Since day 1 of my Japanese journey, I've always kept fearing one thing. Probably not super easy to answer and might have been already covered, but I didn't quite find it. So.

How practical is it to expand one's vocabulary through reading? Taking kanji readings into account. I've been quite successful at learning German and the reason why is that I must have read about a hundred novels so far. But Japanese is different, the conversion from written to spoken is not as clear as in German.

What I apprehend is the sight of having to doubt every new word (especially compounds) I come across while reading Japanese. Does it ever gets to the point where you know enough of the language that you can pick up new stuff without fearing too much of learning it with the wrong pronunciation and/or meaning? I'm not quite there yet, but I'm talking after being familiar with around 8,000-10,000 words or so.

Thanks!

Reading will always help you. After all, you see the words you've learned in context. You begin to build a framework of knowledge that relates to the nuances of words, not just dictionary headlines. Reading allows you to open your mind to lots of things that you otherwise might not ever think of.

The more you the read, the less you will doubt yourself. Initially books might be taunting, but you have to overcome this. The answer to your last question is yes. Eventually you will know enough Japanese to the point that learning more about it will become less strenuous than before.

頑張って

Well reading is still a bitch as far as reading out aloud like you'll come across words where it's made up of 2 kanji and you know the readings and meanings of both including all he possible onyomi and kunyomi bc sometimes the reading could be kunyomi +kunyomi... Yet I'm not sure what the reading bc of onten and sometimes you realize Japanese is really irregular. Ive read 50plus books and I still come across this and I go should I look up the reading or just not since I know what it means anyway. And I have a deck just for readings

http://i.bookmeter.com/u/124681

Besides roudoku yeah it gets easier. Roudoku gets easier too but I still come across that. I also read Japanese Internet so I'm not limiting myself to books

Has anyone who has read more books than me give their experience with roudoku. I don't think complete roudoku is worth it bc it gets so tedious

And for advice in general, read books you like For ex a writing style you like. I've found certain author's writing styles that I hate regardless of whether he or she won an award with the book and writing styles I like

comeauch Wrote:Does it ever gets to the point where you know enough of the language that you can pick up new stuff without fearing too much of learning it with the wrong pronunciation and/or meaning? I'm not quite there yet, but I'm talking after being familiar with around 8,000-10,000 words or so.

Thanks!

You can't ever be 100% sure, I don't think. I think after getting a vocabulary of maybe 12,000 words, I reached a point where most of the words I didn't know had furigana provided. My habit is, if I see a word three or four times and start getting a vague idea of it's meaning, I'll plug whatever pronunciation I guess at into an online dictionary just to confirm it. I probably have a hit rate around 80% if they're kanji I know, which is good enough for me.

It helps a lot to listen to documentaries and the news and audio readings of literature, and it helps to read stuff that has plentiful furigana, but in general I think the benefits of reading a whole lot outweigh the downsides of learning some wrong pronunciations.

(I wonder how much of a problem native Japanese have with this; there's a gag in the sequel to Shimotsuma Monogatari/Kamikaze Girls where the yankii girl Ichigo keeps pronouncing 偏見 as へんみ, to show that she's pretty uneducated.)

Well, in continuing my Kanji education, I think that experience will allow you to know the readings of words. Seeing them over and over again will help. Besides, English is just as bad in my honest opinion. People where I live say pin for pen.

雨水 It could be read as usui or amamizu. Both are correct. Sometimes you do have options. However, the latter is more common.

I just use my dictionary a lot when I read. If I encounter a word I'm not sure about I make my best guess for its pronunciation and check it. I don't want to get in the habit of associating a wrong pronunciation with a word so I'd rather take the extra time to look things up.

Thanks for your answers everyone!
I still have trouble grasping that it's possible to read something without knowing how to pronounce it.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:Besides roudoku yeah it gets easier. Roudoku gets easier too but I still come across that. I also read Japanese Internet so I'm not limiting myself to books

I didn't know that word "Roudoku". It almost sounds like an Olympic sport
I've seen anime or dramas where students were asked to read something aloud, so I guess it's not always so easy for them either. Also, cool website, thanks!

Fillanzea Wrote:I reached a point where most of the words I didn't know had furigana provided. My habit is, if I see a word three or four times and start getting a vague idea of it's meaning, I'll plug whatever pronunciation I guess at into an online dictionary just to confirm it. I probably have a hit rate around 80% if they're kanji I know, which is good enough for me.

This is reassuring

einahpets Wrote:I just use my dictionary a lot when I read. If I encounter a word I'm not sure about I make my best guess for its pronunciation and check it. I don't want to get in the habit of associating a wrong pronunciation with a word so I'd rather take the extra time to look things up.

This is probably a habit I'll have to acquire... Depending on how many words per page you need to look up, this might not be so time-consuming with appropriate material. This truly must be most complicated writing system in the world ><! I guess that's what makes it so appealing though

comeauch Wrote:How practical is it to expand one's vocabulary through reading? Taking kanji readings into account. I've been quite successful at learning German and the reason why is that I must have read about a hundred novels so far. But Japanese is different, the conversion from written to spoken is not as clear as in German.

Ｉ think a lot of people on this forum take a reading-based approach to learning vocab. A novel may be a bit of a stretch, though, if you don't have enough words. I attempted ハリーポッターと不死鳥の騎士団 recently, and found it too frustrating at my current vocab level.

I currently pull my vocab from Internet articles, 漫画、and assisted readers. My general mode of attack is to read first w/ dictionary lookup, then do a second or third pass on the material later without any assistance. I add all of the unknown words I find to Anki, and tag them with the name of the article. That allows me to create a filtered deck containing just that article or manga's keywords so that I can study those specific words before making another pass at the material.

comeauch Wrote:Thanks for your answers everyone!
I still have trouble grasping that it's possible to read something without knowing how to pronounce it.

well here's an example I came across recently

木立

luckily somehow, micraculously there is only one possible reading for it!
I'm writing like this like i'm so ecstatic because like someone else has stated sometimes there's multiple readings and sometimes depending on how you read it the meaning changes (one I came across recently is 出店＝でみせ・しゅってん) and sometimes the meaning is the same, it's just that there's many different ways to pronounce it.

so anyways
木立
means
群がって立っている木々

and the only possible way to read it is
こだち

now before I looked it up I knew all the possible readings for these 2 kanji
so for 木you have ki, ko, moku

examples with those readings
木木 き‐ぎ 、　草木　くさき
木陰＝こかげ
木質＝もくしつ

for 立 you have
たち　AND　りつ
立ち待ち　＝たちまち、旅立ち　たびだち and since it's the second kanji it could be changed to dachi due to onten
設立　せつりつ　成立　せいりつ

so before I looked it up I assumed it was going to be
ki dachi because it feels like they'll be an onten just because kitachi sounds a bit harsher. But no I was off it was kodachi.

Surprisingly as simple as this word seems (from the kanji) I've never came across it before? or i did but i never looked up the reading? I don't really recall.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:so before I looked it up I assumed it was going to be
ki dachi because it feels like they'll be an onten just because kitachi sounds a bit harsher. But no I was off it was kodachi.

I read this post, then totally forgot about it. Then just now, I encountered 木立 in a book and also assumed it was きだち. *facepalm*

But the thing is like I feel like this will never end. That's just how Japanese is. I'm just equate "reading" Japanese (as in roudoku) to winning the spelling the bee in english (it's so intense)i. It's just irregular and there's always gonna be some word that doesn't have the onten or it does or it's not the reading I thought it was (even though i know all the possible readings of the kanji). Like for kidachi, I mean kodachi, even if I read it wrong, I still know what it means I personally wouldn't obsess over that. I think for Japanese you should focus on understanding than the reading of the kanji because there's no end to that crap. Liek I said before, I read a lot of internet and 50+books and listen to music and watch japaense tv shows blahblah but I still am unsure of readings sometimes. Sometimes my educated guess from experience is right and sometimes it's off, sometimes the correct reading is completely left field (it's an exception or special or whatevre).