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[the-old-book-town]

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[the-old-book-town]

I cracked open this book I bought ages ago, "Essential Japanese Grammar", and never ended up using because I learned it all (somehow) in class or on my own.

Actually still amazed by the amount I managed to absorb myself through my truly ridiculous language learning endeavors. I do still think taking a 1 year intensive conversation focused class really helped, because it focused on getting the basic structure and flow nailed down at the expense of not focusing on reading at all. But it definitely helps me to learn the "rules" and such more organically than having it explained via text.

I try to read one explanation on something as simple as adjectives in this book and it boggles my mind. I'm just using it mainly for the example sentences. Since I haven't constructed sentences myself in so long, I've forgotten some of the particles and my brain is slower at processing the structure/order as well.

Also, keigo. Enough said?

(I'm trying to post more regularly to keep myself accountable...)

[the-old-book-town]

Study progress…

A little slow because I haven’t been getting much sleep and this week is kicking my ass, but I started rereading and editing my novel translations. Since I promised myself back then that I would never touch it again after finishing it (because I’m a perfectionist), I’ve never read the first chapter with my current comprehension level (I was almost a total newbie when I started translating this, had one year of classes and a summer of doing game transcriptions before I started).

It’s certainly interesting. As a whole it just makes a lot more sense now. Even if I’ve forgotten specific vocabulary, I’m much more familiar with the structure and flow of the language. Including guessing the subject of the sentence which isn’t always explicitly stated in Japanese. I’m pretty sure I got that wrong a few times back then.

Also, some vocabulary comes back easily. Others I don’t remember seeing at all or since lol. But I understand the parts that make up the words better, which I didn’t back then because I didn’t know many kanji.

I might boot up my Switch tonight and start a new playthrough of NEO The World Ends With You. A ton of it is voiced, but it also has a lot of flavor text, plus the vocab is more casual/modern so it makes for good practice.

[the-old-book-town]

I started a certain translation project as a way to teach myself to read Japanese YEARS ago at this point, and I've begun to look it over out of curiosity. My Japanese is rusty as hell, but back then I could barely read half as sentence without needing to look something up (my listening comprehension was always way better).

Anyways, I was looking at the first line again and compared it to the official translation of a very similar line from the original game. For reference, the novel occurs before the events of the game. The only difference between the two versions in Japanese is the "I" vs. "them".

Novel (translation mine): オレは自らの運命を、自分で決めた。死ぬことを恐れずに。死に畜面する恐怖を知らずに…I chose my own fate. Without fear of death. Without knowing the fear of confronting death…

Game (transcription mine, translation not): 彼らは自らの運命を、自分たちで決めた。そう、死ぬことを恐れずに。死に畜面する恐怖を知らずに。For them, the path was not chosen...They chose their own path. Yes, not knowing the fear of death. Having never learned the fear of confronting it.

I always find it fascinating to look at localizations and see how they alter and adapt the flow of the original. The first line essentially means "they chose their own fate", but the localization chooses to expand the sentence perhaps to match the length of the Japanese version (remember, in a video game, you are also constrained by the number of lines and spacing...so if the first half of the sentence appears followed by the second half of the sentence, you have to expand the english version to fit that spacing requirement).

[the-old-book-town]

A study plan...

I'm actually terrible at sticking to study plans. I haven't done anything remotely structured since I took Japanese for two semesters in college, and this still won't be structured in the least, but it's more than I've done for the past few years. However, I've finally decided to plan a trip to Japan in 2-3 years and there's literally no better motivator.

I'm rusty on literally everything, I haven't been watching shows very often let alone reading, so I'm open to reviewing the basics this time but I'll try to mostly concentrate on immersion. Really, I just need to expose myself to the language more and it'll come back.

I want to resume my long put on the back burner translation project I started years ago. I was recently re-reading the translation and...I am both amazed at what I managed to accomplish and still not satisfied with the level of writing and translation. I kind of want to edit (re: fix...re: retranslate...) it, but if I do that it probably won't be finished for the next 10 years lol.

When I want to play a video game, play all of my Switch games in Japanese! Mainly I have wanted to 100% NEO The World Ends With You for a while now, and this one is great for language practice.

For listening practice, @mejomonster introduced me to glossika Japanese audio so I'll use those occasionally to review the basics (mostly grammar, N5-N4 vocab I haven't forgotten despite not using the language for so long).

Finally, for more listening practice, just watch videos in Japanese with native speakers talking. Can be about literally anything, but how regular people speak is WAY different from how they speak in dramas (and forget about anime lol). Can be let's plays, or, I follow the actor Hongo Kanata's youtube channel because he's a huge pokemon nerd lol.

[the-old-book-town]

When you get to big numbers, the Japanese counting system starts to differ from English. I am not a numbers person, so when I have numbers in my work, I double check constantly. Usually I use on SLJ FAQ, but today I used Jisho and I found this interesting hiccup.

The second suggestion is fine! 2000万 [にせんまん] does mean 20,000,000. It does NOT, however, mean 平成12年 [へいせいじゅうにねん], or the year 2000. (More about the years thing here.)

To get into it, 万 means 10,000. It's usually read マン or バン, but sometimes it's よろず. We've covered its archaic form 萬, and you probably know the exclamation 万歳 banzai. It literally means eternal life and prosperity, but in practical use, it means "Hooray!," to cheer, or the gesture of throwing one's hands up (in either celebration or defeat... or, you know, on a roller coaster or whatever).

But as a number, it also happens to be where the counting system starts to change. Let me borrow a graphic:

Yuck. Maybe you're saying, "Well, these are big numbers, I'm not gonna encounter them that often," I am very sorry to tell you that the yen is counted in CENTS, so if something costs $10, its price is four figures. And with current exchange rates, 10K comes into play around the $66 mark. So you have to learn the big numbers, even if you hate it! Sorry!

[the-old-book-town]

Well played, crow. Well played

大 means 'big.' It's used as the place name for Omiya station.

犬 the extra stroke exactly where the crow is standing changes the meaning to 'dog.' So now it's dog-o-miya station.

This crow understands Japanese and is a genius prankster.

[the-old-book-town]

I dedicate this post to @mejomonster because it would have never crossed my mind to research on my own if you hadn’t told me about hanzi radicals linking to the pronunciation! I didn't think there could be a logic given how many different readings a single kanji can have compared to its equivalent hanzi.

Well, I never did study kanji extensively, which explains why I never knew that some radicals are connected to the pronunciation in Japanese - it seems to be common knowledge among people who are more proficient in the language, but it's almost never mentioned in language learning materials, ostensibly, because people think it's not useful enough to teach.

They're called phonetic components. And they're not as useful as the hanzi equivalent, but they do exist. There are a few caveats in their usefulness: 1) it only applies to on readings, 2) it's not always clear which component is the phonetic one and which is the radical (radical here meaning the one the kanji is classified under in the dictionary), 3) only 67% of kanji have phonetic components, and 4) about 25% of those have irregular readings.

This online dictionary lists the meaning of each kanji and the phonetic component they're linked by.

This article provides a list and discusses this a bit, scroll down to the "Phonetic Compounds and Their Kanji".

This webpage describes some of the research behind the components and two people who put in a lot of work to compiling the list.

I feel stupid for never realizing there is a relationship between the reading and the component, because one kanji/radical I've seen a million times makes it super clear and I just thought it was...a coincidence? I guess??

For example:

The on reading of 義 is gi - alone it is the 'righteous duty' character. It is also part of the following kanji: 儀 as in 儀式 (gishiki, ceremony) and 犠 as in 犠牲 (gisei, sacrifice).

Kanji readings are still difficult, granted, but at least there is some logic to some of the on readings. I don't know if they share some of the same phonetic-component relations as their Chinese counterparts, they might not, or they might but again are more related to an older Chinese language and not so much Mandarin.

For example, 牙 is ga in Japanese but yá in Mandarin and ngaa4 in Cantonese.

For kun readings...there's no logic but only 37% of the dictionary is kun readings, and 53% are on readings, according to one of the articles? If that makes it better haha?

I personally find kun readings way easier to remember. In fact, most of the kanji I know, I identify by their kun readings. 川 is kawa first to me, and 山 is yama, not sen and san.

So, yes, might not be useful for a lot of people, but it's certainly interesting. And at least demystifies kanji a little bit, which is always nice. People, including myself, are always saying how hard kanji is to study, and it's definitely true, but it also becomes almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy at some point.

"It's so confusing, I'm never going to remember them all" and such. But that's why it's interesting to learn different tricks to learn them. It might not help some people, but for example, this makes more sense for me than using mnemonics or making up stories to remember kanji. Even if it only helps me learn a few dozen kanji, that's still more than I would have acquired otherwise (or, at least, not without another 10 years of seeing it over and over again until it finally clicks in my head).

[the-old-book-town]

Very nice resource!

The most difficult part of the process for myself is overcoming the initial hurdle of gaining enough of a vocabulary and simple grammar base to start absorbing new material like a sponge. I struggle with this so much for Mandarin because I just don’t have a structured way or motivation to build that base. Japanese is technically more complex (not only do you have to still learn enough vocabulary, conjugation and politeness levels are more difficult), but I took a class that pushed me through the beginning and made it much easier to learn from comprehensible input afterwards.

I have to say, I was listening to the TGCF audiobook and followed with the English translation and definitely felt it helping. Wish it was easier to access audio+text for novels in Japanese. I maybe should check out the Heavenly Path website, I’ve seen you rec it often!

Comprehensible Input Study Plans

If anyone would like to go on a Comprehensible Input/Automatic Language Acquisition/Direct Method journey with me, I have got a list of resources for you! This list is basically going to be: if I was studying a language primarily through comprehensible input, this is the resources I would try in roughly this order.

Japanese:

1. Glossika Japanese Old audio course. Teaches approximately 2000-3000 words (the course has around 3000 sentences but I think some sentences have no new words). Course seems to be a few hundred hours (150-300 hours I'm going to estimate), and lets say 300-600 hours if you repeat audio files to re-listen and study. This is "audio flashcards" materials so sentences are given in japanese then english then japanese. They are "comprehensible input" in that you can completely understand the sentences, but they do teach using english. Also, Glossika courses are easier if you have some basic grammar knowledge first as the course does not explain word order, verb endings, conjugations, particles etc.

2. Comprehensible Japanese youtube channel. If you are a total beginner, I would recommend this resource first and go through a LOT of the material. Then use something like Glossika Japanese old audio courses, some japanese anki sentences deck's audio files, some textbook with a few thousand word's audio files, to study 2000-3000 common words.

3. ***While doing step 1 and 2, I would recommend beginning study of the writing system. Look up some app for "learn hiragana and katakana mnemonics" and study for a few weeks until you're roughly familiar with hiragana and katakana, as afterward you will read them so much you'll learn them more firmly. Look up japanese kanji radicals and read through a table, it should take a few hours or less. Understand that all kanji are built with those radicals (so maybe think of radicals as letters and kanji as the 'word' piece). Learn that kana (hiragana and katakana) stand for syllables, and have no meaning besides sound. Anything can be spelled with kana. Hiragana are usually for japanese words, particles, and conjugation. Katakana are usually for foreign words. Kanji are symbols that stand for a word (or a piece of a word like "airport" is air-port, 2 kanji may build a word). Kanji have various pronunciations depending on the word they are building. Hiragana often attach to the end of kanji words to spell out the conjugations. Look up "mnemonics" if you've never used them before so you can learn how to use them: they are stories you make up to help remember the pronunciation, meaning, or 'radical building blocks' of a new word. For studying kanji there are many options, I personally recommend finding one that includes mnemonics. As a total beginner I recommend: Learn Japanese Today by Len Walsh. It is easy to read in a couple weeks, it's mnemonics/explanations include pronunciation and meaning, it's a good introduction and you can find it free in a ton of libraries/e-libraries. I also recommend the books on japaneseaudiolessons.com if you want mnemonics provided for meaning AND pronunciations, and reading practice, but be aware they are in depth and dense reads. Many people will recommend Heisig Remember the Kanji... and I recommend it with one caveat: do NOT wait to continue your studies until you finish Heisig. If you use Heisig's book, keep studying japanese with other materials at the same time. I wasted 2 years on Heisig's books because they didn't include any actual pronunciations or vocabulary, so I waited to learn real words. You should start learning new words ASAP. I personally recommend you look up what mnemonics are, look up kanji radicals and practice making up some stories to remember them, then start learning real words and making up mnemonics to remember the new kanji words as you learn them (or going to kanji.koohi.com and using someone else's mnemonics story to remember). Mejo's bare minimum advice: read an explanation on radicals (2 hours), read an article explaining japan's writing system (2 hours), cram through a hiragana katakana free mnemonics app with quizzes for 2 weeks, look up mnemonics for kanji and learn how to make the mnemonic stories yourself, cram through Read Japanese Today for 2 weeks, proceed to learn kanji as part of words normally. If you are struggling a lot with remembering kanji words or written words in general, I recommend you check out the "SRS" section further down.

4. Look up a pronunciation guide, on youtube or any site with audio. Listen to it, should take a few hours. This is just to help you get used to the syllables and features you'll hear. You may want to hear some explanations of pitch tone at this point. I'll be real with you: I'm intermediate and still don't really understand pitch tone much. So I figure the sooner you hear about it, the more time you'll have to start figuring it out than I did. My obviously amateur advice (but it worked for me): do your best to pronounce new words the way they sound in japanese (sort of the way English puts stress on words "BLACKbird, old-FASHioned, underSTAND"). Try your best to pronounce as you hear the word, and move on. If you notice later you're making errors, correct them then. As a beginner, do not PAUSE your learning out of fear you will make mistakes or miss something. I feel that can be one of the biggest hurdles in learning a language: dwelling on how to perfectly do something before moving on, and so you never move on, and never learn more. It's better to move forward and learn new things everyday then to HALT all progress out of fear you're doing something imperfectly. So yeah... be aware of features like pitch tone, but also understand it's okay if it takes you a while to hear it, to understand what it means, to correct your mistakes. And this applies to anything in language learning.

5. Japanese Graded Readers: you can search the web for graded readers of various levels. I would recommend starting with the free Tofugu graded readers (they can be found here). The Tofugu books are very easy to start, make sense from context, and can help you feel much more comfortable reading in japanese. If you would like a more textbook approach, I like the following two books: Reading Japanese by Eleanor Harz Jorden and Hamako Ito Chaplin (this book goes slow and very in depth if you want a lot of beginner reading practice), A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons for Mastering the Written Language (Tuttle Language Library) by Roy Andrew Miller (this book goes fast and it's dense but it will prepare you for reading newspapers and literature). White Rabbit Press has some graded readers. Satori Reader app I highly recommend from early-beginner to intermediate but not ready for real novels yet.

6. Immersion with material for native speakers! Get yourself a translator app downloaded on your phone (I like imabi and while it's subpar I like Google Translate to quickly speak in new words when I'm watching anime). Get an on screen reader OCR translation app if you plan to read a lot of manga (I use Ichigo Manga Translator because it's free). Bilingualmanga.net is a good place to start if you want to read manga, they provide english translations of the japanese and you can copy/paste the japanese text into translator apps. Animelon.com has dual subtitles and click-word lookup if you like watching anime. Parallel translations of books app by Kursx is great for reading novels (it has Text To Speech, click translations of words, parallel translations of sentences) you will need to import txt/epub files if you use this app (annas-archive.org is a good place to find those). If you already have a favorite eReader app (I use Moon+ Reader) then know that most reader apps already have built in click-translation features and text to speech audio. If you use Kindle, kindle has click translations (and if you use Android Talkback accessibility tool it will text-to-speech read kindle books aloud). Amazon Kindle app is probably the easiest place to purchase japanese ebooks and manga. I highly recommend when you start immersion: start with easier materials where you understand the main idea of scenes without word lookups or with minimal keyword lookups. So materials you've seen/read before, slice of life daily stuff where most words are common etc. Also I recommend always watching/reading in japanese primarily before turning on things like dual subtitles or parallel translations: basically at least TRY to understand the japanese before leaning on another language. You want to get used to being primarily in japanese.

7. ***A note on SRS: I go through this more down below in the Chinese section, so please skip down to that. In short: SRS can be a great way to push through that "beginner hump" where you feel you will never learn the language, ASAP. At least, if you can get yourself to reliably do 30 minutes+ per day of SRS regularly. My suggestion for you if you're struggling to go from study materials, to immersion in content for native speakers? Pick SOME SRS study resource for japanese that teaches 2000 words or more. Start it and focus on studying new materials, review OPTIONAL only if you completed 1 or more new sections per day (so study at least 20+ new words per day before doing reviews, cut reviews if you have limited study time). If you're a crammer like me, do 50-200 new words/sentences per day and only review if you have time after that. It should take you approximately 4 weeks on a cram schedule (so 1-2 hours of study per day) to study 2000 words. After that, you can do reviews for another 1-2 months if you want of the 2000 words OR you can jump directly into immersion at that point. That plan will get you from upper-beginner (you know 500-1000 words from comprehensible input, graded readers, audio flashcards, but immersion feels exhausting and you can't understand anything) who just CANNOT handle any immersion, to able to study from immersion primarily, in about 1-3 months. Yes it's 1-3 months of studying 1+ hour a day in flashcards... so you need to be able to concentrate on getting through flashcards. But it will push you over the hump. This is what I did after 2 years of japanese study where I knew 500-1000 words and felt hopeless as an "eternal beginner": I crammed through 2000 cards of Nukemarine's Lets Learn Japanese memrise decks for 3 months. Then I tried to read manga and lookup words: to my surprise I could actually follow a manga plot main idea by just looking up some keywords! I tried playing Kingdom Hearts: and likewise realized I could now play with just some keyword lookups here and there every 3-5 minutes (given I was already familiar with the english version of the game). It made immersion possible for me to do. Once immersion was possible, I continued reviews by immersing and seeing words I'd studied before, and continued learning by guessing new words from context in immersion and looking up words every 5ish minutes or when they looked like key words for main idea understanding. I personally recommend Nukemarine's Lets Learn Japanese SRS decks, as I feel getting through parts 1-6 will make immersion possible (that's what i did) and then the other parts are well structured to help you get the words needed to read novels/watch more complex shows. Nukemarine's decks also has combine sentences, audio and text, new vocabulary, kanji, and grammar points. So if you only have 1 resource you use? It covers the key areas. If you like another SRS course more, use that instead. The main thing is find something teaching AT LEAST 2000 words and get through studying NEW words quickly. Part of the eternal "beginner hump" is people thinking japanese is hard, and taking years studying 300 kanji or 500 words, when the sooner they increase vocabulary the sooner immersion material will become accessible.

(Fun little things: Genki textbooks cover vocabulary immensely slowly in my opinion and I wish each book had at least 2000 words, since they're meant to cover 1 year in college each and typical language introduction books for OTHER languages usually cover 2000 words at minimum... which is doubly annoying because with few cognates, you need more basic vocabulary in japanese to start reading/watching compared to a language like French where with 500 common words and cognates to rely on you can start reading nonfiction...which is what I did. Whereas I NEEDED at least 1000 japanese vocabulary words to start reading anything in japanese. Be aware that a lot of japanese learner material is paced slower than some other languages - like french and spanish - because the writer thinks it's more difficult. the problem is... the lower amount of content per chapter/lesson means less learned per minute... and then japanese is going to take thousands of hours more to learn than a similar language to yours already, so slow learning material is extra frustrating to me. When you run into learning material that presents information slowly? Either find a different learning material, or push through it faster than the learning material recommends. Since Genki 1 and 2 only teach 1700 total... I'd suggest getting through both textbooks in under a year, at least studying their vocabulary sections in under a year. Or get a 2000+ word anki deck and get through it in 3 months lol. A typical Teach Yourself introduction book teaches 2000 words, and certainly expects the student to learn those words at least vaguely in under a year. So personally... I think it's a good idea to push yourself to learn at least that many words in japanese ASAP. If you're a beginner, aim for 1 year (and if it takes longer for some reason that's okay). If you've been studying japanese for years, like I was, and still stuck in the beginner rut? Cram 2000 common words NOW. Go find a word list, an SRS anki deck, get glossika japanese audio files, Something, and get vaguely familiar with a few thousand common words now. Aim to get through the words in 4 months or less, then start immersing (or start intermediate level textbooks/courses if you prefer studying that way, or both).

Chinese:

1. Go through a pronunciation guide (2 weeks or less) like the dongchinese one here. Anything with audio. Look up tone explanation guides on youtube, including on tone sandhi, and then look up a few tone trainer quizzes online and do them every once in a while. All of pronunciation beginner study may take 1 month or less. You're getting used to hearing tones, recognizing tones, recognizing language features, and getting used to pinyin pronunciation.

2. Look up how the chinese writing system works. This may take a few hours to a week. Read a few articles that explain hanzi, that explain and show a table of the radicals and how they combine to build hanzi, how often a hanzi is built of a pronunciation component and meaning component from radicals. The main thing is to learn that hanzi usually are pronounced one way, are a piece of a word (or whole word), and a limited amount of radicals build hanzi (sort of like letters build to make a word). Understanding radicals build hanzi will help you break down new hanzi you see into recognizable radical components. Look up mnemonics if you've never used them before: they are stories you make up to help remember a word or hanzi's meaning, pronunciation, and radicals. Mnemonics can be useful later when learning hanzi, so it's important to know how to make them yourself if you want to use mnemonics later.

3. Hanzi study: you will do this alongside whatever else you do early on. You can use anki flashcard decks for studying hanzi (I recommend searching "chinese hanzi mnemonics anki deck" or "chinese hanzi mnemonics memrise" or whatever app you use with "mnemonics"). I personally mostly relied on a book which had pre-made mnemonics for 800 hanzi, and it gave me a solid foundation. (My FAVORITE chinese study book, it indirectly is also how kanji in japanese got eons easier for me, I love it intensely more than Heisig lol: Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1 -3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters). I simply read through the book for 2 months. After that I just learned new words regularly (through comprehensible input, graded readers, SRS decks of common words/sentences), and made up my own mnemonic stories when I had a hard time remembering a new hanzi. I recommend that if possible you find a hanzi resource that provides pronunciation, meaning, and example words. And that the resource includes mnemonics if they help you remember things better. I recommend using an SRS program if you like using SRS apps, and if that study method works well for you. You will likely be studying hanzi or words with a focus on remembering their hanzi for at least 6 months, possibly 1-2 years, so it's okay to take 1-2 months to search for resources and then decide on using something you really like using. I also recommend getting a hanzi resource that teaches AT LEAST 2000 hanzi, ideally all hanzi on the HSK (but the HSK recently changed so just do the best you can), and at minimum you're going to want to learn around 1000 hanzi (roughly the amount on HSK 4 which is when immersion starts to feel possible). The exception: the book I heavily relied on only taught 800 hanzi, but it gave me a strategy to further study new hanzi as I encountered them later in words... so that book in combination with any vocabulary resource and you should smoothly be able to learn over 1000 hanzi in the first 6 months. I learned about 2000 hanzi in the first 6 months using that book for 800, and then Ben Whatley 1000 Common Chinese Words and Ben Whatley 2000 Common Chinese Words in memrise. It personally helped me to learn a majority of hanzi in the context of words. The memrise decks I spent 4 weeks cramming through, then continued reviewing the words by running into them during immersion. Alternatives: Chinese Spoonfed Anki deck has words in sentences, theres a LOT of anki decks specifically for learning hanzi with mnemonics and I think all are fine if they have audio pronunciation and meaning (and ideally example words).

4. ***Optional: read through a grammar guide summary. This is not part of comprehensible input method, but I did it and it helped me so I figured I'd mention it. I simply read through all the lessons on this site (without doing the exercises) and it took me about 3 weeks.

5. Start Comprehensible Input learning materials. You can start immediately, or after 1-2 months of preparing with the materials above. Comprehensible Chinese is a good youtube channel to start with.

6. Graded Readers. These can be started soon after starting to learn new words with comprehensible input lessons (like Comprehensible Chinese youtube). Mandarin Companion graded readers start at only 50 words so a total beginner could start there, then just gradually read the higher level graded readers until you are reading the highest unique word count graded readers Mandarin Companion has. After that, I recommend downloading Pleco app (***which you will use a lot for other things too), and browsing the graded readers offered for sale on Pleco. They're often 2 dollars for individual stories to 20 dollars for collections of stories/long stories, and reading them in Pleco you have click-translations, text to speech, extensive dictionary entries, and mtl parallel text translations of passages. Some of the graded readers you can buy on Pleco go up to 2000+ unique words, after which you are certainly ready to move to immersion with novels for native speakers. If you want to move to immersion ASAP, I would recommend using graded readers that go up to 800-1500 unique words (I used Mandarin Companion 800 word graded readers and Sinolingua 1500 word graded readers) then going to Heavenly Companion's site (*more details later) and starting with novels for native speakers that start at 1000-1500 unique words.

7. Aim for trying to learn 3000 common words (you can aim for at least 1000 if you're desperate to move on to immersion). Glossika Chinese old course audio is an audio flashcard option to learn 2000-3000 words (audio flashcards teach with chinese sentences then english translation so you can comprehend what is said). The sentences are around 300 hours, then more hourse depending on how much you re-listen to study. Chinese Spoonfed Anki audio files are another good option (have around 7000 sentences, 19 hours, I imagine the sentences teach at least 4000 words). You could use these kinds of resources as a supplement to Comprehensible Input youtube videos and Graded Readers, to keep growing your vocabulary and reviewing things you've learned. (You may have noticed at this point, I'm offering 3 lesson options: videos on youtube, audio flashcards, and graded readers. Depending on the study activity you like best, you may find yourself relying more heavily on one of these 3 and that's fine. Just aim to keep increasing your vocabulary no matter what you rely more on - so if you use youtube videos be aware you may need supplemental vocabulary exposure, and aim to get some listening AND reading practice - so if you use audio flashcards primarily then try to get some transcripts and read along occasionally or anki/memrise companion flashcards to read or turn on chinese subtitles on Comprehensible Chinese when you do occassionally do a video instead of audio flashcards. If you read graded readers mostly, try to listen along to the audiobook or text-to-speech sometimes so you get some listening practice).

8. ***Optional: SRS. Spaced Repetition Study. I did not use SRS much, but I did cram study this way for around 4 weeks in the first 6 months of studying chinese, because it really helped me get vague recognition of 2000 common words in written form ASAP. If you can focus on flashcards/flashcard apps for 30 minutes to 1 hour regularly, this is possibly the fastest way to get vaguely familiar with new vocabulary so you can make immersion doable and easier ASAP. For japanese and chinese in particular, SRS may be the route to go if you feel you "cannot get over the beginner hump." If you are not using graded readers much, you may need some kind of SRS study to get reading practice in and review of written form of words. (You can actually do SRS study with paper flashcards you make or a printed out wordlist you read through or a wordlist website you have open on the computer, all SRS really is amounts to studying the least amount of repetitions you'd need to review information right before you forget it... something like study today, then tomorrow, then in 3 days, then in 1 week, then in 2 weeks, then in a month, then in 2 months, then in 4 months etc). I recommend Chinese Spoonfed Anki deck for chinese since it's got thousands of words, grammar examples, audio, text, and it's a solid foundation to jump to immersion from. I used "2000 common HSK words" deck on memrise, it had no sentences, just audio and text, it worked fine for me and took 1 month to cram through. This is my advice for people who want to get over the endless "beginner hump" or who like me want to immerse ASAP and get past learner materials. It can also be found up in the japanese section. Cram! If you've done hundreds of hours listening to Comprehensible Chinese, audio flashcards, and reading graded readers, but still find immersion too hard or still find you have not learned over 1000 words? Or find you're really struggling with hanzi recognition? Look up an SRS app like anki or memrise, look up an SRS course (again I'd say just use anything with 2000+ words and audio and text, like Chinese Spoonfed anki deck). Do the SRS app 1-2 hours a day for 2 weeks, prioritizing studying 50-200 new words per day. Only do reviews if you have time at the end, after getting through your 50-200 new words goal daily. At the end of 2 weeks you'll het through 1000 words, then spend 2 weeks getting through the backlog of reviews. Then for 2 weeks go through 50-200 new words daily again, 1-2 hours per day, skip reviews unless you have time. After those 2 weeks you'll have gotten through all 2000 words. Take another 2 weeks to do reviews now if you wish (or just skip it). It will take approximately 1-3 months to get through 2000 common words and have a vague familiarity with them. At that point, you can start immersing and stop SRS app usage (unless you like SRS apps, in which case you might want to transition to 10-30 minutes daily with 5-20 new words daily and no more so you don't get overwhelmed). This is how I get vague familiarity with a few thousand common words ASAP. Once there's vague familiarity, when you immerse you might look up those words and 'review' them a few more times by looking them up until they stick in your memory, but they won't be totally unfamiliar. And you will NEED them to understand the immersion content, so your brain will try to remember them quickly since they're needed daily and used daily in immersion. The SRS apps also work well for drilling hanzi when you're trying to learn the first 1000 common hanzi or so. If you find nothing else is helping you get vaguely familiar with hanzi recognition, try an SRS app of 2000+ common hanzi with mnemonics for a couple months.

(***A small warning: a lot of apps "use SRS for their study cards" but how fast you go through new words depends on the app. If you're trying to get vague familiarity with a lot of words quickly, either pick an app that doesn't take you more than 1 hour to get through 50+ words, OR honestly pick a regular word list or a bare bones Anki deck where you know you can easily read through 100 words in 1 hour). One thing that slowed me down a LOT is apps where I'd see 20 new words an hour... I could watch literally any show as a beginner and get exposed to 20 new words in less time. I try to avoid picking resources that slow down my exposure to stuff to learn.

9. Immersion time! If you're extremely tolerant of ambiguity and/or like looking words up, you can immerse as SOON as you can follow the main idea of a scene with just the help of looking up 1-2 keywords for meaning per scene (or without looking up anything). Think about how you felt when reading your first Graded Reader: it probably had more words than you actually knew yet, so it felt HARD, but you could at least follow the main idea of what was going on. And if you couldn't follow the main idea, you could get by on just looking up 1-5 unknown words per page to understand the main idea. And by the end of the graded reader, you didn't need to look up any words to grasp the main idea. If it was a rather easy graded reader, you might even have understood almost everything including most details without any word lookups by the end of the book. That's the feeling you want to get with your immersion materials, at least ideally. And after a few months of immersion, once you've learned more words and gotten comfortable "understanding what you already studied" then some easier immersion materials should feel like a graded reader used to feel. The first few months of immersion I'd recommend picking easier material: shows/books with few unique words (ideally less unique words than you know so if you know 2000 words then picking a kid's book with 1000 unique words), shows you've seen before in your native language (so you can guess what the words mean because you know what happens in those scenes), books based on shows you've seen, books for kids, reading summaries before watching/reading something (so you have prior context to guess what words mean because you know what should be happening). At first, you will have to learn how to "understand what you already studied" so you'll be practicing understanding words you know at speaking speed, in the grammar of actual sentences, reading words you maybe haven't read much, listening to words you maybe haven't listened to much, getting used to accents and emotion and background noise, getting used to understanding stuff you've studied QUICKLY because its all so much quicker than in learning materials. It will feel hard, stick with it for a few months, and eventually you can tolerate immersing for longer time periods and get better at immediately understanding stuff you already studied. At that point, you can gradually start picking more difficult and challenging immersion material.

***If you find immersion INTENSELY difficult and you can NOT understand the main idea, even when you look up key words, or you notice you need to look up like 20 key words per 5 minutes to even guess the main idea? Even after a few months of trying to immerse and see if it gets easier? You may benefit from going to study more words. If you don't like ambiguity and get frustrated by only vaguely understanding things, you'll probably be the kind of person who prefers to study more words BEFORE immersing. I would recommend a. cram studying 2000-3000 words in some SRS app or audio flashcard course like glossika (and if you have time and energy you may even wish to cram study 5000-7000 words... but if it's been over 5 months, you may just be avoiding immersion and hoping Ever More Vocabulary will make it easier... it won't at a certain point. You have to practice immersion eventually for immersion to get easier). b. Reading a LOT of graded readers. Graded readers will feel the most like immersion, because they force you to read a LOT all in the target language. Read increasingly difficult graded readers, so for chinese this is where you'd read 5+ 2000 word graded readers. Practice reading graded readers without relying on word lookups and attempt to grasp the meaning from context, so you can practice skills you'll need in immersion in an easier enviornment. Try to read graded readers through multiple times, attempting to read FASTER the second and third times, to practice comprehending things you have learned faster... this skill is needed for immersion, and practicing it now will make immersion easier. Listen to audiobooks/text to speech OF graded readers, and listen repeatedly until you comprehend most of what you hear. Graded readers in particular will help you both increase vocabulary AND develop the skills you'll be using and relying on a lot in immersion like: learning new words from context, parsing sentences, following audio at spoken speed (if reading along to an audiobook), getting a feel for how difficult a material is to you and if you personally can comprehend enough to learn new words from context alone or if you personally need to look up some key words (and how to identify key words for understanding quickly then move on), being engaged with only the target language for several minutes to an hour without much of another language to rely on.

For chinese, I recommend the Heavenly Path site to find immersion materials if you don't know where to start. You can start with their stuff recommended "Newcomer" with immersion materials that are around unique word counts of 1000, so they should be the most easy to transition into after doing some graded readers and studying 1000-3000 words. In particular I recommed starting with 秃秃大王 if you can read an 800 unique word Mandarin Companion graded reader, or a 1000-2000 unique word sinolingua graded reader. It is excellent for a beginner, it's not too long so you'll be able to finish it in a few days to a month (I think it took me 3 weeks of 30 minutes per day). After 秃秃大王, the other Newcomer recommendations should feel doable to you, and then from there just progressively pick slightly harder novels with slightly higher unique word counts when you're no longer running into as many new words as you wish to. Apps like Pleco (in free version you can copy-paste text into it's Clipboard Reader section, in paid you can import files) and Readibu (copy-paste in a website page to read the webnovel in the app, or find webnovels in Readibu's recommendations) let you read webnovels and click-translate words. Pleco has a ton of other features (and is a great free dictionary app so I suggest downloading it). Parallel translations of books app by Kursx is another good app for reading chinese novels, you'll need to import the novel files though. All reader apps have click-translate and text to speech tools like Moon+ Reader, Kindle, Kybook Reader, so if you have a favorite eReader app you can probably just open chinese epubs or txt files in your preferred app. I use Microsoft Edge for nothing else, but its Read Along tool has the most natural sounding text to speech I've ever heard, if you want to listen to text as you read. All web browsers have click-translate tools (sometimes you need Google Translate installed as an app on your phone, then just hold down any word/sentence you want a translation of when on a web browser and you'll have a Translate option). So honestly, any web browser and webnovel link and you'll be all set to read with click-translations and text to speech. If you like manhua, Bilibili Comics app has english and chinese versions of comics so you can read manhua in chinese, then read the english versions if you want to look up a particular word or check your understanding of the plot. If you like shows, youtube has a ton of free cdramas, often with chinese subtitles, so you can pause shows to see words and then go to a translation app of your choice (Pleco, DeepL, BaiduTranslate, Google Translate) and look up words. LingoTube is a free app where you can open youtube videos and get dual subtitles, audio line replay, click-translations of words.

[the-old-book-town]

I still find it useful to transcribe a short audio clip to get back into Japanese after a dry spell, even though my listening skills are already pretty good. But mostly, it helps if you struggle with reading like myself. Using a Japanese keyboard, the correct word will normally self-populate as long as you get the pronunciation right. 

For words you don’t know, type it enough times (+look up its meaning) and it will eventually stick in your brain. That’s basically how I learned how to read in Japanese, beyond the introductory stuff anyways.

I started doing it again because I want to make a few parallel texts for Genshin Impact (JP & ENG) for my own purposes. 

Genshin’s English localization is actually very good, if a little wordy at times. I rarely get the feeling of “ugh, this is definitely translated” because the grammar is so unnatural or something. The original is Chinese, of course, which makes the Japanese localization interesting in its own right. 

[the-old-book-town]

I was asked an interesting question over on mangahelpers, so I thought I’d post it here too.

I’m just writing because of something I noticed in your translation for Ansatsu Kyoushitsu chapter 50. I was wondering what was the difference between unmei and sadame. After doing some research I noticed both those words mean fate / destiny but they are written with different kanjis so is there a deeper meaning behind each of them in Japanese?

Good question! Both essentially mean the same thing (fate/destiny), but sadame is often used as a reading for unmei’s kanji and is always written in hiragana by itself. Basically, what it comes down to is that “sadame” is a heavier word. The best example I can come up with in English is “strange” and “odd” - the former is a heavier word, whereas the latter is lighter. I found an interesting explanation of their usage on a Japanese forum that makes a lot of sense: “Sadame”, which has the same meaning as “unmei”, is hardly ever used these days. Such an archaic word comes across as sentimental, in a way. That’s why it’s often used in song lyrics. Conversely, the on-yomi (Chinese reading) “unmei” has a calmer feeling to it. You’ll find expressions like “forging your own destiny” (運命を切り開く, unmei wo kirihiraku) and “fighting against fate” (抗いがたい運命, “aragaigatai unmei”) all over the place, but you’ll rarely see them using “sadame” instead of “unmei.” It’s because “sadame” carries with it a feeling of resignation over something that humans can’t change. There are times when an author uses an archaic word in an expression to make it seem “cool”, but often it’s the result of a mistake because they’re using a word they’re not familiar with. If you compare the expressions used in tanka and haiku to those in song lyrics and the like, I think you’ll be able to see the difference.

[the-old-book-town]

A language rant, because I recently read a comment on reddit which was trying to claim the word 子 as specifically used in the phrase あの子 is feminine. Their reasoning: because 子 is used in female names, therefore the child referred to in the phrase あの子 is implied to be female.

???

あの子 does not imply any gender, because 子 is gender neutral, the same as the word 人 used in the similarly constructed あの人. It is no more gendered than the term “that child” or “that person” in English. In the absence of 女, 男, 彼, or 彼女, you simply cannot determine gender from these terms. In fact, this is the reason there can be mistakes in translations, especially serializations, if the gender wasn’t specified in early chapters but is clarified later on. It’s fairly natural to be able to go through a conversation in Japanese, especially manga dialogue, without a single personal pronoun.

Only when 子 is used in names (Midoriko, Touko, etc.) does it become feminine. Although, if you want to be pedantic, historically this wasn’t the case (Nakatomi no Kamako was a man and founder of the Fujiwara clan), but as far as what is applicable to modern times, it is true.

I could pull a million examples from dozens of dramas and anime, as well as natural conversational Japanese, which refer to a young child of any gender as あの子. 

Blatant misinformation drives me crazy, especially because this isn’t obscure or complex, it’s quite basic if you know the language. 

/END RANT 

[the-old-book-town]

I purchased a seven volume bunko set of RG Veda (by CLAMP) from Japan years ago. The paper and ink quality is much better than the manga published in America, the only drawback being the font size can be tiny (the standard size is smaller than the volumes you find in the US).

I actually went and purchased this one because every translation I found, official or otherwise, was either stilted or off in some way due to the main character being nonbinary. The original Japanese handles this in a much more fluid manner, because it’s pretty easy to avoid using personal pronouns and Ashura is a child through much of the story, so using the third person isn’t strange for them.

RG Veda is definitely flawed, as one of CLAMP's first official works (it seems to have started before Tokyo Babylon but also ran concurrently with it for a time), but I love the aesthetics and the almost Greek tragedy levels of fate vs. free will. Like all their stories, plenty of characters from RG Veda crop up in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles.

Since I was flipping through the volumes again, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite lines towards the end of the story.

「そなたこの世で唯一の大切なものが禍をもたらすものであったならどうする？」

"If the most important person to you in the world was to bring about its destruction, what would you do?"

「守ります。手を差しのべて命の限り守ります」

"I would protect them. I would hold out my hand and protect them with my life."

Let's break them down!

そなた = an old timey way of saying "you" この世で = "in this world" 唯一 = yuitsu, "only" or "unique", "one and only" 大切なもの = "precious" or "important" (person - implied) 禍 = wazawai, more commonly written 災い or disaster, calamity. from what I can tell, 災 is more of a disaster in the sense of a natural disaster, 禍 implies more explicitly evil or misfortune type of disaster.

of course, if you know who this person is referring to, this makes sense.

もたらすもの = "one who brings about/forth" あったなら = aru, conjugated and with the -naru ending making it mean "if" どうする = "what would (you) do"

守ります = both subject and object are dropped as usual. 手を差しのべる = "to hold out/extend a hand" 命の限り = "the extent of (one's) life". in this context, 命 will be pronounced with the kun reading "inochi" for "life", there's no way of knowing extent through context that it's not meant to be read "mei" or "order/command". 限り is "limit" or "extent"

I went a little loose with the translation. Maybe it's more accurate to say "If the most precious person to you in the world was to bring about a calamity, what would you do?", but I'm not that fond of making things excessively stilted in translation.

Thinking about 唯一の大切なもの, it's probably more than just "important" and even more than "precious", which would be covered by 大切な alone. Adding this 唯一 "one and only" makes it heavier. And actually, if you know the context, this hits harder as well.

[the-old-book-town]

Since I always study Japanese in short spurts, by the time I return to it each time I forget all the kanji I had finally learned during my last study period...

The frustrating part is that I recognize the word...I definitely KNEW the word...but it’s been so long that I can’t recall it anymore. 

Most of the time I forget the pronunciation, but I’ll also forget the meaning depending on how much time has passed. Either way, it counts as forgetting the word for me, since I personally rate my ability to read based on my ability to know the meaning and say it out loud as well.

Here’s one example of how I piece together words I don’t know how to read right off the bat:

I encountered 守護者 recently but didn’t quite remember how to say it at first. 

守’s on reading is shu and 者 is sha. Meaning-wise, 守 is from 守る mamoru and 者 is mono or person/one. I tend to recognize kanji by their kun-readings, but int his case, 守 and 者 are common enough that I did know their on-readings off the top of my head.

護...I had forgotten, but then I remembered it has to do with protection. The whole word therefore means “one who protects”.

Then, I recalled 護 is the kanji in 加護 (kago), which is used to indicate divine protection (You’ll hear “may god bless you” as 神の御加護があらんこと).

Therefore, 守護者 is shugosha, and it means protector or guardian.

[the-old-book-town]

An underrated way of picking up some new vocabulary: karaoke style song lyrics! For me, a decent English translation is a must because I am awful at poetry and songs. While the words used in song lyrics aren’t always the most relevant or common words, I haven still learned some useful things from them.

It does also help you get used to the grammar structure and implied pronouns, because there are times you can go the entire song without a single personal pronoun. Most of the time the perspective is just implied. Also, there is absolutely no fluff, so you really have to know what the grammar is doing if you want to understand the lines completely.

[the-old-book-town]

Very useful kanji in the name today! 正路 can be read Shōji, Shōro, Seiji, Masaji, or Masamichi.

正 means correct, justice, or righteous. It can be read tada.shii, tada.su, masa, masa.ni, sei, or shō. It's also how you count tally marks in Japanese and Chinese.

I wasn't familiar with the middle one, how cool!

And 路 is read ji, michi, ro, or ru. It means path, route, road, distance. The left radical is 足 foot, and the right is 各 each/every/all.

[the-old-book-town]

There is such a noticeable difference for me in terms of playing a video game entirely in Japanese vs. playing with the localized text and Japanese voice over. It’s especially apparent when playing Fire Emblem.

I have played Echoes: Shadow of Valentia entirely in Japanese (my copy is the JP version, I have never played the localization). The main story is fully voiced, and I had little to no issue playing it and following the story. Even if there were words I didn’t know, it wasn’t difficult to figure out using context or the kanji would tell me the meaning even if I didn’t recognize the word itself.

I am currently playing Three Houses with the localized text/JP voices. While the language difficulty is probably not much higher than Echoes, I keep feeling that I don’t know a lot of words as I play. I’m not paying full attention to the language, so it’s hard to tell if I genuinely don’t know or if it only feels like I don’t because the English is acting as a crutch. Either way, it gives me the impression that I’d struggle a little if I had to play it entirely in Japanese - but is that accurate or just the impression it gives because of the way I over rely on the English text?

Other games I played entirely in Japanese include Final Fantasy Type-0 and of course the visual novels like AkaAka. And AkaAka, which is fully voiced, is 95-98% comprehendible for me. It’s more difficult to tell with Type-0, since I played that years ago when my language ability wasn’t as good. It also has parts that can’t be paused and areas with no voices that require you to read quickly.

I think I do better when I play entirely in Japanese. The same goes for Neo: The World Ends With You. I just adore the localization too much not to play it, but the JP voice over makes it clear that the JP version is quite different.

I’m still probably going to keep playing Three Houses in English text/JP voices because I want to actually finish it before Fire Emblem Engage comes out, but I should consider a playthrough entirely in Japanese at some point...maybe when I finally figure out the class system.