RevenantKioku
PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS oh god i am drowning in them
These threads come in bunches, but I figured I'd just throw all this info out in one nice big post that will be updated.
Remembering The Kanji
Look below for important comments on Heisig's books.
My kanji writing is ridiculous after finishing the first book. I can do 2000+ kanji now. Can I read them all? No, but I can write those 2000 damn fine and have actually corrected Japanese people lately. Lawl.
This is the most important thing you can do to improve your Japanese. Trust me on this one. Get this book.
All Japanese All The Time
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com
Dude didn't live in Japan and got fluent in 18 months. I can't vouch for the truth of that or his sanity, but the basic underlying message is correct. You won't get better at Japanese by not doing things in Japanese. You also don't need classes or textbooks. See bottom of this post for more explanation of how I use this ideology.
Anki
http://ichi2.net/anki/download/index.html
A great SRS (Spaced Repetition Study) program. I use it daily to do my kanji repetitions and sentence repetitions.
Anki doesn't do anything itself, you have to make the decks. It does come with some examples, like the Heisig. But using the Heisig deck implies you're using Heisig's method. (Remembering the Kanji.)
DON'T JUST OPEN UP THE HEISIG DECK AND TRY TO STUDY.
HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE BOOK'S FIRST FEW CHAPTERS.
Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/
Excellent grammar explanation site. Approaches from a "don't think about Japanese sentences as English equivalents" mindset and really cleared up a lot of fog for me.
Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar
Both give clear explanations with multiple example sentences and show you a good amount of "You'd think you can do this, but you'd be wrong." examples as well.
Other Resources
Podcasts
Yomiuri Online Podcast: http://podcast.yomiuri.co.jp/
Online Dictionaries
Yahoo's Japanese-Japanese Dictionary http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/
Jim Breen's WWWJDIC http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html
Dictionary Software
JEDict (OS X only) http://www.jedict.com/
Kanji Sono Mama Rakubiki Jiten
So good, I bought another DS.
Amazon
Play-Asia
My Daily Schedule
I work and am busy as fuck. I also live in Japan, but that won't teach me everything.
1) Kanji reviews.
I write out the kanji entirely. Go from Heisig Keyword to kanji. Do not bother going the other way. The keyword really isn't as important as you might think. You'll realize this later.
Example:
Keyword is tempt. So I have to think of my story for this as I'm not really fast on this word yet. Okay. I imagine a really good looking prostitute tempting me with the most luscious mouth I've ever seen to give me head. Oh yeah, I generally use fucked up stories. But that's just me. I physically write out the kanji.
And I got it right! On the left is the mouth. On the right is "prostitute." Not one of Heisig's words, but he recommends you make things that work for you. The right part shows up often enough so I did this. The top is "license" and the bottom is walking legs. Thinking of countries where prostitution is legal, I think of licensed street walkers. And there you go. I remember the Kanji.
If I forgot it it gets a 0. This resets all progress on learning the character and you're back at the start. If I made a mistake, it gets a 1 and I see it again in 10 minutes. (Later on for ones you've been learning for a while the delay is a bit longer.) If I got it after a bit of thinking I'd give it a 2 and see it again in 7 to 12 hours. A 3 if I only struggled a little and I'd see it in 4 to 6 days. A 4 is for when I get the sentence instantly and I wouldn't see it again for 9 to 11 days. I got it instantly this time so a 4 it is.
The important thing is that these times scale (except for 0) based on how many times you have correctly done the kanji. This is the "spaced repetition" part. And it keeps it down so now I only really have maybe 60 kanji to do a day.
2) Sentence reviews
Sentence reviewing is kinda wonky at this point. Basically for me, I write out 1/3 of the sentences I'm reviewing. I read it out loud. If I can't do this, I fail the review.
Example:
Here is Anki showing me a sentence.
I couldn't remember the reading of 丁寧, but everything else was cool.
So, I graded this a 1. This means I made a mistake, and the sentence will be shown to me again in 10 minutes. I'm much more lenient on sentences than I am on Kanji. You don't want to have a 100% "THIS IS THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION." but only a basic idea of what it means. The goal is to eventually go to just Japanese only. That means, instead of the English "translation" there would be an explanation in Japanese that you already understand.
3) Daily things
I turn the TV on as soon as I get home and leave it on while cooking dinner. Don't live in Japan? Yomiuri News has a podcast. Monday through Friday. It's about fifteen to twenty minutes. Just listen to it.
I play all my games in Japanese now. I write down the occasional word that I don't know. I later look it up in a dictionary and get example sentences that are used in my sentence reviewing.
More on Sentences based Stuying
You can read a lot at the AJATT site but let me paraphrase.
The idea is this. What better way to learn proper Japanese than exposure to proper Japanese? So that's why you watch a lot of Japanese TV and movies(You know how to find it), listen to Japanese music, read Japanese books and manga and play games in Japanese. This way it is interesting, is material you like and you don't get bored.
So, studying off of sentences works like this.
To start, find a good J-E dictionary. I use the one built into OS X. Grab a word you found in something and look it up. Find example sentences. Put those into your SRS. The "question" will be the sentence with kanji and all. The "answer" is the reading and the example sentence in English. But when reiewing don't worry too much about remembering the exact English "meaning". Remember that it is a basic idea of what the Japanese means.
Later on, you copy sentences straight from movies/games/books. But since you don't have a English equivalent sentence, you want to explain it in Japanese. So you look up the words in a Japanese/Japanese dictionary. You get a little circular at times looking up definitions to definitions. But then it all helps to give you a better grasp.
OH NOES! HEISIG DOESN'T TEACH ME READINGS! THEREFORE I WILL SAY THIS IS HORSESHIT!
Wrong.
Look, to get a grasp on the kanji you need to read and write them. Right? Okay. Now how did the Japanese kids learn them? Rote memorization and daily exposure to Japanese. How old are you? How much time do you have to dedicate to writing out kanji? That's what I thought. Pick up Heisig's book or even the sample PDF. READ THE INTRODUCTION. Don't just jump into it.
The idea for this book is to use the imagination and the convenience that most kanji are made up from other kanji or other similar groupings of strokes to work with keywords to build up "stories" for remembering them.
The process works like this in your head.
Keyword -> Remember a visual story -> Remember the parts of the kanji -> Remember how to write the kanji.
Over time and studying with an SRS such as Anki, your brain gets down to Keyword -> Kanji. They become intimate to you and you know the Kanji and how to write it.
So what does this gain you? You can't read, right?
No, but you already have down a significant portion of 2042 kanji. You can write them. And after this everything becomes in-context learning. I just looked at a container of juice I have. 野菜 is on it. Now let's pretend I don't know what it means. But I look it up using Rakubiki Jiten. 野菜 is pronounced やさい. Oh hey, I know that word already. It means vegetables! And thanks to Heisig I know how to write those kanji too. All I needed was a use for them. And now if I need to study what this word means I don't need to bother learning how to write these characters I know them already. All I had to learn was how to read them together. And since in Japanese a lot of the readings depend on what's placed with what instead of bothering studying and guessing, learn right the first time and then you'll be able to guess with better accuracy as time goes on.
I will continue to update this main post with other materials I discover. Questions are welcomed. Veterans, resources you use, please.
Remembering The Kanji
Look below for important comments on Heisig's books.
My kanji writing is ridiculous after finishing the first book. I can do 2000+ kanji now. Can I read them all? No, but I can write those 2000 damn fine and have actually corrected Japanese people lately. Lawl.
This is the most important thing you can do to improve your Japanese. Trust me on this one. Get this book.
All Japanese All The Time
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com
Dude didn't live in Japan and got fluent in 18 months. I can't vouch for the truth of that or his sanity, but the basic underlying message is correct. You won't get better at Japanese by not doing things in Japanese. You also don't need classes or textbooks. See bottom of this post for more explanation of how I use this ideology.
Anki
http://ichi2.net/anki/download/index.html
A great SRS (Spaced Repetition Study) program. I use it daily to do my kanji repetitions and sentence repetitions.
Anki doesn't do anything itself, you have to make the decks. It does come with some examples, like the Heisig. But using the Heisig deck implies you're using Heisig's method. (Remembering the Kanji.)
DON'T JUST OPEN UP THE HEISIG DECK AND TRY TO STUDY.
HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE BOOK'S FIRST FEW CHAPTERS.
Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/
Excellent grammar explanation site. Approaches from a "don't think about Japanese sentences as English equivalents" mindset and really cleared up a lot of fog for me.
Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar
Both give clear explanations with multiple example sentences and show you a good amount of "You'd think you can do this, but you'd be wrong." examples as well.
Other Resources
Podcasts
Yomiuri Online Podcast: http://podcast.yomiuri.co.jp/
Online Dictionaries
Yahoo's Japanese-Japanese Dictionary http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/
Jim Breen's WWWJDIC http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html
Dictionary Software
JEDict (OS X only) http://www.jedict.com/
Kanji Sono Mama Rakubiki Jiten
So good, I bought another DS.
Amazon
Play-Asia
My Daily Schedule
I work and am busy as fuck. I also live in Japan, but that won't teach me everything.
1) Kanji reviews.
I write out the kanji entirely. Go from Heisig Keyword to kanji. Do not bother going the other way. The keyword really isn't as important as you might think. You'll realize this later.
Example:
Keyword is tempt. So I have to think of my story for this as I'm not really fast on this word yet. Okay. I imagine a really good looking prostitute tempting me with the most luscious mouth I've ever seen to give me head. Oh yeah, I generally use fucked up stories. But that's just me. I physically write out the kanji.
And I got it right! On the left is the mouth. On the right is "prostitute." Not one of Heisig's words, but he recommends you make things that work for you. The right part shows up often enough so I did this. The top is "license" and the bottom is walking legs. Thinking of countries where prostitution is legal, I think of licensed street walkers. And there you go. I remember the Kanji.
If I forgot it it gets a 0. This resets all progress on learning the character and you're back at the start. If I made a mistake, it gets a 1 and I see it again in 10 minutes. (Later on for ones you've been learning for a while the delay is a bit longer.) If I got it after a bit of thinking I'd give it a 2 and see it again in 7 to 12 hours. A 3 if I only struggled a little and I'd see it in 4 to 6 days. A 4 is for when I get the sentence instantly and I wouldn't see it again for 9 to 11 days. I got it instantly this time so a 4 it is.
The important thing is that these times scale (except for 0) based on how many times you have correctly done the kanji. This is the "spaced repetition" part. And it keeps it down so now I only really have maybe 60 kanji to do a day.
2) Sentence reviews
Sentence reviewing is kinda wonky at this point. Basically for me, I write out 1/3 of the sentences I'm reviewing. I read it out loud. If I can't do this, I fail the review.
Example:
Here is Anki showing me a sentence.
I couldn't remember the reading of 丁寧, but everything else was cool.
So, I graded this a 1. This means I made a mistake, and the sentence will be shown to me again in 10 minutes. I'm much more lenient on sentences than I am on Kanji. You don't want to have a 100% "THIS IS THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION." but only a basic idea of what it means. The goal is to eventually go to just Japanese only. That means, instead of the English "translation" there would be an explanation in Japanese that you already understand.
3) Daily things
I turn the TV on as soon as I get home and leave it on while cooking dinner. Don't live in Japan? Yomiuri News has a podcast. Monday through Friday. It's about fifteen to twenty minutes. Just listen to it.
I play all my games in Japanese now. I write down the occasional word that I don't know. I later look it up in a dictionary and get example sentences that are used in my sentence reviewing.
More on Sentences based Stuying
You can read a lot at the AJATT site but let me paraphrase.
The idea is this. What better way to learn proper Japanese than exposure to proper Japanese? So that's why you watch a lot of Japanese TV and movies(You know how to find it), listen to Japanese music, read Japanese books and manga and play games in Japanese. This way it is interesting, is material you like and you don't get bored.
So, studying off of sentences works like this.
To start, find a good J-E dictionary. I use the one built into OS X. Grab a word you found in something and look it up. Find example sentences. Put those into your SRS. The "question" will be the sentence with kanji and all. The "answer" is the reading and the example sentence in English. But when reiewing don't worry too much about remembering the exact English "meaning". Remember that it is a basic idea of what the Japanese means.
Later on, you copy sentences straight from movies/games/books. But since you don't have a English equivalent sentence, you want to explain it in Japanese. So you look up the words in a Japanese/Japanese dictionary. You get a little circular at times looking up definitions to definitions. But then it all helps to give you a better grasp.
OH NOES! HEISIG DOESN'T TEACH ME READINGS! THEREFORE I WILL SAY THIS IS HORSESHIT!
Wrong.
Look, to get a grasp on the kanji you need to read and write them. Right? Okay. Now how did the Japanese kids learn them? Rote memorization and daily exposure to Japanese. How old are you? How much time do you have to dedicate to writing out kanji? That's what I thought. Pick up Heisig's book or even the sample PDF. READ THE INTRODUCTION. Don't just jump into it.
The idea for this book is to use the imagination and the convenience that most kanji are made up from other kanji or other similar groupings of strokes to work with keywords to build up "stories" for remembering them.
The process works like this in your head.
Keyword -> Remember a visual story -> Remember the parts of the kanji -> Remember how to write the kanji.
Over time and studying with an SRS such as Anki, your brain gets down to Keyword -> Kanji. They become intimate to you and you know the Kanji and how to write it.
So what does this gain you? You can't read, right?
No, but you already have down a significant portion of 2042 kanji. You can write them. And after this everything becomes in-context learning. I just looked at a container of juice I have. 野菜 is on it. Now let's pretend I don't know what it means. But I look it up using Rakubiki Jiten. 野菜 is pronounced やさい. Oh hey, I know that word already. It means vegetables! And thanks to Heisig I know how to write those kanji too. All I needed was a use for them. And now if I need to study what this word means I don't need to bother learning how to write these characters I know them already. All I had to learn was how to read them together. And since in Japanese a lot of the readings depend on what's placed with what instead of bothering studying and guessing, learn right the first time and then you'll be able to guess with better accuracy as time goes on.
I will continue to update this main post with other materials I discover. Questions are welcomed. Veterans, resources you use, please.
