ta12121 Wrote:Does anyone have that site that you can enter an link and it will display the readings for the kanji on any site? I kinda lost the link. Thanks in advance!

Just get the rikaichan addon for firefox. If you're not using firefox... what the hell are you doing? Haha. You just mouse over stuff and it pops up a full dictionary instantly.

Personally, doing RTK first was what actually made learning Japanese seem possible to me. But doing RTK lite and then KO would have gotten me to a decent level a lot faster.

ta12121 Wrote:Does anyone have that site that you can enter an link and it will display the readings for the kanji on any site? I kinda lost the link. Thanks in advance!

Do you mean hiragana.jp? Rikaichan is better though.

If there's one big mistake I think learners of Japanese make when starting out it's thinking that you have to learn everything about a kanji at once. So you gotta master it's readings and it's writing before you can move onto the next one. I'm with Icecream on this one, learn to read well (I mean pretty damn well) and then worry about being able to write. It's not like you're going to want to write a novel by hand but you probably would like to read one!

That's one of the issues I've always had with RTK, that in my personal experience, there are not that many situations where you have to write kanji by hand. Even the situations I do find myself in where I have to write by hand, those situations do not require the active ability to write 2042 kanji from memory. 99% of the time I'm writing by hand, it's either a short note that only requires common kanji, or I'm copying from something so it's not that important if I can recall every character from memory. (In addition, the majority of the handwriting I do is for my own purposes, so it's not that important if I forget a kanji and just write it in kana instead.) I understand that Heisig is about more than just handwriting characters, but this is another reason why I think starting out with RTK Lite is a better idea than doing the entire RTK before starting anything else.

@bodhisamaya
thanks that's what i was looking for, kinda lost my bookmarks cuz i switched to windows 7.
@mezhup
lol i am using Firefox and rikaichan. This dictionary is amazing.

mezbup Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:Does anyone have that site that you can enter an link and it will display the readings for the kanji on any site? I kinda lost the link. Thanks in advance!

Just get the rikaichan addon for firefox. If you're not using firefox... what the hell are you doing? Haha. You just mouse over stuff and it pops up a full dictionary instantly.

Personally, doing RTK first was what actually made learning Japanese seem possible to me. But doing RTK lite and then KO would have gotten me to a decent level a lot faster.

Why would you use something slow and bloaty (firefox) when you can use something fast and effective (chrome)?

IceCream Wrote:i don't even know why known / unknown kanji is a big deal. Its not like you can't read the words without studying kanji anyway.

How is that? By shape of the word? (btw thx for the triple negative before 8 am =] )

Re unknown kanji - developing reading fluency and dissecting sentences with Rikaichan are different endeavours. We can start working on reading fluency with a small number of kanji.

Quote:Here's one vote for leaving RTK til you can actually read already... ：）

Sarcasm...right?

Mezbup: I'm assuming you mean writing individual kanji as in RTK . The writing part of RTK is mostly a memory tool. Active production is more effective than repeated passive viewing. Are you saying skip RTK? Or do RTK without producing the kanji? Or...?

The "traditional" way of learning Japanese includes breaking kanji down into parts to some degree and writing words (a natural repetition system.) RTK just uses English keywords and a different order. A combination of the 2 would be great, imo:
1. Basic Japanese
2. Subset of RTK (Japanese keywords where appropriate)
3. Use that knowledge
4. Add more
5. Use ...

@Tobberth
Yea, i'm downloading all those things. My computer just got switched to windows 7, so i lost all the other programs(didn;'t back up those things, but shouldn't take more than few minutes to install everything back to normal)

Tobberoth Wrote:Why you something slow and bloaty (firefox) when you can use something fast and effective (chrome)?

Since chrome has all those nice extensions that made firefox so desirable (especially rikaikun & adblock) I don't see the point of using the latter. Chrome is far superior technologically (faster javascript, less memory used, multi-threaded, very clever UI, more visible space thanks to safari-like tabs) and coupled with extensions is by far the best browser out there.

The more i think about, the more I think i really shouldn't rate my abilities in japanese until I've reached a considerable level that I think is high enough to test it. (Reading+understanding for now, then writing+speaking). (Well to be honest, i'm trying to improve all these skills within the coming months, but one skills does improve another, even if it';s a little. But one thing is for certain, you need to actively train skills such as writing+speaking to get to a high level)
For SRSing certain things. Like if you srs from anime+manga, you'll gain a definite improvement in understand those types of things. If you srs from new sites, you;ll definitely gain improvement in that area and the list goes on. Personally i my japanese can get to a point where i won't need a dictionary anymore, but that's still far away....
My sentence deck says i've been at this for 5.6 months. I also have numerous other decks as well, that i will delete+add+change around to my liking and find more effective ways to gain more improvements. The main concern is time management. I try to finish everything within 1-2 hours maximum.

I'm usually vague at best when describing my own abilities. I even try not to post in the 'what's this word/phrase thread' without repeatedly underscoring either my own process and/or the possible process someone else could've used to look things up themselves in the future. I just don't get anything out of thinking about it extensively in general rather than just targeting specific areas enough in advance to plan ahead... When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye left with which to see the path. Or something. ;p

@nest0r
yea i agree. It's weird describing personal abilities in the language. For example when people say they are fluent. People assume all skills are at a high level, or it could be completely different. Ones skills is hard to rate, even by proficiency tests and such. But one thing i think is for sure. You'll know when you're fluent or not. It's just that type of thing. As for testing levels of fluency unno, but i'll wait until i believe personally i've reached a high level. I'm confident i can get there and all, but things as writing+speaking worry me abit. So i'm trying to take those things in to consideration and find ways to improve those as fast as possible.

I've never done RTK, but I can read 1800ish kanji, and write about 1000-1500 (although I make silly mistakes a lot). Most of my mistakes come from using the wrong kanji, not writing it wrong, so I don't think RtK would help me with that specific problem.

I think it's pretty obvious you don't *need* RtK to read, and in fact most people literate learners probably don't use RtK too (I haven't met anybody yet).

I plan on doing RtK sometime though, as I feel my Japanese writing starting to slip. I just don't write enough by hand, so I really want to get some SRSing in. I'm sure somebody like me would have a much easier time doing RtK than somebody who doesn't know a word of Japanese (duh). However I wish I knew the kanji before I started, that's for sure.

I think it's pretty easy to forget how useful some things were when looking back. I guess that's my point?

@Grinkers
I have done RTK, and it does help for visualizing the kanji and knowing there meanings. It helped me to be able to write kanji easily. I just kept writing it down via following the RTK book and then after 1000 kanji or so, once i reached 1000 kanji count i could write any kanji i see. It just became second nature. But nowadays my writing has slowed done. But i think all i have to do is keep writing and practicing out things.

I'm not really worried about it too much. My Japanese level is at a point where it's not "required" for reading. I don't have a problem writing any kanji, but the hard part for me is remembering which kanji is used when, which was the 1800 reading vs 1000 writing. For example I accidentally wrote 宛時計 instead of 腕時計 the other day, but I typed it up without the slightest effort.

I probably haven't written more than a paragraph in English by hand in over 5 years, so I don't really think it's that important. It's all really about priorities. Once the new Japanese-RtK deck becomes completed, I'll do RtK. After that I'm not sure if I'll do anything else to maintain my handwriting.

Do other people who've done RtK have the same problems? I know the meaning of the kanji, and after I realized the mistake it was clearly obvious. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but based on the people's results here, I wish I knew about RtK/SRS a year ago.

Back on topic on rating your own Japanese ability... The more Japanese I learn, and the more I improve, the more I feel my Japanese is horrible. It's really kind of weird, but when I couldn't read anything it was more of a "of course I can't". Right now each word, idiom, sentence, etc I don't understand stands out and really bugs me.

same here. I wish i had found AJATT site and this site a few years ago. I would have been at such a high level now. But that doesn't matter, what matters is now and what i can do now. I understand it's a priority of skills. People want to focus on understanding+reading+speaking the most. As the writing alot of people are fine just typing everything. Alot of people on this site have reached all high levels in those perspectives. But people do have trouble when it comes down to writing the kanji by in full context. Yea i hear yea when there's one kanji for one thing and another one for the same thing. It can have the same readings but different meaning+context. For me personally i just want that skill to grow along with my other skills. So i'll definitely buy some books geared towards writing letters in japanese+writing in general. For me personally i use english writing all the time. Since i'm in school, i definitely need to write essays+write out labs by hand. So alot of handwriting is needed for me at the moment. I'm trying to do that with japanese, just write it as much as possible, practise with the SRS writing from kana to kanji production cards+builiding vocab necessary to write kanji easily,etc. I guess for me personally i want to get to a high level for all skills. But i guess it's best to prioritize

Tobberoth Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:Does anyone have that site that you can enter an link and it will display the readings for the kanji on any site? I kinda lost the link. Thanks in advance!

Just get the rikaichan addon for firefox. If you're not using firefox... what the hell are you doing? Haha. You just mouse over stuff and it pops up a full dictionary instantly.

Personally, doing RTK first was what actually made learning Japanese seem possible to me. But doing RTK lite and then KO would have gotten me to a decent level a lot faster.

Why would you use something slow and bloaty (firefox) when you can use something fast and effective (chrome)?

Until chrome can effectively match Firefox in add-ons, firefox will always be better imo

Like I give a crap if my page loads 0.3 seconds faster. It's the add-ons that make the browser. Sure it now has adblock and rikaikun but it's still missing a ton I use

plus rikaikun sucks really bad. None of the options work, so you can't customize it at all, and it doesn't even work on offline pages, wtf. I can't even use it on my offline books I use to read, or my offline blank page where I put vocab and such in there to read for a later time.

Chrome may be good when it catches momentum, but for the time being, it's still lacking

My Japanese ability is OK right now. I have been studying for 1 year now. I am in the middle of RTK, I can understand about 5% of shows I watch but I totally have no clue whats going on while watching the news . As for sentence making, a child still can run circles around me .

IceCream Wrote:i don't even know why known / unknown kanji is a big deal. Its not like you can't read the words without studying kanji anyway. Here's one vote for leaving RTK til you can actually read already... ：）

If you never plan on going beyond reading Japanese then skipping RTK is fine. I learned to recognize 警察　and 図書館 before I knew how to put a simple SOV sentence together. Unless the elements become three dimensional in your mind, writing kanji will always be a problem. Even Japanese forget how to write kanji if they learned to do it solely from writing them over and over.

I have JLPT level 1 certification, but when I'm talking with Japanese people, I tell them it's at the level of your average 5th or 6th grader. I know a lot of hard words (thanks JLPT1 vocab list :/), but I also don't know a lot of easy words (names of vegetables? body parts? 10 common Japanese names?).

I can watch most TV shows without subtitles and understand about 90% of it.
For news though, that comprehension drops to about 40~65%. There's too much news jargon in the news for me to understand it without specifically studying news jargon.

@Tobbs and @yudantaiteki if you two are reading this, I know you've mentioned it before, but why'd you start RTK?

JLPT 1=5th or 6th grader average level? ouch lol Well it doesn't suprise me, i looked at level 4 and it was easy!!! really essay. But i guess that JLPT doesn't mean you've gain fluency. The word fluency annoys me sometimes. Anyhow
Alot of people that have taken JLPT. Have said that the test, for level 2 and 1 are only the ones worth taking. Level 3+4 isn't as it is a waste of your money. I guess there's also kanji kentai, but that is designed by natives for natives. So that would mean a certain level of skill is required.
I started to SRS things from news now. Since i want to be able to understand more.

nest0r: I have never used RTK (although I am familiar with it; I've read the prefatory material and the first few lessons, and looked through the rest). I joined this forum because I enjoy helping people out with Japanese, but I have no personal attachment to RTK.

ta12121: JLPT 1 is not 5th or 6th grader level; in theory it should be 1st year high school level but probably some middle schoolers could pass it. Of course, passing JLPT 1 does not mean that you know everything that a middle school student knows, since JLPT is not a comprehensive test that tests every aspect of Japanese.

As for rating your proficiency, proficiency is only meaningful in reference to whatever goals you have studying Japanese. The measure of your proficiency is to try to do something that you want to do in Japanese and see how well you can do it.

I have about JLPT1 level Japanese now. I haven't passed the exam (because I never took it), but I'm somewhere in the barely passing/failing range now.

I don't think the JLPT1 could be passed by a 5-6th grade, and a 5-6th grader knows a ton of things I don't know. I think it's really hard to rate your Japanese by comparing to different age natives. 5-year old who can't read knows lots of stuff I don't know, especially if you include songs, tongue twisters, etc.

Even if JLPT level 1 content may be comparable to an average Japanese high schooler's language ability, you only need to get a 70% to pass. And it does not test your ability to talk at all.