What are /r/LearnJapanese's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Pretty funny one of the book is:

今すぐ話せるトルコ語　入門編

Speak Turkish Right Away Beginner's Edition

EDIT: Turkey -> Turkish

EDIT: Are you kidding me????? This useless zero effort comment got one of my highest upvotes ever in this sub.

EDIT: This book is still current, selling for 2750 yen - https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4890852530/

I have no idea if it’s an efficient method or not but I use The Kodansha kanji learner’s course. I do 16 new kanji a day and I use the anki deck for the book to keep them in my memory. Whenever I flip a card, no matter the side, I write it down. Helps me remember better. I only try to remember the main On reading for each kanji and even then I don’t force it. If I can’t memorize it I don’t try that much harder. For the readings I just read a lot of texts and when I come across a word that uses a kanji I know I don’t know the reading of, that’s how I learn the readings. Eventually you become magically able to determine the reading for words even with kanji that have a lot of different pronunciations.

I asked a Japanese person to take a look, and this is almost certainly more advanced than you need to worry about for now, but one interesting thing they said was, when they read handwritten Japanese, they expect that, if there's any variation in spacings, at least the space within logical groupings should be tighter.

So for example, in your third to last sentence, 私は and 一年半ぐらい are logical groupings which should have tighter spacing within them than the spaces between them. In other words, they expected the は to be closer to the 私 but said the spacing between は and 一 looked fine to them.

Of course, consistent grid spacing is also fine, which can be a way to avoid worrying about this for now :)

Side note: They mentioned they were surprised to see 始めまして (the expected kanji is 初めまして). When they did a search, they found out that this seems to be a common choice that foreigners seem to use, and in fact the dictionary says both are OK! But in practice, native speakers use the latter, and even jisho.org only shows one choice.

初 has more of an emphasis on "This is the first time"

始 has more of a feeling like, "Something is starting up".

One concrete case for the latter is used commonly in noodle shops - when summer arrives and it's once again the season for cold noodles, you might find a sign that says「冷やし中華始めました」, or, "We've started serving Hiyashi Chuuka noodles"

Hiragana is also fine: はじめまして

There's certainly no lack of interest in Japanese on Duolingo, nor do I believe that there is any lack of contributors. After all, English for Japanese speakers is already in beta.

The reason it hasn't been added probably has more to do with the writing system(s). Duolingo is a forced-repetition engine, and adapted for teaching isolating languages with compact alphabets. Teaching Japanese to English speakers requires a different approach to be effective (although the system could still be used for vocabulary practice for people who already have some familiarity with the language).

On top of that, there are some technological issues that's keeping Duolingo from introducing Japanese for English speakers; see Kippis' response to this thread.

Nakama is also the name of a Japanese language textbook. Here's the Amazon.com listing for book 1, second edition.

I don't recommend it. It delays katakana instruction and explains verbs very confusingly.

You guys should check out this app then. It serves as a very good supplement it also provides practice JLPT tests. It's a pity it's unavailable on PC.

If you are a beginner like me trying to learn the Kanji, I highly recommend Kanji Study. It's the best app for learning Kanji imo. But this app won't be useful to intermediate learners who already learned the 2000+ Kanji characters and are focusing more on the grammar part.

That is the kind of paper we used for practicing handwriting in Kindergarten.

Twitter. Japanese is the 2nd highest language spoken on the medium. A lot of famous Japanese academics, politicians, writers, and celebrities are pretty active on the medium. It's incredibly fun for me to watch Hideo Kojima geek out on Literature and film through it. http://mashable.com/2013/12/17/twitter-popular-languages/

Sure! The Genki I vocab course is here, and the grammar course is here. If you click on the link to the profile of the person who made the course, they have equivalent courses for Genki II.

There's actually a ton of user made content on memrise, it's the real meat of the site. Unfortunately if you're using the app instead of the website, you can't actually find any of the courses. You can work on them once you've added them from the website, but if there's a way to add them from within the android app, I haven't found it.

Thought I'd comment and mention an app called kanji study. It is hands down the best app for leaning kanji. It has look up, you can break them down by exam board (JLPT etc...,) Proficiency level, it has flashcards, quizzes. Absolutely everything. Honestly everyone on this sub Reddit should check it out. It's free too.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy

Some fonts are "wrong" in that they actually show the Chinese characters. Yes, kanji are derived from Chinese characters, but some have simply changed over time so that they look a bit different in Japanese. 置く is probably the most common example of that happening, and the best way to ensure that you're getting the right non-Chinese one is by double checking what it looks like in the Denshi Jisho. The big kanji on the left already uses the correct font.

Honestly, I can understand why the Chinese font is used for Japanese (not many fonts out there: creating a new font means creating thousands of characters), but it's not a good thing for the Kanji that do differ. I recommend you set your entire phone to Japanese; it should actually get rid of most of the wrongly displayed ones (or at least it does for me).

Go with fonts that are specifically made for Japanese. Like Hiragino, Meiryo, Kochi Mincho/Gothic, IPA, Mona, Takao, YOzfont...

It's silly that problems like these still exist though. :(

You can just put the terms into an image search to see the difference.

電話 (older style hook phone)

携帯 (cell phones)

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=learn%20hiragana&hl=en_US

That's a google play search for "Hiragana," because let's be honest, if you want to learn Kanji, this game probably won't help. Bouncing the characters around the screen is not somehow more conducive to learning than, say, duolingo.

EDIT: I like this app for kanji: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy&hl=en_US

I always recommend this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy&hl=en

Very impressive design, there's writing practice, stroke order, flashcard system, quiz, vocabulary, sentences... Definitely worth a try.

one reason is that you start connecting characters to each other by the kanji "parts" that they're made out of, and this helps with recognition and also memorization

for example, you may notice the temple 寺＝てら part in a bunch of kanji, like 待つ、持つ、時、 etc. so just by understanding that those strokes together have a meaning and if you see them together, they're definitely together in that same pattern, you can easily remember the others.

however, even that one, 寺, is actually made of 土 and 寸, if you look closely. and if you look for it, you'll see those all over the place, too.

however, if you drew 寺 in some weird order where 土 and 寸 were mixed in with each other, then the fact that they're actually separate wouldn't come out, and you might not notice those patterns in other kanji.

noticing the patterns is especially important when kanji get mega complicated, like 厭 or 鬱. trying to remember every single stroke in those is a nightmare. but if you recognize the constituent parts, then they're easy to remember, because they're not "50 complicated strokes", but rather "4 smaller pictures in a large picture". that's much easier to remember.

stroke order makes this clearer, and practicing it reinforces this knowledge.

anyways, if you're interested in learning the kanji parts and what they mean, a good book is:

https://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268/

http://steven-kraft.com/projects/japanese/

This link is all you need. Seriously. Beyond a lifesaver. Drill it into your brain by power of sheer rote force.

That said, if you use memrise, this course covers some of the slightly more advanced common conjugations (and one or two uncommon ones): https://www.memrise.com/course/1593496/conjugation-mastery/

(Incidentally, the te-form is fairly easy to remember once you know the simple past form. Just change the た or だ into て or で. Example: 食べた becomes 食べて and 読んだ becomes 読んで, etc.)

Nice, but I still prefer the application Sync for NHK Easy News by far.

• it is completely free. Mondo has some kind of ads
• You can listen to every article with its own player which is simply perfect.
• it helps you a lot learning how to read kanji (the most difficult part of the language for me). Basically you can read your article with furigana and click on a word if you feel like you know how to read it. Then for that word furigana doesn't appear anymore.

P.s. The guy who made it is in our community

Here are a couple:

Japanese Mind

The Book of Yokai

A member of Duolingo actually addressed this issue in the first comment of this post about the English for Japanese learners course:

> The biggest problem, I think, is that Japanese does not use spaces to divide words, and it's extremely difficult for making the computer recognize individual words automatically. We're kind of cheating in this course, by treating every single hiragana, katakana or kanji as an independent word, and by registering blocks of letters as idiomatic phrases when we want to add popup hints. This has to be fixed when we're creating a Japanese course, which is going to take a while.

> There are other problems, which we're actually suffering from right now. At least half of the English sentences in Duolingo have more than a thousand possible Japanese translations, many of which exceed 3,000 - and the Duolingo system doesn't allow us to have more than that number of possible answers. In order to get around this, they've adopted a system that converts kanji into hiragana, and also an auto-converter for common synonyms, but it often doesn't go well.

> However I'd like to stress that Duolingo is working seriously for the realization of a Japanese course.

I'm using Kanji Study which I imagine everyone here knows about. I've learnt about 500 (early days) but haven't used a sheet of paper (specifically for memorising 漢字)

There are a lot of bilingual readers available as well on Amazon.

Japanese Stories for Language Learners: Bilingual Stories in Japanese and English (MP3 Audio disc included) https://www.amazon.com/dp/4805314680/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_YhEyCbZJE56CT

That are cheap and have vocab etc. I have this one and it's good for basic reading comprehension. Manga can only take you so far before you plateau.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.inputmethod.japanese

Google Japanese keyboard, it just works, has suggestions from trending words, has multiple layouts (regular, flick).

Otherwise Swiftkey added support for Japanese language some time ago, can be a decent all in one solution, but afaik it doesn't have different layouts

I think I found it and thought it would be useful here... wow this was a tough one. But the PDF (20mb) is in a less (apologies) "child-friendly" format but has the same content. http://www.koto8.net/nihongo_learn.pdf

Img1: S-01; to suck; pdf page 52
Img2: K-01; to curve; pdf page 83
Img3: N-03; gluey; pdf page 10
Img4: T-05; to adhere; pdf page 75

It is from this book Learn Japanese From Etymology: Approach From Sound Symbolism by Watanabe Masamichi https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-Japanese-Etymology-Approach-Symbolism-ebook/dp/B00WWYP1VA

This book is a compilation of Japanese-specific vocabulary. This book focuses only on pure Japanese vocabulary excluding Chinese vocabulary which is shown by the kanji. This book covers approximately 1,800 Japanese words in total, which 860 of them are explained with illustrations. It covers almost all Japanese words. The Book is classifying Japanese in the unique method. The consistent idea throughout the book is “there is a relationship between vocal sounds and meanings in the Japanese language”. The principle of Japanese word generation is shown. The former linguistic theory of origin was a hypothesis. At this book, vocabulary is classified on the basis of Japanese origin theory. It is useful actually, so the value of this theory will be demonstrated.

Looks like the paper I used when I was a kid learning how to write. Try this

If you have android you'll love this.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.kelbi.nhkeasysync

It's made by one of our own and has all the nice features one needs in order to have NHK news become a study tool.

Nice find! As for issue 50, just do a search for "repair pdf file", there's loads of online sites that can fix it for you. I went with ilovepdf.com. Fixed it but the cover was the last page. Easy to move to the front with a pdf utility.

it takes time. it's one of the most rote aspects of learning japanese. i'd have two general comments:

1. don't memorize kanji, memorize words, the kanji will come along for the ride
2. memorize more than just the kanji, also learn the radicals and the stroke orders

those seem contradictory but they're not. by learning the radicals (the repetitive blobs of stuff that are reused in many kanji) you can get a sense for the meaning of it, and start recognizing common patterns. for example 時 and 待つ and 持つ and 侍 all have 寺 in them. (technically this is a bad example, as that's officially two radicals, 土 and 寸, but hopefully you'll see what i mean visually)

stroke order fits into this because as you learn the stroke order for a radical, they're generally the same across kanji, so you end up learning things that cross characters. also, writing them is a kinesthetic form of practice that engages different neurons. the more senses you use, the better.

however, to the first point, rather than trying to memorize that 人 can be pronounced three ways, just teach yourself 人ごみ＝ひとごみ=crowd、人口＝じんこう=population、人気＝にんき=popular. then you'll be learning the pronunciations, but also getting vocab at the same time, and not wasting time "just memorizing readings".

one good book to help with radicals is:

https://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268/

It's on Amazon JP: 正しいFUCKの使い方

There's just no one thing. The various programs by CB4960 (subs2srs, Japanese text analyzer, etc), Anki, Memrise, Tae Kim's approach to teaching grammar, Core 2k/6k for vocabulary, etc. all are big things that supercharge learning/skill levels.

Still, I'll answer with the one thing that made Japanese as a written language seem actually approachable and that was Remembering the Kanji VIA the Kanji Koohii website that I used 10 years ago.

Remembering the Kanji as a stand alone book is good but has a number of flaws that almost all fixed when you use the online resources dedicated to that method. The community on the forums at that time were also diverse, amazing and helpful.

>Aren't all names written in Kanji?

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Names are often very unique and there's quite a lot of freedom in how one chooses to write their own name. As you may know, certain names have the same pronunciations but different kanji (for example, look how many different ways you can write "Kyouko".) This extends to hiragana. So even if there is a kanji for Urara, it can be in hiragana.

Furthermore, this is a sign, right? There could be stylistic reasons for choosing to write the name in hiragana (good balance between the 3 hiragana for うらら and the 3 kanji for 美容院), or the owner thought うらら was simpler and easier to read.

For starters, if you've not passed the N1 exam I don't believe you're at N1 level. Sorry but there's a lot of people here that like to self-assess their level and are often wildly off.

​

For practice;

• Try and live in a sharehouse. Some sharehouses are full of loners/残業 addicts who never leave their rooms apart from to go to work. Most sharehouses are pretty social though and you often have the chance to speak Japanese everyday to some of the people there.
• Meetup.com and things like that are really hit and miss. You might have a great time or you might be in a group with 10 foreigners speaking English the whole time.
• Tinder/hellotalk/whatever are decent for talking to people and meeting them. Tinder is a lot different in Japan, there's people on there looking for friendship as well as the hookup people.

​

If you're lucky, you might meet one person and they will introduce you to their friends and soon enough you'll have a decent network of people to hang out with.

If all else fails, hit the bars and start talking to whoever will listen. Try and keep conversations in Japanese and get whatever SNS details you can to make some friends that last more than one evening

Well actually, Bunpo and Bunpro are two different services.
OP is vouching for Bunpo (App Store | Play Store) I think.
I agree that Bunpro is very nice though

有り難迷惑 does seem to be the most accurate representation. Takoboto (which to my knowledge uses the same backend database- JMdict- that jisho.org uses), describes it as 'unwelcome favor' or 'mixed blessing', which sounds accurate.

There's Hinative where they are redirecting anyone trying to register on Lang-8. I've found it works well for asking simple questions and such, but it doesn't seem as suited as Lang-8 for writing longer texts, at least in it's current state.

Edit: I emailed the support about it a got the following reply:

> Dear User, > > Thank you very much for using Lang-8. > > Our system momentarily cannot registration for unidentified reasons and we are not going to close Lang-8. > Therefore, we are sorry to inform you that we cannot specify the exact date when this issue will be solved. > We will make an announcement on Lang-8. > > Please let us apologize once more for any inconvenience this situation may have caused you. > > Thank you for your kind understanding on this subject and we all appreciate your patience. > > Best regards, > Lang-8 staff

Based on the email the registrations being closed should only be temporary.

> So there is no format for constructing or deconstructkng kanji?

Basically all kanji in (modern) Japanese can be constructed with these components. You put these components together and boom, you create kanji. Of course you can't just make your own and there isn't a kanji with every possible combination. Try playing around with that website.

You need to learn the 2136 kanji that are called the Jouyou kanji (lit. "regular use Chinese characters") which brings me to my next point:

> Or do j need to learn chinese characters?

I'm not too sure about J or Adam, but you definitely need to. Actually, kanji ARE Chinese characters. Japanese people just decided to use them a long time ago and they are indeed a fundemental part of the Japanese language now, but in the end of the day they are still just Chinese characters. Not the simplified ones mainland China uses now, but the traditional, un-simplified characters that are still in use in Taiwan for example. So current Japanese Kanji are basically "old" Chinese characters that do resemble the new and simplified ones, but they are much more similar to the traditional ones.

Please do not use any kind of Chinese videos, books, tools or learning resources in order to learn Japanese kanji. The characters might be similar, but they are still two very different languages and you don't need to learn about the four different pitches and all that Chinese stuff.

Also, be ready to face the horror that is called "readings". In Chinese, most characters usually only have one reading which means that you pronounce the character in one particular way. In Japanese however.. Oh boy, most kanji can be pronounced 2 - 5 different ways, and some even have more than 15 readings.

I started Japanese in Duolingo but I was very frustrated with the lack of explanations of grammar. I felt like things changed for no apparent reason and I couldn't make sense of it.

I ran into this app and it completely changed my outlook on Japanese grammar. It has very simple step-by-step tutorials and it plays just like Duolingo.

Give it a whirl and see what you think!

take your time and learn as you go, there's no need to force-feed oneself kanji. just learn the proper spelling for words as you go. it's important, so don't try to skip learning kanji, but you don't need to go overboard and try to memorize hundreds at once either.

if you find that remembering the shapes in the kanji is difficult, then paying attention to the radicals (the small chunks that make them up) can sometimes help. while they don't always add up to a full meaning of the kanji, they can sometimes make up a nice narrative that makes it easier to remember. for example, 人 means person, and 寺 means temple... if you look at 侍 you'll see both - the vertical line and diagonal on the left side of it is a squished 人... so if you think about it, "man by the temple"... the meaning: 侍＝さむらい＝samurai.

if that visual study method sounds interesting, i recommend https://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268/

• language exchange partner
• engage in japanese media, be it games, books, news stories, anime, japanese tv, anything
• write sentences and get them reviewed and checked somehow, in class or with the exchange partner
• make it a habit of trying to flip your internal monologue to japanese - literally think in it. when you need to think something and you can't, write it down, ask, and then think it. this is free practise that doesn't require a book or electricity, and is guaranteed to be relevant to you because it's literally your own thoughts
• i like making physical flash cards, the tactile process is part of the learning
• pay attention to stroke order and radical meanings in kanji, maybe take a shodo course, and pick up https://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268 for radical meanings
• read through jlpt grammar guides and the japan press grammar dictionaries periodically, just pick a new grammar or sentence pattern or two a day and read a little on it. even if you don't make a ton of sentences, being aware of what kinds of grammars and sentence patterns are out there helps distinguish "simply new words" from "a repetitive pattern you should pay attention to"
• read and write poetry
• read up on japanese mythology and history, even if in english - when you run into something new and interesting, look it up specifically in japanese

just some random thoughts

I agree that sexual mnemonics are unhelpful. Others have mentioned https://kanji.koohii.com/ and I would second that; you can create your own mnemonics (which is what RTK is about), but if you get stuck you can adopt one shared from the community.

Be warned though, that you will still encounter some sexual and often misogynistic entries. You (obviously) don't have to use them, but it's an unmoderated resource so there's an occasional mnemonic provided by an unfortunate pubescent boy.

The real goal though is to come up with your own mnemonics, they tend to stick better. And as a plus, Kanji Koohi has an inbuilt flashcard review system.

It's a good thing that the readings are not included, otherwise you probably would not be able to retain all that information. You can learn the way kanji are spoken within words, you'll be fine.

I'm using RTK, couldn't recommend it enough. Use it with https://kanji.koohii.com for maximum impact

A: What on Earth could have caused this school to become so strange?

B: It seems like accepting such peculiar things is actually this school's purpose.

It's quite a troublesome objective.

(Does that mean) the mirror we saw the ghost in yesterday (and those other things) are a part of it (that objective)?

[一環](#fg "いっかん") - http://ejje.weblio.jp/content/%E4%B8%80%E7%92%B0

変わった can mean "strange". See here.

一環 means "part of". She's asking if the mirror they saw yesterday (which had a ghost projected in it) had something to do with the school's objective- accepting strange objects.

Edit: Also, I say ghost, but まぼろし can be a bit more general than that. An apparition or a vision of some sort. An illusion is fine too- what you'd choose to translate it as is context dependent.

I have Beelinguapp which is pretty similar! But PIBO sounds way more beginner-friendly. I'm bummed there's no Android version. :(

Memrise is OK.

Duolingo is generally considered bad, but if you don't immediately let your eyes go to the word bank... and or you set it so it prompts you to type the answer all the time, then it's OK.

This kind of ruins the point of having the actual books, but if you read raws on your computer you can use KanjiTomo which I've found immensely helpful. It's an on-screen Kanji reader, so you can just mouse over Kanji you don't know and get an instant translation.

I'm also about 8-9 months in my learning, very on and off, and with KanjiTomo and Google Translate I can translate a 38 page chapter of a manga in about an hour and a half and read it considerably faster (if you wanna see my translation, it's in my post history, I won't say the name b/c ecchi lol).

Anyways, if you don't want to read on your computer to start off, just have a dictionary handy and look up kanji you don't know. Oftentimes chapters will use the same kanji many times and before long you'll know them by repetition.

It's definitely legible. Also, since you've just started learning, I thought I might recommend these two sites:

http://jisho.org/

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/complete

The first one is a dictionary. It's excellent for showing jouyou (commonly used) kanji. In addition, you can search for kanji by the parts they're made up of (radicals), so you don't have to know the pronunciation to look them up (useful if you're ever reading in print). It also has an extensive name dictionary. Probably the best feature is the step-by-step how-to-write for each kanji under "Kanji details".

The second site is excellent for teaching you the basics of grammar.

Happy learning!

I don't really see the merits of doing RTK at this point. If you have a high level of overall Japanese, I'm not sure why you'd want to spend so much time bogging yourself down with convoluted English-language mnemonics and stories.

If your overall level of Japanese is advanced and literally your only (or primary) issue is physically writing the kanji by hand, I'd just go with materials aimed for native Japanese speakers.

Back in the day, I found the Kanji Kentei training games for the Nintendo DS pretty helpful as well as an amusing way to pass the time.

In general, don't focus on memorizing pronunciations, study words, the kanji will come along for the ride.

If you want to learn all the pronunciations of a kanji, find one word each that uses all the pronunciations, and then memorize those. That way you'll at least get some vocab out of it.

For example, rather than trying to memorize that 人 can be pronounced three ways （ひと、じん、にん） , just teach yourself 人ごみ＝ひとごみ=crowd、人口＝じんこう=population、人気＝にんき=popular.

If you want to take an extra step and learn more about radicals, the pieces of kanji that make up kanji, that can sometimes help with knowing some pronunciations of words, but it's not guaranteed. In the end, one must memorize.

https://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268/

I'd like to add that you can also use the "Language Partners" option (http://www.italki.com/partners), where you can find someone who's learning English and whose native language is Japanese. This is kinda informal, but free ($ wise).

Yeah, this doesn't make sense.

The meaning of 「本を読まなきゃいけない」 is "I have to read a book", but the way the sentence structure literally breaks down is something along the lines of "if I don't read a book, it won't work out well". You can't stick たい onto a potential verb like that (see e.g. this HiNative question) and if you could, the meaning would be something like "if I don't read a book, I'll want it to not work out well" which is not what you're going for.

Since you can't translate this phrase literally, you'll have to look for an alternate way to convey the meaning. Here are some possible examples.

Note that the context of the English phrase is important. "I don't want to have to read this book" could mean any of several possible things, and the Japanese translation might end up being pretty different:

• I hope it doesn't end up being the case that I have to read this book
• I have to read this book, and I'm expressing unhappiness about that fact
• You don't want me to read this book, and I'm threatening to do so anyway

Sure

"I enjoy myself at school" - 学校で楽しむ

"I don't enjoy myself at school" - 学校で楽しまない

"Enjoyment is important" - 楽しみが大切だ

jisho.org can give you many more (better) examples. Check this out: http://jisho.org/sentences?jap=%E6%A5%BD%E3%81%97%E3%81%BF

Err... probably not a good idea. You'll essentially just make a dictionary. Also, Kanji have multiple readings. Where do you put 上, for example? Under あ、のぼ、うえ、うわ、かみ、よ、シャン、しょう、じょう? Even if you pick the most common readings (by guessing, for some of them), you'll have a list that looks like this:

Kanji that can be read with しょう... which includes 518 kanji (likely more that aren't listed).

There's no real reason to group the Kanji. If you need a structured list, you could go by grade. Japanese learn the 2136 Kanji between 1st and 8th grade. This may or may not help you, depending on which kanji learning philosophy you subscribe to.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lulilanguages.j5KjAnd&hl=en&gl=US

This app. I'll write it via the app and handwrite it in a study notebook for practice and memorization.

In general, don't focus on memorizing pronunciations, study words, the kanji (and their pronunciations) will come along for the ride.

If you want to learn all the pronunciations of a kanji, find one word each that uses all the pronunciations, and then memorize those. That way you'll at least get some vocab out of it.

For example, rather than trying to memorize that 人 can be pronounced three ways （ひと、じん、にん） , just teach yourself 人ごみ＝ひとごみ=crowd、人口＝じんこう=population、人気＝にんき=popular.

If you want to take an extra step and learn more about radicals, the pieces of kanji that make up kanji, that can sometimes help with knowing some pronunciations of words, but it's not guaranteed. In the end, one must memorize.

https://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268/

When it reaches over a thousand dollars for second-hand copies:

https://www.amazon.ca/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268

you would think the publishers would wake up and print a few more.

Go on Hello Talk and hit your face against a wall with a native. That's what I do (though I really need to do it more). Though it's embarrassing, sucking but trying is how we get good.

Another suggestion is go take Dogen's pitch accent course and record yourself when you speak and listen. It helps make you sound more natural, and then as you speak more, stuff comes to you quicker. An easy app I found thanks to someone here is Echo which is really great.

These things have helped me, I hope they help you.

I may have got it used, but I just found it new for $18 on Amazon, so like lol I dunno what you are doing. https://www.amazon.com/Jpn-Genki-Answer-Key-Japanese/dp/4789014479/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526747316&sr=8-1&keywords=answer+key+genki

I use Memrise along with KanjiStudy. Memrise is more like Duolingo, but KanjiStudy helps with stroke practice and kanji flash cards.

I don't think it's that you asked the wrong question, I think it's that you don't understand his answer or how it answers your question. Your question is just "what are these two things in the red circle?" and he did a great job answering it.

The "two things in the red circle" (ほん、もと） as you call them are the Onyomi and Kunyomi readings for 本, respectively. Hence "READINGS" above the cell.

First, you need to understand what Onyomi and Kunyomi are... and their differences: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/onyomi-kunyomi/

Then, you need to understand the Onyomi and Kunyomi for 本.

http://jisho.org/search/%E6%9C%AC%20%23kanji

Now, you should see that ほん is the Onyomi pronunciation for 本 whereas もと is its Kunyomi pronunciation. There are also examples of the difference on the page that should help.

"する" is one of the 10 most common words in Japanese, and by far the most common verb. It usually means "to do" but has 16 other meanings according to Jisho: http://jisho.org/search/suru

The one you're looking for is number 4:

>to wear (clothes, a facial expression, etc.)​

You'll slowly figure out the rest as you go along.

As an alternative Rikaisama also supports saving words, and has a real-time import feature to make anki flashcards from the selected word. There's also support for EPWING dictionaries.

If you're using Chrome, you can also add Jisho as a custom search engine, so you can type something like j <tab> 単語.

One can do this by right-clicking Chrome's URL bar, hitting "Edit search Engines", scrolling to the bottom and adding: "Jisho" as the name, "j" as the keyword, and "http://jisho.org/search/%s" as the query URL.

It is easy to search for on jisho.org

You can use an asterix as a placeholder for any series of characters, and so you can search for all words containing っら by writing ＊っら

For example:

http://jisho.org/search/＊っら

Repeat with each kana in the r series.

It seems like it's dialect for the eastern equivalent of V-stem+たい (to want). https://jp.quora.com/%E8%81%9E%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A8%E3%81%86%E3%81%AA%E3%81%8B%E3%81%A3%E3%81%9F-%E3%81%A8%E3%81%84%E3%81%86%E3%81%AE%E3%81%AF%E3%81%A9%E3%81%93%E3%81%AE%E5%9C%B0%E6%96%B9%E3%81%AE%E6%96%B9%E8%A8%80%E3%81%A7%E3%81%99

https://hinative.com/ja/questions/6435178

That means 'tune', as in "My favorite tune is playing on the radio."

音楽 is 'music'.

http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E9%9F%B3%E6%A5%BD&eng=&dict=edict

http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E6%9B%B2&eng=&dict=edict

I'm aware of this but is that alone a good reason to not mention one of the best studying apps at all? You don't even have to use it on your phone, most people who own an iPhone also own a PC, right?

> If you can't afford the app, you can still use AnkiWeb.

If you're studying for a trip, why not get a phrasebook or list of common/useful terms and study from that? "A word a day" isn't going to be a very good study aid or entirely applicable for what you'd use on a trip (which depends in part on where you want to go and what kind of stuff you want to do); something like flashcards would likely be more effective.

For example, I've heard some good things about Anki. If you're willing to put in some work you could make your own flashcard set without any ローマ字, or with some searching I'm sure you could find some sets that other people have made.

Reading Road: 多様な日本を読む

It's has 15 short (2-page) essays on various topics, they're surprisingly interesting. 10 of those have shorter supplementary reading bits too, maybe a paragraph or two each. It's targeted at exactly this level, in each chapter there are 3 topics. 1st essay is easier, the 3rd is hardest, 2nd is in the middle. Each has 2 grammar points to learn or review and a few vocab words to focus on. Sometimes you still have to look something up, but it's pretty manageable.

Yes language learning can easily be free.

Anki is a great flashcard app and free on Android and browser. You can download a basic vocabulary deck from there (I'd recommend the Tango N5 and N4 vocab decks) and do them at a rate of 10-30 new cards a day. Grammar is important too, below are a few options.

After that streaming services are great too, if you don't have Netflix or something similar already, there is also Animelon and various other streaming sites out there. You can practice listening through that.

You should also read, this can increase your vocabulary by a lot. Reading material is also available online, there are several open source works and other ways to find what you're looking for.

When you're done with the N5 and N4 deck described above, you can make your own cards from native material (books, manga, tv shows...).

Some other good resources:

-

- bilingual manga website

• if you already have, streaming services. Especially with Netflix a VPN like NordVPN will increase the amount of shows available.
• Tae Kims grammar guide or Misa Ammo's videos on beginner grammar

Two camps exist:

1) Handwriting is obsolete and if you can type, you’re good, silly Billy.

2) You should be able to write kanji, ya mook.

IMO: learn how to write about 500 basic kanji (Basic Kanji books) and then the other characters you use/see daily.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/加納-千恵子/dp/4893580914

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/加納-千恵子/dp/4893588834/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=basic+kanji+book+vol.2&qid=1624423945&sprefix=basic+kamji+&sr=8-1

Yes, that means that the novel has been cut in 2 or 3 parts, to read the whole novel you have to buy all the parts. You can see in the title the kanji for 上 Up, 中 middle and 下 down, and you have to read in that order: 上→中→下

For Norwegian Woods, it seems that the book is cut in 2, so it's just 上→下, the red cover is first and then the green cover.

"Use additional free apps such as <strong><em>Duolingo</em></strong> to explain the basics."

Imagine paying a large monthly subscription just to need another app to teach you the 'basics' along with not touching on grammar at all. Your review makes absolutely no sense in the end - it's mostly very negative but in the end you say it's worth it?

日 has many different <em>readings</em>. Most kanji typically have readings which fall into two categories: [音読み](#fg "おんよみ") (often when the kanji is part of a compound word) and [訓読み](#fg "くんよみ") (often when the kanji is by itself). For example, [木](#fg "き")(the kun reading) becomes [木](#fg "もく")(on reading) in [木曜日](#fg "もくようび") and [材木](#fg "ざいもく"). But then you have a word like [稲木](#fg "いなぎ") which doesn't use the on reading, but is still in a compound!

The number of readings can vary greatly and there are always exceptions to the the rule regarding on and kun reading. As a result, your best bet is to not learn kanji based on their readings, but through learning vocabulary.

I recommend a program called kanjitomo. http://kanjitomo.net

It is a program that will OCR whatever is under your cursor and bring up a dictionary definition. It really speeds up reading manga but you need to have scans of a fairly good resolution for it to work well.

I think つつ is seen more often in written form while ながら is definitely very common in daily speech [日常会話](#fg "にちじょうかいわ"). Someone on the internet appears to think so too. Which game(s) are you playing out of interest / any worth recommending? 🙂

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you're missing all the contextual clues, as clearly you're at a fairly advanced level. But if you're still getting "lost" with some regularity, that means that you're most likely missing some of them.

Of course, even highly proficient speakers (and even natives) can get confused at times by a particularly difficult passage or author who is deliberately trying to mislead/challenge the reader (Gene Wolfe, anyone?). But if you're finding stuff "vague and weird" on a fairly regular basis, then you're most likely not quite there yet.

As for how to "fix" it, it's hard to give a concrete, step-by-step process because we don't know your exact level (and even if we did, it's not really that kind of straightforward/black-and-white process). What I can say is that it's going to involve some combination of (as other replies have also touched upon):

- More immersion/exposure to get more comfortable with the language in general

- Picking up new vocabulary/grammar knowledge

- Further leveling up/deepening your knowledge of words/phrases/grammar constructions you think you know (but may have some slight gaps in your knowledge compared to a native)

For #1, there's nothing really to do but read a lot (and ideally, read different authors and in different genres so you're getting exposure to a wide variety of writing styles). For #2 and #3, a good J-J dictionary along with a grammar reference with lots of example sentences (I haven't opened it in years, but used to swear by this one) is probably your best bet.

Or, if you want to post some examples of the type of sentences that are confusing you, I'd be happy to take a look at them and try to figure out where the specific gaps in your understand might be arising from.

Yes. Do you have the genki textbook? Or just the genki work book? One is about 200 pages, one is twice that. If you’ve only got a thin book, then you’ve only got the workbook, which doesn’t teach you anything. You need the textbook for learning. Genki is for beginners, so you don’t need any prior knowledge, it teaches it all to you. It sounds like you might only have the workbook.

Textbook: https://www.amazon.com.au/GENKI-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014401

Workbook: https://www.amazon.com.au/Genki-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-Workbook/dp/478901441X

It's on a case by case basis. In general, don't focus on memorizing pronunciations, study words, the kanji will come along for the ride.

If you want to learn all the pronunciations of a kanji, find one word each that uses all the pronunciations, and then memorize those. That way you'll at least get some vocab out of it. For example, rather than trying to memorize that 人 can be pronounced three ways, just teach yourself 人ごみ＝ひとごみ=crowd、人口＝じんこう=population、人気＝にんき=popular.

If you want to take an extra step and learn more about radicals, the pieces of kanji that make up kanji, that can sometimes help with knowing some pronunciations of words, but it's not guaranteed. In the end, one must memorize.

https://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268/

The app is called Kanji Study. I highly recommend it. You have to pay to unlock every options but if you truly want to learn kanji, this is a must.
Google Play
App Store The interface seems really different on IOS but it seems to be working the same way.

i wouldn't worry about it. yes, the point of SRS is to remind you of words just as you're about to forget them, but that doesn't mean you should AVOID them until the SRS algorithm decides it's time to show them to you....it's not like it will hinder your learning of a word if you are exposed to a it more often.

as for your related question, i personally don't think anki is great for writing practice. i know some people use it for that, and get a lot out of it, but it's like using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail...yeah, it works, but why not just use a hammer? some good writing apps i've found are japanese kanji study and skritter

I try to think of の as an associative particle. Possession, of course, is a form of association, while e.g. 東大の先生 ("a teacher at Tokyo U.") is association without possession.

Beyond this, の can also be short for もの ("thing").

If you want a thorough listing of uses for not just の but a bunch of other particles as well, I'd suggest checking out an actual book like All about Particles: A Handbook of Japanese Function Words or A Dictionary of Japanese Particles.

To be a bit more specific, the っ (called the sokuon), marks a geminate consonant. A geminate consonant is basically a consonant which is pronounced for longer. For a sound like "t" or "k, it resolves itself by essentially pronouncing the consonant twice, with the little pause, so まって is "mat-te" because you can't exactly pronounce a longer "t"

However, with an "S" it is slightly different because you can extend an "s" sound. I would compare these two words here, first is [一緒](#fg "いっしょ") pronounced here while the second is [衣装](#fg "いしょう") which you can hear here. You can see that in the case of an "s" it is resolved differently because it is a fricative, instead of a stop, like the others.

There are far too many to count. I'd also recommend getting your kana down pat before starting to go hog-wild on vocabulary.

Edit: Here's the search results on jisho.org, which returns over 5000 entries.

I think you probably didn't mean to reply to me, and instead meant to post a new question. But, anyway, uh... I have a hard time understanding your question.

Instead of thinking of kanji and furigana-- try looking up and reading about "on yomi" and "kun yomi."

Simply put, "kun yomi" are the Japanese readings of kanji, and "on yomi" are the Chinese readings of kanji,. Most Kanji have several possible kun yomi and several possible on yomi, too, based on the word.

It'll be easier to look at an example. Let's look at the kanji 赤 which means red. http://jisho.org/search/%23kanji%20%E8%B5%A4 Kun: あか、 あか-、 あか.い、 あか.らむ、 あか.らめる On: セキ、 シャク

So if you want to say the apple is red, you'd say このりんご赤いです。Here, the kanji is read as あか with い to make it the i-adjective, 赤い。

However, there are words in which the reading of 赤 will change completely, to せき or しょく. 赤道　（せきどう）the equator 赤十字 （せきじゅうじ）the red cross

When do you know WHICH reading to use..? Well, that is simply a matter of memorization.

Is that what you were asking me? Hopefully that was of some use.

Don't hate me, but gross mnemonics are so good as mnemonics, if you personally dislike them (as it seems), then the chances of you remembering them are even higher, which is what we want.

And with time you won't need them anymore, you don't need do remember them forever, only until you don't need them anymore to remember the keyword for each kanji.

I'm currently using KKLC (kodansha kanji learner's course) and there are no offensive mnemonics, but I did make a few "offensive" mnemonics for myself when I could think of them, it helps so much with many weird kanji. I'm not using any anki deck for KKLC, but I know there is at least one. And you can always use kanji.koohii.com for many shared stories.

I've been in Japan for four years and have done business level presentations in Japanese. I'd advise the following:

1. Learn Hiragana and Katakana before you do anything else
2. Once you have learned those, sign up for Wanikani and do it seriously to learn how to read
3. Use Tae Kim's guide to Japanese to get an understanding of grammar
4. Sign up for language classes to supplement the above

Best of luck!

Actually "muchakucha" actually is a real word... though it doesn't actually mean "cocksucking".

One of the greatest and worst aspects of GT is its human translation "corrections".

The word is [もう](#fg "mou"), pronounced "mo" (long o). English dictionary here, Japanese dictionary here.

As said, it's just an expression that expresses exasperation. When used in a sentence, it's often translated as "already," for example - もういい ("Enough already!") or もうやめて ("Quit it already!")

On JLPT certificates you get to see the lovely 公益財団法人日本国際教育支援協会.

By the way, a tip - if you put in a long string like that into the search box on jisho.org, it will automatically break it down into compounds it has definitions for.

> Very new to this

Now might be a good time to point out that what you're doing is not commonly accepted to be a good way to proceed (though it's very popular amongst beginners for some unknown reason). You shouldn't be learning strings of readings for kanji and then trying to string them together post hoc (not least because, well, see this kanji's readings for example) - you should be learning words (how they're pronounced, what they mean) and then assigning writings (kanji + okurigana or whatever) to them. Simultaneously, you should probably be learning some grammar. Are you following a textbook or something?

Try an optimized approach. Core 2k Optimized is first 2000 words of Core 10k sorted by kanji index of the first 2001.Kanji.Odyssey books. However, learn those 555 kanji in the KKLC order.

So, you learn 1/4 of KKLC but those 555 kanji just happen to cover 80% of kanji used in daily Japanese by frequency count. Since Core 2k is sorted by these kanji, you'll see only words using kanji you learned. Plus, they're introduced slowly so you notice onyomi/kunyomi and context much, much easier along with transitive/intransitive verb pairs and verb stem variants!

After 1000 words, learn another 555 of the 2k1KO index in KKLC order, and learn another 1000 words this time sorted with 1110 kanji. Lots of fun.

In general, don't focus on memorizing kanji, study words, the kanji will come along for the ride.

If you want to learn all the pronunciations of a kanji, find one word each that uses all the pronunciations, and then memorize those. That way you'll at least get some vocab out of it.

For example, rather than trying to memorize that 人 can be pronounced three ways, just teach yourself 人ごみ＝ひとごみ=crowd、人口＝じんこう=population、人気＝にんき=popular.

If you want to take an extra step and learn more about radicals, the pieces of kanji that make up kanji, that can sometimes help with knowing some pronunciations of words, but it's not guaranteed. In the end, one must memorize.

https://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268/

That being said, if you did vocab words BASED on 3-4 kanji a day, that would be an excellent pace

Practice time management if you ran out of time. Don't waste time on questions you don't know the answer to, and prioritise the reading questions over the vocab/grammar questions because they will take more time.

I'm not sure N1 would be wise because it is a lot harder than N2 and even if you had enough time for the reading, your language knowledge score is still quite low. I also don't see the point of just scraping a pass, if you're going to do it then why not do well? If you're getting the certificate for employment, your employers aren't going to be real impressed if you hold an N1 certificate but your actual skills aren't up to scratch. Reaching N1 by December is doable, but you'll have to work really hard at it.

In terms of study, learn more vocab, and use that vocab. You'll be more likely to remember words if you use them regularly. Check Amazon for N1 vocab disctionaries like this one to help you with that.

N1 grammar can be pretty obscure, so if you're going to go for it you just have to learn them and do a ton of practice questions, because you might not encounter N1 grammar as commonly as you would N2 grammar.

Your listening seems fine so I'd say keep doing whatever you're doing for that, since it's working.

I would say get the Genki book, its very simple and easy to use. Its around $100 USD on Amazon sadly, but it is very easy to use and understand. It includes vocabulary, grammar, and how to write Japanese in Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji (if you want to learn that as well)

I think there is somewhere on reddit or online you can get it for free as a pdf though.

https://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-Paperback/dp/B00MXHRQB4?crid=2R2BVTTCKIXV&amp;keywords=genki+1+textbook+2nd+edition&amp;qid=1535558646&amp;sprefix=genki+1&amp;sr=8-4&amp;ref=mp_s_a_1_4

As for how to say hello:

おはよう (o-hai-yo) : Good Morning

こんにちは (kon-ni-chi-wa) : Good Afternoon

こんばんは (kon-ban-wa) : Good Evening

1. Japanese.io for defining words while browsing articles or sites in general. As far as I can tell the dictionary has been expanded a lot since I first started using it and it has a very nice user interface on the website where you can copy and paste text into documents for future reference. It also recommends news articles based on the content of the documents you save.
2. Kanji Study for Android - it's been updated with a full dictionary recently, which is nice, but the kanji content is and always has been very solid. Dev has been working on an SRS update for a long time but honestly, I don't think it even needs it, it's a great resource for studying kanji
3. iTunes - Japanese music/podcasts galore. Although I actually prefer Spotify for its reliability, their libraries are incomparable as far as I can tell.

WK for WaniKani

Highly recommend it. It has certain scripts to increase efficiency within wanikani like preventing going to the next kanji if you make a mistake so you don't skip the explanation.

I just did the same thing and learned it this past weekend! Glad to see I'm not alone.

I know I'm not a teacher, but I think my method is pretty solid. I'm currently using an app to learn some simple kanji for the purpose of vocabulary, and will be tackling katakana this coming weekend. I really like the app since it allows you to quiz yourself with reading as well as writing the kanas, kanji, and radicals.

I've used Genki a bit for some simple grammar (mostly chapters 1 and 2 of the first part), and will continue with it as soon as I've learned katakana.

Edit: This is the app I was taking about.

Are you learning Japanese, or are you trying to learn some as a party trick of some kind? Because that's what I'm getting from your post. If you want to learn some, get KKLC, RTK, or wanikani to learn each of them individually. If you want to learn for a party trick, go to this site, type in a really basic English word/noun like 'sea', 'tree', 'lake', 'rain' etc. and you'll get some kinds of kanji you can learn.

There's a whole treasure trove of games on Steam that you can change to Japanese as well that I found quite helpful. I think my favorite is Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

Another thing that I'd suggest is creating yourself a Japanese PSN account if you have a PS3 or PS4. There is a link out there somewhere that walks you through the sign-up website. Once created you can create a new user profile and use it for the JP PSN store and there are a ton of free games you can download and play just like the English version.

I'll have to check out Stardew Valley though, it' s looks like it would be fun!

I'd like to agree with/elaborate on something /u/L8BCIFPOouJHjFMTFQdY said.

>Work on a balanced study plan. Not just kanji, but the language as a whole.

This is so important because a lot of beginners fall into the trap of thinking, "Once I learn all 2,000 of the kanji, I'll have mastered Japanese!" There are several problems with this way of thinking- first of all, including rarer kanji, personal names, location names, and common kanji that are simply not included in the list for whatever reason, there are actually far more than 2,000 kanji in use. There are many words that may have two or three kanji, (みる as 見る, 診る, 観る, etc.) or, a bit more rarely, kanji that may have several words (readings) attached to them ([生](#fg "な")す and [生](#fg "む")す). And lastly, there are many words that do not have kanji (katakana words, onomatopoeia, etc.). It's a tempting trap, because the number of kanji you've learned and your progress towards 2,000 is easy to quantify, but again, the reality is that learning Japanese is more complex than that.

The fact that you're asking about how many kanji to learn per day, and setting such a high goal for yourself, suggests you're falling into this trap. We've had people come back here after "cementing" all the kanji with some mnemonics stuff like Heissig's Remembering the Kanji, but then get pissed when they can't actually read any Japanese. Without grammar and vocab, "knowing" the kanji is virtually meaningless.

So don't learn "生" and it's 20-some readings and then think, "Oh, okay, that's one kanji down."

Learn [生](#fg "い")きる. Learn [生](#fg "なま")ビール. Learn [生地](#fg "きじ"). Learn [生](#fg "う")む. Learn words you can actually use, not just kanji in a vacuum.