Maybe I shouldn't be confessing stuff like this, but nobody here knows my mom (I hope), so what the heck. I'm sort of a petty person. And I'm highly competitive; not a very nice combo. So I get really jealous when I see how good you guys are at reading sometimes.

Now I suck, but not nearly as bad as I used to. For example, although it was a struggle at first, I'm pretty fast at kana. I can read anything in my old text, or probably any beginner text for that matter. I have close to a 4000 word vocabulary, and I can read those words in their kanji form.

I'm attempting to work my way through "Read Real Japanese". Even with my 4000 word vocabulary, I get a consistent 25 new words per page. There are about 100 words total, which means I'm at 75%. Way below what is recommended. And even though I know all the basic grammar now, those long meandering sentences are still very hard. But I look at it as a vocabulary exercise, and continue the struggle.

So I log on here, and see post after post of beautifully kanjified Japanese. About half the time, I can't figure it out. Sometimes it's just a word, sometimes I'm totally stumped. It seems like most here can read and respond appropriately. I'm in awe. So, the question: Are you really that good? Does anybody use anything like rikaichan, and if so will it hurt my reading?

Leo "green with envy" Smith.

leosmith Wrote:I log on here, and see post after post of beautifully kanjified Japanese. About half the time, I can't figure it out. Sometimes it's just a word, sometimes I'm totally stumped. It seems like most here can read and respond appropriately.

The majority of the kanji that's posted seems to be text copied from an authentic source.

I agree that sometimes it looks intimidating. But we have to remember that the poster will have had time to peruse the text prior to posting.

If there is a load of Japanese text in the forum that people have trouble with, it might be an interesting topic of discussion and we might all learn something. So if there are any examples that you could post to this thread, perhaps that will get things going...

Sorry, this isn't really a response to your question (which synewave answered pretty well), but I would like to offer some words of motivation.

When I started reading children's books in Japanese, I averaged 17 unknown words per page in the first chapter, 14 in the second chapter, and 10 per page by the time I got to the last chapter (the book was about 250 pages long) by the time I had read 4 books in the series, I was averaging 4 words per page for most of the book.
I made excel spreadsheets and charts to graph this all out and motivate me.

The point is, progress definitely happens, but it happens slowly, and you'll probably have to get through hundreds of pages before you feel like you know almost everything you're reading.

This is why reading without a dictionary is so helpful. It allows you to read fast, and it allows you to read at a level above what you could do with a dictionary (ironically). It's just important to accept that you won't understand every sentence at first, but you will accumulate vocabulary and start to understand more and more. For something like this it also helps to start off reading something you've read in your own language. If you've read Harry Potter in English, I recommend trying the first book in Japanese.

Even if you do decide to go the route of trying to understand all the words and sentences from the beginning, I would like to suggest that at least you don't try to memorize the new words by drilling them, staring at the word lists, or using flash cards. Just let yourself acquire them naturally. When you see one you don't know, you can check its meaning and move on. Since some words are more common (and vital) than others, you'll learn those ones first, and once you're familiar with those, the moderately common ones will start begging your attention. And on and on. This route requires a bit of time double-checking words that you've encountered a few times and still don't remember, but you will save that much time by avoiding drilling the words and save mental effort trying to memorize individual words by a rote method.

Don't worry, there are some of us who are so beginner-ish with our Japanese that we don't even try to work out most of the stuff on the forum!
Although it's hard to do, you just have to remember, that whatever you do in life, someone will always be better than you... If you can accept that and look at what you can do, instead of what you can't then you're in a good place

can you recommend some children's books to read?

I'm not.

Kana? Sure, I don't even notice it anymore, I just read or write it.

Basic grammar? So-so. Those run-on sentences still make me think hard, sometimes I have to diagram the sentence in my head (or on paper!) before I can figure it all out.

Kanji? Horrible. Finished RTK1 and can tell you that 理科 is "logic-department", but without RTK2, I don't know it's pronounced りか.

Vocabulary? Horrible. I don't know that 理科 means "science". It only takes 2 or 3 unknown words to destroy a sentence and send me running for JEDict or Rikaichan. So I can't read high school level Japanese. With a dictionary, I can fake it, but it's hardly a relaxing time.

With dictionaries and input method editors, computer assistance allows one to both read and write well above one's natural levels.

chamcham Wrote:can you recommend some children's books to read?

I've only read one type of children's book and that's books from the series 世にも不幸なできごと (A Series of Unfortunate Events in English) by Lemony Snickett. They are tremendously humorous and the translator does a pretty good job of capturing the author's tone. They have a healthy dose of furigana and the vocabulary and kanji demands are noticeably lighter than Harry Potter. Someone working without a dictionary could probably tackle Harry Potter too, and I would not recommend against those books, but it would probably be a bit more of a struggle.

there was a post recently about reading material and the way to read, but i would also like to add to the "reading without a dictionary" camp:

I also do this and often I don't get the "true" meaning of a sentance due to now knowing certain words, but this doesn't bother me at all, because from the setting you can pretty much gather what is going on.

I would like to mention something that i have found myself doing: when reading a book, if i don't know a word that keeps on popping up again and again, i have a pretty good idea of what that word means from all the contexts that i have seen it in, and it is only really those words that do pop up all the time that i actually take the time to look up in a dictionary.

here's my point:

Leo, if you are petty and want 100% understanding of what you read, you will never progress at any great speed. like some of us are mentioning here, barge through it and let the words find you. if you don't understand the finest detail, who cares, as long as your reading speed increases... in opposition to this point though, if there is something that you don't understand fully and this happens to affect your understanding of what follows, or if it is an important section, then you probably should take the time to unravel it.

EDIT: スペルミス

JimmySeal Wrote:Even if you do decide to go the route of trying to understand all the words and sentences from the beginning, I would like to suggest that at least you don't try to memorize the new words by drilling them, staring at the word lists, or using flash cards. Just let yourself acquire them naturally. When you see one you don't know, you can check its meaning and move on. Since some words are more common (and vital) than others, you'll learn those ones first, and once you're familiar with those, the moderately common ones will start begging your attention. And on and on. This route requires a bit of time double-checking words that you've encountered a few times and still don't remember, but you will save that much time by avoiding drilling the words and save mental effort trying to memorize individual words by a rote method.

This is the best advice you can get for how to read and use a dictionary without burning yourself out.

My Japanese sucks beyond daily conversation, though I'm now reaching the point of being comfortable with conversations about any general daily topic. As for reading, I learned kana two years ago, so that's a breeze, and all that daily conversation is a breeze too. After that, things get iffy for grammar, and awful for a whole bunch of kanji. Just as an idea for benchmark, I probably couldn't pass JLPT3 right now, though I would be close.

Two pieces of advice I would give for reading:

1. Don't get very young children's books. I'm working on Doraemon right now and it's killing me! Everything is in hiragana. Kanji HELPS you learn vocabulary and meaning more quickly. I have much higher comprehension and a much easier time with books for middle school aged students.

2. I know a lot of people here are against drilling, but in concentrated doses it's invaluable. A month ago I memorized every JLPT 4 verb. The difference in all realms of my Japanese has been significant. Pick such distilled lists to build your vocab base. Meguro JLPT Resources has excellent resources (their verb lists are in -masu form though. I changed them all to dictionary form).

When I approached 90%-per-page vocabulary level with english, I used the following technique. I usually read arbitrary texts on my way to/from school/uni/work and they are usually in form of printed 20-page sections of downloaded books. So as I read, I marked (with a marker) all occured unknown words, and in evening looked them up in a dictionary (I didn't know about spaced repetion system at the time, alas).

It combines benefits of dictionary-off reading and dictionary-on learning.

Thanks for the responses. Has anyone here learned to read Japanese without a dictionary beginning from my level (75%) or lower?

leosmith,

I've seen comics for little children, where there is NO kanji whatsoever. So if you're a beginner, it might help. Of course, seeing all that hiragana might give you a headache. But it might work for you and I guess would be good for speaking.

Btw, I found that lately, having acquired generally good english vocabulary, I tend to uncontiously ignore the fact that I know the meaning of many rare obscure words only in crude approximation. I just don't move in the direction of understanding them better. It's a habit developed through reading dictionary-off. The only way to fight it that I found is to still mark such words and look them up in dictionary. In this case it's not just learning preference, but the only way.

And don't say that I don't need these words if they are so rare and I already know their general meaning (someone said that in one of the recent learn-without-dictionary topics). Read becomes insipid when devoid of meaning tones.

Looks like everyone's abandonded the 'Read-without-the-Dictionary' thread and yet again resumed the discussion here... I rest my case.

A couple of words in Rikai, in response to Leo's post. I was an avid user of it when I first discovered the tool and I ended up banning myself from that website altogether. I still think it is a great tool, when used sparingly. What I found happening to me was that I would get bored and too impatient to get to the end of the text and would start moving down the sentence reading pop-up translations for every single word, including those that I know for sure and those I could have figured out with a bit of effort. Rikai became too much of a crutch.

I am now forcing myself to read both Chinese and Japanese websites without Rikai. It allows me to go through the whole sentence first and identify the words I definitely don't know. Which I can then cut&paste into http://www.dict.cn or JEDict standalone application on my PowerBook - and that is a very conscious effort, as opposed to looking for shortcuts.

I have to say that my reading comprehension (especially Chinese) has noticeably improved since I started doing this. The other benefit is that Rikai actually does a lousy job on cutting a Chinese sentence into words.

More diligent people than myself, however, should have no problem using Rikai, as long as it doesn't become a crutch...

chamcham Wrote:leosmith,
I've seen comics for little children, where there is NO kanji whatsoever. So if you're a beginner, it might help. Of course, seeing all that hiragana might give you a headache. But it might work for you and I guess would be good for speaking.

Hi chamcham,
Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, kanji isn't my problem though, which is a good feeling come to think of it. It's usually lack of vocab that kills me. But maybe things aren't so bad. "Read Real Japanese" is a reader, so it's much more convenient than a regular book for looking up words. I just glance down when I want to "look up" a word. I'm thinking this might not be such a bad method to slowly learn enough vocab to get to the 90+% range. Then I might try the no dictionary method on something like Harry Potter.

Serge Wrote:A couple of words in Rikai, in response to Leo's post. I was an avid user of it when I first discovered the tool and I ended up banning myself from that website altogether.

Thanks for the info Serge. I'm afraid I could become easily addicted to it, so I guess my laziness in never installing Rikai has paid off. I hate furigana for the same reason; my eyes tend to wander too much.

synewave Wrote:I agree that sometimes it looks intimidating. But we have to remember that the poster will have had time to peruse the text prior to posting.

If there is a load of Japanese text in the forum that people have trouble with, it might be an interesting topic of discussion and we might all learn something. So if there are any examples that you could post to this thread, perhaps that will get things going...

Thanks for that explantaion synewave; I feel better now. Also, I'll post stuff here next time I get confused. Good idea.

JimmySeal Wrote:When I started reading children's books in Japanese, I averaged 17 unknown words per page in the first chapter, 14 in the second chapter, and 10 per page by the time I got to the last chapter (the book was about 250 pages long) by the time I had read 4 books in the series, I was averaging 4 words per page for most of the book.

Very inspiring JimmySeal. I'll definitely try your method at some point. I feel like I need to get to a slightly more comfortable level first.

I'm going to try to suck the life out of my current book, which was designed for that from what I can tell. By that I mean it provides different reading styles, using very common vocabulary, without building on itself. It should give me 1500 new words.

I know this goes against what some of you believe to be best, but it actually represents quite a compromise on my part. I was just going to study lists of vocab for 6 months. It's nice to keep my reading practice up, and see things in context. Anyway, this was a big step for me, so your tolerance is appreciated.

leosmith Wrote:I'm going to try to suck the life out of my current book, which was designed for that from what I can tell. By that I mean it provides different reading styles, using very common vocabulary, without building on itself. It should give me 1500 new words.

That sound like a load of vocab. I have no idea how many words I know (not that it's that many mind you!). It would be good interesting to know, possibly.

Regarding what's "best", my feelings are that it's fairly subjective, all of us believing we know best! Thinking only of vocab, what I think would be best would be to do a Matrix style download of an English/Japanese dictionary into my brain then start reading to see how the words are actually used.

We may have varying opinions on how best to learn vocab but we probably agree that the more words we know, the better.