Hi all,
Learning Japanese has been an incredibly humbling experience. I’m someone who learns vocab & phrases rather quickly. There have been countless times where I am introduced to a new word, and it just sticks… even if I don’t hear it again for days or even weeks. This has made it easy to learn other languages in general, and it felt like I had a knack for it. Japanese, however, is my first attempt at a non-Latin alphabet…
I’ve come to realize that I am *not* a visual learner, but more a conceptual and auditory one; hence why grammar & vocab tend to come easy for me. I’ve found kanji and *even kana*, basically any element of the written language.. difficult to retain. At times, I’ve considered just working towards fluency in the spoken language, and being illiterate for now… but that just seems like it’s making more work for me down the road.
Does anyone else struggle with the visual side of learning new writing systems? So many of the mnemonic devices are too much of a stretch, and I just don’t “see” the patterns. I also struggle to remember people’s faces, see patterns in rugs/wallpaper, etc… so maybe my brain is just wired differently and struggles with certain types of visual processing.
I suppose this is sort of a rant, but I’d also like to know if anyone else can relate, and how they overcame it.
Cheers!
3 comments
Japanese does not have the grab-bars we enjoy in European languages. The characters, the vocabulary, and the grammar are so much different.
For the kana, try to memorise hardcore rote, writing, recognition, and pronunciation. That should take less than a week. Getting absolute fluency in kana is critical for success IMHO.
You might consider a Japanese textbook to guide you, like Genki. Skimming a chapter is not good enough. My teachers said westerners can benefit from memorising a phrase per grammar point. And memorising every vocab word. That is a lot of work but you will get faster over time. And it is one method of getting the basics nailed down. This is a (very) unpopular method on this forum but is popular in full-time language schools in Japan. As students become proficient, rote memorisation of sentences becomes less popular or necessary.
The conjugations are relatively easy but you need to memorise them too. That takes some work.
Get a feel for proper pronunciation via your textbook and some shadowing. You don’t need to overdo this but I think this can help your speaking and listening skills.
Kanji is the real challenge for westerners. Especially those who wish to write. Normally schools have a separate kanji textbook which somewhat runs in parallel with Genki’s vocabulary. One issue is that beginner words and beginner kanji don’t always intersect. I don’t have an answer for you here, alas. SRS can be popular.
Actually, you can ignore kanji for the first several chapters IMHO. Then you might benefit from a kanji book and at least learning how to write some of the kanji; writing is relatively less useful but might help build a foundation. I don’t know if learning TO WRITE more than a few hundred would be helpful but you can cross that path when it comes. The written “stroke order” is very important for memory and nice penmanship.
kana is something you can practice by writing the chart out again and again and again, without looking at the answer unless you make a mistake
it doesn’t actually take that long though
Kanji is hard for everyone. It is a skill that takes years to build up. If you can’t see the patterns in it maybe try something which breaks it down to radicals, and try writing a few of them.
I got kana mixed up until I actually started reading. Putting it into practice helped a lot. Something relatively easy with furigana would be a good place to start, like a graded reader or Yotsuba.
I also found the JapanesePod [video](https://youtu.be/6p9Il_j0zjc) to be pretty helpful. I focused on memorizing the mnemonics for the kana I got confused with each other.
Now I’m working on the kanji with Wanikani. Their method of learning radicals first is working well for me—before that the kanji were just an impenetrable mess to my eyes.