I’ve been at learning the language for only a couple months now; got all the hiragana/katakana down, have got a pretty decent grasp on the grammar fundamentals, and I’ve have worked through (and continue to) some vocab decks. To summarize, about 2 weeks ago I felt like I was in a position where I’d be able to start working my way through some basic native content (like some manga). I came across a pretty significant roadblock right away, and I gave it about 2 weeks just to see if this is something that would become less problematic after a little more exposure, but it still remains the biggest hurdle as I’m working through these manga. I’ve taken to calling it “Hiragana Soup” and I’m not really sure if it has a real name or something but I’ll try and explain.
When I’ve been studying grammar and vocabulary everything was very clean and concise. The Hiragana used felt very deliberate and logical; its either a particle, or a verb ending or something simple and to the point. Granted this was material intended to learn from so of course all the hiragana would feel like it has a clear purpose.
However when I have transitioned into trying to work through manga its the opposite. Where I was worried kanji and its words would be a big roadblock, hiragana has actually become my worst enemy. Every bubble or text feels like they go out of their way to cram as much hiragana bloat as possible, and while I can verbally read what it says its proving very difficult to get a grasp on the sentence structure and break it down to try and understand the meaning. I don’t know if something is a long word that happens to have a particle hiragana in it, or a couple short hiragana words with a particle or two between them, a verb ending I might be less familiar with, or some form of slang/mannerism I’ve never seen yet. Or see what looks like a conclusive verb ending, only to stretch on for 3 more hiragana as if its conjugating the conjugation or something. Basically all this overwhelming strings of hiragana could be anything to my untrained eye and I can’t differentiate it. Add in that that this native japanese material has sentence structures and grammar usage I haven’t seen before in my learning materials (which are intentionally simplified and consistent), and its a headache and half. Even yomichan (which has saved me more than a few dozen times), it still often struggles to make sense of what its scanning in these situations and just picks out of couple hiragana here and there that doesn’t make sense in the context (which only adds to my confusion)
The whole thing just becomes an exercise in trial and error where I’m praying yomichan can pick out something that makes sense in the context, and if it doesn’t I’m helplessly copy/pasting strings of hiragana while adding or removing one each time into a dictionary or translator to try and get some glint of what it might be (and even then I’m mostly guessing whether that was right). And that point it no longer feels like I’m even trying to read or understand, just grasping at straws. It makes it really frustrating to try and work through because I’m not really sure how to approach it or look up these types of things. And it feels counter-intuitive to the grammar study and other work I’ve done since so much of it just gets tossed out the window. I’m almost wondering if a VN or LN might be more approachable to me since even though it’d technically be harder material, the words might be more coherently written and easier to identify the sentence structure and words themselves.
Anyways I don’t know how poorly I explained it but I hope some of it made sense of what I mean. If anyone could offer advice on how I might approach this more effectively I’d be very appreciative. I’ve hit quite a few roadblocks but most of them have been very fun to overcome, this one however is just frustrating me.