/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Sorry I never really posted in on of these djt threads, I can give a bit of advice, from personal experience. I don't think Anki really takes a person that far, it's maybe a good starting point, but as soon as you can even rea d a bit, I'd say to keep on doing that.

So I recommend anything that helps you read, like whether it's Satori Reader or Tangoristo (if it's still around?).

The Kanji is something I noticed is treated as a great behemoth and something to be conquered ab initio, but ironically, even though the Chinese characters became more abstract of course over a great deal of time, it's not really, again from my experience, what is a problem with learning Japanese, even though I'm recommending people to get into reading asap. The problem is the grammar. Kanji is actually quite concrete, even though we have now abstractions from its earlier forms (Bronze script, etc.).

I don't know exactly what would be the best path to get someone to start really benefitting and being able to utilize something like Satori Reader and the like (Tangoristo is free, I get the impression it might not still be around anymore... maybe Manabi reader?) I went at it, in a real sorta chaotic way, or that is to say, I never used textbooks. Like people have recommended doing Genki and then going to Tobira.

Instead I just learned vocab here and there, sometimes Anki, sometimes not, sometimes from songs. Grammer from here and there. All I know for certain is, once you get to the level, and it's not even a intermediate level, where you can start reading a bunch of basic stuff, that's what your main focus is on.

Kanji will still be an issue. If RTK works for you then great, if it doesn't there's other ways, whatever works. I think a general thing though, and there's truth to it, is writing things out does help, because of muscle memory, and there is an art to drawing Kanji.

Summarize: read Japanese. Read it a lot.

Oh, if you got a jp gf, that means you're doing pretty well in life, use her.