Hello good people. What do you think is the best way to learn vocabulary?

7 comments

1. You need to pay very VERY close attention to what he’s saying. It’s the individual readings you don’t need to learn — at least not right away. You’ll learn them naturally unless you’re trying your absolute hardest not to learn anything regarding kanji at all. You still need to learn how kanji look if you have any plans regarding becoming at least partially literate. Unless you are only planning to learn to read toddlers’ materials (i.e. before grade 1), most words simply will not show up naturally without kanji. Sure, a lot of the most popular manga in history have furigana, but sometimes those are too small to be helpful (certainly less helpful than just knowing the kanji and vocab flat out).

   As for vocabulary, learning them through audio isn’t out of the question, though that can only get you so far unless you set your whole life (including the people you surround yourself with) to Japanese for an extended period. Otherwise, having an ever-growing number of known kanji will help speed up vocab gains as you read.

2. I personally learn new vocabulary through games and novels. If I see a new word that will come up often I jot it down.

3. >every kanji bassically meant a word or concept.

   You’d be wrong. For example, 寿司 is sushi, yet it has nothing to do with longevity or directors, officials, ruling, etc. This phenomenom of using kanji without regards to their meanings is known as ateji.

   While looking up the kanji that make up words can help, most people recommend focusing on words rather than memorizing lists of readings.

4. I guess what the video is trying to tell you is that only because you know a kanji doesn’t necessarily mean you know the reading of a word hence why you should learn vocab. You can know the meaning of a kanji without knowing its reading. So, in a sentence like this: 早く食べよ！you might not know how to read 食 but you know it means “to eat” so you still can understand the sentence. Over time, you’ll know how to read kanji as in how to read the word.

   Many students drill through kanji, their stroke order, readings and their meaning but eventually reach a point where they realise it’s far easier to “just” learn vocab instead. The examples in the video pretty much show why it’s more efficient in the long run. You reduce the steps, so to speak.

   So, “no kanji study” is not exactly correct, I guess. Obviously you still need to know kanji. There’s a few options to learn vocab:

   **Anki (or similar spaced repetition apps or websites):**

   Basically a flashcard app with a built in algorithm that calculates when you’re most likely to forget a word and then it brings it up again for repetition until it’s locked in your long-term memory. Many pre-made decks can be used to grind vocab. It’s a popular learning tool and it’s free (unless you want to use the iOS app) and a resource that’s often recommended among learners.

   Personally, I don’t use anki. It bores me to death. But it might be the method that works best for you. Learning methods are not a one-fits-all solution so you need to test the waters what works best for you.

   **Reading:**

   Discussions usually happen around the “when and at what level should I start reading Japanese texts” aka the immersion debate. In my opinion and experience: once you know hiragana and katakana, you can dive into texts, but there will be extremely cold waters to jump into and many get discouraged. The beginning is always hard. There will always be texts you breeze through and texts that humble you again. But: if reading is something you enjoy, then this’ll be ideal for learning vocab. It’s basically spaced repetition but in a fun way, at least for me. Graded readers are very helpful to ease into texts.

   The downside:

   Well, depending on where you live and your budget, gaining access to Japanese texts can be a little bit of a challenge. Satori reader is a great graded reader online. Manga with furigana are great for beginners (and great in general) and can be ordered online or to a Kindle/e-book reader or read online. I find pure text novels without furigana to be the most challenging level when it comes to immersion and are only fun once you have a higher level, I guess.

   **Workbooks:**

   Classic vocab drill aka how the Japanese kids do it. Useful if you aim for JLPT because you’ll need the kanji for each required level. Though this’ll be way cheaper if you use pre-made anki decks and are a fan of grinding.

   **Conversation and listening**
   Obviously, conversations with native speakers can help learning vocab as well. iTalki is often recommended to find tutors online.

   In short:
   If you expose yourself to Japanese, you will
   learn vocab one way or the other. Try to find what works best and what’s fun for you!

5. I am a big fan of the Tango Anki decks starting with Tango N5 for vocabulary. They are set up in an i +1/1t format which means they teach you with sentences but every sentence only has 1 new word. That way you see the words and grammar you have learned over and over in a natural way. I used them myself and then moved in to sentence mining later on to get to a good level of japanese.
   https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/866090213

   When it comes to starting japanese I pretty much agree with everything in this video except I prefer the free Migaku Kanji God addon Anki addon over RTK. The addon creates RTK style cards which are based on the kanji coming up in your Anki decks.
   https://youtu.be/L1NQoQivkIY

6. I like WaniKani’s approach of learning a single reading with each kanji, then learning the rest of the important readings by learning associated vocab. That’s better than trying to learn all the readings without vocab, and then not knowing which reading to guess when it comes to actual usage.

7. You need to learn them through kanji. Unless you wanna make the same mistake I did and make a bunch of flash cards with hiragana