First post here and figured I'd try to get an idea of what's considered good progress.

Sometime mid-January I decided to take up learning Japanese after being a casual anime and manga fan for years. After learning the katakana and hiragana fairly easily, I started doing the basic vocab courses on iKnow and am currently in the middle of the 2nd one. I've also been reading Remembering the Kanji after I read the intro and decided it's probably best to start that as soon as possible. Think I'm around 330 or so.

I think I'm doing alright at this point but my understanding of grammar is still really basic. I've picked up basic stuff like some particle usages and simple sentence structure but obviously there's a lot more to it than that.

In that regard, am I following the right train of thought? Learning vocab, reading Heisig, and hopefully something to understand grammar better--are those the three main things I should be focusing on all at once?

Any advice or guidance would be much appreciated at this point.

Most important thing: Have fun so you'll continue your journey.

Usually you are told on koohii.com to first learn kanjis. Thats why: Relationship from kanji to kana are like relationship from kana to romajii. It's easier to learn new vocab with kana than with romajii. And it's far more easier to learn new vocab having kanjis than just kana. Knowing kanjis give you a boost for your learning skills.

I'll disagree that learning all 2.000 kanjis is a good thing for just beginners. Instead it would be better to combine both learning kanjis and learning actual japanese using a textbook or a language course. But of course you have to know all kanjis when you are in a course or using a textbook. That's why I only learned a subset of all kanjis that could be presented by me in the next years: I learnt JLPT 2 kanjis (1100) using RTK LITE and now I start to learn japanese with a textbook.

For efficiency reasons: Do you learn vocabulary with kanjis or just with kanas?

Yes. But, you describing your approach to Heisig as 'reading' concerns me. If you haven't, do actually set up some system, like the one on this site, to continue creating and reviewing stories with. It isn't enough to just read through Heisig; you need to apply it.

Otherwise... go at it. And start listening to dramas/anime/podcasts/whatever immediately(comprehension not required), and start reading manga etc as soon as you can comprehend a basic sentence written with kanji.
Or before.

Ah, it is pretty fun so far. Definitely been enjoying trying to learn something I always assumed was impossible. The vocab I've been learning from iKnow is all in kana form since I can't actually read any of the kanji yet beyond Heisig's keywords.

On that note, my word choice was probably not the best in regards to Heisig's book. I do read it but I also pay careful attention to what he says in between lessons and in the intro, and I started using the flash card system on this site to review and add as I go. I'll admit when I started I often did the exact things he warns against as more Kanji are introduced, such as associating words with different words instead of with images. It's a gradual thing but I think I'm getting the hang of it now after 300+ Kanji.

Sometimes I'll go through the example sentences iKnow gives you for the vocab words and find I'm starting to recognize some of the Kanji which is pretty cool for the first time. That might help a bit when I start to learn readings since it gives the sentence in normal form as well as the purely hiragana form below it. Anyway, thanks for the replies! Any specific recommendations for sources that work on grammar and sentence structure etc?

http://www.guidetojapanese.com covers enough to get you reading real materials. From there, I don't know about any specific online resources. The Dictionary of Basic(Intermediate, Advanced) Japanese Grammar series is often recommended for purchase, but I think you might as well just go through the stuff on that website first before deciding where you want to go after.
It's worthwhile to reference material in J-J dictionaries as soon as you're able to comprehend them. For raw beginners, http://www.sanseido.net/ is useful because it tends to be (overly) succinct. Once you're dissatisfied with that, I often find myself at http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/ . For really good dictionaries you'll have to get advice from others, though, because I'm more of a context-learner and don't really go beyond what I just listed for reference material.

I'm going to say this, but it's just about impossible for people to do: Do NOT worry about progress. It's counterproductive.

'Progress' will happen at its own pace for everyone individually.

Having said that, it seems like you are making progress at both RTK and iKnow faster than most. Don't let it burn you out. If it stops being fun, back off slightly (not all the way!) and add in some other fun activity, like reading Manga or something.

As for 'all at once', that's a hot debate. Heisig says you should be doing RTK alone, and nothing else. Then you start on vocab and grammar together. Others says you -never- study grammar from a textbook, but just absorb it from context. And, well... There are as many opinions as people.

If what you are doing is working, don't stop. Don't let anyone confuse you into thinking you aren't making good enough progress. If you truly aren't making enough progress for who you are, you'll automatically add in something else to help with it.

I think Heisig may be wrong when he says learn the kanji and do nothing else..

I'm at about 900 kanji (I don't add new kanji enough, even though my reviews have been about every other day) but I've been noticing more and more of the familiar kanji attached to vocabulary words in kana I already know.

Personally, knowing both the japanese vocabulary word, and the kanji that goes with it makes it much easier to remember the kanji on the site's reviews.


Just knowing the english meaning is great, and I think it helps, but I wonder if it would be a better method to learn the Japanese word for a given kanji along with the english meaning.. They seem to compliment eachother strongly, and I'd know exactly what I was looking at in a Japanese paragraph, where as simply recognizing the kanji from the paragraph doesn't equip me for reading or understanding a sentence.

I think the "all at once" is made much more useful advice simply because of the ridiculous order that Heisig uses. Never mind the ones not even in RtK1, consider that 来, 気, and 声 show up in the late 1800s, and 関 and 咲 after 2000.

~J

woodwojr Wrote:I think the "all at once" is made much more useful advice simply because of the ridiculous order that Heisig uses. Never mind the ones not even in RtK1, consider that 来, 気, and 声 show up in the late 1800s, and 関 and 咲 after 2000.

~J

I wouldn't personally call 咲 all that important though, while I see your point with the rest of them. I mean, compared to all the insanely common ones not even in RtK1 (拭、誰、俺、痩) etc 咲 isn't that common.

Still, most people who learn a subset of RtK1 don't just start and learn until 1000 or so. They use different lists and orders to make sure the subset they study is the most important one.

Why doesn't Heisig include the more common kanji? If they don't fit with the primitive groups, why not through them in throughout and just suggest you learn them?

I didn't set out to include it, but it was on the same page as 関 and I see it often enough that I threw it in. Regardless, the point stands.

~J

cerulean Wrote:Why doesn't Heisig include the more common kanji? If they don't fit with the primitive groups, why not through them in throughout and just suggest you learn them?

Because his goal was for all the 常用漢字 (jouyoukanji) to be in the book. That's 1945 kanji. Then he added some kanji commonly used in names which are also used as primitives of other kanji (吾 for examples is almost never seen outside of names if even that). That's how he came to 2045. All of the kanji I listed, extremely common, are not in the official 常用漢字表. (The Japanese government is working on a new list though which adds 191 kanji, i'm guessing all the ones I listed will be added).

cerulean Wrote:I think Heisig may be wrong when he says learn the kanji and do nothing else..

People periodically say things like this, but I'm not sure about a few things. One, why bother arguing with Heisig here when there's a consensus on the forum that all sorts of methods are viable. Two, Heisig, as far as I know, didn't say to just do kanji and nothing else. The idea is to learn the kanji writing + simplified English keyword derived from the meaning, and then learn the readings--for him it was learning the readings in isolation with RTK2 I suppose, for us, it was in context. In fact, in addition to saying you could finish the book in a month if you studied it full time, Heisig suggests that the importance in the RTK order lies in the primitives and other particulars of the method, and that by using the frame numbers, et cetera, to maintain that basic premise, you could develop your own order of doing RTK.

Nukemarine, I believe, suggested the JLPT-based RTK Lite, which someone else implemented as a script... at any rate, that design was before we had a commonly used sentence source from elsewhere (iKnow, Kanji Odyssey). I believe a more efficient order could be designed. Also, I don't believe anyone here or elsewhere ever strictly adhered to some kind of 'do only RTK' dogma, we all did something that we felt minimized the overhead and maximized efficiency, so that we weren't trying to learn writing + reading of kanji at the same time. Mostly, I think the lack of extensive kanji sentence-study in the 'early days' of this forum to do alongside RTK was, again, due to a lack of a commonly used sentence source.

iKnow and KO happen to be based on newspaper frequency, et cetera, I would presume because researchers or companies do corpus analysis then license the lists, or perhaps the companies do that themselves. Because of that, it's easy to realize that if you're using those to do sentences while doing RTK, it'll be a little while before you can be sure you're adding sentences at a good pace while keeping writing + readings of the kanji separate. That's why I think studying basic grammar through sentences in the early stages of doing RTK, as well as getting plenty of listening practice, is a good idea (since neither of these requires kanji knowledge), and by the time you've got enough RTK kanji under your belt to do iKnow or KO without worrying about picking up the entire kanji all at once (writing+reading), you'll also have enough grammatical knowledge to parse the sentences more easily, and can continue to finish RTK so that you'll be able to taper off adhering to the foundational sentence source--which at the moment is likely arranged by frequency, so that the diminishing returns of relying on less and less frequent kanji will free you up to move on to native media sources that you enjoy, while your Japanese progresses further and further and eventually you'll just pick up whatever kanji with ease.

Of course, this whole essay-like rant is for people who are choosing to use structure in their studies, and it also doesn't factor in the possibilities of subs2srs to create more customized lists on a large scale, which I'm still salivating over.

I think you are doing really, really great. Probably it could have been done little faster, but you seem to be having fun and steady progress. Keep working hard and you'll soon notice even more progress.

I think you're doing great ^_^ props to you! The more you do, the more fun it becomes, and the more addictive it becomes! I now have flashcards on my DS and I find myself doing it in bed!!

I'd say you're doing great!

If there's one piece of advise I can give, it's making sure you write down your own mnemonics for Remembering the Kanji, because you will forget them. I made it to around 500 before I started forgetting the stories I had made up, and because of it, disciplined myself to actually start back at frame 1 and do my own.

Keep track in notepad or on this site. I kept track of my own notes in my own text file (ask my how I generated 3007 numbers so I didn't have to write down that many numbers, if you're curious)... that way I have access to them at all times, instead of having to read them one-by-one from this site's database.

Other than that, keep up the good work!

Very poorly indeed. What, not even one published article in a Japanese literary journal? Where's your book of published works? You clearly have some catching up to do.

~J