I'm definitely not fluent in Japanese. But please don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to say to start putting words together, without any knowledge of grammar or so. But we are talking about learning 10K sentences, which is just unnecessary, and ineffective.

I'm sensing that what you are trying to say is to be PERFECT Japanese, but note, that is not = fluency, that's beyond that (by far). Why would I want to be perfect in any language? Not even it's almost impossible to achieve (specially with Japanese) but ineffective, because the learning curve will go up exponentially with every added percentile to your knowledge, beyond 85%-90% and so.

If you learn the words with some grammar (emphasis is always on the words), and start putting them together, you will eventually catch up. I don't see how this can hinder learning certain fixed expressions along the way.
But if you ONLY learn whole sentences + grammar you might find it difficult to express yourself the way you want - thus limiting your own "freedom" in the language, hence less fluency.
You have to understand that the brain works by association, the more connections you have the more you know (and can know). I believe that having 10K words memorized will still give you much more connections than learning 10K fixed sentences.

Also Japanese is just a language just like any other, no need to mystify it too much imo.

Raschaverak Wrote:I'm definitely not fluent in Japanese. But please don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to say to start putting words together, without any knowledge of grammar or so. But we are talking about learning 10K sentences, which is just unnecessary, and ineffective.

I'm sensing that what you are trying to say is to be PERFECT Japanese, but note, that is not = fluency, that's beyond that (by far). Why would I want to be perfect in any language? Not even it's almost impossible to achieve (specially with Japanese) but ineffective, because the learning curve will go up exponentially with every added percentile to your knowledge, beyond 85%-90% and so.

If you learn the words with some grammar (emphasis is always on the words), and start putting them together, you will eventually catch up. I don't see how this can hinder learning certain fixed expressions along the way.
But if you ONLY learn whole sentences + grammar you might find it difficult to express yourself the way you want - thus limiting your own "freedom" in the language, hence less fluency.
You have to understand that the brain works by association, the more connections you have the more you know (and can know). I believe that having 10K words memorized will still give you much more connections than learning 10K fixed sentences.

Also Japanese is just a language just like any other, no need to mystify it too much imo.

If I could add to this, you learn how to express yourself in any language by huge exposure, I'm I right? You must be exposed to different patterns in different contexts, used with many different words. Even if you learn 10k sentences with Anki, many of them are redundants or too simple and out of context. While if you learn 10k words, allways in context of a simple sentence, but without trying to learn the sentence itself, with those 10k words you are able to consume native material easily, and it's from this that you get used to patterns and how/when/where to use the words you learned with Anki. Isn't it so?

I don't think anyone is actually advocating memorising sentences, as such - but to learn words in the context of sentences. Instead of just studying one word in isolation, understanding a whole sentence with one new word in it. But what you're testing is whether you remember the word, not the whole order of the sentence.

Oh, OK that's different. If the sentence is just an example to emphasize the meaning & usage of the word, but you learn ONLY the word itself then it's OK. I got confused, since in the OP's post it says "learn 10K sentences".

Yeah as far as I can remember, 'learn 10k sentences' in the AJATT context means put 10k interesting sentences containing 1 or more new words into your SRS and test yourself on whether can you 1. understand the words, 2. read them without furigana, and 3. grasp the gist of the sentence as a whole.

It worked pretty well for me during the time I used it and of course learning words in context along with lots of immersion = natural sounding Japanese

Also, honestly I think the 10k number is a little misleading... I know we need a lot of words, maybe even more than 10k words in order to be able to understand native content easily. But it is true that many words are compounds or similar to other. For example in many word lists (see that based on 5000 novels), if you skim the list you see that in order to gain a 90% knowledge you need 8000 words. And we know 90% is not good as it could seem at first sight. So one can get discouraged. But if you see in those list there are words like: 白 and 白い; 見る, 見える, 見せる, 見つける, 見つかる; 大きな, 大きく, 大きい, 大きさ; 決定 and 決定的 (and many other with teki); all those words ending in 者 like 編集 and 編集者; all grammar particles and other grammar words; another example: if you have 真っ黒 on Anki, do you really need to put even 真っ白? And so on. 10k words doesn't mean you must put all of them on Anki. Also counts all the words like 僕, 私 and so on... you will see them like many times a day. No need to put them on Anki. If you put everything in your deck in order to consider it as learned, you will end with a lot of reviews and when you end with Anki you'll be so nauseated by japanese you will evade japanese for the rest of the day.
What I'm trying to say is that, even if you need a lot of words, this doesn't mean all those words are equally difficult to learn. Also see all those words where both meaning and reading are easy to learn thanks to kanji.
So maybe in the beginning it will be very difficult, to the point you will end up with a burn-out as happened to me when I tried to farm 50 words a day with the core10k deck (because of exponential reviews). I learned the first 3000 and the idea I still need like other 7000 to just gain a basic vocabulary made me lost all the motivation to study japanese.
But I assure you that with time Anki will lose importance and you will be able to learn many words simply by reading and listening. At that point anki will be more just for exceptions (like non standard readings, or meaning that have nothing to do with the kanji used).
Hope this help you to regain motivation

EDIT: this is especially true if your main goal is to know conversational japanese. You certainly don't need to memorize 10k words just to chat on forums and speaks about general things with native people.

EDIT2: another example I encountered just 10 seconds ago while I was watching Death Note: if you know 保育 (nursing) you don't need to put 保育園 (nursery school) and 保育士 (nursery teacher) on Anki, even if they count as three separate words. Also in the next sentence of the same episode 警視庁. If you know 警視 I think a simple dictionary check will do it, no need to add this word on Anki too. And those, I checked, count as separate words in those frequency lists. Also "犯罪者", isn't it really 犯罪 + 者? Two words at the price of one.

Doesn't "nusring" come form the scene where Light tests the death note for the first time on live TV?

Raschaverak Wrote:Doesn't "nusring" come form the scene where Light tests the death note for the first time on live TV?

Asd exactly! I started yesterday with the "anime method" after reading the CureDoll's blog post about it xD Unfortunately there are many words like that but really I don't know what other anime to watch which is enough entertaining to keep me motivated. I tried with things like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball but while they are way easier I find them too childish :/ Also being them old anime the audio quality is poor. I tried with more recent anime like K-ON and while audio is good they are really boring. I gave a try to Tokyo Ghoul, Psycho-Pass and Mirai Nikki and the fact they are 10 times more difficult than everyday-life anime made me aware of how much important is motivation and especially to use compelling content. So I decided to give a try to my favorite anime and it doesn't seem much difficult than Tokyo Ghoul so I decided to stay at it. Maybe I will go at a super slow speed but is't still better than not moving at all xD

I'm getting to a similar situation. While it's not quite at 9 years, I sometimes say 6 years. But then I try to narrow it down to 3 years because, "While I started 6 years ago, I didn't really 'study' until 3 years ago." That's my dumb reasoning anyway. Spent 3 ridiculous years just staring at dramas and TV shows without comprehending what they were saying because I was an idiot and read AJATT.

But after I started reading, my comprehension steadily increased there. Now I can read lots of things but still struggle sometimes because I have no confidence in my reading of kanji. This is mostly with authors when they get into describing stuff, or certain news articles. What makes everything worse is my listening/speaking sucks. How do people pick up listening to podcasts so fast? Simple ones such as The Hotcast still make me struggle. I feel I can attribute this to my difficult with focusing which happens even with English podcasts. I try to listen and then just lose it and my mind starts to wander.

Contributing to all of this is that it sucks finding partners to voice chat with because I'm 14 hours behind Japan. When I get off work they are waking up and going to work. When I wake up for work they are about to go to bed. It's obnoxious.

TheVinster Wrote:Contributing to all of this is that it sucks finding partners to voice chat with because I'm 14 hours behind Japan. When I get off work they are waking up and going to work. When I wake up for work they are about to go to bed. It's obnoxious.

If you get desperate, the メンヘラ types on atskype.jp don't seem to sleep at normal times.

@cophnia61
Seeing you're so inspired by CureDolly, maybe you should try precure? :p
(Actually a serious suggestion though - Heartcatch in particular is both good study material and a good show. A fairly large percentage of my old subs2srs deck is made up of Heartcatch and DokiDoki. Mujin Wakusei Survive is another good but easy show. Those together basically gave me my whole vocabulary foundation)

Aikynaro Wrote:@cophnia61
Seeing you're so inspired by CureDolly, maybe you should try precure? :p
(Actually a serious suggestion though - Heartcatch in particular is both good study material and a good show. A fairly large percentage of my old subs2srs deck is made up of Heartcatch and DokiDoki. Mujin Wakusei Survive is another good but easy show. Those together basically gave me my whole vocabulary foundation)

Wait, what is it? I know nothing about this! It looks like a great suggestion, I'll try to find more info about it!

My motivation to keep learning is that I've finally reached the point where I can handle real books!

I borrowed a book of short stories by the author Haruki Murakami from the library and find that with the help of a dictionary I can easily understand it. There are even whole sentences I can understand without the dictionary.

This was an important goal of mine--to get to the point where I could read real Japanese books (with the help of a dictionary of course). Not children's books either, but books that adult Japanese people would want to read.

cophnia61 Wrote:I tried with things like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball but while they are way easier I find them too childish :/ Also being them old anime the audio quality is poor. I tried with more recent anime like K-ON and while audio is good they are really boring. I gave a try to Tokyo Ghoul, Psycho-Pass and Mirai Nikki and the fact they are 10 times more difficult than everyday-life anime made me aware of how much important is motivation and especially to use compelling content. So I decided to give a try to my favorite anime and it doesn't seem much difficult than Tokyo Ghoul so I decided to stay at it. Maybe I will go at a super slow speed but is't still better than not moving at all xD

I didn't really think that the Kawaii Japanese Anime Method was crafted around kawaisa itself. But this comment and a few others on our Japanese forums show me that in a certain way perhaps it partly was.

That is, if you really don't enjoy anything aimed at children it makes things a bit more difficult as it is best to begin (and spend some considerable time) working with material at a simple-ish level.

Of course you could force yourself to do it in a spirit of study, but I don't recommend that myself as it is rather alien to the whole approach, which is using Japanese, not practising it. In other words doing things you would be doing anyway in your native language (even if very slowly and stumblingly at first).

I would certainly be watching Precure. It is worth looking for the right series if you do want to try it. Recently I was watching the current series (Go! Princess) and enjoying it, but not with that old doki doki (ahem) feeling. I wondered if I was outgrowing Precure. Then I re-watched a couple of episodes of Doki Doki and remembered just why I loved the series so much.

I don't think you need to be one of the "kawaii crowd" to enjoy some simple anime. Totoro is a classic that many adults enjoy, for example, and Aikynaro-san is certainly not the only grown-up minded person who can enjoy Precure.

But if you really do find anything accessible to children boring, that does seem to necessitate some kind of adaptation.

I am not sure how it would work starting with things like Tokyo Ghoul. Of course you are at a higher level than we were when we started with Precure. I will be interested to hear how this works for you.

CureDolly Wrote:

cophnia61 Wrote:I tried with things like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball but while they are way easier I find them too childish :/ Also being them old anime the audio quality is poor. I tried with more recent anime like K-ON and while audio is good they are really boring. I gave a try to Tokyo Ghoul, Psycho-Pass and Mirai Nikki and the fact they are 10 times more difficult than everyday-life anime made me aware of how much important is motivation and especially to use compelling content. So I decided to give a try to my favorite anime and it doesn't seem much difficult than Tokyo Ghoul so I decided to stay at it. Maybe I will go at a super slow speed but is't still better than not moving at all xD

I didn't really think that the Kawaii Japanese Anime Method was crafted around kawaisa itself. But this comment and a few others on our Japanese forums show me that in a certain way perhaps it partly was.

That is, if you really don't enjoy anything aimed at children it makes things a bit more difficult as it is best to begin (and spend some considerable time) working with material at a simple-ish level.

Of course you could force yourself to do it in a spirit of study, but I don't recommend that myself as it is rather alien to the whole approach, which is using Japanese, not practising it. In other words doing things you would be doing anyway in your native language (even if very slowly and stumblingly at first).

I would certainly be watching Precure. It is worth looking for the right series if you do want to try it. Recently I was watching the current series (Go! Princess) and enjoying it, but not with that old doki doki (ahem) feeling. I wondered if I was outgrowing Precure. Then I re-watched a couple of episodes of Doki Doki and remembered just why I loved the series so much.

I don't think you need to be one of the "kawaii crowd" to enjoy some simple anime. Totoro is a classic that many adults enjoy, for example, and Aikynaro-san is certainly not the only grown-up minded person who can enjoy Precure.

But if you really do find anything accessible to children boring, that does seem to necessitate some kind of adaptation.

I am not sure how it would work starting with things like Tokyo Ghoul. Of course you are at a higher level than we were when we started with Precure. I will be interested to hear how this works for you.

Well I like anime aimed at children, and "girly" anime in general, but I've seen that as a source of study they aren't ideal for me because, as my listening skill is poor, I need to listen to the same phrases again and again and it is a little boring because... I don't know how to explain it... ._.

For example in Sailor Moon there are all those dialogs about school and her bad votes... then she cries and things like that xD But if it is for entertaining purpose I love them, Sailor Moon is one of my favorite anime xD I like even things like Hamtaro and Ojamajo Doremi *-*

The same thing goes for idol tv-shows, I love them and recently I've found a source of subtitles for them, only to discover they aren't suitable to my study style

On the countrary I've watched the first season of Tokyo Ghoul and I don't even liked it, but as a source of study I've found it pretty good... I don't even know if this does make sense :/

But I'll give a try to Precure, I'll definitely watch it at least for entertainment, this is sure!

@cophnia61
Not sure why you would limit yourself to only two ends of the anime spectrum, it's not like in-between anime don't exist. There are simple SOL like K-On/Free, or stuff like Kurenai/Usagi Drop/Barakamon, or Aikatsu/Pretty Rhythm if you want little girl cartoons with less supernatural, and probably a lot of others I don't know about.

EratiK Wrote:@cophnia61
Not sure why you would limit yourself to only two ends of the anime spectrum, it's not like in-between anime don't exist. There are simple SOL like K-On/Free, or stuff like Kurenai/Usagi Drop/Barakamon, or Aikatsu/Pretty Rhythm if you want little girl cartoons with less supernatural, and probably a lot of others I don't know about.

I know but unfortunately many of them don't have japanese subtitles :/ For example two of my favorite anime are Toradora and GTO but unfortunately I cannot find japanese subtitles for them... But something like that would be perfect! Now I'm going to check the anime you mentioned, thank you EratiK!!

EDIT: Usagi Drop has jsubs and it seems something I will enjoy watching!

TurtleBear Wrote:2. Stop relying on motivation. Motivation is fleeting. If you want to learn Japanese, dedicate yourself to it. Say to yourself, "No matter what, I will dedicate myself to Japanese at least one hour a day, regardless of how tedious it sounds." This is what people who accomplish goals do. When asked about the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo responded, "If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius." Do you think he ever took a day off painting because he simply didn't feel like it? Why should language learning be any different?

http://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motiv...iscipline/

cophnia61 Wrote:

EratiK Wrote:@cophnia61
Not sure why you would limit yourself to only two ends of the anime spectrum, it's not like in-between anime don't exist. There are simple SOL like K-On/Free, or stuff like Kurenai/Usagi Drop/Barakamon, or Aikatsu/Pretty Rhythm if you want little girl cartoons with less supernatural, and probably a lot of others I don't know about.

I know but unfortunately many of them don't have japanese subtitles :/ For example two of my favorite anime are Toradora and GTO but unfortunately I cannot find japanese subtitles for them... But something like that would be perfect! Now I'm going to check the anime you mentioned, thank you EratiK!!

EDIT: Usagi Drop has jsubs and it seems something I will enjoy watching!

I just watched first episode of assassination classroom and immediately thought "this is GTO with a tentacle monster instead of a delinquent". I've no idea if it will live up to it's inspiration but it does have Jsubs if you want to give it a try.

vgambit Wrote:With the AJATT method, that feedback loop starts with the motivation boost you get from reading one of Khatz' articles. Then you study. Then, if you set up an immersion environment, you experience native material. Then you comprehend nothing, feel bad, and read another article for motivation, whenever you get around to it. In fact, until you get far enough into that sentence phase, the immersion environment is gonna serve as a constant reminder of how much progress you aren't really making at all, despite the hours you're putting in. Eventually, you get sick of not understanding OS error messages, and not comprehending any dialogue in movies/shows/anime. You switch it back to English. You turn subs back on. The music might stick around, but the immersion fades.

In my opinion, you need one of three things to effectively study Japanese:

1. Fun learning material

2. Lasting motivation

3. A strong work ethic

The problem with 1 is that the fun material is usually sorely lacking in content, or has other problems that diminish its effectiveness. This is one of the things a good teacher who follows the i+1 theory can provide; an enjoyable learning environment that actually keeps you learning at a decent rate by building on what you already know so that you don't get frustrated or bored. You can't really get that with free/cheap learning materials, though, so it's pretty expensive for something that you're really only doing for xyz not-very-strong reason.

The problem with 2 is that most of us simply lack it. If you have to learn the language, say, for work, then you're gonna do it because you don't really have much of a choice if you want to get/keep your job. My motivation was that I had gotten tired of fan translations and bad localizations, and wanted to experience the native material the way it was intended. That eventually changed to becoming a requisite of my dream job of working at a Japanese game development studio. I planned out a timeline of learning both the language and certain in-demand technologies. Of course, it was always a nice-to-have and not an imperative, so it wasn't a good enough reason to stick to the grind through the really bad times.

3, again, is something a lot of people just don't have. Simply accepting that the process is long, arduous, and often simply hard work (with no pay), and continuing to grind, day in, day out, until you get to a good point where you don't have to grind anymore.

This whole portion of the first post resonated with me cuz I have felt the exact same way about my Japanese learning process. I've been on and off learning Japanese since 2007 starting off with a Japanese course in college (skipped class too much and failed out). Tried to do it on my own, but lacked those 3 qualities you listed.

As for listening, that is my worst skill! I briefly did sub2srs of 1 episode of a drama I was watching. Didn't really work out because I got too lazy to make the decks and just watched the dramas. I say it has slightly helped. Only word I can remember hearing often from the series was 社長 「しゃちょう」. I agree and I want to put more priority in my listening skills.