Hey everybody! I make this post based on two events that happened today.
1. Today I read a manga chapter without having to look up a single word. It was the latest chainsaw man release. I didn’t pay attention during the fact; but now that I’ve given it more thought I think it’s pretty signifcant. In my ~2 years of learning this is possibly among the first times where that’s happened.
2. I read [this article](https://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2016/08/25/what-80-comprehension-feels-like) about word comprehension. It’s pretty funny, but that got me thinking as well.
It seems many people see the act of frequently looking up words as a major hazzle, and I can kind of understand why: searching for a word can take you out of the story, and if it’s a kanji you’ve never seen then that might take a longer while. I know when I started reading manga about 4 months in, all I could think about was “gee I wonder when I’ll be able to do this without constantly being interrupted by so many new words”.
The answer was apparently around 2 years. That seems like a lot to some people. But actually after a short while I started paying no mind to the halting: that was when I realized how insignificantly not knowing a word would impact my enjoyment. As it turns out, a limited vocabulary will generally not mess with your ability to understand a sentence. Here’s an example in the style of the article:
He went down the stairs and greeted his burklos in his way out. It was a good day.
You look up “burklos” and see that it translates to “dog”. Oh. Pretty simple then. Now you understand the sentence and can move on. Obviously if there were 3 or 4 unknown words then that would be a bigger issue but in this case it doesn’t exactly hinder the experience in my opinion.
What’s more, finding unknown words in the wild like that is a great way of learning them since you can see them used naturally, in a certain context and not in a vacuum. Personally I feel like reading has helped me so much, and I probably wouldn’t be at my current level if I hadn’t chosen another method. So please, don’t feel discouraged by finding words you haven’t seen before!
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I understand that some people learn faster or slower, but like, this shouldn’t be a shock when considering how many years of incremental study and practice it takes to read in your native language.
Different people have different tolerances for how much interruption they can withstand when consuming media. If I’m consuming something that I think is fine/mediocre, I’m more willing to pause and lookup, and/or let lines go by without full comprehension. But if a story has me completely hooked, I’d want to make sure I learn all the relevant words first, or turn on the subtitles (knowing that I won’t be using it as learning material).
I agree. Thousands!
I love reading though.
For anyone reading digitally, Yomichan definitely really helps cut down on how disruptive looking things up is, since you can just hover and immediately get the definition. I combine that with pasting the text into [ichi.moe](https://ichi.moe). (Depending on formatting, you may need to extract the text first using e.g. [mokuro](https://github.com/kha-white/mokuro) or Google Keep or something similar, in order to do this)
Well isn’t that obvious?
Part of this is having good tools. If you read something on the web and use a browser plugin like Yomichan to look up words and common phrases, it takes literally half a second to look up each thing. It’s particularly useful as a reminder of vocabulary you already learned but forgot, or to double-check your memory.
I have three basic levels of studying:
1. Light studying where I don’t look up anything and rely on context to follow things;
2. Medium studying where I look up words as I go but don’t bother stopping to really investigate or memorize them, or figure out new grammar;
3. Deep studying where I try to understand 100% of everything and even make Anki cards for unfamiliar words to really memorize them.
Often I’ll re-read (or re-listen to) the same exact piece of media at level 1, then level 2, then level 3. Each time, the context that I gained from the previous level helps me feel more confident at the next deeper level.
I feel like my recent question in the daily thread was seen lol.
Yup, it seems like looking up every word or nearly every word is just how it’s going to be.
I’m more into physical books, so I might just sit with a notebook and pen and translate the words I don’t know. Maybe make an Anki deck for the ones that pop up frequently or are interesting.
Yess I recommend this all the time to intermediate to advanced learners. Sometimes I just know if a character is just being pretentious and using big words to describe little things. Sometimes I just guess the meaning based on kanji and context and look up the dictionary just to make sure, most of the time I’m right.
if you’re trying to read something and you have to look up every other word, maybe try picking up an easier text – you’ll have a better time while still getting reading experience.
THIS!
I really only started doing this since COVID. I was part of the OLD OLD school learning group who thought part of AJATT was not looking up words. So when I tried to read things 4 years ago, I just skipped everything I didn’t understand hoping that the stuff I didn’t know would magically absorb into my head at some point. :C Mmm nope.
I also thought that, if there was vocabulary I had to look up while I was reading… that meant I hadn’t learned enough vocabulary… so I needed to go back to traditional study.
That’s not the answer either.
When I finally bit the bullet it was with Pokemon Shield. I was desperate. I figured it would be a slow miserable slog, and that it would easily take me a year of playing every day to get through the game. So I buckled down, prepared for the worst, and…
… by the time I got to the first gym town I was reading at an OK speed and had dropped down from almost every other word to one or two here and there.
🙂 Media, it turns out, has a finite core vocabulary. Once you start picking that up it’s a breeze. And it happens pretty fast.
But yeah, not really obvious to a lot of language learners. I also see a lot of people go “I tried, but I had to do so many word look ups it took me out of the moment”. :/ It really doesn’t have to, once you get quick with a digital phone dictionary. I’m even pretty quick putting together unknown kanji at this point.
I’m also a about a year in now and I’ve had moments where I didn’t have to look up things at all while immersing (Especially during utawarerumono, was really nice to get through that VN)
In other games I’m still perma stuck on my dictionary though sadly. (Less and less everyday though). Can’t wait for my 2 year mark !
I feel like I don’t know what the right lookup process is.
* If I see a word I don’t know, I look it up in a web dictionary or app. I get the meaning and then promptly end up forgetting it.
* So I started adding an extra step, finding the card in SRS so that every word I look up is now in a “Encountered in the Wild” deck. But this pile of words doesn’t account for whether it’s actually a useful word to learn, and whether it’s consuming time when there are far, far more useful words to know.
* I also don’t know whether if looking up a kanji in 10ten is good enough to absorb it, or is it better to spend the work looking it up by drawing the kanji itself in an app or using a paper dictionary. Because I’ve also heard that the additional effort helps with retention since you’re interacting with the kanji, rather than just copying/pasting it.
So I’m a bit in paralysis in analysis, maybe I’m worried too much about the process. I’ve also heard the flip arguement that all this doesn’t matter, just look it up as you need and don’t make a card, because if it’s common enough you’ll eventually repeatedly encounter it more often anyways.
What’s the basic piece of writing (manga) to read and understand easily
This applies to learning languages in general, there are many times that you don’t know a certain word but understand the sentence by context too