Hi there

I've been doing an AJATT-like routine for some 10 months now, finishing RTK1 about six months ago. I'm not exactly at the point of "burn-out" or whatnot, but there is a problem that increasingly frustrates me: Kanji readings. Maybe the community can help? :p

The case is that I love reading, so much of my "study time" lies in books. Picking up stuff I like to read in English (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, etc.) there are so many words that I do not know the reading of. As you probably know, looking up kanji you don't know the reading of from paper is extraordinarily time-consuming, and hence gets boring quickly. However, not looking up the readings feels like such a waste - I may understand the meaning from context, but not knowing the reading I will never recognize it in a conversation.

Possible solutions:
Manga w. furigana: Not much I find interesting, reading Slam Dunk and HUNTERxHUNTER
Web contents w. Rikaichan: Unfortunately I don't have internet at home since moving to Japan
E-books w. copy-paste into dictionary: Not a lot of them in Japanese it seems.

Oh, and to give you an idea of my level, I recently bought some Isaac Asimov Sci-Fi novels and enjoy reading them, although it takes 15 minutes per page if I look up everything...

Any suggestions?

What have you done since you finished RTK1? Have you gone through Core 2K/6K or something equivalent yet?

Some suggestions:
1. Go through some vocab lists. KO2001 etc.
2. Use the handwriting support on an iPhone/ iPod touch/ electronic dictionaries to look up words quicker. As you pick up more and more readings, it'll get a lot easier to type them in.

Do more vocab SRS. Add every word using kanji even if it's usually written with kana. Eventually you'll be able to guess readings well enough or at least know another word with that kanji so that lookups are easy. That includes obscure kanji you've never seen before since you'll get a hang of phonetic elements.

I've been doing that for awhile. On average I read 1-2 books of manga daily (finished 犬夜叉第13巻 during lunch today), a novel once a week or so (just finished 星新一's modern adaption of 竹取物語 a few minutes ago on my work computer), and spend the rest of my day reading/translating automotive documents for work (just finished the updates to a dealer marketing guide for next year's <popular Japanese vehicle>) and only rarely have to manually draw a kanji into my dictionary (every few months)

Hm... Maybe you should get your books in electronic format or the like. Electronic lookup (e.g. Rikaichan) is so much faster compared to lookup in books or even kanji recognition programs. Plus you have the possibility to easily create lists for Anki, for later. If you get the book on your computer, I don't think there is any more need for an internet connection.
I know reading at the computer sometimes sucks. But remember, that it's only for the time learning all the stuff

Pre-mine the vocabulary and add it into Anki (1 speed read through x number of pages). Make sure it's in order and you have a physical list or list on your digital device that you can scroll through while reading for the words that your Anki deck hasn't allowed to stick yet. As you are reading refer to the list as you go along.

I would recommend this if you are doing a re-reading project like me, where you re-read the same pages for a period of time (it takes me about 2 days with the time I have to do the 70 odd pages I do - about 10-15 minutes per day on the train.) I am reading Bleach, which has furigana, and a kids version of Pirates of the Caribeen, which is actually a lot easy (no slang).

Things I think are worth doing:

#Make a cram deck and redownload it daily, running through it once or twice per day.
#Reread the same content a few times.
#After you finish read the book one more time (if your not totally sick of it by then - I really like Bleach.)
#If it's a Manga or based on a movie, get the episodes that correspond to the Manga chapter your reading. Watch this regularly with Japanese subs, you should be able to find something that fits this profile, and rip the audio to MP3, so you can listen and read. Run it through Subs2srs if you can get the subs or the Manga is similar enough to be able to rip out a few sentences from the anime, this can really help your listening/reading.
# Read it out loud if you can and write out the sentences from the book if your not doing writing in mass at the moment (I get a lot of writing time, so I don't bother - plus it just takes too long for me as I'm impatient.)
# Basically, hit it from all angles. Reading, listening, speaking and writing. The more you get out of it the better.

Notes:
It takes 2 hours to rip out 100 pages of a manga for me. Adding it to my deck (cutting out unnecessary definitions) takes awhile as I go through the manga at the same time. If I Subs2SRS it, then that's another 30-45 minutes of work if it's not timed (I've never had to sub from the manga, so I don't know.) If it's different from the manga, I'll go through the subs and combine the decks removing extras (I do vocab only, but you can also cut and paste the sentences in, whatever) that takes about 20-30 minutes. MP3s, etc. don't take any time really. Hence, your looking at about 4 hours to 5 1/2 hours to produce: A) A list of words in order; B) An Anki deck with all the words in it; C) A Subs2SRS deck with the audio from the subs. D) An extra deck for additional vocab from the anime; E) An MP3 of the anime episodes audio and IPOD formatted videos. F) + Whatever else you need.

Oh... results:

I have gone from looking up 25 of every 50 words per page (50%) to 1-3 words (-5%). Also, as it's all on a list I don't have to type it in - just glance. I probably get 2-3 hours of reading out of 100 or so pages of a book, but the anime recordings become extremely understandable, so it's probably a lot more than that, and the vocabulary all goes to my main deck, so that stays too. Basically, I use the books I read from every angle to get everything I can out of them.

Note:
My goal is to remove vocabulary as a factor, so I can focus on learning the grammar I see and hear.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Do more vocab SRS. Add every word using kanji even if it's usually written with kana. Eventually you'll be able to guess readings well enough or at least know another word with that kanji so that lookups are easy. That includes obscure kanji you've never seen before since you'll get a hang of phonetic elements.

I've been doing that for awhile. On average I read 1-2 books of manga daily (finished 犬夜叉第13巻 during lunch today), a novel once a week or so (just finished 星新一's modern adaption of 竹取物語 a few minutes ago on my work computer), and spend the rest of my day reading/translating automotive documents for work (just finished the updates to a dealer marketing guide for next year's <popular Japanese vehicle>) and only rarely have to manually draw a kanji into my dictionary (every few months)

vocab is working wonders for me. I can instantly recognize kanji/meanings and if it's a compound I haven't seen(i.e. different combination of kanji). I usual can guess the right readings most of the time. I add 60 new vocab cards per day. I decided no need to overload myself with 100 a day

I do both kinds of readings, the kind where I just power through it regardless of whether I know what it means, and the kind where I just slowly and steadily look up everything I don't know and SRS it. Sometimes with the same book, and actually very often.

Sometimes cursory understanding and reading speed is good for enjoyment, but sometimes I also want to really concentrate and learn to make sure I understand completely.

It keeps me sane.

kainzero Wrote:I do both kinds of readings, the kind where I just power through it regardless of whether I know what it means, and the kind where I just slowly and steadily look up everything I don't know and SRS it. Sometimes with the same book, and actually very often.

Sometimes cursory understanding and reading speed is good for enjoyment, but sometimes I also want to really concentrate and learn to make sure I understand completely.

It keeps me sane.

Build your vocab deck to 10,000+ and I'm pretty sure you won't have trouble with most texts.

ta12121: Concerning the vocab deck. I had this issue as well, I was just too lazy and maybe even afraid having that huge decks, but now, step-by-step, I got it. Anki is just so wonderful for stuff like that to do on a regular basis, every day. Doing the core6k right now and I must say, I virtually recognise every time I encounter japanese (audio, more often text such as trying to read wikipedia in Japanese or even Mangas I come across and I like reading when they are not too difficult - grammatically), i understand more.

Getting confused with those subtle differences sometimes in Japanese grammar, especially when it comes to writing, but reading is fine Guess it was a crucial step right after Rtk1, going on with a (larger) vocab deck providing enough necessary vocabs. Just my opinion and experience.

Tori-kun Wrote:ta12121: Concerning the vocab deck. I had this issue as well, I was just too lazy and maybe even afraid having that huge decks, but now, step-by-step, I got it. Anki is just so wonderful for stuff like that to do on a regular basis, every day. Doing the core6k right now and I must say, I virtually recognise every time I encounter japanese (audio, more often text such as trying to read wikipedia in Japanese or even Mangas I come across and I like reading when they are not too difficult - grammatically), i understand more.

Getting confused with those subtle differences sometimes in Japanese grammar, especially when it comes to writing, but reading is fine Guess it was a crucial step right after Rtk1, going on with a (larger) vocab deck providing enough necessary vocabs. Just my opinion and experience.

It definitely helps a lot.
Thanks to rikaichan, I can save a lot of words to the word document format and then I import it to anki(3 fields, 1 is the expression,reading and last is meaning). But anyhow, it slowly builds up. As long as you keep going/reviewing/building/reading. You'll be well on your way to reading fluency or at least a very strong kanji knowledge building up over time.

10,000 is kind of low. I'm at 17,000 right now (not counting stuff easier than around JLPT2 level) and I still add about 70 words per day on average so far this year.

The downside is that mobileanki runs pretty poorly with such a huge deck. Undoing an answer takes about 30 seconds and my 3GS constantly runs out of memory and slows to a crawl when using it. I mostly just do reps at work now and use phone time to read manga.

And yeah, rikaichan is a lifesaver. I probably wouldn't make any new cards if it wasn't for it. I have a textfile of terms I've come across that aren't in edict (and so not in rikaichan) so I haven't made an anki card for. Probably over 1000 :/

Jarvik7 Wrote:10,000 is kind of low. I'm at 17,000 right now (not counting stuff easier than around JLPT2 level) and I still add about 70 words per day on average so far this year.

10,000 is the starting point. Like getting JLPT1 is the starting point really. I'm nearly at 14,000 and it gives you a pretty sweet ability but I agree that 10,000 is still low. I'd say 25K and you'd be knocking on native territories door.

Mass SRSing of vocab definitely works, but try to keep dictionary use to a minimum. There're are plenty of people (mostly polyglot types) who recommend against immediately reaching for the dictionary, and only checking words that you repeatedly encounter and don't understand. The obvious problem particularly with paper dictionaries is that if you use them too much your reading speed and therefore volume of target language digested per unit of time will suffer massively. Furthermore whether you understand a word or not, repeated exposure to it does move it into your long term memory priming it to be learned from context later, or if you do eventually look it up you'll remember it for good. I recommend just noting down (but not looking up) repeatedly encountered vocabulary to add to your srs later via rikaichan's 's' hot-key or some other time efficient method of card creation. If too little of the text is understandable to be enjoyable, then find easier texts, or use parallel texts, translated example sentences, translations of books you all ready know and so on, so you can make connections this way.

Don't-look-it-up advice probably mostly comes from the wisdom of people who were studying without the aid of high-speed lookup electronic dictionaries (or copy & paste lookup, rikaichan, etc).

Thumbing through a paper dictionary is a definite hinderance, but I don't think looking something up in an electronic dictionary is a big deal.

I recently began reading Harry Potter (don't judge me ) in Japanese and so far its going EXTREMELY slow since I've been adding every single word into my Anki deck (this is despite the fact that it has furigana in almost every word except the really basic ones). I believe it to be worth it, since not only my vocab will grow but I'll get accustomed to how this writer&translator combo write and what vocab they use. Gradually it should be getting easier and since I've 7 books at my disposal there is lot of material to work with and in time have more fun.

I'll post my progress with each chapter in the "Achievement" thread along with the number of words added in each of them. So far, after around 15 pages (half of 1st chapter) I've added about 150 words to my ~7100 vocab deck. These are not poetry or some technical vocabulary, they look pretty common to me and around 80% of them has "P" in JDIC.

Judging by my experience I don't think things will get much better at 10k words, they will in context of this particular series but on the whole its just a small step. I believe the magic number to be 20k and there is no way around it

ta12121 Wrote:Build your vocab deck to 10,000+ and I'm pretty sure you won't have trouble with most texts.

where do you think i get my vocab from? obviously from reading the novel.

25K ? I don't think I know that many words in English -- or do I?
Are we taking compound words into consideration? (言語＋障害＝言語障害 to me that's two different words not 3...but)

kainzero Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:Build your vocab deck to 10,000+ and I'm pretty sure you won't have trouble with most texts.

where do you think i get my vocab from? obviously from reading the novel.

sweet

mezbup Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:10,000 is kind of low. I'm at 17,000 right now (not counting stuff easier than around JLPT2 level) and I still add about 70 words per day on average so far this year.

10,000 is the starting point. Like getting JLPT1 is the starting point really. I'm nearly at 14,000 and it gives you a pretty sweet ability but I agree that 10,000 is still low. I'd say 25K and you'd be knocking on native territories door.

I'm currently at 20,000+ at the moment here. No duplicates. I;m definitely entering native territory. Feels awesome!

Jarvik7 Wrote:10,000 is kind of low. I'm at 17,000 right now (not counting stuff easier than around JLPT2 level) and I still add about 70 words per day on average so far this year.

The downside is that mobileanki runs pretty poorly with such a huge deck. Undoing an answer takes about 30 seconds and my 3GS constantly runs out of memory and slows to a crawl when using it. I mostly just do reps at work now and use phone time to read manga.

And yeah, rikaichan is a lifesaver. I probably wouldn't make any new cards if it wasn't for it. I have a textfile of terms I've come across that aren't in edict (and so not in rikaichan) so I haven't made an anki card for. Probably over 1000 :/

Same, rikaichan is making my life easier.

gyuujuice Wrote:25K ? I don't think I know that many words in English -- or do I?
Are we taking compound words into consideration? (言語＋障害＝言語障害 to me that's two different words not 3...but)

hmm me too, not too sure lol. I hear that, if you have an active vocab(obviously how to use it properly). 20,000 is enough to call yourself fluent in speaking, probably more than enough.

I'm at 42,000. Still a long way to go. You need 100,000 words memorized and then you'll be fluent. Language is just strings of words, so if you memorize a big list you can easily speak and write strings of words. You just need a big enough number and then you'll be as good as, say, Jarvik7.

nest0r Wrote:I'm at 42,000. Still a long way to go. You need 100,000 words memorized and then you'll be fluent. Language is just strings of words, so if you memorize a big list you can easily speak and write strings of words. You just need a big enough number and then you'll be as good as, say, Jarvik7.

HUHH???

I hope that this is some bad joke