inquisitive Wrote:Hi everyone,
I am interested in learning Japanese and was referred to this site by a member from another site. I have some questions on how i get started? I am going to get "Remembering the Kana" by Mr. Heisgl to start off with. Also, i heard it was good to get some electronic software to learn like Anki(is this what they call SRS mnemonic)? Also, what are electronic flashcards exactly? Wouldn't it be beneficial to take a piece of paper and write down the characters and find some audio to get the pronunciation correctly as i go through the book? Any tips would be greatly appreciated from a newbie.

p.s: Isn't it better to learn Kana before getting into Kanji?

Some people advise doing Remembering the Kanji first, but I think that's very hardcore. If Japanese is just a starter hobby for you, it's easy to give up before you get through RTKanji because it's quite a long haul activity.

I think you might as well learn the kana first as it takes little time. You have nothing to lose from learning the kana first. Basically, do the kana this week, and then start the kanji next week .

It doesn't matter in which order you learn them.
It matters how long you take to start to mine sentences.

About the readings, check the movie method. If I knew about it at that time, I would have done it instead of RTK.

The glory of RTK is this site. The stories here, man, are awesome.

The movie method?

http://drmoviemethod.blogspot.com/

This question belongs in this thread, I think.

Coming in with a blank slate, I've been learning Japanese in the order this site suggests. Kanji --> Kana --> Grammar --> Sentences.

I'm on the grammar right now and was wondering if anyone else has been using Heisig's method for kana as well. I've found myself assigning visuals to each character, and when I come across a new vocab word, I make up a story with those visuals in the order that the word is in.

Does anyone else find themselves doing that with new vocabulary? Or do most use mnemonics?