I’ve been reading more and more books with less and less furigana and I’ve realized that I’m not exactly sure what to do when I have a word that I know what it means but I don’t know/can’t remember the reading for it.
Should I look it up and interrupt my reading flow? Just go with it since it’s not stopping my understanding?
I guess basically I’m asking if in the long run I’ll have wanted to have looked up (and potentially learned on an anki card) the reading to these kanji, or if it’s fine and the reading for words eventually gets picked up with lots of reading.
I tend to take a rule of thumb that if I see the same word several times while I’m reading then I’ll look it up, but otherwise I’m likely to move on. (This is the same rule I have for words I don’t know but which I can guess from context or which are clearly unimportant in context.)
Generally you won’t pick up readings from “lots of reading” if your reading is mainly no-furigana books for obvious reasons, so you do kind of want some mechanism by which you’re learning vocab with readings…
I did RTK for learning Kanji so I can usually discern the meaning of a word without knowing the meaning - but producing the right reading is sometimes tough to look up. If I see a word three or four times and cannot figure it out, or it seems important then I will look it up. (This is for physical books as I do 95% of my reading with them.)
If I don’t know the reading - I will go based on the kanji and find the word. If I know a valid reading or another word(s) containing the kanji I will smash the known words and delete the excess to look up the unknown word.
I’m getting into furigana-less works and I don’t like unknowns, but dealing with them is sometimes difficult or not possible depending on where I am. Sometimes I just scribble them down or put a slip of paper on the page to look it up later. Gotta love words like 陽動 because sometimes they are not clear from context, but they stick easy.
Back when I got the N1, I pretty much stopped caring about improving my Japanese and did like the others (just go with the flow, only look it up if it comes up a few times)
After a year of doing that, though, I noticed I got some bad habits (got some readings wrong at some point and internalized them, sadly). I then decided to study kanji again and started using WaniKani. Not the most efficient way of ironing the creases, but it worked for me.
I am now back to my previous method BUT I am now supplementing it with doing a audiobook + text reading once in a while. The audiobook provides (presumably) the correct reading, so the odds of me getting bad habits decreases significantly.
I personally look everything up all the time, unless I’m really tired or disinterested in the particular section I’m in. Recently I’ve stopped looking things up, when reading with audio.
It does make reading more cumbersome, but I’m not going to learn the word, if I only know its representation. Otoh if I look it up, I might know it next time I see it. Occasionally I find that I had a mistaken definition too
I always look it up if I’m reading digital, and almost always if reading paperback.
Just from looking up words on my kindle over and over again I naturally remembered the reading for a lot of words over time. Even now I still check the dictionary for words that I’m 95% sure about but am not fully confident I know the reading for sure for sure.
I would say though, I never really read anything that was way too hard for me. If it felt like I needed to look up too many words I put a book down and came back to it later. So, looking up everything always felt manageable.
Having curiosity and desire to know readings and more words helps, I think. During times when I haven’t been as motivated to improve and just care about the story, I’ve had a more meh attitude and glossed over things (but have missed smaller details). Both are fine, it’s just about doing what you want to reach your goals.
I wouldn’t call myself an “advanced reader” haha, but I’m advanced enough with kanji that I don’t desire or need furigana the majority of the time – and I still look up every word I don’t know/remember but could guess, because I get a confidence boost from looking words up and confirming that my instincts were right (or I learn something if I’m wrong). I don’t find that lookups interrupt my “flow”, though; reading in Japanese is a learning activity to me first and foremost, so I treat lookups as a normal part of reading. I think whether you “should” look things up or not is up to your personality and what you enjoy about reading and what you want to get out of it, not a strict “yes” or “no”.
But if you’re not at the point where you can look at a kanji compound and make an educated guess about how to read it without furigana, it may benefit you to reinforce the readings more. Most kanji have a phonetic component that makes them easy to guess how to read if you’ve gotten a feel for the pattern, without a lot of effort to memorize them; 9 times out of 10 when I look up a compound, the reading is my first or second guess, and if I can’t guess the whole word I can at least guess the individual readings well enough to get the kanji suggested in my IME.
If I’m reading digitally I’ll almost always look it up because it’s quick. If I’m reading physically (which means manga for me) it depends on my mood. If I see the word a lot or it’s nagging at me I’ll look it up, but sometimes I’ll just keep going.
用途 is the only word here that I didn’t know, but I guessed from 用 and the context in the sentence (and since I bothered to grab the text I verified that my guess was correct) I was wrong on the reading because I sillily went with ちゅう from 途中
小型竜・中型竜・大型竜 in these the only reading I’m sure of is 竜.
分類 I guessed correctly, but was only about 75% on how sure I was.
I read about 10 pages and all of it was like this. There were maybe 2 words that I needed to look up for meaning and 50 that I needed to look up for reading.
Like everyone else has mentioned, if I read digitally, I’ll look up everything, even if I’m pretty sure of the reading. But I have a feeling that those readings just aren’t sticking because I keep on looking them up again and again.
This is a really good point. The vast majority of what I read I wait until I can read it mostly like I read in English. I don’t mind 1-2 lookups per page, but I do not want to feel like I’m studying when I’m reading. I don’t mind not understanding everything, but I do hate the interruption into my reading flow.
This is what I’m the most worried about. I feel like it’s easier to do things right the first time than to course correct.
I started learning Japanese way before WK was a thing, but have done RTK (at least twice) so I have a pretty good foundation for the meanings of a lot of kanji, but the only readings I have are for kanji from words I already know. Also at this point in time, there’s enough WK is falling apart/it’s unusable without addons and all the addons are broken talk that I’m not super interested in this path–although maybe it would be good for me?
And yeah, this is pretty much what I’d assume is the case (and, if we’re being totally honest I was just hoping that everyone would just tell me it’ll all work out without any extra effort )
I think the read copious audiobooks + text is probably the closest to a frictionless solution, but I’m not sure how much I should rely on just that. I’m not exactly opposed to doing anki, but anki tends to become a time suck of making and styling cards to be Perfect (If I could have even half of the amount of time back from 10 years ago that I spent making cards instead of studying, my japanese would be a whole lot better than it is now )
If you’re reading for pure enjoyment and lookups make it feel like work instead, then I would say don’t bother. If you’re not reading as a way to acquire new words and learn kanji readings, the most important thing to do is have fun.
I do think learning the right readings and such is still a good idea, but you don’t have to acquire those from the books you read for leisure.
So close! It was the right kanji with the right reading.
That’s pretty much where I was at when I did WK.
I don’t know the current situation, since I think I did WK in 2018-ish? Maybe 2019? But I did it without anything other than cosmetic add-ons (well, mostly an add-on that told me when was the next review necessary to keep going full speed was coming).
The reason WK worked for me is that it forced me to write down the reading. I did a RTK + reading Anki deck when I was studying for the N1, and a bunch of other stuff before, but nothing really actively forced me to write things down (and with Anki I didn’t have the self control to admit that no, I did get the reading wrong, “actually I knew it” is not a thing) AND it forced me to go through kanji that I thought I knew (but internalized wrong).
So, for me, it was the perfect tool, but I don’t think it’s really a common use case.
Still, I feel like this can be easily emulated by writing things down on paper with pretty much any other kanji learning method (as long as one has the discipline to go through everything and identify possible mistakes).
Or, you know, you could just read stuff for fun. Especially if you mix in audiobooks in there like you said, you probably won’t get the issue I had… and even if you eventually do, there’s no unfixable problem and, conversely, there’s no perfect method.
If I’m reading for enjoyment, I might skip words here and there if I know the meaning but the reading isn’t popping up in my head immediately, but overall I try to stare at the word until the reading comes to me (and then double-check) or try to guess the reading from other words / radical (and then double-check).
Sometimes I use sticky noted if it’s a physical book to go back to the page (I imagine you can do that with a bookmark feature with ebooks) to check words without interrupting flow. But you need to be committed to actually go back and check that reading.
I’m maybe not a great data point because I rarely ever read in my “free time,” which makes reading much more focused on learning for me. My process has also changed a lot over the past year as I’ve gotten more and more used to reading. Even still I find somewhat simple words like 映える (“simple” as in 常用漢字) that I didn’t know the reading to. I think that if I weren’t careful about reading I’d just gloss over this as the meaning was apparent, but the strange feeling I had when reading it prompted me to look it up. In cases like these where the word is relatively common I think it actually helps me learn it because the “shock” of not knowing sears it into my memory. I also can tie that memory to the context I read it in so the connection is even stronger.
That being said, I do commit the sin of biasing my searches toward the more fancy looking difficult words (of which I have an abomination of an anki deck for), while many of the more commonplace 熟語 slip past me (I specify 熟語 because it’s usually more clear that I don’t know the reading when the kanji is using 訓読み or stands alone). In the end I think repetition is the key for this because those common words will undoubtedly come around again and if I had been reading them wrong for a while, being humbled by searching up the actual reading/meaning means I probably won’t make the same mistake again.
So basically I usually trust my gut and if I do have some misunderstandings they usually get fixed at some point by virtue of repetition and experience.
I think this is probably the crux of it. If input isn’t causing it to stick, then output is probably the way to make that happen.
One thing I remember hearing on some random polyglot vid was “make up sentences with the word you’re trying to get”. Though I suspect even writing out/speaking existing sentences would work.
For pattern based stuff, see if there’s a rule. Like: 小型、中型、大型 - the right side is always がた. The left side is 音読み except for 小 which is こ
I would say that I’m doing the latter, with the goal of making the former possible.
My long term language goals are probably reading > listening > speaking. Would it be fine for me to get to a high level of literacy without knowing how to pronounce a huge number of words? Probably not, because I’m also interested in listening and at least being able to have some amount of speaking skills.
Sure, but, how do you remember the rules?
bc this is my point. Why is it こ and not しょう? Why がた and not かた? Or けい? 大 and 小 are particularly bad for this, but upon seeing a word that you know the meaning for, even if you know a number of possible readings, how do you know what reading it is?
I think, for now, I’m going to take advantage of the fact that my dictionary app has an export word to anki feature and pull out words from my recent lookups list that seem like good candidates for anki. I’m still at the phase of learning that if I have a word I don’t know come up it will more than likely come up again in my reading soon enough. But I have a number of irl “leaches”, plus the fact that I seem to be able to memorize meaning a lot faster than readings. I think anki can be good for these two use cases and with words exported directly from my dictionary I’m not going to spend more than 5 seconds to generate a card except that I want to add audio and maybe pitch accent to the words and suddenly that makes each card about 1 minute of effort… I’m so good at scope creep…
I’m not advanced, but I’ve been actively working on readings by using the type function in Anki. (Screenshot grabbed from somewhere on the internet because I currently can’t screenshot my cards)
I basically just have a separate field with the Reading and then this checks against it and shows if you made any errors. It’s just easier for me to remember if I have to type it out. So you basically just have to put in {{type:Reading}} and it works out of the box with Anki. I know you already mentioned Anki, but maybe the type function is new/useful to you.
For me, before a word gets into Anki, I usually research the Kanji(s) a bit with the Kodansha Kanji Learner’s course book. So I know which readings are there and so on. Often it has hints and tips when to use which reading. I moved away from creating quick Anki cards to creating Anki cards that take a bit longer to create but stick.
As a rule of thumb, if it is a prefix to a 訓読み word, it will be こ (or お, but that’s more for names), otherwise しょう (there are exceptions, I imagine, but can’t think of any right now). Same for 大.
Meanwhile, when used as way to indicate a type (e.g. ロボット型, A型) 型 is always read がた.
BUT I am now supplementing it with doing a audiobook + text reading once in a while. The audiobook provides (presumably) the correct reading, so the odds of me getting bad habits decreases significantly.
During times when I haven’t been as motivated to improve and just care about the story, I’ve had a more meh attitude and glossed over things (but have missed smaller details). Both are fine, it’s just about doing what you want to reach your goals.
Perfect 
)
