Hello everyone! This forum certainly seems like a very happy and lively place. Since I'm new here, I hope to integrate more fully in the future... I look forward to learning Japanese along with others!

I should supply some background info, I suppose: having discovered AJATT simultaneously with graduate school applications to Teacher's College, and having a long-standing interest in Japan in general, I decided to take the plunge and start RTK. It is fascinating, the language is so complex yet interesting at the same time, and it really tickles that centre in my brain loving logic and puzzles (as a kid I would do puzzles compulsively, I think something flipped on when I saw RTK. I couldn't stop it!). I already know two languages (English is not my native, Armenian is... anyone heard of that one? XD) and am keen to learn Japanese.

But I do not want to start off on the wrong foot. AJATT and Khatz... he talks very... let's say he's very 'motivational'. He does a good job at convincing you it is possible to "MASTER THE LANGUAGE in 18 months"... but stepping out of that bubble of inspiration for just a minute and doing a quick "does AJATT work" breaks it down pretty quick. I don't believe he attained full fluency, nor can I actually believe everything is as neat and tidy as he claimed it was...

The problem I am now having is what the process should be in order to start learning Japanese... I know this has probably been asked before hundreds of times, but after doing numerous searches, I haven't really found a precise answer. I'm hoping a fellow forum member can provide some insight!

I'll tell you where I am now: I have bought RTK 1,2,3, and am about a week into RTK. I have bought the crazy 2000 Kanji poster (because I want to display my achievement once done!), set up Anki, downloaded Rikaichan (which is amazing, by the way... so useful...) and have transformed all my music into Japanese music. I have also found some audiobooks in Japanese that I intend to listen to later.

My intention was to first do RTK1. But I think using Rikaichan or another as yet-unfound resource like a dictionary to learn the proper and full range of meanings of the Kanji would be more helpful, overall. Especially when I start making my own stories. Following this, I was simply going to continue with RTK 2 and 3, learn the Kana ("Remembering the Kana") and then go into the sentence-breakdown stage with as much time as I could give it. Obviously, I only really know of AJATT's method here: full immersion, etc etc. It's all on his site... >.> But I have heard mention of other resources, like the Movie Method and am curious to know more about them. And I wanted to know whether there were other, better ways to maximize the time spent being productive.

Having gone from thinking solely in one language to another once before (Armenian ==> English), I know it's possible to do it again if I have the right tools and resource. It's gonna be hard, but I'm motivated to get it done and see where learning it leads me. I am hoping I can find some measure of advice and help here!

Thanks for listening, everyone!

Zephyros

Welcome!

There has been a lot (and I mean a lot) of discussion about AJATT here (even in recent times) and everyone has varying opinions on it.

My two cents is, learn the Kana first as it's kinda crazy to learn 3000 kanji but not even know kana. Work your way through RTK1 and really try get it done in no longer than 3 months. From that point on most people generally tend to go with working through Tae Kim's grammar guide which is a great starting place and then they move onto building vocab and learning to read through either doing the Core series on Smart.fm or doing KO2001. Some supplementary JLPT2 level grammar study helps immensely aswell and after that you'll have a solid foundation with which to really just study on pure cruise mode by doing anything you want.

In the beginning it's definitely best to study the basics hard to bootstrap yourself to a level where it's possible to dive into any native material and feel OK in terms of understanding.

From the start it's great if you are also immersing yourself in the language! I'd definitely recommend it so long as you're watching/listening to something you actually enjoy.

NB: most people don't bother with RTK2 they just learn to read by actually reading which has the added benefit of exposure to grammar/sentence structure patterns and appropriate word usage. Plus it tends to be more enjoyable.

Good luck.

I'd do RTK and Genki 1/2 at the same time.

Skip RTK2 and Tae Kim, they are pretty useless IMO.

I'm mostly with Womacks, though I'd say Tae Kim is decent enough.

I'd learn the kana, then sorta flip around some grammar books while trying to do RtK in about 3 months. Don't go crazy, just do about 30 kanji a day. I find that about half of the people who really try to push through RtK crazy fast hit at 50-100 kanji a day get slammed by a huge wall of reviews that kills their motivation.

Anyways, 30 per day was perfect for me. While you're doing RtK, having some starter grammar books to start picking up basic vocab and grammar points will be nice. I wouldn't take any of that study too seriously, as your real objective is getting through RtK. But just spending those 3 months doing nothing but RtK without any real taste of Japanese would be pretty demotivating for me.

As you near finishing RtK, come up with a plan for continuing. Determine how well you've been grasping the grammars you've been study, and probably just start over from the beginning and start SRS'ing everything. Anyways, you don't have to get everything set up right now, of course.

Anyways, you're probably not going to master the language in 18 months. That Khatz guy sounds like he was absurdly, wildly motivated and he didn't master it. From what I read, he managed to get through an interview in Japanese at that point. Most of his stuff seems to have been written after living in Japan a while, then remembering back on what his level used to be. I think it's pretty hard to judge, to be honest. Also, this is the internet and anyone can say anything. Grain of salt and all that, but the dude is motivational.

At the beginner stage, it might be worth going through an audio course such as pimsleur or michel thomas (or both) to ease you into listening. I never did this with japanese, but I've done it with other languages I'm not studying seriously and I still remember a bunch of vocab and basic grammar. I think at the complete beginner stage you will learn more from this than for example music or native language podcasts. This is just something to do on the side while completing the RTK and is something you can do passively on the bus or something. Don't be too cocerned about if you don't feel like you're making much progress at the start. If after 3 months all you've done is RTK. That in itself sets you ahead or the majority of learners.

ようこそ！

Zanzou makes a good point about pacing yourself (I tried to do 100 kanji a day and got slammed with reviews in the triple (and later quadruple) figures pretty quickly. Massively demotivating - try to avoid it. Most of the people who did well with huge daily reviews were high school or uni students on summer break, or those who didn't work or study full time.

Also, Womacks suggestion re doing Genki (or similar) concurrently is a great idea, because somewhere in the middle of RTK1 you can get a bit lost - you know how to write all these kanji, but you don't know a lick of actual Japanese. Definitely start with something grammar-y, rather than, say, Core 2000 or KO2001, as it's easier to plug new words into familiar grammar structure than learning words in amongst grammar you can't identify.

Zephyros Wrote:But I think using Rikaichan or another as yet-unfound resource like a dictionary to learn the proper and full range of meanings of the Kanji would be more helpful, overall.

Heaps of great dictionaries out there, but a few recommendations to start out with:

http://jisho.org/ (Does word meanings, kanji meanings and has a nifty 'kanji by radicals' search function where you pick radicals from a list and it gives you kanji using those elements. Avoid the example sentences there, though, I think they're from the Tanaka Corpus..? Someone correct me if I'm wrong!)

http://ejje.weblio.jp/ (Haven't played around in this one so much, but a lot of people seem to rate it.)

http://www.tangorin.com/ (Same comment as Weblio)

http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/　(I like Yahoo's example sentences; use the 和英 button while you're starting out - that's the English/Japanese combo dictionary)

If you're using a Mac, the built-in dictionary is great for example sentences, as it usually gives multiple to cover various contexts - mine's constantly open when I'm studying.

Zephyros Wrote:(English is not my native, Armenian is... anyone heard of that one? XD)

Sure have - there's a reasonable size Armenian community in Sydney, including an Armenian school right up the road from me. Have to admit though, the first thing Armenia makes me think of is cake Mmm, Armenian Nut Cake... Is that even authentically Armenian? idek.

Topics like these come up now and again and everyone posts their own ideas, so be ready for a FLOOD of posts. You will have a lot to read here and will probably learn a lot of techniques. (And yes, I do know about Armenian ^^)

Here's how I would put up a short basic roadmap for a newbie to Japanese:
* Do RtK, aim for finishing it in 3 months, 4 is okay. The faster, the better.
* At the same time, start listening to Japanese. Doesn't matter what level it is, you're not supposed to understand it, just get used to the sounds and rythm. News, podcasts, audio ripped from drama or anime, anything works, mix it up.
* Once you're getting done with RtK, you need the other components to start reading native stuff: Grammar and vocab. Where you get this is up to you, but I recommend either tae kim or any other basic textbook such as Genki or Minna no Nihongo. Going through a whole book or all of tae kim should give you all the basics needed to see a Japanese sentence and be able to split it up into functional parts and thus translate/understand. Just pick sentences from those books after reading the explanations so you understand and keep reviewing them.
* Once you're done, start with native material. Easy manga, Easy anime is a good start, but it might already be time to mix it up. As you learn more vocabulary and get exposed to the grammar more often, it becomes easier to jump into harder material. Drama, then news and wikipedia or novels, then maybe academic or economic stuff.
* When doing the above, completely stop using subs for you Japanese video stuff. It might be hard in the beginning to understand since listening needs to be practiced a lot, but keep going. Rewatch stuff, relisten to lines. Eventually, especially as you learn more vocab, it will become easier and easier.
* As you feel that it is starting to become easy and you guess that you have a vocab of about 4000-5000 words, I would recommend looking into JLPT2. Find some old tests etc and see how you fare. If you feel it's very hard, I recommend studying SOMEWHAT for it, using kanzen master or something similar. This is just to make sure that you get that critical mass to understand "real modern" Japanese, the stuff you would have to know if you lived there, and not just whatever comes up in anime. This step is of course only important if you care about that, if you just want to know Japanese to enjoy media, it's not important.
* When you feel JLPT2 is no big deal, you probably have more than enough knowledge to start training output for real. Find Japanese people on mixi, skype or in your town and start writing and talking. It will be very bad at first, but you will quickly get used to it.
* Do whatever you want, at this point you won't need any steps.

I personally don't think RtK2 nor 3 are worth the effort. RtK2 teaches readings, something you learn automatically as you learn words. RtK3 goes through a LOT of kanji you won't see for years, it's simpler to learn them as you come across them using the techniques you learned in RtK1, it saves you time and effort. As for KO2001 and Smart.fm, i'm not sure. Many people find them extremely boring, but the words contained are common and useful so especially if you're going for full fluency (and will need the JLPT2 step) it might be worth it. Overall, I don't think you need to worry about sources too much, it doesn't matter in the end WHERE you learned a word as long as you learned it. If you feel manga works as well and is more fun than those structured lists, by all means go for that.

EDIT: As you might notice, I didn't mention anything about monolingual in my steps. That's because I don't think it's important, if you want to use J-E you can do that until you're fluent, it won't matter. Still, it should be noted that if you ever feel that you want to understand words better, going for Japanese dictionaries is a good thing. It IMO takes a long time before a student is ready to do so though. If you need to use rikaichan more than once or twice in a definition, I doubt it's useful, you're not going to understand a word well if you don't understand the definition. Better to go for English coupled with example sentences if that's the case.

All of the above are excellent suggestions, even if they conflict a little! I'd say the most important thing to take away from this is that one size never, never fits all. You need to find your own path and do things in your own way, although other people's methods and suggestions are always a good starting point. Gambatte!

I didn't even start RTK until after JLPT2.

guilty

Womacks23 Wrote:I didn't even start RTK until after JLPT2.

guilty

I still haven't done it at all.

your guilty + 1

Seriously though, it's interesting reading advice and what worked from people here.

WOW! Thanks for all the advice! This has been... enlightening, to say the least. So many options! Thanks a million!

I had sorta figured something as universal and important, and so often misconstrued as being this incredibly difficult thing to do - learning a language, obviously - would have a lot of variations, a lot of personal tweaks you can make to suit your own style. My problem was not knowing where to go for these sources, what my options are... so all the feedback really, really helps!

I should probably clarify what my ultimate goal is for learning Japanese: I am very interested in taking the JLPT. After graduation in 3 months' time, I am going on a 6-week trip to Japan to see what life is like there, followed ultimately (a few years - work, master's, etc...) by application to the JET program, which, now I don't know if exists only in Canada or not so forgive my ignorance as I explain, is an exchange program for English language teachers who are interested in Japan to go there through the Japanese Embassy, and live there for 1 to 5 years. My goal is to be able to function in society there, and ultimately (hopefully) gain fluency through exposure once there. In the meantime, until that point, I want to learn the steps I need to take from now to make some level of integration into/understanding of the culture better. It wouldn't do to be illiterate and ignorant of their language if I intend to live there for so long; and knowing the language (writing, reading, ultimately speaking) would prove a huge benefit if I want to keep working there in the future.

I think I'm going to stick with RTK for now, and once I've built up a good enough vocabulary and start getting used to the process more, I may supplement it with a grammar book. But my issue here is, I've already started RTK and I haven't touched the Kana. I have a feeling it would be necessary to know the Kana before I can learn the grammar. Should I stop (or it might be better to just cut back on it and do it alongside) with the RTK for now and go through the Kana - now, while in the early stages when it hasn't gotten quite so intense yet? From what I've heard, learning the Kana isn't anywhere near as difficult and long as the Kanji.

But to the other suggestions:

Tae Kim - I take it this is an online resource? How does it compare to a store-bought such as Genki? Apart from the financial difference, I mean. I've heard some people express dislike for Tae Kim around the boards.

Core 2000 or KO2001 - I've heard these mentioned before, but I'm not quite sure what they are. I did a quick search, and it looks like it helps you associate the written with the pronunciation? Of course, I could be wrong... If this is the case, however, is it really necessary to break it down and buckle learning it? I get the feeling it would be a lot funner to go through media outlets like movies, TV, newspapers, etc and form the association yourself. I suppose I'll have to wait and see, though, and it's good to have options...!

Tobberoth, you actually mentioned something I was meaning to ask in general. Translations. Is it a negative influence or a positive influence? I mean, would it be better to just force yourself to listen to the same thing over and over again, until you pick it up or just look up the translation? I get the feeling this would tend to make you reliant on the dictionary translation, and that's not really the thing you want to aim for if you ultimately want fluency. Of course, I could be totally wrong, and ultimately there is no effect and it only helps make it less frustrating. If anyone has an opinion on it, I would surely like to hear it!

And one final question about the JLPT. It sounds like this process really helps you to get all the way to the second level (which is WOW! surprising). But what is the difference between JLPT2 and 1? What I mean by this question is, how different is the difficulty between the two, and what the ultimate benefits are for getting 1 after 2 - what is the drive for passing this last test. Proof of full fluency? Better job access/cultural acceptance? Easier permanent residency applications?

If this last question shouldn't be discussed here (In the RTK forums...!) I'll go ahead and probably repost that in the proper forum and ask the right people!

Thanks again for all the advice, guys!

If you're going to Japan in 3 months, maybe right now your time would be best spent learning basic Japanese notions, useful travel phrases and kana. Then when you get back from Japan, start RTK.

Yes, I've been exactly where you are before! AJATT is very persuasive, but I ran into a wall with the pieces not meshing for me. Take all my advice with a grain of salt - I've made very little progress, but:

mezbup Wrote:My two cents is, learn the Kana first as it's kinda crazy to learn 3000 kanji but not even know kana.

I've learned the Hiragana, but I've not gotten very far with kanji at all. "Remembering the Kana" by Heisig is perfectly reasonable, and probably wouldn't take you long at all. I have ...distractions... in my life, and I learned 70% of my Hirigana in three days. The last 30% took me another week's worth of work spread out over four months. Nobody's situation is alike, so I'm okay with that rate of progress. I didn't have an SRS at the time, but if I was going to do it again, I'd still use Heisig for the first 70%, and use an SRS for the the rest. I finally did lock down that last 70% by reading out loud untranslated manga. You can download any number of Kana decks for Anki from within the program.

Immersion counts, here though. め is more like meh or mais (French) than anything like "may". Actually hearing the sound that you are trying to pair the kana with is really important, and immersing for three months is probably the way to get that. Some of what I use for immersion is audio stripped out of anime episodes I already understand. (I do recommend spending a day or two listening to news podcasts, just because it drills certain structures into your head without you realizing it, things like wa/ka sentence endings.)

Now I spend my time with Anki, paging through a subs-to-srs deck based on Toki o Kakeru Shōjo. It helps me rehearse my kana - I'm picking up the Katakana I didn't bother to learn earlier. I'm cutting and pasting kanji I don't know into jdic, and then hitting edit, and pasting the reading and meaning that comes kinda close back into the card that it came from.

I don't recommend this method for anyone, but I enjoy it for myself, so that's good enough for me.

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edited to fix html brackets

Let's see

Learning kana is easy and takes about a week or two to master. You'll need kana to learn Japanese grammar and how to read kanji.

Tae Kim versus Genki is really all about what you are most comfortable with using. I prefer to learn with books that have full dialogues with audio, and lots of exercises I could work on. Genki had this and is put together in a real quality way that held my interest.

Tae Kim didn't appeal to me in that way.

It's not necessary to learn with Core 2000 or KO2001 either. They are just popular resources. I preferred to use Kanji in Context and other various textbooks. Once you get started in learning Japanese and get a chance to check out the different resources you'll figure out the ones that work for you.

JLPT 2 to 1 is a huge gap.

JLPT 2 means you can apply to those jobs requiring "business" level Japanese.
JLPT 1 means you can apply to the jobs requiring "fluent" level. Though in a way 1級 is just the first step towards fluency

I'd recommend learning the kana right away. There's not very many of them, so I think just "brute forcing" it is the best way. If you forget a few when you're first starting out, it's not really a big deal. You'll have so much exposure to them after awhile it won't really be any issue at all. It's kind of like our English alphabet; we just don't have to think about it. It's just not possible for us to forget a letter, or how to write it.

Womacks23 Wrote:JLPT 2 means you can apply to those jobs requiring "business" level Japanese.
JLPT 1 means you can apply to the jobs requiring "fluent" level.

You shouldn't be under the impression, though, that JLPT 2 and 1 represent universally accepted forms of proof of your Japanese ability. Unless a job requirement specifically mentions them, it's unlikely that the people there will have heard of the test (in my experience, most people in Japan have never heard of JLPT) and so even if you tell them you have a certain level they won't know what to make of it.

For the most part, it's your functional usage of the language that will determine such things. It depends on the job, but impressing the interviewer with your spoken Japanese and use of polite language could be more important than JLPT. If you claim to have JLPT 1 or 2 but your spoken Japanese is full of grammatical mistakes, bad pronunciation, inappropriate polite/impolite expressions, and such, that will tend to make a much stronger impression than your piece of paper saying you passed a test.

yudantaiteki Wrote:You shouldn't be under the impression, though, that JLPT 2 and 1 represent universally accepted forms of proof of your Japanese ability. Unless a job requirement specifically mentions them, it's unlikely that the people there will have heard of the test (in my experience, most people in Japan have never heard of JLPT) and so even if you tell them you have a certain level they won't know what to make of it.

An HR department in Japan hiring Japanese speaking foreigners will know the test. Everyone else seeing a katakana name will start looking for evidence of Japanese language skills, particularly educational history or JLPT score. Depending on the job. IT and highly technical jobs are exempt here.

yudantaiteki Wrote:For the most part, it's your functional usage of the language that will determine such things. It depends on the job, but impressing the interviewer with your spoken Japanese and use of polite language could be more important than JLPT. If you claim to have JLPT 1 or 2 but your spoken Japanese is full of grammatical mistakes, bad pronunciation, inappropriate polite/impolite expressions, and such, that will tend to make a much stronger impression than your piece of paper saying you passed a test.

Exactly. It won't get you a job of course. But writing that JLPT level on your resume will vastly increase your chances of getting an interview. Having no evidence of speaking Japanese will get your resume trashed most of the time. Even if you wrote it in Japanese.

Zephyros Wrote:Tobberoth, you actually mentioned something I was meaning to ask in general. Translations. Is it a negative influence or a positive influence? I mean, would it be better to just force yourself to listen to the same thing over and over again, until you pick it up or just look up the translation? I get the feeling this would tend to make you reliant on the dictionary translation, and that's not really the thing you want to aim for if you ultimately want fluency. Of course, I could be totally wrong, and ultimately there is no effect and it only helps make it less frustrating. If anyone has an opinion on it, I would surely like to hear it!

And one final question about the JLPT. It sounds like this process really helps you to get all the way to the second level (which is WOW! surprising). But what is the difference between JLPT2 and 1? What I mean by this question is, how different is the difficulty between the two, and what the ultimate benefits are for getting 1 after 2 - what is the drive for passing this last test. Proof of full fluency? Better job access/cultural acceptance? Easier permanent residency applications?

I personally don't find any problem with translations per se. It's a shortcut, and a BIG one. Especially for beginners, translations will be important, it's hard to get the meaning of a specific word across. By using a sentence and translating ALL of it, you can show how it differs. That said, like you say, relying on translations isn't a good idea, and trusting a translation isn't a good idea. If you see a sentence and a translation, you can't just learn that sentence as is, you HAVE to learn every word in the sentence to get the connections. IMO, a translation a sentence is just a good indication of the overall feel of the sentence. The translation of a word is like a synonym. As long as you don't overestimate the usefulness and just see it has a help on the way, I don't see how it can be detrimental at all. Don't worry about becoming a "translator" who translates everything from English in your head while talking, that won't happen.

As for JLPT, JLPT1 is twice as "big" as JLPT2, but that doesn't translate to twice as hard. You need twice the vocabulary and twice the amount of kanji, but the actual texts and listening doesn't get all that much harder from JLPT2, and the grammar is also just extended by a little bit. It's more like a big extension of JLPT2. The drive for passing JLPT1 is that it's necessary for most things. If you look at a list of jobs for foreigners, only like... 5 in 30 or probably less will be doable with JLPT2, the rest will demand JLPT1 (and that's just for getting an interview, your actual skill is what decides from there on). At least for the old levels, it worked like this: JLPT4 and 3 were useless. They proved that you know basic Japanese, nothing else. JLPT2 proved that you know "business" Japanese, and used to be enough for most universities and a few jobs. JLPT1 was the real deal and were supposed to show that you're fluent. Certainly though, JLPT1 is not enough to call yourself fluent, not by any reasonable standard at least.

Zephyros Wrote:I'll tell you where I am now: I have bought RTK 1,2,3, and am about a week into RTK. I have bought the crazy 2000 Kanji poster (because I want to display my achievement once done!), set up Anki, downloaded Rikaichan (which is amazing, by the way... so useful...) and have transformed all my music into Japanese music. I have also found some audiobooks in Japanese that I intend to listen to later.

Well, I do have my doubts about immersion...
I think if you want to learn pronunciation and just to get used to hearing the language if you've never really heard it before, then have fun with it and go ahead, and feel free to use subtitled stuff.
But nothing special happens if you were planning on listening to stuff completely out of your range (like a news podcast) and expecting to somehow piece it together. You should know something about the grammar or vocab being used, and slowly piece it together.

Quote:My intention was to first do RTK1. But I think using Rikaichan or another as yet-unfound resource like a dictionary to learn the proper and full range of meanings of the Kanji would be more helpful, overall.

Since I'm going through KO2001 right now after finishing RTK, I find that learning the meanings is more of a last resort when you absolutely can't remember what the word means. I think some of the Heisig words could use some work (I always get confused between "I","Me," "Myself," and "Private"), but overall I wouldn't worry too much about getting all the meanings. When you start learning Kanji compounds you'll also be able to get your own meaning out of it based on the other words it's used in.

Quote:And I wanted to know whether there were other, better ways to maximize the time spent being productive.

Just a word of caution, a lot of times when I pick up a hobby or want to learn a new skill I get caught up in the method of learning and end up researching it more than actually putting in the time =)

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar

I like Tae Kim cos it doesn't ***** around with shit like "This is スミスさん and he is a 騎士。 His favourite food is ぶっ掛け饂飩 and he always eats it at his favourite レストラン。 His 奥さん is a ****ing 美人 so be jealous. (Ok so that'd be a wicked text book actually ). And then lame dialogues like introducing urself, ur job, various あいさつ, romaji, more annoying dialogues with shit like "are you married?????".　えぇ？合コンしょう？

That's all super functional stuff and is centered around learning to speak Japanese which is the goal, sure.

Tae Kim really just focuses on grammar and it's explanations using several examples which are simple in nature but not geared towards making you able to introduce yourself and then be totally stumped. It's about understanding parts of speech in Japanese. It doesn't bog you down with having to wade your way through that crap if that's not your style (seriously isn't mine).

So really it depends on your focus. If you're cool with getting basic instruction in the style of traditional textbook/classroom learning then go with that. If you're doing self-study and you feel that just the explanations will do and you can apply them to real world materials (or other stuff like KO2001, Core Series) then go with that.

Really there's no right or wrong on this one.