ta12121 wrote:

Does anyone have that site that you can enter an link and it will display the readings for the kanji on any site? I kinda lost the link. Thanks in advance!

Just get the rikaichan addon for firefox. If you're not using firefox... what the hell are you doing? Haha. You just mouse over stuff and it pops up a full dictionary instantly.

Personally, doing RTK first was what actually made learning Japanese seem possible to me. But doing RTK lite and then KO would have gotten me to a decent level a lot faster.

If there's one big mistake I think learners of Japanese make when starting out it's thinking that you have to learn everything about a kanji at once. So you gotta master it's readings and it's writing before you can move onto the next one. I'm with Icecream on this one, learn to read well (I mean pretty damn well) and then worry about being able to write. It's not like you're going to want to write a novel by hand but you probably would like to read one!

@bodhisamaya
thanks that's what i was looking for, kinda lost my bookmarks cuz i switched to windows 7.
@mezhup
lol i am using Firefox and rikaichan. This dictionary is amazing.

Last edited by ta12121 (2010 February 11, 10:08 am)

IceCream wrote:

i don't even know why known / unknown kanji is a big deal. Its not like you can't read the words without studying kanji anyway.

How is that? By shape of the word? (btw thx for the triple negative before 8 am =] )

Re unknown kanji - developing reading fluency and dissecting sentences with Rikaichan are different endeavours. We can start working on reading fluency with a small number of kanji.

Here's one vote for leaving RTK til you can actually read already... ：）

Sarcasm...right?

Mezbup: I'm assuming you mean writing individual kanji as in RTK . The writing part of RTK is mostly a memory tool.  Active production is more effective than repeated passive viewing. Are you saying skip RTK? Or do RTK without producing the kanji? Or...?

The "traditional" way of learning Japanese includes breaking kanji down into parts to some degree and writing words (a natural repetition system.) RTK just uses English keywords and a different order. A combination of the 2 would be great, imo:
    1. Basic Japanese
    2. Subset of RTK (Japanese keywords where appropriate)
    3. Use that knowledge
    4. Add more
    5. Use ...

Tobberoth wrote:

Why you something slow and bloaty (firefox) when you can use something fast and effective (chrome)?

Since chrome has all those nice extensions that made firefox so desirable (especially rikaikun & adblock) I don't see the point of using the latter. Chrome is far superior technologically (faster javascript, less memory used, multi-threaded, very clever UI, more visible space thanks to safari-like tabs) and coupled with extensions is by far the best browser out there.

I'm usually vague at best when describing my own abilities. I even try not to post in the 'what's this word/phrase thread' without repeatedly underscoring either my own process and/or the possible process someone else could've used to look things up themselves in the future. I just don't get anything out of thinking about it extensively in general rather than just targeting specific areas enough in advance to plan ahead... When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye left with which to see the path. Or something. ;p

I've never done RTK, but I can read 1800ish kanji, and write about 1000-1500 (although I make silly mistakes a lot). Most of my mistakes come from using the wrong kanji, not writing it wrong, so I don't think RtK would help me with that specific problem.

I think it's pretty obvious you don't *need* RtK to read, and in fact most people literate learners probably don't use RtK too (I haven't met anybody yet).

I plan on doing RtK sometime though, as I feel my Japanese writing starting to slip. I just don't write enough by hand, so I really want to get some SRSing in. I'm sure somebody like me would have a much easier time doing RtK than somebody who doesn't know a word of Japanese (duh). However I wish I knew the kanji before I started, that's for sure.

I think it's pretty easy to forget how useful some things were when looking back. I guess that's my point?

I'm not really worried about it too much. My Japanese level is at a point where it's not "required" for reading. I don't have a problem writing any kanji, but the hard part for me is remembering which kanji is used when, which was the 1800 reading vs 1000 writing. For example I accidentally wrote 宛時計 instead of 腕時計 the other day, but I typed it up without the slightest effort.

I probably haven't written more than a paragraph in English by hand in over 5 years, so I don't really think it's that important. It's all really about priorities. Once the new Japanese-RtK deck becomes completed, I'll do RtK. After that I'm not sure if I'll do anything else to maintain my handwriting.

Do other people who've done RtK have the same problems? I know the meaning of the kanji, and after I realized the mistake it was clearly obvious. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but based on the people's results here, I wish I knew about RtK/SRS a year ago.

Back on topic on rating your own Japanese ability... The more Japanese I learn, and the more I improve, the more I feel my Japanese is horrible. It's really kind of weird, but when I couldn't read anything it was more of a "of course I can't". Right now each word, idiom, sentence, etc I don't understand stands out and really bugs me.

Last edited by Grinkers (2010 February 11, 2:53 pm)

Tobberoth wrote:

mezbup wrote:

ta12121 wrote:

Does anyone have that site that you can enter an link and it will display the readings for the kanji on any site? I kinda lost the link. Thanks in advance!

Just get the rikaichan addon for firefox. If you're not using firefox... what the hell are you doing? Haha. You just mouse over stuff and it pops up a full dictionary instantly.

Personally, doing RTK first was what actually made learning Japanese seem possible to me. But doing RTK lite and then KO would have gotten me to a decent level a lot faster.

Why would you use something slow and bloaty (firefox) when you can use something fast and effective (chrome)?

Until chrome can effectively match Firefox in add-ons, firefox will always be better imo

Like I give a crap if my page loads 0.3 seconds faster. It's the add-ons that make the browser. Sure it now has adblock and rikaikun but it's still missing a ton I use

plus rikaikun sucks really bad. None of the options work, so you can't customize it at all, and it doesn't even work on offline pages, wtf. I can't even use it on my offline books I use to read, or my offline blank page where I put vocab and such in there to read for a later time.

Chrome may be good when it catches momentum, but for the time being, it's still lacking

IceCream wrote:

i don't even know why known / unknown kanji is a big deal. Its not like you can't read the words without studying kanji anyway. Here's one vote for leaving RTK til you can actually read already... ：）

If you never plan on going beyond reading Japanese then skipping RTK is fine.  I learned to recognize 警察　and 図書館 before I knew how to put a simple SOV sentence together.  Unless the elements become three dimensional in your mind, writing kanji will always be a problem.  Even Japanese forget how to write kanji if they learned to do it solely from writing them over and over.

Last edited by bodhisamaya (2010 February 11, 5:10 pm)

@Tobbs and @yudantaiteki if you two are reading this, I know you've mentioned it before, but why'd you start RTK?

nest0r: I have never used RTK (although I am familiar with it; I've read the prefatory material and the first few lessons, and looked through the rest).  I joined this forum because I enjoy helping people out with Japanese, but I have no personal attachment to RTK.

ta12121: JLPT 1 is not 5th or 6th grader level; in theory it should be 1st year high school level but probably some middle schoolers could pass it.  Of course, passing JLPT 1 does not mean that you know everything that a middle school student knows, since JLPT is not a comprehensive test that tests every aspect of Japanese.

As for rating your proficiency, proficiency is only meaningful in reference to whatever goals you have studying Japanese.  The measure of your proficiency is to try to do something that you want to do in Japanese and see how well you can do it.

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2010 February 11, 5:40 pm)

Even if JLPT level 1 content may be comparable to an average Japanese high schooler's language ability, you only need to get a 70% to pass. And it does not test your ability to talk at all.