I’m looking to get into reading but I don’t understand 99% percent of the words on the paper

24 comments

1. i use [tadoku](https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en)
   there are many levels to choose from

2. Get to vocab learning if you dont know any. If you got grammar down, its best you learn kanji/vocab alongside as well! Its fun to get to reading, but dont rush if you haven’t learned basic vocab yet

   Theres many good programs for vocab learning, Anki and Youtube is a good contender imo

3. Hello!
   Yeah I’m in the same situation as you. I have been learning japanese for a month but I can’t recognize any word.
   Let me let you in on a little secret. It takes time for the brain to get used to japanese!
   I used to learn japanese vocab in romaji, but ever since I started reading in hiragana, I find reading sentences much easier in kana and kanji (despite not knowing all kanji), than in romaji!
   Don’t ask me why, cuz I have no idea.
   The point is, you just need to practise, keep practising.

   I only know a few words yet while I was reading some short article I recognize one word!! Isn’t that awesome?
   As opposed to the fact that I used to not recognize any kanji or have any sort of idea of the grammar of the sentence.

   I know many people struggling with japanese, as many as people who know a lot of japanese. You will be fine don’t you worry! I have a few books that help me a lot, I can send you their covers in dm so you can search for them.

4. I know very well the frustration of slow reading while you’re learning Japanese. When I first started learning in earnest I had already memorized all the kana, and got a book in Japanese that I had read multiple times in English (I can’t count how many times I’ve read it) and that had furigana on all kanji.

   It took me about 5 minutes to read a sentence at the beginning, despite being familiar with the contents and Japanese grammar, and I would have to look up basically every word. Even though it was annoying to be taking so long for such little content, I stuck with it and my reading comprehension started to improve little by little over time; now, reading the same book feels like second nature and it’s because the only way to get faster at reading is to keep reading, in any language.

   It may seem inefficient, but the ability to read opens you up to a vast store of learning material that you would otherwise not have access to, and in the end the tortoise wins the race against the hare.

   That being said, I wouldn’t make 100% of your studies reading. You need a good mix of speaking, listening, reading, grammar study (I’ve been speaking Japanese for around 7 or 8 years and I still learn new grammar often), and vocabulary study. The more ways you can practice, the faster your brain will make synaptic connections.

5. After the Genki textbooks I knew over 1k words.

   But when I picked up a book it was like I knew practically zero words.

   I wrote a post about it that you might benefit from reading, and other people posted good replies to it:

   https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/r38zc0/i_read_one_book_and_started_a_second_this_post/

6. dunno what you’re reading but start something easy to medium, and just face on read it. nothing you can do, gotta have pain at the beginning. you’ll never be ready otherwise

7. The NHK has a “easy japanese” setting iirc. You can read the news “basically” in hiragana. When you find a word you don’t understand, hop on jisho for the translation.

8. I didn’t see what sub this was from so your title, out of context, made me laugh for like 30 seconds straight.

   Thank you.

9. study more kanji that way even if you dont´t know the meaning of a word you sould be ale to guess its reading and look it up in a dictionary. to practice to write kanji is also a good option becaus it lets you look up the kanji by writing it directly and forget about the radicals.

   A month is not enough to start reading with ease much less if thisis your first second language. give it a year opf 10 months and if you don’t forget about study daily at least 1 hour you’re gonna start to see resuilts in your first year!

10. > I’m using satori reader…

    If you have access to Satori Reader, I highly recommend the Human Japanese Extra Credit series (hereafter abbreviated to HJEC). It’s very basic, both in terms or grammar and vocab. Even for someone less than a month into studying Japanese, the HJEC series should be doable. You start with sentences like 犬です, and build up to things like 8年前に、日本ではとても大きい地震がありました.

    If you find the articles too easy, you can try the Human Japanese **Intermediate** Extra Credit series. To tell the two series apart on the website, the beginner series has a green background color, while the Intermediate series has a blueish gray background color.

    The sentences will be easy, maybe even boring, but the HJEC series cover a decent variety of topics (vocab and basic grammar), so they’re really helpful for getting comfortable with reading *and* listening.

    You can try stories too, but don’t get discouraged if they seem too hard. They get easier with time and experience. However, please note, the stories can be grouped by difficulty (there’s a link at the top left of the Series page). Try something in the Easier section first. Akiko’s diary (明子の日記) isn’t terribly difficult, but it’s really long, so I don’t know if I’d recommend it as a first story. Kiki-Mimi Radio and Hole in the Wall are both pretty accessible. Kiki-Mimi Radio is shorter, but a little harder (in my opinion).

11. This may not be exactly what you’re looking for but I’m leaving it here, maybe it would help someone.

    I’ve found this app for [android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.fuwafuwa.kaku) (not sure if there is a newer version on their [GitHub](https://github.com/0xbad1d3a5/Kaku)) that uses OCR (optical character recognition) to detect kanji within games and other apps and show their meanings.

    While it could use some extra features it does a pretty good job at detecting kanji and quickening the look up process.

12. Honestly I’d suggest working your way through more textbooks before jumping into reading, or I think it would just be an exercise in frustration. I think the goal to read as much as possible is the right one, but it doesn’t seem very feasible to me when you only started a month ago.

13. Echoing what others have said, but start learning vocab. Once you know a couple hundred words, you could try reading some manga. The visual element helps a lot with comprehension. I’d recommend よつばと! As a pretty easy first manga. Yotsuba only speaks in kana though so it might take a bit of time to understand what she says. You can download it off of itazuraneko if you want.

14. Try Mate Translate extension and going onto japanese websites with content you love, then everytime you get something you don’t know, you can right click translate it instantly. There’s even pronunciation. I learnt a lot using that method.

15. Idk about other people but i started reading a light novel called konosuba with yomichan before even fully learning kana tho i did have some understanding of the story beforehand since i already read it in English so that’s that.. basically what i was doing was clicking on every single letter as i went through and everytime i read the ln i got better at it and i could even see the improvement instantly when trying to read the ln again. Many people wouldn’t do this though because they’re too lazy to click on every single word as the read but it’s really not that hard because literally the only thing you’re doing is clicking on the word and everything else is automated thanks to yomichan and you really get results if you do it long enough

16. Are you really surprised that it’s hard to understand something written in a foreign language?

17. Its definitely a skill one has to work with to get good at. I personally think that seeing how other people think though translation can help. For example, one of my college profesors told my class that translating japanese means going backwords, and then pointed to parts of the sentence as he translated it.

    I know you’re working with satori reader, have you tried re-reading any of the easy stories? The first run though you had to look up a bunch of the words, but it might be a good idea to re-try the same book after a day or so and see if you have any improvement and build up from there.

    You also might try watching one of these reading discussions like with [Hamtaro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aBGNhkxKzs&list=PLNvL1DnM9hiyo-pE0X8M-4xaxUE2vTwub) or [the magic tree house](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNvL1DnM9hiyjcqo1SXEK5ht7Uo_ExaBT). You could also get a vocab deck based on like yotsuba or girls last tour, and study the vocabulary *before* reading, and then try. I think that having to look up every word tends to break up your comprehension in a way that makes it hard to remember what it is that is being said.

18. This may or may not work for you, but the way I’ve sped it up is by learning basic words, phrases and grammar. Things like 時間「じかん」and いただきます。 The more I’ve picked up through anime, music, live news and reading the easier it’s become to learn more “nonstandard” words and phrases. Stuff that isn’t the basic hello, goodbye, how are you, has become a lot easier because I’m already fairly motivated and off to a good start from learning the basics and now I’m able to spot words here and there when trying to read news articles, Japanese twitter and even pick up phrases here and there through anime, music and live news.

    When picking up new words and phrases, I don’t try understanding a whole article because I’ll end up forgetting all of it after trying to cram it all. I look for sentences in 「」in different articles and tweets. Simple sentences and words that I can look up, say a few times out loud and practice writing and then I put it in my anki deck. I personally can’t use anki as my main learning source. It’s more of a support for me. I learn a few things, I go do something else like watch anime, then I go to my deck and practice what I learned earlier.

    I just find trying to learn everything at once to hurt my progress instead of help it. After switching the way I learn to what I (probably poorly) described, I’ve noticed I’ve slowly been getting better and better at Japanese than I was when I tried cramming a bunch of kanji and hoping for the best. Only take in what you can. Don’t try translate entire pages word by word.

    Also, I tend to look up words made of multiple kanji. Like the word waterfall in English. If you know waterfall, you know 3 words. You know waterfall, water, and fall. Break down the Japanese vocab you do learn and learn the individual kanji within it. You’ve suddenly gone from learning maybe only a few words at once to 10+.

19. Bro you’re a month in and already understand enough grammar to read whatever you’re trying to read?(im assuming the news) Why didn’t you study any vocab? This is why I don’t like people telling others about yomichan so early, it helps to have a base vocab of even 300 words before you start.

    Seen as you have already started, I would recommend just keep doing yomichan and Anki. It works, I promise you. It’s how me and several hundred/thousand others learned.

    Edit: a little tag on to say that I used to sit down with no yomichan and use a dictionary to read a book at roughly 1 page/30 minutes or longer. It takes time, but the grind pays off

20. There’s a couple of websites that I found useful as a beginner. http://www.watanoc.com. The N5 (beginner) reading there is easy, culture focused, and bite-sized. It usually has audio to go with it. I read at least one article there a day. It was a challenge at first, but you can get definitions of most words by hovering over them. A good amount of repetition of words too.

    Then, there’s http://www.crystalhuntersmanga.com

    There are lots of free beginner learning guides there, and the action-fantasy manga the site is home to is easier than Yotsuba or any other “beginner” manga. The story is awesome, not aimed at children, and book 1 is free to read at the site. The art is top notch as well. Lots of repetition of words too.

    Hope these helps.

21. Hello there. I’ve studied Japanese for a little over 10 years.

    Grammar isn’t the only important thing in a language, vocabulary is number one too.

    For example:

    りんごを食べますか｡ (Are you eating an apple)?

    I understand you want to read but it takes awhile. I didn’t get my first manga book till after one year.

    Sentences can’t also be translated word per word in Japanese and vice versa since both languages are quite different or the meaning is a bit different.

    If you don’t understand 99 percent of words on a page, it’s difficult to understand a book and it’s not fun then.

    I read manga now and there are words I don’t understand still.

    Look up JLPT N5 grammar and vocabulary. This will introduce you to basic stuff.

    Do you know the て form of verbs? (How to conjugate them).

22. Anki is not a tool for learning, it is a tool for testing recall what you have learned.

    If you never learn things in the first place, Anki will of course reflect that.

23. I would really suggest using wanikani. Also, the android (not sure about ios) app Kanji Study by Chase Colburn has an add-on you can buy with a bunch of example sentences for each kanji and the cool thing is that it only shows you the kanji you’ve encountered before.

    So example sentences for the first kanji will only have that first kanji and all kana besides that. But by the time you get to 50 you’ll start to see a lot of the kanji that were before 50.

    Downside is both of these things are relatively expensive, but I swear they’re worth it.

    I probably know around 150 kanji to some extent, and reading easy stuff on satori reader feels way more possible and worthwhile than it used to.

24. I’m going to give some controversial advice here, so feel free to take what of it you like and leave the rest. That said, I firmly stand by what I am about to say.

    First, ditch anki. It’s a time waster and won’t actually help as much as you think it will. If you must use it, create cards from the words you are looking up in what you are reading and delete them as soon as you have a good grasp. Do not use core decks or anything of the sort, it is a waste.

    Second, they are a bit expensive, but find a way to get ahold of the dictionaries of japanese grammar. Take your time with them, but read them cover to cover. These are the only “textbooks” you will ever need. Do not do this before reading material, do it while. A bit of both every day.

    Starting on a reader is fine, but I recommend moving to native material designed for native speakers as soon as you can. It is up to you what material that is, but make sure it is something that you will enjoy reading/listening to but you are okay with it taking a year or more to reach the end.

    If I could get ahold of myself a month into learning, this is what I would tell myself.