visitors, it would be nice to be a little less biased in this regard. Assuming you have tried learning through methods most people use here, it would probably help your agenda more if you actually explained how those methods failed for you. That's just my own opinion of course though.

It is true that words you already know the pronounciation of, are learned better and faster, but you're not limited to romaji when learning the pronounciation. Furigana is a better choice for all the flaws of romaji Flamerokz pointed out. Audio is another option: how much simpler it is to attach a pronounciation to a kanji when we already know the word from anime? Kawaii etc..

john555 Wrote:Exactly. As the old textbooks point out, the more spoken Japanese you know before attempting to learn the Japanese writing system, the easier and more efficient it will be.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuu. Not what I said at all. I said that he should start learning the writing system right away, but start with the few words he already knows, don't try to learn new words he never heard before.

Then, he should search out various easy materials where he acquaints himself with more words, and add those words too. Some of the things I did was listen to songs, watch TV shows, read blogs and manga, and then, after some time spent on repeated listening or viewing, look up the words in them in Core6K, and (if they're there) move them to the front of the review stack.

I never suggested that he shouldn't start reviewing Kanji vocab until he speaks on an intermediate or advanced level. I would consider that bad advice, especially after someone already did RtK. Here's why:

Because Japanese is an agglutinative language, after a while, one can start learning words using the Kanji writing as an anchor, without having had to hear the specific words ahead of time. This would be far more difficult to do using Romaji writing, because of the many homonyms.

There is massive amounts of order in the Japanese language that can only be recognized through how words are written. For instance, here's a list of words: shadou, kendou, juudou, doubutsu, douga, undou. What do you think the pattern is there? No, it's not, you're wrong, it's not that they all have "dou". That doesn't help at all, because it's two different "dou"s, and there are hundreds of words with "dou" in them.

-without Kanji, you would never figure out that the words shadou, kendou, juudou, (written 車道, 剣道, 柔道) have the Kanji 道 meaning "way" or "road" in common, making all these words (and many more) far easier to remember with Kanji than without. Shadou is "the way of cars", kendou is "the way of the sword", juudou is "the gentle way". Very easy (and without knowing the Kanji, there's no way you can make that connection between all the words with this Kanji in them; best you could do is connect kendou and juudou, if you're a martial arts fan; but there are a dozen more words with the same Kanji that you can't connect).

-the words doubutsu, douga, undou, etc. (where the dou in each case is written with the Kanji 動, meaning "motion") on the other hand have this other Kanji in common. Nothing to do with the first Kanji, nothing to do with the first "dou".

-many common words with the Kanji 同 in them (also read as "dou") have that in common. Again, nothing to do with either of the two previous "dou"s.

To someone trying to remember words without Kanji, that "dou" would all sound the same, and have no meaning whatsoever, making all these words (many of them read the same exact way, or with only the length of a vowel being different) impossible to make sense of. And don't think this example is some rare one. Far from it, it only scratches the surface. In fact, while I only used three words for each Kanji, there is at least a dozen words that follow the same pattern, for each one of them. And there are many other Kanji read as "dou" that I'm too lazy to look up. Same with other common readings.

If you have been learning words with romaji, I bet you've struggled with many of the very examples I just gave. Well, guess what: when I learned these words, I had no problem at all with them, because I relied on the Kanji in them, and they made perfect sense since day one as a result.

In conclusion, a beginner should start with words he already knows by sound, and then he should continue to scour the Core deck (Core6K at first, then later on Core10K or even the big extended one with all the common dictionary entries) for the words that are easiest to learn (because either he has heard them before or because they are made up of one or more Kanji he already knows how to read). Please do not twist my words to try and validate your romaji theory. I don't agree with you in the slightest on that.

P.S. Please treat my advice above as a heuristic rather than a law written in stone. Some words, you just have to suck it up and memorize cold. Especially verbs.

Apply common sense to figure out which. For instance, if you are going through the Core deck in optimized order, and come across a word you've never heard before, look at the translation. If it says "sister", or "doctor", or "school", or "breakfast", or "Thursday", or " visit", or "use", you're gonna wanna keep that card around and learn it, even though it's going to be a pain. Those are pretty important words. It's those other less important words that you should skip.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Please do not twist my words to try and validate your romaji theory. I don't agree with you in the slightest on that.

Sorry no offense but you DID use romaji in your post:

"You couldn't. You should mostly study words you already know. I'm sure that even if you're a beginner you know some, like ai, kawaii, watashi, neko, etc. Start with those. If you don't know enough of them, find easy materials online, go over them."

From your post which uses romaji, I took it to mean you were cool with using romaji to do the initial learning (the words you "already know").

But your point is taken. I agree you don't agree with me. We can agree on that.

I believe Stansfield used romaji for your benefit because you are learning romaji vocab and wouldn't understand his point if he wrote in Kanji.

Oops I forgot to reply on topic earlier.

My opinion is that tae kim + core2k is a pretty good route to go with after doing RtK vol 1.

Without RtK vol 1, I still think the above is still alright although as others have mentioned it may be useful to use Genki I & II as well.

I should note that when I say using core2k, I mean mostly as a vocab builder. I don't think understanding the sentences are as important for core2k (most of them use really basic grammar if I recall correctly; if so the benefit is minimal at best).

If you gentlemen/gentlewomen will excuse me I shall now return to the 60s to consult an ekusupa-to.

yogert909 Wrote:I believe Stansfield used romaji for your benefit because you are learning romaji vocab and wouldn't understand his point if he wrote in Kanji.

Indeed. I never use Romaji. No one who knows the Kana does.

Stansfield123 Wrote:

yogert909 Wrote:I believe Stansfield used romaji for your benefit because you are learning romaji vocab and wouldn't understand his point if he wrote in Kanji.

Indeed. I never use Romaji. No one who knows the Kana does.

"No one who knows the Kana does".

Well, I know the kana and I use romaji.

If you never use romaji how do you input Japanese into your computer?

Quote:If you never use romaji how do you input Japanese into your computer?

Easy, just think of the key presses as finger movements, not characters (if you have to look at the keys in order to type, you should learn touch typing first).

There's also direct kana input:

I see now why it's important to do RTK, Stansfield123 had some really good points!

john555 Wrote:"No one who knows the Kana does".

Well, I know the kana and I use romaji.

You sure showed him; now his radical/nonsense kanji+kana theory is finally debunked.