Hi folks! I’m aware that there is not one best way to learn the language, but I just want to share what I’m currently doing and if there are ways to improve it as each time I have posted here I have ended up with really valuable explanations!
Q: what were the methods that worked for you starting from the absolute beginning?
For context, I started 12 days ago – I am comfortable with all basic hiragana, and most katakana. I have still to memorise dakuon but I can recognise it when I see it. I have still not encountered combos with the smaller や、ゆ and よ but I am aware of them. (Is this good progress, fast, slow?)
I am currently on both Duolingo and Lingodeer for practice. I have tried Anki but I feel its too advanced for me at the moment. I am also trying to understand N5 grammar points from Bunpro. All of which seems to be going well, however, I cannot put most of the grammar into practice due to my lack of knowledge!
Would I be better to fluently learn all kana (dakuon included), then some basic vocab before moving off onto grammar? I’m really enjoying using Bunpro, but I find myself asking questions after each lesson. Ideally I’d like to back my knowledge up by following the Genki progression, but I’m just holding off on that for now until payday! Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
6 comments
the ideal learning schedule is “whatever keeps you from giving up” as someone who has been at it for 12 days, your biggest risk to success is giving up, not using some process which is only 80% as effective as the “ideal”.
find something you can stick with, demonstrate you can stick with it, and then make gradual improvements to that.
You really should learn all the kana (including dakuon and combination kana) before going forward. There’s really no reason not to, as you’ll encounter it in even the most simple words and it honestly should be easy once you have the basic character sets down.
After that, there’s no reason to separate your studies — you can learn vocab and grammar at the same time.
Also, I would drop Duolingo. It’s not really good at anything besides teaching the kana (which you’ve already basically learned) and perhaps acquiring some really basic vocab and sentence patterns — and it seems like you already have better resources for this.
Other than that, sounds like you’re on your way. Good luck in your studies!
I’m not going to give advice other than to never give up. Be kind to yourself and never forget learning this language takes yearsssssssssssssss
don’t silo concepts, do a little of everything as you go; everything reinforces everything else. you need grammar to give purpose to vocabulary, and need vocabulary to fill sentences grammatically. there’s no perfect order.
I would recommend to learn the basic concepts of the grammar before going into a deeper vocabulary study. Like the particles: が(ga) の(no) は(ha/wa) と(to) に(ni) で(de) etc and how and when to use them in their most simplistic uses. Then perhaps some basic conjugations like past tense, present progressive tense etc. How to conjugate -iru -eru verbs and such is a good to look into aswell, along with the difference between い(i) adjectives and な(na) adjectives.
Having an understanding of these concepts will help a lot when trying to learn words and sentences going forward as they make seeing the meaning and separation much easier, especially the particles. Learn the particles as early as possible, you’ll also get some vocabulary this way. I did a lot of youtube for this in the earliest days. Don’t worry about advance uses, just the simple ones.
You been posting a lot of questions and honestly I love your enthusiasm. It makes me motivated too. I would say don’t worry about how fast or slow you’re going, this is important because it’s not a race. You have a very, very long road ahead of you and we all are on this journey. So just try to enjoy the process.
About mastering any aspect, just do all of it at once. I personally learned hiragana/katakana, and broke down the basic grammatical concepts of the language at the same time. So that means all the particles and their simple usage points, conjugation, verbs, adjects (いandな) and then most basic sentence structures and by that time you should have also gotten fully used to all of hiragana and katakana. Again, not a race so don’t rush it.
I then personally moved into learning kanji radicals (kanji components) and jouyou (everyday use) kanji grades 1 to 3 for a good foundation. While learning kanji I started reading and doing kanji looks up on every word I didn’t know. It wasn’t long before that act of attempting to read (very slowly) burned hiragana and katakana into my brain. For this you can do things like read twitter posts. Just 10-20 minutes a day and a few tweets, try your best to figure out what they’re writing. At this point this is where you need to bolster your vocabulary and move into more advanced grammar. Never stop trying to read a tweet or two everyday.