Someone asked me to elaborate on the previous post in a DM, but I’d rather it be on the main log. So just consolidating my response to their questions here:
I meant progress is starting to not feel as simple as read a X amount of level 18 books, then read X amount of level 19 books, and so on.
I was finding it hard to read last week because I was struggling. It would have been better to take a detour and read easy material to regroup and regain confidence.
For ポラリスは消えない, which inspired my post. It was a combination of vocab and lack of gradings. I chose to read that because it was level 21 at the time and seemed interesting. But very few people had graded and it’s actually difficulty might be higher?
A reverse example of this is ぼくは麻理のなか which I saved to read when I felt like I could handle level 20 material, but it was actually really easy. After I started reading, it dropped to 18.
So I have an awareness now that levels can change quickly and reading less popular works based on difficulty level carries added risk. I’ll probably still take that risk in the future, but now I know and can plan around it.
I’ve also found that how interested I am in a book will also influence how hard it feels. If I’m really into a story, even if it’s a difficult read, I will want to know what happens and push through, even if it takes a lot of lookups. Conversely, something totally at my level that doesn’t capture my attention will feel like a slog. So even if the gradings could perfectly rank books (something I don’t think is even possible), for you, things at a given level might still vary in your perceived difficulty based on how enjoyable it is.
I ended up not following the plan from last time of shifting focus to easy manga. For some reason, I have been in quite a manga and anime slump. Instead I read two volumes of くまクマ熊ベアー and played a lot of テイルズ オブ シンフォニア instead, which is going well for me.
くまクマ熊ベアー
I read volumes 1 and 2 this month and I am hitting a really good stride with my reading pace.
I am finding that I really like books without pictures because of all of the non-dialogue descriptions of things and the mental visualizations that come with it.
Will probably take a break to read something else, but planning to read a couple more volumes due to how easy it is.
テイルズ オブ シンフォニア
Playing it in full Japanese has been awesome because I am using the language in so many different ways (story, menus, 術技, 装備, アイテム, etc…). It feels very immersive when given choices.
One gripe I have as a language learner is the excessive 英語 katakana usage for names of things. I wonder if it’s a fantasy thing or video games in general? Random example, but I am playing as コレット and she has a 天使術 called エンジェル・フェザ, and as language learner I am constantly wondering why it’s not called 天使の羽. Do Japanese kids even know what the katakana means or does it just sound cool?
Thoughts about Bunpro:
I have been trying to decide if Bunpro is still a useful resource for me or if I have outgrown it at this point. I put my review queue on pause this past weekend and it feels great to just read when I have time instead.
I think it has been valuable in getting me to this point, but I am reaching a point where the remaining grammar just feels like specialized vocab and I could acquire most of it by reading.
The other major problem I have is that it is really frustrating when the example sentences lack context needed to figure out the purpose of the sentence, which takes the focus away from the grammar point being tested.
why is number pronunciation so hard/not documented in an easy way?
I have been using a reading forward strategy for learning Japanese and there is one area that I have noticed does not improve for me by reading alone, and that is number pronunciation.
For some reason, numbers rarely have furigana and the dictionaries I use don’t tell you how to pronounce things properly (ex. you type 三匹 into dictionary and it give you two separate results さん and ひき, instead of the correct pronunciation さんびき)
After realizing that this problem isn’t going away on it’s own, I am making an effort to explicitly study numbers/counters.
If anyone has resource recommendations for learning this let me know. Or better yet, if there is a dictionary or site out there where I can just enter stuff like 八匹 or 三日 and it tells you how to pronounce it, that would be amazing.
My guess is that because the fantasy genre is highly influenced by D&D in particular, and western fantasy more generally, that there’s some amount of both history and at this point that’s what people expect in those games.
I haven’t played a ton of games in Japanese, but the non-fantasy ones I have played have not had any more katakana than you’d expect.
I’m interested in both of these as well. It’s even more irritating when you’re reading a manga with full furigana, but the word is written 3匹 or something so they just sidestep it entirely. :\
Not resources, per-se, but I’ve had luck with memorizing some of the very common ones and then using those sound changes to map to other counters.
For example, 本 is everywhere, and (as far as I can tell) all of the sound changes map to the sound changes for 匹 since they are both は行. 個, 大, 分, and 才, are both worth knowing because they come up so much. I’d also suggest 枚 except I don’t think it has sound changes…
You can also sidestep the problem entirely by using the -つ number with what you’re counting (リンゴが一つ for example). 個 can also work for a lot as long as it’s small.
Yeah I think the western inspiration is probably a big part of it.
Another example I can think of would be the Sailor Moon attack names. Like Usagi with ムーン・ティアラ・アクション or Sailor Mars with ファイヤー・ソウル.
The problem I am having is that the game is like that x100. But on the bright side, I will probably get really good at reading katakana from this.
Thanks for the advice. I will see if I can find a mapping for those counters somewhere online and try to memorize the patterns a bit.
This is good to know too, but I currently have no output use case. My goal for now is just to how to read them when they show up in manga and novels. Normally I would be able to pick up the pattern after reading it several times, but I’m finding it difficult to know how to pronounce them in the first place.
For me SRS just doesn’t make sense for grammar, since it’s something I need to “understand”, not memorize. But I really like Bunpro as a grammar dictionary, the explanations and example sentences are great and I like that they give cross references to other resources.
I agree but I also think that a lot of grammar points are just vocab, which the SRS works well for. Learning small set phrases is a lot different than learning verb conjugations.
I learned quickly that I needed to set it to reading mode and just try to understand the sentences as a whole. I’d rather work on comprehension than recall.
The big problem I am having is opening up a big stack of reviews is getting demoralizing. So I might just quit all SRS and go full reading soon now that I can handle basic light novels.
I started using it like this too. I really like the grammar search bar. At one point, I realized that JLPT order isn’t important for me so I started searching grammar points as I saw them come up in reading. I guess I could still do that without the SRS part.
I’m not a Bunpro user, but I agree with this. When I first started reading I made Anki cards for everything I had to look up while reading. Only after I started reading grammar dictionaries did I realize that a ton of my cards were actually grammar points. Granted, there’s still a ton of grammar I don’t know, but so far the only time basic flashcards weren’t as useful for me was with conjugations. For that, I ended up discovering how useful cloze cards are when you have a whole list or table of information.
I’m trying though also to train output more, since I realized when I’m trying to freely speak, finding the correct grammar for what you want to express is harder than expected. Usually I forget that 2/3 of my learnt grammar ever existed and then for the rest I’m wracking my brains on the correct formation
Personally, for the latter I actually find drills the most effective for me, even though some people hate them.
I’m in the hate them category, and don’t get me wrong, my speaking is not good, but if you’re into drills one of the things I highly recommend is learning how to explain words that you don’t know (or can’t remember). “Oh it’s the little thing that you use it when you’re doing this other thing” kind of speaking. I actually got into that from a Japanese YouTuber (who might not exist anymore?) who did a few videos where he explained concepts like that. I’ve found it super valuable in keeping conversations going the few times I am speaking in Japanese.
I am probably in a unique position as a language learner because speaking is my lowest priority of the 4 language skills. So I haven’t even considered doing drills for it. But part of me thinks I am getting better at it just by reading?
I started noticing this past weekend when I had company over that sometimes my brain would just automatically think of small Japanese phrases or names of objects. Not full sentences, but like short phrases. (I also get the urge to use like half Japanese/half English when I write these posts lol)
This wasn’t useful at all because my guests do not speak Japanese, but it made me wonder how much I would be capable of if I did have a use case for speaking.
This is kind of unrelated to what you said but it made me think of this. I just saw a video last night about あいずち and how important it is to keep conversation going. It kind of blew my mind because those phrases are everywhere and I feel like I only partially knew what they meant until this point. Maybe I should watch more YouTube teachers…
For anyone following the numbers saga, I have a new approach. As much as I am trying to avoid SRS, I think that counters are the perfect use case because it is just pure pattern memorization.
So I found a pre-made deck on Anki’s website that has 20 popular counters and usage for numbers 1-10, 百, 千, 万, 何. It would be better if they were sentence examples but しょうがないな.
The goal for me will be to drill pronunciation recall on these counters for a bit until I can transition to reading them correctly in manga and novels and drop the SRS.
I think that works well for when you don’t know a vocab, but sometimes things like I had to remember if “trying to do something” was the volitional or the ‘add よう’ form and do I use と or に + してる or plain する, also the nuances for usage flew through my head. In my own experience, that is harder to reword, and using the wrong grammar led to me not being understood at all sometimes. Then comes the finding the right politeness register for when you’re all adults who never met each other before, some will use plain already, some use polite and trying to mirror it adds to my brain overload…
They really are! I would say sometimes even 50% of the conversation.
BTW speaking was also my lowest priority until I found a language meetup (with jpn natives) in my city. After going there I both felt both disappointed in my speaking skills but also it felt super rewarding, you felt like you learnt a ton and every little sentence you catch feels amazing. Reading is still most important to me but I have high regards for output ability now and definitely want to improve that too.
May be an unpopular opinion but google translate gives you the reading under the Japanese but it’s in romaji I sometimes use that, or DeepL will show it the same way, with romaji, if you switch it so it’s a translation from English to Japanese. I do tend to use my phone for look ups though.
Learning the counter pronunciation is going well. I am starting to get a feel for the patterns surrounding the h/f, b, and p sounds. Minutes and days are still challenging but my system of Anki plus the Tofugu guide is working.
Reading through また、同じ夢を見ていた which has been not bad at all, despite it’s Natively level. I think I am going to try to be less concerned with levels and read more of a mixed bag of difficulties going forward.
Discovering reading speed data (blessing or curse?)
I started using ッツ Reader for my ebooks and it has a tracker that tells you how many characters you read per hour, which I have taken interest in.
At first, I enabled the tracker and read like I normally do. The basic pattern so far is that the beginning of books I am fairly slow (~50 字/分) but then as I read and get used to the author that number gradually increases to around 100 字/分.
Obviously increasing speed alone is useless if you lose comprehension. However, if I can find a way to increase my speed, then I can read more books!
My Repeated Reading experiment:
Repeated reading is a learning strategy that involves reading a short text multiple times to improve reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
The way that I have decided to test this out is to pick a page from my previous reading session and read it aloud 3 times in a row, with a short break break in between rounds to look up any tough words. The goal is to read it as fast as possible while pronouncing words correctly and actively taking meaning from the passage.
Observations after a few days:
Speed increases in a consistent manner between rounds. Something like 2:30 ->1:50 ->1:40 is very typical for me.
The brain has to multitask and process old info while taking in new info. There are times where it randomly clicks for me what they meant from three lines ago. It feels like no-pause listening practice, in the sense that you can’t stop or slow down the input stream.
I catch which words I verbally stumble on (現れる, 限れない, and 柔らかい are my worst offenders)
Practice making split second decisions. (parsing words, skipping hard words until the next round, etc.)
I am really impressed by this practice method and since it only takes 10 mins I think I am going to keep trying it for a while to see if it has an impact on my overall ability. It also serves as a mini recap from my previous reading session which is nice.
Do you care about reading speed at all when you read? Have you ever tried any structured reading techniques to improve speed/fluency?
I used to track it by pages per hour, but then stopped caring after the first ~year of reading books. It’s worth noting I read only physical books back then, so I had no way of tracking chars/hour.
I view reading speed as something that will naturally increase as I do more of it, and that has proven to be true. I’m a very fast reader in English though, and comparing how quickly I’m getting through rereads of some English books (I decided I wanted to read Sherlock again recently) to my Japanese speed is always a bit sad Casually reading ‘a bit’ of Sherlock before bed each night has a book done in a few days, casually reading ‘a bit’ of a Japanese book of similar flavor of difficulty and we’re looking at weeks.
Some books I read slow, because I like them - I don’t want the book to end; some books I read fast, because I like them - I want to know what happens next.
If I want to be fast, the main problem is the amount of look-ups I do. With time look-ups will go down and the general reading speed will increase - automatically.
This seems likely to be the main contributor to speed, gradual change over time from using the language. I have only recently become interested in the speed topic now that I have an easy data set to play with.
I relate to this. I think the material that I have been reading lately has been well suited to my skill, but if I increase difficulty too much my speed will probably crash due to lookups.
However, with the repeated reading drills, I already read the page before so I only have a few stubborn lookups.
I am starting to get a feel for scanning text and identifying words I don’t know and how they fit in the larger puzzle even if I choose not to look them up. It’s almost like realizing that I can read a whole section fast, cache the missing words, and then lookup 5 things at once and my brain will still piece it all together.
Not that I would want to read every book this way, but it is interesting to me.
I sometimes use that, or DeepL will show it the same way, with romaji, if you switch it so it’s a translation from English to Japanese. I do tend to use my phone for look ups though.
Casually reading ‘a bit’ of Sherlock before bed each night has a book done in a few days, casually reading ‘a bit’ of a Japanese book of similar flavor of difficulty and we’re looking at weeks.