I know it’s 100 times better to learn vocabulary with phrases, but how can I do this? When I learning English, I knew simple words like car, man, table, etc. But how can I do this in Japanese? Learn 500 words at the beginning or something? And sentences on the internet are 5 to 10 words long, you’ll need to learn many words in a row!
9 comments
Textbooks are generally designed with this in mind. They teach you the most basic phrases, “I have a textbook.” and then teach you a bunch of words to use in place of textbook that eventually gives you a base to work from.
Learn some words. It’s a gradual process of learning vocab and then learning more vocab in sentences that use the vocab you already know.
You start with a handful of sentences of one unknown word “Who?”, “Jim.” Then you find one or more sentences with two words or more words (one unknown): “Who is Jim”, “Jim is huge”, “Huge cat!”, “The cat is huge”, “Where is the cat?” …
To get the ball rolling, use word lists. It’s literally what textbooks and guides for beginners do do. Alternatively, pictures coupled with words.
When you find a word, adding notes for context helps: e.g. you see 車, so you write “typical word for car”, and then 自動車 and you write “closer to “automobile”, contains 自動(automatic, lit. ‘self-motion’)+車(car)”; 訪れる is “to visit (someone)”, 訪問する “means the same but is slightly more formal because it’s kango”, etc.
To begin with, it’s not always better, it also can be worse to learn some vocabulary within specific phrase. The idea “learn vocabulary with context” mostly comes from set phrases. In English we say “to play guitar”, but in Japanese ギターを弾く, which is literally “to pluck”. However, such expressions are minority and in majority of situations context doesn’t provide any special benefit. A door is a door, you don’t need any context to understand that.
So why using context can be worse? Because it limits variations. For example, if you learn 車 in context of driving like 車を運転する, you are missing a lot of nuances, because 車 isn’t a car, but rather a wheel-vehicle. Carts can be considered as 車 too as tens of other different vehicles.
I would do the TangoN5 Anki deck. It’s pre-made with an i+1 order so it would be a nice introduction to start learning vocab
Stop overthinking and get a beginner textbook.
I had the same problem as you like 7 days ago lmao. I found using the genki workbook and textbooks help a lot. They teach you the grammar and and basic phrases and sentences. If that’s not appealing to you I was the same. I then found out that at the end of each chapter there’s a vocabulary list of all the words it uses. Trust me, genki is really good for starting out.
I use core 6k and i find sentences helped tremendously. I learned about 1900 Kanji meanings through an anki deck with kanji.koohi mnemonics. So even if i dont understand all the words or grammar from sentences, i can par kanji with English translation and get the gist of it. In the end i learn word, not sentences. Dont get the sentences at all? Let it be. Understand some parts of it? Good, keep going. As i build up more vocabulary and grammar I understand sentences more and more, it become even more helpful.