Hello. Right now iam doing RTK1. After i finish it i want to start reading a book so that i can learn the readings. i think instead of studying them separately through RTK2 and other methods i will find studying them in context more fun since i am into manga and novels and i will be reading these for learning the readings. many people have also mentioned learning readings through contex in the forum and they have learned a lot through this method. but what i don't understand is how to read a book without knowing the readings?

should i read the books which has furigana in it? that way the readings will be written and i will be able to know what is being said.

What about the books which doesn't has furigana? 99% of the books that i like doesn't have furigana. how should i read them? should i look for the readings of each and every kanji that is written in the book? it will be so tiresome but is it how the readings are learnt from a book? iam quite confused. please guide me.

A lot of people suggest something like Tae Kim right after RTK, for basic grammar exposure. It's practically necessary before delving into native material. If you're willing to pay, there are hundreds of other grammar resources you could look at - if you're into Manga, Japanese the Manga Way is a good one.

KO2001 is another commonly-used thing after Tae Kim/RTK to learn the readings. However, it's got a really steep learning curve. Oh! Core 2k/6k (sorted or not sorted by kore) is another HUGELY popular afterwards-thing. It increases your vocab but you get context for it, too.

Learning the readings from native material with absolutely no background is going to be painful. Most people give up because of the ridiculous number of unknowns.

I don't think learning readings solely from reading books is the most efficient way. If anything you'd probably get fed up with having to look up how to read each word everytime.

I'd suggest using some kind of textbook first and read novels or manga to reinforce the readings you've learnt. You could try a book like Kanji in Context or Basic Kanji Book.

Kanji in Context Review
http://nihongoperapera.com/reviews/kanji...ntext.html

Basic Kanji Book
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Kanji-Book-V...4893580914

Why not watch Japanese TV dramas with Japanese subtitles?
You can learn readings by listening to people talk.

If you go to D-addicts.com they have many Japanese dramas
with Japanese subtitles.

Here is the link:
http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/subtitles.php#Japanese

You can see the kanji as they are saying the words.
On average, there are 400-500 unique kanji in a
japanese TV drama episode.

Perhaps you're going about this the wrong way? Maybe instead of trying to learn readings of characters, you should be trying to learn words instead. That's what I'm doing at the moment at least.

For example, say you have the word 洗濯. Instead of trying to learn that 洗 is read せん and that 濯 is read たく, I just learn that 'laundry' in Japanese is せんたく (with an SRS card). Now when I see 洗濯, the characters remind me of meaning, I remember the word せんたく, and thus can read it. This also automatically takes care of irregular readings, because I'm learning readings on the word level.

Do other people do this?

Well, I am still a beginner myself, but I am also at the stage where I am trying to increase my vocabulary/kanji compound knowledge. Just wanted to provide some feedback on the vocab list vs. native material idea.

I have finished RTK and have gone through the Genki 1 textbook for basic grammar; I’m now finishing up Genki 2 (translation: I have a very basic familiarity with kanji and grammar).

At the end of last year I decided to start going through an Anki Core 6K deck (i.e. a list of 6,000 vocab words). The words I learned were definitely useful in the sense that I saw them quite frequently whenever I tried to look at native Japanese text (websites, etc.), and I could immediately recall their reading and meaning.

My overall plan was to get through the 6,000 words this year and then next year start going through native materials in earnest. As I got to JLPT2 vocab, however, I found myself burning out. Picking 20 random words and drilling them got to be difficult especially since many of the words started running into one another (kei/kai/jou/shou/shuu/chuu…).

So… I eventually decided to start going through native materials, looking up anything I didn’t know (both vocab and grammar), and then unsuspending the applicable vocab from the Core 6K deck. This way I would still be learning from the Core deck (at a slower pace, which is better for me) but the words I was learning would now have a context. Any words that weren’t already in the Core 6k deck I would add myself.

I’ve been doing that for only a month or so now I think, but it’s actually been working much better for me. I remember the words much more easily and don’t have many issues with confusing new words anymore. I’m also more motivated as the words relate directly to whatever it is I’m reading at the moment.

I think it all depends on your study style/personality; quite a few people have apparently gotten through Core 6K or KO2001 by just going straight through the list with no real issues.

It must be said that while I personally find using native materials fun and more satisfying than going straight through Core 6K, it’s definitely a trade-off: my vocab/kanji/grammar knowledge is so basic that anything meant for native Japanese speakers is *way* above my level. This means looking up a large number of words and grammar points. It’s more decoding than reading, really, and would most certainly turn some people off, but it happens to work well for me and I feel like I am definitely learning a lot. What’s more, I enjoy it and find it fun, which means that it’s much easier for me to stay motivated and do it on a consistent basis.

Personally I would strongly suggest starting with materials that have furigana. Looking up words whose reading you don’t know is quite tedious (particularly when you have a large amount of vocab to look up).

I would also definitely say that going through some sort of basic grammar – a textbook like Genki, Tae Kim’s grammar website, etc. – is a must if you’re going to attempt to read/decode native material (or probably even if you’re going to use something like Core 6K so that you can easily understand the included sentences). Even with basic grammar under your belt native material is tough, but I think it would be near impossible without it. Something like Genki would give you a nice base of (basic but very useful) vocab as well.

So maybe something like the following would work for you:

-Gain a basic understanding of grammar via textbooks/Tae Kim, etc. (assuming you already haven’t)

-Then Core 2k/6k/KO2001 (there are also other options with which I am less familiar… Movie Method, etc.)

-AND/OR start tackling native material

-Be open to dropping things that don’t work and experimenting; if you try Core and love it, great; if you can’t stand it, try KO2001, Kanji in Context, or native material. If you still find trudging through native material too tedious after going over some grammar, maybe a more structured vocab option like Core or spending more time learning the basics via textbooks is better for the time being.

Check out these threads for beginner manga suggestions, by the way:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5735
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=4693

One of the forum’s members, Nukemarine, also has a guide for beginners that you may find helpful: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5110

What I’m basically doing now is:

1) RTK/Anki Core 6k review daily

2) Decoding native materials (I am using the following manga: Doraemon, Hayate no Gotoku, and Yotsubato). Again, all native material is “tough” for me at this point, but Doraemon and Yotsubato in particular are comparatively simpler than other manga. I find Hayate more difficult but it’s a great source for kanji compounds. Yotsubato on the other hand is often cited on this site as manga that’s good for beginners, and I agree – there are stretches where I can actually get through several pages of Yotsubato at a time without having to look too much up.

- I have an Ipod Touch and use a free Japanese dictionary app called “Kotoba”. The app allows you to make word lists, so I have a list for each manga. When I look up a word, I add it to the appropriate list. I then send the list to myself via e-mail and unsuspend or add the vocab in my Core deck based on the list. This makes dealing with a lot of vocab much easier for me – I don’t have to write anything out. It also means I can print the lists out and have them by me for reference when I reread a given section of manga.

-To make things easier on myself, I am working with manga that has the following:

a) Furigana (for easy lookup)

b) An available English translation (the version of Doraemon I have is bilingual, with the English and Japanese both visible for each frame; I also purchased hard-copy Yotsubato and Hayate manga in both Japanese and English. You can find manga online but the furigana in particular can be very difficult to make out.

For, say, Hayate no Gotoku, I go through a certain portion of the Japanese version, look up what I need to, and try to determine what it means. Only then do I take a look at the English version to double-check. I think having the English version close at hand is key for me because it helps me make connections as far as how various ideas are expressed in Japanese. Also, if I don’t understand something in the Japanese version, having an English translation there can sometimes give me the clues I need to figure out what’s going on in the phrase that’s giving me difficulty.

-I also look up any grammar I’m unsure about using The Basic/Intermediate Dictionary of Japanese Grammar, Japanese the Manga Way, and failing that, the internet.

- I re-read the portions of the manga that I’ve decoded on an ongoing basis to help reinforce the vocab and kanji that I’ve studied.

3) I’m wrapping up Genki 2 for continued basic grammar “exposure”. After Genki, I plan to use a textbook that’s the unofficial follow up to Genki 2 (An Intermediate Approach to…).

4) I do other things as well (listen to random Japanese clips from interviews and variety shows; shadow material; read Japanese Graded Readers; read Yahoo! Japan Kids with rikaichan, etc.).

cellophane Wrote:Perhaps you're going about this the wrong way? Maybe instead of trying to learn readings of characters, you should be trying to learn words instead. That's what I'm doing at the moment at least.

For example, say you have the word 洗濯. Instead of trying to learn that 洗 is read せん and that 濯 is read たく, I just learn that 'laundry' in Japanese is せんたく (with an SRS card). Now when I see 洗濯, the characters remind me of meaning, I remember the word せんたく, and thus can read it. This also automatically takes care of irregular readings, because I'm learning readings on the word level.

Do other people do this?

i do that. or at least, that's how i remember how to read things.

even if you can read a kanji, or even if there is furigana you still need to know what the word means.

if i read 洗礼 as せんれい, well, i don't know what it means anyway so it would still confuse me. (i know what it means now, but still...)

i can also remember things like the 上 in 屋上 is pronounced じょう and in 上り坂 it's pronounced のぼ because there is no word おくうえ or じょうりざか。 (and if there are words spelled like that, i'm sure the context would be entirely different.)

So, after finishing RTK1 i should do grammar. Those particles, verbs, adjectives etc.

And then it is better to learn the readings of kanji through RTK2 or various methods like kanji chain, kanji town, movie method

OR

Do vocabs/sentence mining using anki decks of core2000/KO2001.

And then

Native materials like manga, novels.

Is this right?

cellophane Wrote:For example, say you have the word 洗濯. Instead of trying to learn that 洗 is read せん and that 濯 is read たく, I just learn that 'laundry' in Japanese is せんたく (with an SRS card). Now when I see 洗濯, the characters remind me of meaning, I remember the word せんたく, and thus can read it. This also automatically takes care of irregular readings, because I'm learning readings on the word level.

Do other people do this?

I do this too. I have been doing it since the beginning of last year when I first started at Japanese university. Any new words I encountered in homework, from textbooks or when translating etc I added to a new anki deck with the reading and english translation and I passed N2 in December. I already knew basic vocab when I started, but this was how I learnt N2 level vocab. Plus it gives you the added bonus of being able to read most words you encounter that contain kanji you know from other words. And because you know them in the context of a word and thus a specific meaning, you can work out a general meaning of a new word if you can't check in a dictionary, online etc etc.

Eg.
防止 - ぼうし - prevention
防ぐ - ふせぐ - to prevent
犯罪 - はんざい - crime
犯す - おかす - to commit (a crime etc.)

Therefore if you have never seen 防犯 you know it is going to be ぼう　+　ざい　and will have a meaning like 'crime prevention' or 'preventing crime' (which is the meaning btw).

It's generally takes years before learners can read a book written for adults with fluidity. Just a warning. I would give a lower estimate of two years for people who study a damn lot, and nine years for people who study very casually. I realize there are some people outside of that margin on both sides, but they're rare.

Manga's pretty easy though.

SendaiDan Wrote:Therefore if you have never seen 防犯 you know it is going to be ぼう　+　ざい　and will have a meaning like 'crime prevention' or 'preventing crime' (which is the meaning btw).

(That's ぼうはん)

While this is a useful thing to do, learners should always keep in mind that this practice of combining kanji meanings to come up with the meaning of the word will not always work. In fact, I would say that for people in the beginning to intermediate stage who probably have a shaky understanding of the overall context or meaning of what they're reading, this will probably fail more often than it will succeed. (Especially since most characters have multiple meanings.)

Giving rough estimates from my experience, I would say that maybe 30% of the words you encounter will be completely predictable from the kanji. 55% cannot be reliably predicted (without a strong understanding of the context) but once you know the meaning of the word, the kanji used to write it make sense. And maybe 15% or so are either completely arbitrary or are based on obsolete meanings of the characters.

For instance, it makes sense why 優先 means "(in) preference", but it's not the kind of thing that you would just automatically come up with from the meanings of the characters.

autumn2 Wrote:So, after finishing RTK1 i should do grammar. Those particles, verbs, adjectives etc.

And then it is better to learn the readings of kanji through RTK2 or various methods like kanji chain, kanji town, movie method

OR

Do vocabs/sentence mining using anki decks of core2000/KO2001.

And then

Native materials like manga, novels.

Is this right?

Grammar, yes. Most people (again, from what I've seen here), dislike RTK2. Like other people have suggested, don't focus on learning every reading for the kanji. Learn vocab - that's why the Core series is so popular. Knowing that a kanji is read XYZ won't help you, but knowing that...oh, say, 明日　is a word read あした will help you a lot more in reading.

nohika Wrote:but knowing that...oh, say, 明日　is a word read あした will help you a lot more in reading.

Unless it's あす or みょうにち.
Sorry, couldn't resit the temptation.

nohika Wrote:Grammar, yes. Most people (again, from what I've seen here), dislike RTK2. Like other people have suggested, don't focus on learning every reading for the kanji. Learn vocab - that's why the Core series is so popular. Knowing that a kanji is read XYZ won't help you, but knowing that...oh, say, 明日　is a word read あした will help you a lot more in reading.

Oh well, let me tell you why *I at least* adore the "pure groups" section of Heisig's second volume so much: it gives you, after finishing the first book in a comfortable amount of time, the feeling that you are not bucked up and left alone with a thousand of readings (on yomi.. not to count the kun-yomis. But I cared for those with core6k quite well till now, I suppose. My next shot now will be JLPT2 vocabulary, yet I have problems with the grammar I review from Genki2 -- or am I just lazy?)! Pure groups tries to structure the kanjis in their readings and it gave me a kind of 'feeling' how something is read.*

It's important to get a nice overview of readings and that's what RtK2's first chapter called 'PURE GROUPS' seriously does in a very structured way.
I recommend this book* for everyone having difficulties with readings. It's magic. If you believed and trusted the Heisig method, this will definitely work for you. Just believe and use Anki.

*[I say/write this as someone who tried/forced himself learning the readings somehow, but nothing worked. Neither the Movie Method wanted to work properly and quickly after I tried a month and I gave in. Then I rediscovered my RtK2 (german/english keywords) deck again and magic happened to me. Since then I'm adding new words from it almost daily.]

I would say that in RTK 2, chapters 2, 5, and 6 are probably the most useful -- that's the pure groups, the semi-pure groups (the groups with one exception) and the "readings from everyday words". Also I would suggest completely ignoring his introduction; following the "advice" in there will do you more harm than good. I would also advise not making too much of an effort to remember the out-of-context vocabulary examples he gives you; if you remember them great, but there's only so much out of context vocabulary you can deal with, and it's completely normal if you're unable to remember them all.

(However, even just doing the pure groups chapters can skew your perception because you can end up associating very rare readings to characters -- for instance, he puts 情 into the group of 青 because they share the reading セイ, but this reading is extremely rare (EDICT's only example is 風情, where it's actually read ゼイ instead; EDICT contains no examples of the kanji actually being read as セイ). ジョウ is the common reading.)

@autumn2:

The short answer to your question is: you can't. There are many more steps before you get there.

You need to do RTK2, which is essential. RTK1 was mapping kanji -> meaning, whereas RTK2 maps kanji -> on-yomi. After RTK2, you'll be able to recognize several thousands of on-on compounds in a reasonably accurate way. You will need to SRS them though, as you must familiarize yourself with them and with the particularities in readings and meanings.

There will be several more steps before reaching your goal of being able to read kanji in books: you'll need to add to your Heisig II deck more on-yomi (since many kanji have several) and kun-yomis. That'll take you time. Common characters may have up to 25 different readings.

Finally, you must start learning Japanese (which you can start doing in parallel any time with any method you like: school, texts, pillow method ... whatever). RTK1 and RTK2 do NOT teach Japanese, they are just a systematic approach to mastering the WRITING SYSTEM, no more, no less.

louischa Wrote:You need to do RTK2, which is essential.

Plenty of people here haven't done RTK2, so it can't be essential.

EDIT: I didn't notice this:

Quote:Common characters may have up to 25 different readings.

No character has 25 readings that are commonly used in modern Japanese (not counting names). The limit is about 8, and only a few characters have that many. Most have only 2 or 3.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

louischa Wrote:You need to do RTK2, which is essential.

Plenty of people here haven't done RTK2, so it can't be essential.

I'd almost say more people haven't done RTK2 than who have. Pretty sure that's the truth, also.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

SendaiDan Wrote:Therefore if you have never seen 防犯 you know it is going to be ぼう　+　ざい　and will have a meaning like 'crime prevention' or 'preventing crime' (which is the meaning btw).

(That's ぼうはん)

That's what I get for writing posts about Japanese after 1am in the morning...

I agree with the rest of your comment too. For me the most useful time was in the JLPT exam, because it is pretty unreasonable to be able to study every single word that will appear on the test either in the vocab section or the reading section. So for the words I did encounter that I didn't know, I could still work out the meaning of the sentence by looking at the word in context.

I have a couple of follow-up questions: is there any kind of consensus on what is the best order to use for the Core 2k step 3-10 decks posted by Nukemarine? If you look at the spreadsheet, you've got "Core 2k/6k index" and "Rtklite2001ko-index" as the last two columns. Either one looks better than the original smart.fm ordering, which seemed to take a huge leap in difficulty starting with step 3, but I'm not entirely sure which to go with. I think Rtklite does a better job of showing you the same kanji in several words in a row, which helps with getting the readings straight (more of an i+1 approach). Is that the best one to use, or does the Core 2k/6k index have any advantages I'm missing?

Now i understand i still have a lot to do before i touch any native material otherwise it would become quite daunting and I wouldn't understand anything.

After Rtk1, comes learning on - yomi, or vocabs, then grammar.

Everyone's preference and approach is different after rtk1. but i have a question for those who learned only on yomi through Rtk2 and various methods.

How did you learn kun yomi after learning all the on yomi? is it that instead of learning them separately like on readings, kun readings can be learnt on the go as you read native books?

I just learnt them at the same time on the go. One of the kanji text books I was using had the kanji and the kunyomi as well as 2 or 3 words that used it for its onyomi. I think because the kunyomi and onyomi are so different it is easy enough to learn them together and you won't get confused. Also kunyomi has okurigana (the hiragana that comes after the kanji eg べる　in 食べる) so that also helps to remember the kunyomi as separate. I think if you do it together you will also save your self a lot of time as you can enter them into your SRS together, instead of doing one lot, then going back and doing it all again.

In order to read a page of text, you at least need to know all the words on the page. The same is true for any language. louischa has pointed this out already - RTK I and II do not teach you any words. Even if you know all the kanji, and all their readings, you still don't know any actual words. *

I think the concept of readings, while interesting academically, is not something you should be thinking about when learning Japanese; you should just learn whole words rather than bits of them. I mean, this is how Japanese children do it. I know that Japanese children don't necessarily learn kanji in the most efficient way, but you've got to admire the rate at which they learn words. And secondly, I don't know about you, but I find the concept of learning hundreds of readings that you can't use directly to a bit dull.

* well, that's a bit of an exaggeration for effect; you would know words written with only one kanji. But there'd be plenty of words you don't know.

cellophane Wrote:* well, that's a bit of an exaggeration for effect; you would know words written with only one kanji.

You wouldn't. You wouldn't know how they sound and how to pronounce them. Even the meaning wouldn't be clear.

buonaparte Wrote:

cellophane Wrote:* well, that's a bit of an exaggeration for effect; you would know words written with only one kanji.

You wouldn't. You wouldn't know how they sound and how to pronounce them. Even the meaning wouldn't be clear.

I said that "if you know all the kanji, and all their *readings*", so you would know how to pronounce them. I suppose it's a moot point because I was arguing against doing this anyway.