Finished Core 6000. going to review for a couple a weeks during midterms and then start adding new cards to Anki in a few weeks. Feels good.

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:Finished Core 6000. going to review for a couple a weeks during midterms and then start adding new cards to Anki in a few weeks. Feels good.

Awesome!

I just finished core 2000 myself. Only a few dozen into 6000 now.

Warp2243 Wrote:I keep hearing about Japanese learners reading キノの旅 (on this forum and elsewhere), and I'm surprised I didn't knew this book before if it's such a "classic". I finished 賢者の石 recently, how would you compare both books in terms of difficulty and interest?

There aren't any major differences in difficulty, but Kino's Journey has shorter sentences in general, but still has a lot of weird weapon related terms. Also, it has a lot of furigana compared to 賢者の石.

"Interest" is individual, so you gotta figure out that one yourself.

Watched suberanashi hanashi that aired in december 2012 and laughed out loud. matsumoto hitoshi IS brilliant I understood it fine except for one person on the show (his story wasn't even interesting anyway) so that's definitely not my fault. lol.

Some time ago I deleted all my Anki decks without taking backups because doing them was about as fun as poking your eye out with a fork. Prepackaged crap like Core6000 were the worst offenders.

After that I did nothing but read, read and read native materials. In a few weeks I noticed a significant increase in my reading ability which has been more or less stalling for a long-ish time.

I started a new deck for interesting sentences I come across in native media but this time answer side is Japanese definition of the word/words I am trying to learn/retain through the card. In any case, from now on the priority of native media to SRS will be around 90:10.

To be honest, I haven't felt this good and refreshed since starting learning Japanese a few years ago. Now, back to reading. Feels good man, so to speak.

[Zgarbas]

I accidentally made my cat a kanjibox shogun.

I recently watched all four series of ひだまりスケッチ in 1:1 aspect ratio... and didn't feel guilty about it.

Spent a whole day with Japanese people, listening to and speaking in Japanese for most of the time. This is after not having spoken Japanese with a Japanese person for like a year now out of shyness. So happy. So much motivation.

I started Core2k-6k in October and now I'm finally done~~ Well, by 'done' I mean there are no new cards. I still need to keep reviewing, of course. ^_^

I reached what I considered my core milestone, namely I think I'm done with predefined decks and textbooks for now. Yesterday was my last card in Core 10,000 that completes it. I think I joined Jan 29, 2012 so it's been about a year and 4 months. Anyway, what I did is as follows if anyone is interested/wants to repeat this path.

1. RTK 1 via this site (no writing the Kanji)(6 weeks)
2. Went through the kanji using Skritter! for an additional 6 weeks to learn the writing.
At the same time read through Genki 1 & 2 for the first time.
3. Did Core 6000 via iKnow!. This is production based. I believe it took me about 7 months.
4. I studied Genki I & II again and did the workbook exercises and took more notes.
5. Studied from Tobira Texbook
6. Went through Kanzen Master 2 & 1 kyuu
7. Did the remaining 3600 or so words in Core 10,000 in Anki (recognition) cards This was about 3.5 months. Points 5 & 6 overlapped wth this.

Note that I didn't do much listening practice at all since I first wanted to learn to read and write. I will start to use sub2srs soon. I spent a lot of time studyng, from 4 to 5 hrs a day.

Recently I've completed reading 2 light novels. I have to say though, that even though I expected it, I was surprised at how many new words were in them. The first one was Zero no Tsukaima 1 which is a pretty easy read but it was easy 800 new words. The second one is Madan no Ou to Vanadis 1 which is a bit harder since there is more description and less dialog. This one was over 1200 new words. Though to be honest, I wasn't finished with Core 10,000 yet so there could be overlap with that list and some words I've forgotten. Even so, the amount of words is enormous. I'l have enough for long while. Also I'm pretty slow at reading. I guess speed comes with practice. Anyway, many thanks to this site for past help and future guidance.

PotbellyPig Wrote:I reached what I considered my core milestone, namely I think I'm done with predefined decks and textbooks for now. Yesterday was my last card in Core 10,000 that completes it. I think I joined Jan 29, 1012 so it's been about a year and 4 months...

Just had to point it out hehe xD but anyways silly jokes aside, congrats! You accomplished a lot in such a short time. Especially with finishing Core 10 :o Did you find it easier to tackle novels once you did Core 6k & 10k?

RawrPk Wrote:

PotbellyPig Wrote:I reached what I considered my core milestone, namely I think I'm done with predefined decks and textbooks for now. Yesterday was my last card in Core 10,000 that completes it. I think I joined Jan 29, 1012 so it's been about a year and 4 months...

Just had to point it out hehe xD but anyways silly jokes aside, congrats! You accomplished a lot in such a short time. Especially with finishing Core 10 :o Did you find it easier to tackle novels once you did Core 6k & 10k?

Well the more vocabulary you know, the less dictionary lookups. But you can alleviate the tedium of dictionary searches by using a program like yomichan or rikaisama to read the light novel. Like I stated, you are going to be hit hard with new words in any case. Though in the novels I read, some of the new words are probably not worth memorizing like types of armor, weapons, feudal titles, etc.. Learning the grammar is probably just as important. I think it would be good to at least go through the Kanzen Master 2 kyuu or the equivalent in another series before tackling light novels as those grammar points show up everywhere. Oh, I forgot that I also read "Japanese the Manga Way". This is great for grammar also. And it shows the examples in the context of real manga. Even though this is stated as being a beginner's book, I think it was the last book I studied from.

I've taken a good hard look at every kanji in the old JLPT 4, as well as all of those in the Kanji Kentei 10-kyu. I don't remember them perfectly yet, but I do remember them decently well. So I think I could easily pass the JLPT N5 test now, though it's too bad that it's not offered until December here (I wish we could petition for July JLPT in the US!). I probably won't actually end up taking it, since I have more than enough time to be ready for at least N4 by the time it's actually offered.

Still, this is an important milestone because my level of Japanese is on the level of being able to pass a test. I really feel like the gap between N5 and N4 is much narrower than the gap between just starting Japanese and N5, even though the gaps between the exams get wider again for each level. Being comfortable with N5 material probably means you have become comfortable with some method of retaining Kanji (obviously some combination of methods involving the RTK book for most people here). That kind of foundation is a very big milestone for learning Japanese, in my opinion. I mean, I remember how much I struggled with remembering Kanji at first, but now I have a kind of process for doing it that I am comfortable with.


EDIT:

Warp2243 Wrote:

Stian Wrote:Finished my first Japanese book today.
It was キノの旅, so nothing fancy...
(Have started several, though; I think I'm gonna continue on Harry Potter 賢者の石 - read about a third of it...)

I keep hearing about Japanese learners reading キノの旅 (on this forum and elsewhere), and I'm surprised I didn't knew this book before if it's such a "classic". I finished 賢者の石 recently, how would you compare both books in terms of difficulty and interest?

I've been stuck at the level where I can only read 少年 manga for a very long time, but キノの旅 is one of my reasons for learning how to read Japanese (maybe I'll try again after a few hundred more kanji learned?). Not only are big parts of it not translated by anyone into English, but it's also the kind of book that's "interesting" rather than "entertaining", so I feel like reading it in the original language could be a much better experience. I've heard it's not that difficult, but obviously I can't judge for myself yet.

The anime only covers a small part of the stories in the books, and is translated, so you can always check it out to find out if it's your thing.


EDIT 2:

s0apgun Wrote:Humans do not fail in learning a language, its a multidirectional path pointed in one road towards fluency.

Unfortunately, as I have stated elsewhere, I think I have found a way to move backwards in fluency. Many years ago, I thought that learning a bunch of random Japanese words in romaji was a good idea, and now I'm spending enormous amounts of efforts to internally think in hiragana, katakana, and kanji instead of romaji, whenever I hear Japanese speech. I feel like I've moved myself backwards in some sense, by learning romaji too well before I had a decent handle on the other Japanese writing systems.

My milestone is buying rtk 1............................. I am doing about 200 pages a day with reviewing 100 from the day before (I am using almost all of my free time on rtk) I feel like i am about to die from all the kanji

[RawToast]

Silty Wrote:Still, this is an important milestone because my level of Japanese is on the level of being able to pass a test. I really feel like the gap between N5 and N4 is much narrower than the gap between just starting Japanese and N5, even though the gaps between the exams get wider again for each level. Being comfortable with N5 material probably means you have become comfortable with some method of retaining Kanji (obviously some combination of methods involving the RTK book for most people here).

Agree with this. There isn't really much difference in the amount of vocab/grammar points.

N5: ~600-800 words and 40 grammar points (tanos.co.uk)
N4: +900-1000 more words and 50 more grammar points (again tanos)

When getting to N5 level though you have to deal with learning both kana sets, get used to reading, and for many on here RTK or RTK lite.

Finished core6k wut wut. Boy is it ever a good thing this thread exists because I really just had to brag about it somewhere. It was an overwhelming urge.
Also downloaded more decks, so that's good. The vocab grind must continue!

[Zgarbas]

Not much of a milestone but...
I had to run a N3 simulation for school scored about 95% (1 miss in 語彙、2 in 文法、2 in 聴解）. Given how in February I only scored about 60% in each section it's nice to see how I've gotten more used to the exam answering type and strengthened my basics. Particularly with 聴解, with which I have a great deal of problems. Not sure if this progress will be seen at the N1 (I really have to run a simulation at home), but still. Quite a confidence boost =)

Haych Wrote:Finished core6k wut wut. Boy is it ever a good thing this thread exists because I really just had to brag about it somewhere. It was an overwhelming urge.
Also downloaded more decks, so that's good. The vocab grind must continue!

I'm at around 2,100 words in Core6k right now, so I'm really jealous, congrats! How's it feeling on the other side?

Also, nice job there, Zgarbas!! =D Keep us updated on future improvements!

Honestly, it feels great like all short-term goals do, and I know it represents a huge step of progress. But at the same time, I know its not enough. If there really is a point where everything suddenly 'clicks' and becomes easy, then for me, all I can say is this aint it. Not quite yet. I'm still a little green in terms of exposure though, and I'm sure lots of people come out of it feeling like a pro.
I think I'll probably feel more at home once I've finished my first novel. That's going to be one of my next short-term goals.

Haych Wrote:I think I'll probably feel more at home once I've finished my first novel. That's going to be one of my next short-term goals.

What are you reading? (or intend to read)

finished RTK1 last night at 1:30am
feelsgoodman.jpg

Warp2243 Wrote:What are you reading? (or intend to read)

I got a bunch of novels in hard copy a while back that I never really finished. One in particular I'm looking at is ねじまき鳥クロニクル by murakami. But then again I also got some light novels in html format and those make it super easy to look up words, which is appealing. In that case I'm looking at the haruhi series. Probably will just tackle that one first because it will be easier.

I finally caught up with my SRSing.

Splatted Wrote:I finally caught up with my SRSing.

Bet that feels pretty damn good.

uisukii Wrote:

Splatted Wrote:I finally caught up with my SRSing.

Bet that feels pretty damn good.

I can only imagine.