cophnia61 Wrote:

fzort Wrote:

cophnia61 Wrote:but consider also that RtK is not ordered in respect to frequency of use

Ouch. In that case, forget what I said. :-)

But what you said is true! Even when you know 2000 kanji there will be even more so there is no need to learn all now, with those 1700 one covers many words so if the op feels the need to pause kanji learning for one or two months I think he can continue to study other things without any problem! Even if those 700 kanji contains many common ones there is not much difference if he pauses rtk to make the review number go down!

cophnia61 Wrote:影 (not used in many words but at least in one common word: 撮影

Also 影響, heh.

asd you are right!

*Cough*火影*Cough*

I kind of felt this way yesterday. I went to Book Off here in the US, looked at the 少年漫画 and found exactly zero things I could read. I was thinking One Piece, but I looked through the first few pages and realized I'd have to look up every other word, and that was pretty depressing.

esplanades Wrote:I kind of felt this way yesterday. I went to Book Off here in the US, looked at the 少年漫画 and found exactly zero things I could read. I was thinking One Piece, but I looked through the first few pages and realized I'd have to look up every other word, and that was pretty depressing.

I think everyone has days where they feel like they're an imposter just "posing" at learning the language. Still, it helps to remember that even if you have to look up plenty of words, that's still more than any old layman on the street would be able to understand. And even if you can't read anything at first, having the patience to continue and go through a page at a time pays off big time. Even if it's just a little bit a day, it still adds up.

To put what Raulsen said another way: The only people I ever knew that could read One Piece learned how by reading One Piece.

There's upwards of 45,000 words that college educated natives know and a subset of those words past whatever magical 10,000 you select creep in everywhere. If you want to read something specific you are going to have to learn that world's lingo, I'm pretty sure pirate vocabulary doesn't rank high on the Core lists, and you'll also have to learn the authors favorite "big words".

This actually happens in all things Japanese too. It was years before I could understand my father-in-law well even though I could understand everyone else in the family perfectly fine. I also made friends with a guy from a poor neighborhood in northern Japan and his street slang combined with a slight accent threw me off for a while as well. You will run into this kind of thing until you've had the equivalent of 10-15 years of Japanese exposure, I would guess most kids around that age can understand everyone around them, so learn to love it.

esplanades Wrote:I kind of felt this way yesterday. I went to Book Off here in the US, looked at the 少年漫画 and found exactly zero things I could read. I was thinking One Piece, but I looked through the first few pages and realized I'd have to look up every other word, and that was pretty depressing.

Try the 少女漫画 section instead. On average I'd say it's far far more readable than stuff aimed at boys - stuff for girls tends to be all about people and relationships while stuff for boys tends to be all about fighting legendary <whatevers> and other stuff that unless your study source is the same sort of thing you're not going to have the words for.

The walls of pink may be intimidating but that's the price that must be paid for easy reading material.

Aikynaro Wrote:

esplanades Wrote:I kind of felt this way yesterday. I went to Book Off here in the US, looked at the 少年漫画 and found exactly zero things I could read. I was thinking One Piece, but I looked through the first few pages and realized I'd have to look up every other word, and that was pretty depressing.

Try the 少女漫画 section instead. On average I'd say it's far far more readable than stuff aimed at boys - stuff for girls tends to be all about people and relationships while stuff for boys tends to be all about fighting legendary <whatevers> and other stuff that unless your study source is the same sort of thing you're not going to have the words for.

The walls of pink may be intimidating but that's the price that must be paid for easy reading material.

What would you recommend in shoujo? I have read Yotsubato and Chi's Sweet Home, which are both shoujo, so I'm not adverse to them, but I haven't really heard any other recommendations around that level (even in the manga-by-level megathread).

tokyostyle Wrote:To put what Raulsen said another way: The only people I ever knew that could read One Piece learned how by reading One Piece.

There's upwards of 45,000 words that college educated natives know and a subset of those words past whatever magical 10,000 you select creep in everywhere.

This is so true, and this is why I personally find "core" lists pretty useless.

The way to learn vocabulary (in my humble view, and I realize it is different for different people) is by encountering it, not from lists, and certainly not from lists after the most basic thousand or so.

Every area you approach, every manga, every novel, every anime, has its own vocabulary. However much you have learned in advance from unrelated lists is almost certainly not going to cover it.

So... when you see a manga or whatever and think "I'll be looking up every other word" there is your "core list". Slog through it, look up every other word. It's a pain but still more interesting than abstract core lists! And after a little while you will start encountering the words you've learned more and more. Which cements them in much better than Anki alone.

Stay with the same author or series for a while and it just gets better and better.

And when you move on to something else (especially if it is in a similar genre) it won't be anywhere near as hard as when you started.

I don't mean to sound quite as prescriptive as I did! Everyone is different of course, but this is the way I have tackled vocabulary from the start, and for me it is far better than learning from lists or pre-made decks which really can never prepare you for what you are actually going to encounter.

PS to clarify: In my view it is a good idea to enter the new vocabulary into Anki. Isn't this a big pain? No. Look up the words online and then use Rikaisama, which will now make an Anki card right from your browser with a single keypress. It really couldn't be easier. It is true that you could spare yourself that keypress by using a pre-made deck, but you'll still have to look up a lot of words in order to read anything. This way you are making a core deck that is actually useful to you, and self-cementing, which will enhance the Anki learning immeasurably.

Quote:What would you recommend in shoujo? I have read Yotsubato and Chi's Sweet Home, which are both shoujo, so I'm not adverse to them, but I haven't really heard any other recommendations around that level (even in the manga-by-level megathread).

Yotsubato is shounen while Chi's Sweet Home is seinen.

I don't really have any recommendations, as such. If you have a Book Off handy you should just browse and see what you can find. I remember reading ライフ and 瞳をそらさずにいて - I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend them, but they were very readable.

Well, I will recommend からくりオデット - but anyway, the point isn't so much that you should read these but that if you want to browse for manga you should try the shoujo section before becoming completely disheartened because (very broadly speaking) it's easier.

Or go grind vocabulary mined from shounen manga/anime for a month and go back. A lot of that stuff isn't difficult - you just haven't seen it yet and won't for a long time if your vocabulary source is Core or something similar.

Thanks a lot for your help guys!

In the meantime I have recovered from my burn-out and am already bursting through the remaining Kanji in RTK1.
(I'm at 1933 and will finish until the end of the month!)

I'm already working through vocab decks (first core2k until step 3, now I think about switching to Nayrs core, because learning curve in core gets a little steep w/ lots of quite difficult vocab within a single sentence, that might be useful if you read the news, but I'm not sure if the vocab in Nayrs isn't more useful)
Anyway I can already see the great benefits of having learned the Kanji upfront.

Of course you don't really "internalize" all the Kanji in RTK just by going through it. You aquire it through lots and lots of repition through ANKI (done quite a bit of that already I guess). Oftentimes I'll really get the Kanji meaning in more depth when I learn a new word that's using it. That's when it clicks. But just the fact of having gone through it once, having written it down, having looked at the primitives and thought of a story helps immensily. In my opinion that's the whole point of RTK.

I'm also doing a lesson in TaeKim per day.
I bought a japanese reader (hikoichi) but it's still a little difficult - apparently it's around N3/N2, so I'm still looking for reading material at the right level. Not that easy to find something.

Anyway I have again found motivation to study every day, even though it's a little depressing to see how little japanese I still know considering how many hours I have already put into it. But I'll keep moving forward, and hope to see more progress as I continue this journey.