I'm currently a little worried about my Anki study routine over the holidays. I do 10+ new cards per day (the + is for days where I'm extra motivated and want to do a few more new words), which currently gives me about 80-90 cards due for review per day. My routine on work days usually consists of two 15-20 minute sessions per day, which I complete during commute, while riding the bus/subway, and that usually works out perfectly. I've been doing it like this consistently for over 3 months with only a few missed days.

But I notice on home office days and even more so during the weekends, that I have a hard time keeping up that study routine... because I don't commute to work, so it feels like I have to do extra work during these days. This sometimes results in me realizing that I still have to do my Anki study very late in the day. I have a daily task for this set in my ToDo-list app, which I am required to review at the end of the day and then sometime I'll only do my reviews at like 11 pm and then my performance is significantly worse than usually.

With the holidays coming up and me having two whole weeks off of work, I'm a bit worried that I won't be able to keep up my study routine and I was wondering if y'all have some valuable tipps to share on how to keep up the study routine during a longer time off, which upsets one's daily routine.

One of my Japanese learning goals is to be able to watch live variety TV shows, like this: https://youtu.be/zaR65NSe_so?si=xn4FN1qbSzMtYiGc

I’m around at least N3 level, I can understand “comprehensible input” content just fine. But then a show like that comes on and it might as well be in Mongolian because it’s like I can’t catch a single word.

I’m hoping some more advanced students have some specific study techniques or practice methods to help me train to understand this type of content? I have limited time to study so I’m hoping there is something more focused out there beyond “just watch a lot”.

いつも通りありがとうございます

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I was watching a show recently, mining for words and during the show they used the word 大家 but not with the reading or meaning that I was familiar with.

According to Jisho there are 3 ways to read this word, all with different meanings attached.

たいか meaning a master, expert, authority, etc.

おおや meaning a landlord or landlady

たいけ meaning rich family or distinguished family.

I always have my cards set up so it only shows me the word by itself, because having an example sentence on the front feels like a crutch. Like "Oh this sentence starts with 僕はこの… so I know it's this word." Instead of learning the kanji associated with the word, I just learn the example sentence associated with the word. But in this sort of scenario I might need to break my rule just so I can have a separation between these three readings and meanings.

Anyone have any leads on where to find fanfiction in Japanese?

I'm not into reading manga, but as a teen reading fanfiction really improved my English, so I wish I could level up my Japanese reading with fanfiction as well.

I think AO3 has some Japanese stories, but you never know if it was written by a native speaker or maybe an advanced learner for practice. Basically a writer who only speaks Japanese would be unlikely to publish on a primarily English-language website...

Are there any Japanese youtubers who take reddit threads, translate them into Japanese and read them?

I really would like to find channels like this, this and this

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I'm curious to see how much vocab each of us currently knows compares to how much we comprehend. For this, I mean in terms of at least reading, and listening if you can do that as well. I figure this is more productive than another "How many do I need to know to do X" and getting a lot of ESID, "it depends" type answers. Here, we're just sharing our current experiences.

Also, in this case, I count not only single words, but also different meanings of a word (like 気 and かけるhave a million each), as well as short "phrases" that function more more less as words (like 気に入る) as their own separate "vocab" since it was something I didn't know that wasn't kanji or grammar.

Obviously, grammar is also a factor for comprehension, as is total immersion time, but the point of this is primarily to compare a single variable first, namely, passive vocab.

Vocab level: In my case, in Anki my vocab deck is currently just over 11k words.

Comprehension level: I can follow easier manga like Pokémon Adventures, though I still miss details here and there and there are often several words per page that I don't know. I was surprisingly better at following Pokémon Origins w/subs and pausing than I was at reading Pokémon Adventures when it came to vocab. Naturally, content that I've mined already gives me few problems.

Bonus - Grammar: I suspect that my grammar comprehension is "ahead" of my vocab level because 19/20 I don't know something, it's vocab, not grammar.

Bonus - Kanji: Occasionally a new kanji (currently around 1900) will also be to blame. I can occasionally intuit the meaning of unknown words just well enough for it to not block sentence comprehension altogether thanks to kanji and context in the sentence.

Bonus - Comparative comprehension: At this point it feels like for Japanese I need at least double the vocab that I needed for Spanish to be at the same level of comprehension. By 11k Spanish, I was weeeell into comfortably watching shows and listening to native podcasts like The Wild Project (despite the name it is Spanish) without issue. Where I'm currently at feels like more or less 4-5k Spanish vocab felt like in terms of coming across words I don't know.

Are there any channels/videos/websites where they go through the lyrics of songs in Japanese and dissect the grammar and vocabulary used?

One of the reasons I've always wanted to learn Japanese is to be able to understand some of my all time favorite songs. I plan to try and translate some of them during the christmas holidays as a fun activity. I've recently wondered if someone has done the same already!

I'm not looking for specific songs, any song is welcome!

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Hey everyone, hope you are doing well!

I work with native Japanese people, and have decided to start the process of learning Japanese in order to have light hearted conversations with them. Like how was your weekend or how is your family doing? We have a translator on staff for actual work related discussions, but know that eventually learning to speak with them will help there too.

My problem is that I grew up with a speech impediment. I could not say my th's, ch's, r's, s's.... basically a lot of stuff. I had years of speech therapy in elementary school to correct them, but there are still some words that I can't say. Like Massachusetts or cinnamon. This therapy included directed learning by a teacher on how to properly make the sounds and say the words until muscle memory kicked in. Along with gold stars and prizes from the prize chest when I got enough stars lol.

I assume that I will have the same problems when I start the daunting task of learning to speak Japanese. My question: is there a good resource / tools / hints or tips that will help me in this area? I looked over the starter page and the wiki, but didn't see anything that calls that out specifically. Then again I have been told that I must be blind for missing obvious stuff before. So feel free to call me out on that if I missed it.

Any help you can provide is appreciated!

what have you been reading lately? ive read a few novels in japanese but its hard for me to find something thats interesting. i really liked some of 三秋縋 books, and i also enjoyed 人間失格 although it was hard, but besides those i havent read much.

I know this is a bit of a weird question, but basically I’m an ex-software engineer wanting to get back into things and I’m kind of lost for ideas I can implement to learn how to program again.

I’m pretty satisfied with my life in the sense that I don’t feel like an app or website would it improve it much (I’ve even been really happy with my Japanese learning system) so I’m curious to hear ideas from the community to see how I can help contribute to it.

I'm looking for a resource that can check my Japanese. When I study I am always making my own sentences. To check if it's written properly I've been using Google translate, which as I'm sure you know isn't great in the first place. Is there a better thing I can use to more accurately check my sentences?

I have some native friends I could check with, but I don't want to be sending them constant messages asking them to check my stuff. In addition, everyone has their own way of speaking. My sentence might be actually correct for one person, but some people would change it up to the way they speak.

Happy Monday!

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Edit: I have passed N3, yet the textbooks that I have used at university were for N2-1, so I am N3.5 aiming towards N2 (I should've passed a few years ago by now).

I am currently living in Japan at N3/2 level. I studied at university but found that the course required us to learn too fast and so I struggled to remember what I learned across 4 years of my course.

My course was structured strangely with a year abroad in Japan where I learnt things in a different order / method. This makes my knowledge of Japanese strange where some N1 concepts I understand while some things from N4/3 I struggle to remember or understand. The same goes for my kanji and grammar. I understand some really difficult kanji, yet struggle to remember even the most basic ones.

Since graduating I've reset my Japanese learning and started near from N4 to recap everything until I hit N2 by myself in my own time.

Now that I can use the language more and I am in Japan, I am trying to learn words that are useful for daily life and not strange words that are usually learnt in textbooks in Genki or Tobira.

To you, what is the most important Japanese that you've learnt?

I’ve gotten to the point where I can read and comprehend so much more than I ever could before so I’ve been pushing myself to read more material I used to ignore because it was too difficult. It’s still hard but I’m able to actually make it through which still feels rewarding. I enjoy reading so much in English I really want to do the same for Japanese but it’s so draining… I wouldn’t be frustrated if it didn’t make me feel so tired afterwards. I wanna understand everything so bad but looking up even just one word halfway through every 2-4 sentences is frustrating. Not to mention just comprehending the grammar adds to the mental exertion.

When will I be able to enjoy reading it can be so hard to even with my favorite genres/subjects. 😞

If you have any advice I would appreciate it greatly 💗

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I just realized that there are verbs which can be both, transitive and intransitive, depending on context. This might be obvious for most of you but it confused me a lot since, for me at least obvious sounding intransitive verbs like 通りかかる or 離れる would apparently work with the をparticle. (例: 船を離れろ！家のそばを通りかかった。) Just a heads up for people like me who maybe got confused yet again by transitive/intransitive verbs.

I've been studying Japanese for a few years now, progress is slow but steady. Main thing is I still enjoy it as a hobby. But I can't shake the feeling my Anki setup is terrible, and possibly been wasting my time for a long time.

I have 2 decks. One for vocabulary, where I add a card whenever I see a word I've never seen and want to learn. I have this set to show me 5 new cards a day (I'm a Dad with a busy job I think this is what I can handle).

The other deck is for verbs. Where I'm given a word, a verb, and the other side is a few different conjugations. Not sure how valuable this deck is for actually remembering/using verbs, but my on-the-fly conjugation skills have massively improved.

I feel like I don't actually remember anything from anki. It just doesn't feel useful. There are some that stick, but I feel that once I take a word or verb out of context, it becomes meaningless. I may remember the word, but it just sits in isolation in my brain, only to be used again when it next pops up in anki - where I'll probably get it wrong again anyway.

I see people using 5k/10k decks etc, and it's popularity has me intrigued. How does this work, learning so many words out of context? Maybe my issue is I'm mining the 'wrong' words that aren't common etc.

Does anyone have any article links to explain how best to use anki and what decks to use? Is there a better way to mine words? If you're using a 5k deck for example, what do you do with words that pop up in the wild? What are the best decks?

Sorry my thoughts aren't clear. I just know it's not working, but don't know why. Thanks for your help :)

Yesterday marks 2 months of learning Japanese, and I thought I'd check my progress by taking a mock N5 exam. I passed! It was definitely not easy, and only got 110/180 so still have a ways to go before I understand everything on there easily, but it feels like a great milestone.

Learning Japanese is a LOT of work and I'm pleased at how much progress I've made in such a short amount of time!

This thread is for all simple questions, beginner questions, and comments that don't need their own post.

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Seven Day Archive of previous threads. Consider browsing the previous day or two for unanswered questions.