Any advice for learning to read?

4 comments

1. Manga are pretty good for that, shounen manga in particular usually come with most of the furigana. So you can use your knowledge of spoken Japanese to read it. That said, do put effort into looking at the kanji as you go, otherwise you’re just training yourself to ignore the kanji and only read the furigana.

   Another option would be a book with an audiobook so you can read and listen at the same time. That at least avoids the issue of training yourself to only read the furigana.

2. Don’t worry about the lack of kanji knowledge, and instead get started reading interesting stories that use furigana. If you are looking for entertaining and convenient material, download the ジャンプ+ app to start reading manga on your phone. All the manga on the app that I’ve seen include furigana for kanji, so you’ll be able to read (and pick up kanji as you go). Also helps that the first few chapters are free for all the different manga on the app, so you can start reading without paying anything.

   Highly recommend using the app since it’s so convenient, you’ll find yourself reading even when you get short breaks. You’ll also want to have a jisho app to look up new words. And it helps to reference an English translation of the manga you read when you get stuck (lots of those free and easy to find online, but sometimes translation is off).

   If you live outside Japan and use an iPhone you’ll need to create a separate Apple ID that is based in Japan to download the ジャンプ+ app. There’s also ways to make in app purchases without having to open a bank account with SoftBank. If you want details on how to download Japanese apps/ make in app purchases, send me a message.

   If you’ve got the time, keep up kanji flashcards. This will help you remember the words you encounter so you don’t have to use the jisho as often. Wanikani is popular, and there are also many premade Anki decks. I’ve also put an app together that will teach you the most common 2150 kanji with premade decks and is free to use (link in my profile). But use what you find most useful/convenient.

3. It’s so funny because I’m the exact opposite. Thus far I rely on kanji and reading to understand any sort of japanese, and the moment I hear it with no subtitles or text without kanji I’m just like what the fuck is this lmao

4. Graded readers are a great place to start. Here’s a list of free ones:[https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/](https://tadoku.org/japanese/en/free-books-en/)

   If there are more than 5 words on each page that you don’t understand. Move to an easier one. It took me 3 months to read all the graded readers and I went from about 250 known words to 1500 known words