I see a notable difference between reading -- just to read through it without necessarily understanding everything -- a novel in a cognate language like French or a language like Japanese where an unknown, or even slightly known, kanji is impossible to read.

Reading a French word you don't know may mean retaining it because it's close to another English word, it may mean recognizing it later in a conversation, and it may mean being able to use it right away because you just got the meaning from the context.

In Japanese, reading past an unknown kanji gets you zero dividend: you can't even say the word, you won't recognize it if you hear it and you won't be able to use it.

I suppose we all have different perspectives but personally, I don't think reading novels is a very effective way to learn Japanese until you are much more advanced and can gain a lot of insight as to what is a natural way to express things and how words are used in context. I do try to read in order to improve my vocabulary, but searching all unknown words is eventually a very frustrating task I can only sustain for a short while.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I would have been bored to tears trying to go through something where I only understood 20%.

The early stages of language learning are going to involve some boring experiences one way or another. I'd prefer that they be spent reading actual enjoyable material, even if I can't understand all of it.

yudan Wrote:Being receptive and open-minded doesn't help you figure out the meaning of words from context;

I beg to differ. They most certainly do.

yudan Wrote:you need to have some basic understanding of the grammar to be able to do that.

Which most people should have after 5 months of studying. I would even contend that you need know almost no grammar to start reading if you can figure out the meaning of a fair number of the words.

Tzadeck Wrote:It's also a bit weird that you're calling the opposition naysayers JimmySeal, since the OP doesn't actually satisfy your own list of requirements--he hasn't finished RTK.

I'm well aware that OP hasn't finished RTK. I was responding to numerous people saying that it's pointless to try to read a novel after 5 months of studying/until they know most of the words they'll encounter/until they have a vocabulary of about 6000 words/etc. Not referring to OP specifically.

AlexandreC Wrote:I see a notable difference between reading -- just to read through it without necessarily understanding everything -- a novel in a cognate language like French or a language like Japanese where an unknown, or even slightly known, kanji is impossible to read.

You're not going to find many unknown kanji in a work targeted at children if you've finished RTK. And kanji are not impossible to read if they have furigana.

Tzadeck Wrote:

ta12121212121 Wrote:It's best you test yourself via an srs(anki) and not get used to furigana. You want to have that ability to read well and even guess reading for certain kanji.

Why would reading something with furigana hamper your ability to read well and guess readings? Doesn't seem to be a problem for Japanese people.

No, i'm just saying don't expect furigana to be present in everything. It won't hurt your progress but you want(for the long-term) to be able to read well without furigana. The novels and games I play don't have any furigana. Only for the rare reading(and one thing about furigana is, they usual state it once in the novel and expect you to remember it throughout the book)

mezbup Wrote:

JimmySeal Wrote:

ta12121212121 Wrote:It's best you test yourself via an srs(anki) and not get used to furigana. You want to have that ability to read well and even guess reading for certain kanji.

Why would reading something with furigana hamper your ability to read well and guess readings? Doesn't seem to be a problem for Japanese people.

I actually used to hate furigana and go out of my way to avoid it. Now I see it as a blessing. It's totally awesome for upping your reading ability with very little effort. I'm fairly sure the ministry of education has done a lot of research and designed it that way.

I only realised it when I read 今、あいにゆきます。 which is an easy novel to read and it has some furigana here and there. Because it's aimed at a younger audience who aren't so proficient in reading just yet the furigana is given for stuff you're not likely to know at that level and then later on in the book it dissappears leaving you to read the word on your own. This is actually seriously conducive to learning if used in the right way as a stepping stone. It's no good if you rely on it 100% but right time, right place... it's brilliant and I wish i'd taken advantage of it sooner.

Furigana helps a lot, what I'm noticing more and more is: whenever they list vocab for kanji that are usual rare or not well known (even for adult Japanese people), i'm starting to be able to read them without furigana(thanks to anki). So basically, there good for testing, since novels only list them once and expect you to remember them.

tokyostyle Wrote:I cannot fathom how people would be unable to read after studying Japanese for 6 months. What the hell have you been studying exactly? Obviously you need to select something reasonable, maybe say a late elementary school novel, but that's just common sense.

I really don't understand why most threads on this forum are so negative all of the time. Stop focusing on what you think can't be done and focus on what can be done!

Fumbling through a novel after slogging through basic grammar is totally doable.

How would you define "read"? It really means different things to different people. I'd say it would take 1 year to become fully literate(2000 common kanji). With the srs of course.
haha, i agree with you, that's why I love to focus on what you can do in a short amount of time, then the negatives.

tokyostyle Wrote:I cannot fathom how people would be unable to read after studying Japanese for 6 months. What the hell have you been studying exactly? Obviously you need to select something reasonable, maybe say a late elementary school novel, but that's just common sense.

I really don't understand why most threads on this forum are so negative all of the time. Stop focusing on what you think can't be done and focus on what can be done!

Fumbling through a novel after slogging through basic grammar is totally doable.

I don't think anybody is saying he can't or shouldn't read, they're just saying he should focus on more bite-sized, accessible articles rather than full-blown novels; articles are still reading. And fumbling through a novel is doable, but not always the most fun. Depending on how steep the differentiation in skill-level, it can completely destroy motivation. Oftentimes I've wanted to just quit Japanese simply because of such situations.

i think the style of writing in a novel/literature is different than articles/news anyway...


i think the suggestion to trying to read a book is good. whether or not the OP likes 1 page of a book versus an article is up to the OP.

personally i'd go with 4-koma manga. they're usually compact enough to get a joke in the 4 panels. if you don't understand one, you can move on at usually no real loss, except when there are running jokes that rely on your reading comprehension and whether you understood something before.

although since OP asked how to improve speaking, i don't think manga or books are the way to go. haha.

The order of the 常用漢字 and all three RTK books combined are different. Remember elementary students learn 1006 Kanji. Thus it is possible to encounter unknown words book aimed at elementary students. The thing that I like about Furigana, is that it allow that it can be quickly checked in a dictionary.

I remember hating reading as a child, more because of having to read books that I didn't choose on my own.

Maybe, my impression comes from using books as a tool to help me learn Kanji. Being not afraid to take the time to look up the reading of a Kanji. Then determining the reading of words it was used to create. That way I could get an idea of the meaning of a word, and see how it was actually used. Then when I read it again it became easier.

Some seem to believe what is being suggested is that the individual should pull up a chair open a Japanese book, sit down and just read it. What is being suggested is to take ones time and read the book a page at a time or less in one sitting. Get out a dictionary, and read. The person could read until encountering a certain number of unknown words like 10. Then continue at another time.

In semperanimus' defence, they clarified earlier that by "understanding well" they meant that they could recognize learned words in print and audio, not that they could easily comprehend everything when listening or reading.

tokyostyle Wrote:I really don't understand why most threads on this forum are so negative all of the time. Stop focusing on what you think can't be done and focus on what can be done!

But folks are also offering accounts of what they were able to do and suggesting alternatives they believe would yield better results. As TheVinster said, "doable" doesn't necessarily mean enjoyable or effective.

People are going to flag - or offer a different opinion on - advice they consider goofy, extreme, misleading, incorrect, etc. It happens whether the advice is too optimistic or too negative. (Based on your posts, I think you're in favour of such sharing of opinions.) :-)

Quote:I cannot fathom how people would be unable to read after studying Japanese for 6 months. What the hell have you been studying exactly?

The number of months doesn't matter. As you say, what matters is what they've been doing. Different routes to fluency. A learner focusing on spoken Japanese, for eg, wouldn't have any reading skills. Doesn't Silverspoon finish RTK at day 140 after spending time getting accustomed to incomprehensible audio and writing down incomprehensible sentences? How are their reading skills at 4 months with zero grammar or vocab? At 6 months?

We don't know exactly what the OP has been doing (wrt grammar, vocab, etc), only that they know at least one reading for only 40 kanji. That means looking up almost every single word. Possibly also insufficient grammar to infer meaning. Fumbling through a novel sounds more like vocab and some pattern acquisition from an authentic source than what most people would consider "reading". If the goal is to actually to improve reading skills, there are better ways (some of which depend on level.)

I recall learning about ways to work on different reading skills. (iirc, the DLI GLOSS lessons employ some of these techniques. Unfortunately, there's not much for beginners.) Some involve reading the same piece several times (prediction, partial/full priming, focused inference, problem solving, selective furigana, reading aloud, audio reading, etc.) Texts of varying difficulty are used for different purposes. ie. easier/known text to work specifically on reading fluency. Close reading and other comprehension feedback can prevent repeated misinterpretion caused by inadequate grammar (which, as ydtt points out, is common.) A range of style and content is important. People already mentioned use of illustrations to infer meaning, etc. Shorter texts at appropriate levels are better for all this.

In my limited experience, students find the higher final comprehension, sense of completion and variety both enjoyable and motivating. Going back and re-reading something you've previously analyzed can be a huge motivation boost! "Hey, look at me! I'm reading!" :-)

thurd Wrote:

AlexandreC Wrote:

semperanimus Wrote:What do I do?
Just realized after about 5 months of study, I can understand speaking and writing well,

No, you can't.

I'm sorry, but I see no other way to answer this than by being blunt (and perhaps presumptuous).

You are either overestimating your level or you aren't exposing yourself to real material.

Basically, you don't know enough yet to realize all the things you don't know.

This. After 5 months OP is not even approaching the tip of the reading iceberg (let alone listening), he's still in the port waiting for his Titanic to embark on his maiden voyage.

I just opened this months Jump and at two random pages (apart from names) I didn't remember/understand 5 words, that's a lot and I'm at 8.5k words and 2k kanji!!! If I had 2x as much words missed I'd understand shit from the story, can't imagine what kind of "understanding" semperanimus was talking about.

Are you exaggerating??

Are those words "manga- specific" words ( like かぶり物、猿舞い。。。） or actual vocab words??

Because I'm sure that I don't know 8.5K words (never measured it or anything), but when I read a book or manga...I rarely have to look in a dictionary...

被り物　also written かぶり物　is a Japanese word. ぼうし is a 被り物 「例文: ぼうしをかぶる」. A simple definition of 被り物 is かぶる物. Japanese has many words like that such as　食べ物、乗り物. That feature of Japanese is why I like learning Japanese.

猿舞 is also a Japanese word. It would most likely to find the definition in a Japanese dictionary, than a Japanese-English Dictionary. 猿舞 is written さるまい in present Japanese, and seems to have changed from さるまひ. For those keeners　猿舞の意味 (like me).

Mistake (ぼうし as in 帽子 I left out the う　after ぼ).

What is this "ぼし" of which you speak?

JimmySeal Wrote:What is this "ぼし" of which you speak?

A Mistake, and corrected. I usually, verify the Kanji then revert back to Hiragana.

Realism Wrote:Because I'm sure that I don't know 8.5K words (never measured it or anything), but when I read a book or manga...I rarely have to look in a dictionary...

If you can read most manga or a fair amount of books without needing a dictionary, then I'd say you're way past the 8K mark. Most ten year olds have more vocabulary than that (I'd say in the range of 10,000 words, with adults at 25,000+ if English vocabulary size studies are anything to go by).

Realism Wrote:Are you exaggerating??

Are those words "manga- specific" words ( like かぶり物、猿舞い。。。） or actual vocab words??

Because I'm sure that I don't know 8.5K words (never measured it or anything), but when I read a book or manga...I rarely have to look in a dictionary...

Not at all. There were actual words, I've had 2 of them in my vocab deck but 1st was written differently, 2nd had been used with a new meaning. I've forgotten both of them anyway so its still an unknown word (even if you have the feeling of dejavu). It really was an honest evaluation, this is where I'm at and sometimes I don't know a lot more words on one page or they are more crucial to the story which gives me even more problems.

I think you're underestimating your word count, from what you describe I'd say you have around 15k words or more. There is no way you can get that comfortable even with simple comics with such pitiful amount of words like mine.

I'm sorry, but there's no way you need to know 15k words to understand most manga. Maybe to know almost every word... but to understand it and enjoy it you can get by with much much less. Heck I was reading manga well enough to enjoy them after less than a year, and there is no way I had 15k words. I probably had less than half that.

thurd Wrote:Not at all. There were actual words, I've had 2 of them in my vocab deck but 1st was written differently, 2nd had been used with a new meaning. I've forgotten both of them anyway so its still an unknown word (even if you have the feeling of dejavu).

So in other words... you don't have a vocabulary of 8.5k words?

If you actually "knew" the 8.5k words you claim to know, wouldn't that mean you found 3 unknown words on those pages?

You can't claim to know a certain number of words and at the same time say that some of those words are "unknown."

Based on your own statements, I think you believe other people to be underestimating their word count because you are overestimating your own.

nadiatims Wrote:I'm sorry, but there's no way you need to know 15k words to understand most manga. Maybe to know almost every word... but to understand it and enjoy it you can get by with much much less. Heck I was reading manga well enough to enjoy them after less than a year, and there is no way I had 15k words. I probably had less than half that.

I didn't say anything about needing 15k words to read manga, I was just estimating Realisms vocabulary based on his claim that he rarely needs a dictionary. My assumption was that he understood everything else, if it wasn't so then my estimate of his abilities is of course wrong.

JimmySeal Wrote:

thurd Wrote:Not at all. There were actual words, I've had 2 of them in my vocab deck but 1st was written differently, 2nd had been used with a new meaning. I've forgotten both of them anyway so its still an unknown word (even if you have the feeling of dejavu).

So in other words... you don't have a vocabulary of 8.5k words?

If you actually "knew" the 8.5k words you claim to know, wouldn't that mean you found 3 unknown words on those pages?

You can't claim to know a certain number of words and at the same time say that some of those words are "unknown."

Based on your own statements, I think you believe other people to be underestimating their word count because you are overestimating your own.

This is the problem of vocabulary estimates they are just that. I estimate based on my deck size and I doubt anyone here uses more accurate measure of his vocabulary (I'm not aware there are better ones). So in the worse scenario for me (comparison me vs someone else) we make the same mistake (since both are using the best method), in the best mine is quite precise but still an estimation and someone else just pulled the number out of his a$$.

This is extended further by other problems like writings and meanings. If I knew a word very well but didn't understand one of its meanings does it still count as a known word? What is a word then? Same for writing, I might know すてき but not　素敵, how does it count?

My story about two words being in my deck isn't the issue here, I wrote that I didn't know/remember these words because that's how it was, my vocab count is a completely separate number which I use to estimate my ability.

All good points. I think a better basis for comparison would be the mature card count. It would still fall well short of the actual number of words you can recall at any given time, but for comparison purposes, it more accurately reflects how many words you have under your belt, so to speak.

Of course this would assume you're comparing this number against other people who have one and only one card for every word they've ever learned, which is probably not true for most people.

Omoishinji Wrote:被り物　also written かぶり物　is a Japanese word. ぼうし is a 被り物 「例文: ぼうしをかぶる」. A simple definition of 被り物 is かぶる物. Japanese has many words like that such as　食べ物、乗り物. That feature of Japanese is why I like learning Japanese.

I'm not talking about that 被り物。。。。。。I'm talking something completely different.

I didn't write it accurately....it's more like かぶり者

Realism Wrote:

Omoishinji Wrote:被り物　also written かぶり物　is a Japanese word. ぼうし is a 被り物 「例文: ぼうしをかぶる」. A simple definition of 被り物 is かぶる物. Japanese has many words like that such as　食べ物、乗り物. That feature of Japanese is why I like learning Japanese.

I'm not talking about that 被り物。。。。。。I'm talking something completely different.

I didn't write it accurately....it's more like かぶり者

It is the same verb 被る. The writing using Kanji is 被り者 and has the same meaning as 駆け落ち者（かけおちもの）. The word means an eloper. It also refers to "Travel on Foot on the Tokaido." (Reference 広辞苑)

It call also be written 冠り物. However, as 被り者 isn't a standard (常用漢字） writing, かぶり者 is fine.