I suspect there is no special thing or strange fruit you can take in order to help you reading manga but maybe someone already doing it has discovered something important and would like to share it here.

I bought my first manga (Bleach #1) and just started 'reading' it. Every single thing I don't understand I google it or look it up in Tangorin or GTranslate. It takes a while to process the simplest thing.

I realize I can't avoid (mostly) the hard work but how can I do this more effectively? Ideas?

Thanks.

I'm not sure there really is any shortcut. Any native resource is hard; even stuff for kids like manga has a lot of new vocab and grammar in it if you're a learner. Look up as much stuff as you can without boring yourself, and if you do get bored, try reading it without looking anything up and see what happens.

1 - Are you completely committed to looking up every single thing you don't understand?

2 - Are you looking up every single thing you don't understand in order to learn every single thing that you don't understand, or are you looking up every single thing that you don't understand in order to understand the storyline? Are you making word lists to study, or adding items to an SRS, or are you just looking them up and letting them go? (Hint: if you're not making word lists to study or adding items to an SRS I don't think you should be looking up every single thing you don't know. I don't think you should be looking up every single thing you don't know, period, but especially if you don't have a strategy for long-term retention.)

Depending on how you feel about the answers to those two questions, I'm going to suggest varying your reading strategies. Maybe, after looking up everything for a few pages, you'll find you can coast through a few more pages without looking much up, or looking up only things that are absolutely essential and that you can't guess from context. My own preferred reading strategy for manga is to read a good-sized chunk at a time (20-30 pages) and then look up any frequently used or plot-essential words, and not bother with the rest. The good thing about this is that if I see a new word a couple times in the course of a manga, and I try to figure it out from context, it makes it easier to remember the word long-term.

Even if you want to look up every single word, you may find it's more efficient to make a word list as you go along, look up your word list in the dictionary, and then reread the manga using your word list as a glossary. Looking up every single thing as you go along really disrupts the flow of the story.

Bleach is a particularly difficult manga to read - it has an advanced and diverse vocabulary, many dialects, writing-as-spoken that is nearly impossible to look up, deliberate misuse of kanji for color, use of real words in kanji with english-katakana to confuse and complicate things, use of obscure kanji and unsimplified kanji, and of course, made up words. Basically, every challenge in reading manga all rolled up under one cover! You may want to consider an easier manga first, but you probably won't.

Anyway, assuming you're undaunted,
- if it has English katakana, don't waste your time looking up the kanji. You don't really need to know what obscure religious or martial arts term is being relabeled to follow the story.
- Likewise, if you've identified a set of characters as a proper noun, don't look up the kanji. It doesn't really matter.
- Add the obsolete kanji to the same card as the 'normal' writing of a word. Front or back of the card doesn't really matter. Put it somewhere to keep you familiar with it, but don't waste time quizzing on it. The manga has furigana anyway.
- If the kanji seems odd, but it's a 'yamato' word (a native japanese word like most verbs and adjectives) and the sentence seems to make sense, then don't bother looking it up. Unfortunately, the same can not be said of kanji compounds - while most yamato words with the same pronunciation are similar in meaning, sino-japanese words with the same pronunciation are more likely to have totally unrelated meanings.
- If an obviously contracted and slurred sentence seems to make sense, don't bother trying to figure out exactly how it collapses down to that mess. Reading that kind of written-as-spoken dialogue is more about 'feel' than anything. It may help to watch the anime (or -anything- unsubtitled with plain speech) to get a sense of how the sentences sound.
- Don't look up 'sound effects' or -anything- handwritten. The onomatopoeia for sweat dripping, nodding vigorously, breaking a window, or whatever may be interesting and the little scribbled comments outside the speech bubbles may be amusing asides, but they don't effect the overall story much.
(Actually, come to think of it, I think the handwritten side jokes may be one manga difficulty Bleach doesn't have an abundance of. Still, whatever amount of it there is, ignore it. Or glance at it, but if you can't read it, don't worry about it.)


After that, it's just a matter of working through the vocabulary in your study time and getting used to sentence structure and manga layout.
Oh, and character names. Add -every- character name to your SRS or wordlist. There is nothing more frustrating than wasting time trying to look up a word that doesn't exist when someone mentions the name of a character that you haven't seen for many pages. (Unless you already have an efficient way to look up the names... Bleach is popular enough there should already be plenty of lists.)

I love bleach and it's easy to read for me but then again, when I started, I remember I could not read or even understand if my life depended on it. Take it from me, it will take time. You still should try reading it and learning vocabulary from anime and common terms, as this all helps in comprehension of text. Making a vocabulary deck is key here, it's what helped me reach the next level for reading and comprehension of Japanese text.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:- If an obviously contracted and slurred sentence seems to make sense, don't bother trying to figure out exactly how it collapses down to that mess. Reading that kind of written-as-spoken dialogue is more about 'feel' than anything.

This is the only thing I disagree with in your post; the contractions in manga are common manga usages, and should be learned since you see them so often. Beginners who are looking up many words can't trust their "feel" of a Japanese sentence, particularly a casual slang sentence they don't have any first-hand experience using or hearing. The most common contractions are pretty easy to learn and remember if you just ask about them (dictionaries will be useless, of course).

When I first started reading manga, I would read a page, look up words, and then read an English scanlation/official version of the same page. I got the idea from a Japanese friend I knew, who was doing the same thing with English manga. While going hardcore and not using a translation is probably better for immersion, I found going through the Japanese and English versions of a manga to be pretty helpful at first.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:- If an obviously contracted and slurred sentence seems to make sense, don't bother trying to figure out exactly how it collapses down to that mess. Reading that kind of written-as-spoken dialogue is more about 'feel' than anything.

This is the only thing I disagree with in your post; the contractions in manga are common manga usages, and should be learned since you see them so often. Beginners who are looking up many words can't trust their "feel" of a Japanese sentence, particularly a casual slang sentence they don't have any first-hand experience using or hearing. The most common contractions are pretty easy to learn and remember if you just ask about them (dictionaries will be useless, of course).

Finding something that explained the contractions and treating them as a grammar pattern to be learned like anything else did a lot for my listening skill. It's when you realise that it's not your listening per se that sucks, it's that people aren't saying what you think they're saying! The classic "i can do the listening exercises in class, why can't i understand this anime for 7 year olds?!?!".

http://www.thespectrum.net/features/mangajin/

Quote:What is Mangajin?
Mangajin was created in the early 90's as a monthly English publication for students of the Japanese language. Unlike most text books that focused solely on teaching people Japanese through boring text, Mangajin was different in that it focused on showing readers a page of manga and then a page of English translations. As great of an idea that this sounds today, it didn't catch on in the 90's and Mangajin ended in 1996. Now manga in America is as popular as ever, which is why I have decided to put Mangajin onto this web site. Fans of Japanese manga and who are looking to learn Japanese will undoubtedly find Mangajin very useful!

For more, search uz-transaltions.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:You may want to consider an easier manga first, but you probably won't.

I am not particularly stubborn. I like Bleach and getting your loot for 105¥ at Book Off is always cool, but I wouldn't mind starting with something simpler at all.

Which are some simple ones you can recommend?

Wish list
始めの一歩
BECK
Naruto

I'm not sure any manga will be particularly easy at this stage; something you're interested in is going to be better than something you're not interested in that's technically easier.

I would say try volume 1 of any series you're interested in, and you'll find out yourself which ones are easy. Even if you bought volume 1 at full price that's not a huge investment.

Sure thanks.

After "Bleach is a particularly difficult manga to read" bleach looks too much like a challenge and just 'trying to read manga' in the first place is a superb challenge for me, you could say I am manga-challenged.

bcrAn Wrote:Which are some simple ones you can recommend?

よつばと! is probably as simple as 少年漫画 gets. There's a few colloquialisms and contractions here and there, but most of what's going on can be inferred from the context and the vocabulary is quite simple and mundane.

I also found ラブひな quite accessible (available here in high quality, for free and perfectly legally). It was the first manga I started reading without having read the translation or seen the anime adaptation. When I read the first chapter I was surprised that I understood about 60% of the text (however, when I read the translation of that chapter I saw that most of the humour was in those 40% that I missed). By the end of the second volume I no longer even bothered reading the translation afterwards.

If you have questions about Bleach, though, I have the first few volumes so I can help. I liked Bleach at first when it was still about the hollows, but I lost interest when it turned into yet another "train and fight stronger opponents" Shonen Jump series. I never felt like it had the energy, humor, and creativity of One Piece or the in-depth world creating of HunterXHunter. I'm actually a little surprised it's still running past the 50 volume mark.

In any manga it's usually worth spending a bit more time (in terms of looking things up and making sure you understand everything) on the first chapters, because you'll typically see a lot of key terms in those chapters that will reoccur over and over, and it lets you get accustomed to the mangaka's individual style.

I started reading manga in Japanese about a year ago, before that I had been studying with low intensity for a few years. First manga for me was よつばと, I remember that I had to look up words and grammar for every page and my progress was slow.

Today I have just read the first chapter of よつばと volume 11, for 20 pages I only had to look up two or three words. My message is that there is a steep learning curve at first, but once you reach the point when reading no longer feels like studying your learning speed will increase greatly.

My own manga recommendation would be 放浪息子 (Wandering Son). The language used is mostly straightforward and there is translation for the first volume in English. It doesn't have furigana, but that's a good thing once you have learned the basics.

I don't really have a strategy for reading, but the most helpful thing I've found for transitioning from textbook to manga has been reading through issues of Mangajin.

buonaparte already mentioned it, but I have to second his recommendation. Mangajin is an excellent resource. There are 70 issues, with each being around 100 pages consisting mostly of real manga that they guide you through panel by panel with English translations on the opposite page and notes/explanations about the Japanese used (good for learning the more colloquial expressions). In total that's around 7000 pages of content aimed at helping learners to read manga, which is pretty remarkable really.

It's not just individual panels used for examples either, but includes full length stories spanning multiple pages, covering a variety of genres and language styles.

Unfortunately it's long out of print now, but you can find PDF scans for every issue online.

I have two reading strategies:

1- Read closely and carefully, defining everything I don't understand
2- Don't stop to look anything up and try to figure out major points through context

I think both are important for studying and for enjoyment. By reading carefully you learn new vocabulary and grammar. By reading to understand you gain speed (important, as you can see by the number of people who had to hurry through JLPT reading) and well... you practice processing and parsing the content of the article/manga/novel.

Re-reading also helps a lot, since it's like combining the two strategies into one.

I'm not big on manga, but I've read Azumanga Daiou 4 or 5 times over, and I feel like I've learned something new about Japanese every time I've done it.

What I do is I have a book called understanding basic Japanese grammar and i put sentences that I do not understand in a SRS.

vonPeterhof Wrote:

bcrAn Wrote:Which are some simple ones you can recommend?

よつばと! is probably as simple as 少年漫画 gets. There's a few colloquialisms and contractions here and there, but most of what's going on can be inferred from the context and the vocabulary is quite simple and mundane.

I also found ラブひな quite accessible (available here in high quality, for free and perfectly legally).

Whoa. You're a hero for posting that link! Thanks! This is actually the first series I ever bought (Except it was in English). Can't wait to (try to) read it in 日本語！xD

Can you write an example sentence from Bleach that you don't understand?

halcyon_rave Wrote:

vonPeterhof Wrote:I also found ラブひな quite accessible (available here in high quality, for free and perfectly legally).

Whoa. You're a hero for posting that link! Thanks! This is actually the first series I ever bought (Except it was in English). Can't wait to (try to) read it in 日本語！xD

Ohh! I missed that when it is was first posted, he is a hero! Not only manga but light novels seem to be available on that site. Legally, apparently! Do they really make enough in ad revenue to support the bandwidth? Or is it that they only provide the first X volumes of a series? Or maybe they hope to sell associated music and anime. I suppose I'll have to read the front page at some point.

Ah, and I didn't mean to ignore the question, but I don't really have much to recommend ... while Video Girl Ai and Kimagure Orange Road are not fully furigana they were much easier to read than the fully furigana Magic Knight Rayearth and X (1999) that I cut my teeth on. I'm not sure any of those are still available, to be honest. More recent... Death Note is straightforward Japanese but very advanced vocabulary - but nice for skipping many of the manga challenges, though, very little in the way of speech contraction, sound effects, made up words, antiquated speech, etc. 'Reborn' has a pretty simple storyline, often amusing situations, and isn't really difficult except for the usual manga challenges of natural speech in written form. The nice thing about it, is you can always skip a frame you don't understand because it's basically a cartoon sitcom. (And I use the word cartoon deliberately, not as a synonym for manga.) I've kind of drifted away from manga/anime though and into dramas, so I'm not the best to suggest easy manga that are still in print. Naruto is easier than Bleach, but, when I was subscribing to Jump, Bleach was the hardest to comprehend, Naruto second hardest. D. Gray Man should be still in print and was at least easier than Bleach or Naruto... D. Gray Man has reasonably conventional natural speech, nothing extreme that I recall, and fairly moderate vocabulary, almost all of it of good use for reading other adventure or martial fiction. So I suppose I would recommend D. Gray Man as a good adventure and a good vocabulary builder for more challenging works.

Wow, don't think I've ever been called a hero before! いえいえ、どういたしまして=^_^=

I found out about the site from this thread, so most of the credit should go to Axlen, who hasn't posted anything since February.

That's interesting. I find Bleach much easier than Naruto. Maybe it's just the particular volumes I've been reading, but Bleach seems to have a simpler vocabulary, and less convoluted sentences. I think it also has a lower writing to picture ratio. The casual speach does make things more dificult, but it still seems easier to me.

I find shoujo maga a lot easier than shounen though, so maybe you should give that a try. I can't remember what I started with. It was some kind of sickeningly sparkly middle school romance, but it only dealt with everyday situtations, which made it a lot easier to understand.