Learning languages like I’m chasing waterfalls (learning log)

[HopeWaterfall]

It’s monthly update time! This month was a bit of a mess, both in my personal life and for language learning. Nevertheless, I managed to do a lot, but with a really random spread of energy between languages.

Spanish

Spanish was… not great. I read one full novel, Sin noticias de Gurb | L33?? , which I loved. Other than that however, I just read some of La Ciudad de las Bestias | L30?? for the bookclub and randomly some litterary analysis. That amounts to 234 pages, which is surprisingly better than the previous month, but all in all not that much. I definitely need to catch up on bookclubs, I’m starting to get slightly overwhelmed by the amount of books I’m reading at the same time.

Korean

While this isn’t the month for Spanish, it is for Korean. I’ve managed to read over 1000 pages this month. Or well, mostly read, since I also listened to two audiobooks. So far, that Storytel subscription has been very useful, and I’ve listened to two books in the 사라진 날 | L20 series. It’s actually surprisingly palatable, and the level is pretty nice. I did suffer a little bit with 엄마가 사라진 날 | L20 , but that’s on me, I should’ve figured that missing mom = crying kids, and that’s something to avoid in audiobooks.

Of note, I’ve finally finished 이상한 과자 가게 전천당 1 | L24 , so that’s my first Natively book club book officially finished! I finished another (outside of Natively) book club book as well, 전우치전 | L22 . I also bought the next graded reader in the series, 심청전 | L27??, but as it’s supposed to be at C1, I don’t know when I’ll tackle it.

But that’s not all. I’ve read (and listened to afterwards) a pretty good chunk of 다이어트 학교 | L22??. I have to admit, it’s not the best thing to read while trying to lose weight, as it’s filled with pretty much every possible weight related trigger. So I took a small break from that in favor of 매일매일 아침밥 먹으리 | L15?? , which is actually not as easy as I thought at all. That’s a TOPIK4 book for sure, but we’ll see where it ends up exactly soon. I also just started Harry Potter, but I am reading at a pitifully slow pace (my stats don’t look that bad, but my edition also uses a giant font, with about twice as many pages as my French edition).

Now it’s stats time! I only missed two days of reading this month, and I’m continuing to read more and more higher levels, with 462 L20-26 pages against 343 last month. Comparing to last month, that level appointed to only 15% of my total pages, and we’re now at 20%!

(I totally didn’t read just one more 두루책방 book to get my L20-26 pages proportion from 19,9% to 20. Obviously, I would never do that.)

Italian

Not much to say here. I went through the first 5 short stories of one of the graded readers I bought, but otherwise I haven’t done much besides watching a couple grammar videos.

Japanese

This is the newest addition to the family. You’d think that in the week (not even that really) that I’ve decided to learn Japanese, I wouldn’t have really been able to do anything, but you’d be wrong. I thought I was starting from a completely blank slate appart from an ease with grammar concepts, but I was not prepared for this to happen. Apparently I remember way more than I thought from the time when I watched anime, and I haven’t watched any in a hot minute (pre 2020 probably). So that was helpful, plus my meager hanja knowledge.

I’ve decided to use Tae Kim’s guide to learning Japanese along with some Cure Dolly videos as my main ressources for grammar. For kanji, I’ve started using wanikani, and I can already tell that those mnemonics work great for me. As long as that continues into L2-3, I will be continuing with Wanikani. For vocab, I started using an anki deck based on Tae Kim’s guide which is quite nice as well as a deck specifically containing Crystal hunters content.

I’ve also tried reading some https://learnnatively.com/series/c78f246213/ graded readers, for now L0-2, and I could actually understand a lot! I even started Crystal hunters and read through chapter 1. It’s crazy how much reading does to help with language learning, because I can already tell that I’m going to be improving a lot more quickly with Japanese than with Korean. Of course, part of that is the grammar understanding, but reading as an absolute beginner isn’t something that I’d ever tried to do and I can already tell that it’s doing wonders for my vocab and grammar knowledge.

Some celebratory stats. Of course, it’s graded readers, so not many words per page, but I am honestly baffled at how this could even be possible.

Should I hide each language’s comment behind a details tab, so that my comments don’t get too long?

• hide them
• show everything
• other (comment)

[cat]

Other - it’s your log, do what pleases you. The important question is do you like formatting it like that?

[Pashmina]

Maybe one day I’ll do the reverse thing and learn Korean. Grammar-wise it should be similar to Japanese, right? I’m just a bit scared of the pronunciation thing.

[HopeWaterfall]

@cat

The important question is do you like formatting it like that?

That’s the thing, to me there are pros and cons to both, hence why I did the poll. The completely open posts look nice, but then if I want to look back on something, with four languages, it’s starting to get pretty unpractical.

@Pashmina

Maybe one day I’ll do the reverse thing and learn Korean. Grammar-wise it should be similar to Japanese, right? I’m just a bit scared of the pronunciation thing

Join us Korean learners! Grammar should be easier for you, the whole concept of the particles is super similar in Korean, and sentence structure to some extent as well. Also your kanji knowledge would translate into Hanja knowledge, as long as you look up the pronunciation of the most common ones, so it should be immensely helpful to learn vocab quickly. (As a bonus, there are only 1000 commonly used Hanja.)

As for pronunciation, I’m obviously biased, but I don’t think it’s that hard? There are a couple sound change rules, but those are clearly outlined and otherwise it’s pretty simple. Some vowel changes are pretty common as well, diphtongues disappearing and slightly different verb endings depending on gender and how cute you want to sound. But you can start with just learning the standard pronunciation, and you’ll get the rest through exposure.

Most things that deviate from that in standard Korean you’ll find actually follow the former spelling of the word, so you just have to recognize the pattern and words it applies to. And then obviously there’s dialect, but you’ll probably start with standard Korean, and if you’re interested in a specific dialect you can look up pronunciation guides. Generally they have certain vowel sounds that they change and different verb endings, so it’s just a matter of getting used to it.

[HopeWaterfall]

I’m just realizing that I could’ve put this all along, but oh well… So here are my learning time stats for Korean this month. It’s both pretty good, at 32 hours this month, but also a lot lower than it’s been. Okay, maybe comparing it to my best month is unfair, but in November 2023 (when I joined Natively), I somehow managed to do 74 hours of Korean. How, I honestly don’t know, but it happened, I have proof

That ratio is pretty ironic though, but it represents my learning style well. It’s always going to be books first, the occasional drama episode or audiobook, and a sprinkle of grammar here and there, since I mostly just look things up as I come across them now.

[eefara]

@HopeWaterfall

Should I hide each language’s comment behind a details tab, so that my comments don’t get too long?

I voted for “hide them” since I like the aspect of anticipation that comes from seeing a stack of language-related tabs, haha. It’s like opening gifts every time I open one.

@HopeWaterfall

Some celebratory stats. Of course, it’s graded readers, so not many words per page, but I am honestly baffled at how this could even be possible.

Man, that’s awesome! I can’t wait to see where you go from here!

[HopeWaterfall]

I’ve just gotten to level 2 on WK! It took me 5 days, so that’s nice, but I’m probably going to install one of those add-ons so that I can go back and correct when I go too fast and make typos. I could’ve leveled up yesterday if not for that. But well, at least I managed to start on all the vocab from level one.

So far, I’ve been loving the mnemonics. Knowing which mnemonic and pronunciation to use is the hardest thing, but otherwise, it’s been super fun. I’m still not sure how many lessons per day I should do, it’s hard to imagine how that will compound later on. But well, I’ve put a maximum of 20 lessons a day for now, and we’ll see how that goes.

[Pashmina]

Definitely go wild on the extensions, there’s so many that add QoL improvements. I gave my lifetime account to my friend who started learning Japanese, from time to time I log in there and get nostalgic lol (wish they had the lesson cap back then)

[SpiderWeb]

As someone coming to these forums from wanikani’s, I’d err on the slow side of the daily lessons. I burned out a bit and I’m still working my way back up to new lessons. Maybe by the end of May. 20 a day is almost enough to do the whole site in a year, which is a pretty fast speed. Consistency wins over speed. Srs reviews will stack up on you fast once you’re through those first couple levels. Plenty of people make it through at a fast pace but not everyone does.

[HopeWaterfall]

New week, new me. I’ve been struck by a series of not so great circumstances lately, sooo now my computer screen is half broken. It still works, ish, but the worst thing is I don’t even know how it got broken.

For language learning however, this has been a good week!

Korean

I’m trying to read all my backlog of chapters for the 죽이고 싶은 아이 | L24 book club, and that’s been going pretty well.

I also finally finished 매일매일 아침밥 먹으리 | L22. It’s not that’s it’s a particularly difficult book, but well, I picked it up with the intention of it being a quick and easy read, so I felt a bit cheated. It had a temporary rating of L15??, which in retrospect I shoudn’t have believed, but I figured that whoever added it must’ve read at least the preview. Well, that assumption was wrong, so it ended up taking me almost 5 hours to read this fully. The worst part though is the storyline, it was basically non-existent, and the little that was there was just incredibly boring. The entire thing can basically be summed up to this: grandpa wants the family to eat breakfast together, but the daughter refuses to eat because she’s on a diet hoping that her school crush that bullies her about her weight will like her back if she loses weight. And that’s literally it. 136 pages for just this.

Japanese

Now Japanese, I feel like I made a lot of progress with. I just hit L3 on Wanikani, and so far, things have been going smoothly. I now split up my 20 daily lessons into two sessions, my retention is better that way. I’ve also started getting those guru reviews from L1, and I remembered all of those bar 2, when I’d forgotten the reading, so I’m pretty pumped about that.

I also finished the first volume of Crystal hunters, the japanese version at least, not the natural japanese one. As for the Tadoku graded readers, I’ve read almost all of them up to Natively L4, and I’m starting to tackle the Natively L5 ones. Basic sentence structure is starting to make a lot of sense to me, and between WK and the anki deck I’m using, my vocab is expanding pretty quickly, so reading is easier.

I’ve also started looking at grammar, both on Tae Kim’s guide and on Imabi. I’m kinda lost between which one to choose. Tae Kim’s guide advances pretty quickly, but just in the first few levels, comparing it to Imabi, it’s missing a lot of information. I feel like Imabi is more complete, but I’m moving through it super slowly. So I’m not sure if I should continue reading through both, or just pick one, and in that case which.

Spanish

I’ve really fallen back on my own book club for Spanish. I’ll be taking advantage of this week to catch back on it, I just need to read what, seven chapters? I think what’s been holding me back is that I set myself on doing intensive reading, which I’ve really never done in Spanish. So I’ll be switching to extensive reading instead, not putting any extra pressure on myself so that I can just enjoy the book fully.

I also started on Dracula, I almost did it in English, but reading it in Spanish will add to my language learning, so in the end, I went for it.

Italian

I found a short book in Italian that seemed pretty simple, so I ended up buying it. It was also used book and only $5, so I hope I’ll be able to read it! Now I just need to finish my graded readers first and then I’ll tackle it. I honestly can’t wait for the days of Natively Italian to come, this is exactly what I’m lacking right now.

I feel like this list of languages is getting bigger everytime I look at it. Someone recently mentionned Icelandic to me, the grammar is really weird and complex apparently, and that’s actually making me consider picking it up eventually. There are just so many interesting languages that I could be learning. Today, if I were to make a list of all the languages I want to learn, it’d look something like this, in no particular order:

• Romanian, because it’s a romance language with slavic roots, that’s just interesting
• Polish, for my family, also an entryway into slavic languages
• German and Dutch, to speak to friends, and again it’s just a different grammar structure that’s interesting (and it would also be funny to be able to say that I’m learning all the Natively languages . All those book club opportunities!)
• Swedish, it just sounds so beautiful
• Mandarin, for the writing system and also there’s just so many books I could be reading
• Portuguese, because I might as well go for the other romance languages, plus I know a lot of portuguese speakers
• Arabic, not sure which dialect, but probably Algerian Arabic, because I have family and friends who speak it. It would open a world to completely different languages and writing systems
• Indonesian, because it’s a mix of words from a lot of different languages, and has an interesting grammar system as well
• Icelandic, interesting grammar, need I say more?
• Finnish, it’s so different from almost all languages because it’s basically part of an isolated language family, along with Hungarian

[eefara]

@HopeWaterfall

I also started on Dracula, I almost did it in English, but reading it in Spanish will add to my language learning, so in the end, I went for it.

I’d definitely advocate for an extensive reading approach to this one as well, personally. Older vocab, long paragraphs, plus the story takes a while to get going.

[HopeWaterfall]

Also, I forgot to say that earlier, but I’m thinking of taking the next TOPIK session! It’ll be in October, so I still have some time to prepare. I just need to remember to register in June.

I’ll probably try a mock test soon. Obviously I’ll be taking the TOPIK II, but within that I’m not exactly sure what I’ll get. The writing section is probably going to be the hardest. Now comes the question, should I just broadly improve my level or focus on studying specifically for the TOPIK? Has anyone here ever taken it?

[bungakushoujo]

@HopeWaterfall

Now comes the question, should I just broadly improve my level or focus on studying specifically for the TOPIK? Has anyone here ever taken it?

I studied for last October’s TOPIK but ended up not making it to the test the day of. However! That means I do know a lot about studying for it now. In my opinion, I think it’s best to use some resources specifically for the TOPIK, as the questions for each level have a really specific type of format and there is also specific vocabulary associated with each. I used the textbook 토픽 합격 레시피 last year and would recommend it. It covered everything having to do with the test and I felt like I could’ve passed with a good score. It’s split by level, so you can just study the materials up to the level you’re aiming for and save the advanced stuff for later.

I would also probably recommend getting a separate textbook specifically for the writing section if you care about getting points there. 토픽 합격 레시피 teaches enough and has a lot of good vocab and building blocks you can memorize, but I don’t know if it’s enough for the longer essay prompts. The level 3 writing prompt is actually pretty easy since you just need to memorize some phrases and vocab associated with summarizing data, then you’ll get a graph or chart to write a paragraph about. But from level 4 (I think it was??) onwards you have to express your own opinion and organize your paragraphs logically, so a writing textbook will teach you how to approach that. I used a Japanese one (TOPIK作文対策 for the curious) but I’ve seen a lot of Korean ones. I think you couldn’t go wrong with any of them!

[ddochii]

This is gna be long I’m sorry

long thing

I basically just studied using my normal textbooks and used the free past tests uploaded online to study. You’ll need a good base of grammar, so I used the level 4 SNU textbook I had to review that. I got topik 6 and no advanced grammar actually came out imo.

If you need to understand the structure, maybe a topik specific book would help explain that? I just looked at topik study websites and looked at the past tests and got it that way. Up to you though. I saved my money on materials and paid a tutor to give me feedback on writing questions instead.

I took the reading and listening practice tests more than once and just decided to grind vocabulary up to about question 35. After that, it’s too specific and there’s only small chance that those topic specific words would show up. If your goal isn’t level 5/6 then don’t worry about those high level questions too much. You should learn the distribution of answers (eg 11 As, 10 Bs, 10Cs…) cause it’s evenly distributed and you can guess the higher level questions with better probability. You probably won’t have time to read it all if you aren’t going for 5-6.

Study the verbs at the end of choices so you can estimate the answer quickly. Listening is all about time— you need to be reading the options before the listening passages are being read so you know what to listen for. I tried to read 2 questions ahead and circle the key word until about question 30 where I didn’t have time to do so.
For reading, I circled the main point in the options (usually the verb or key detail) then skimmed the passage. They’ll try to trip you up. Understanding the question is more important than understanding the whole passage. Since you already practice reading a lot, it’ll be good since you need to be comfortable just have a general sense of what the passage means and be able to use context to guess words you don’t know lol.

You need to know grammar to get writing question 51 and 52 correct. You should aim to get these both correct. 53, just try your best. Memorize the structure for different types of graphs. I just googled graphs pictures in Korean and practiced summarizing the info using the structures I learned over and over. Make sure you know spacing rules!! You should also prob learn grammar suited for writing eg 했다 —> 하였다. 인상하고 —> 인상하며. Don’t bother doing the last essay 54 question, just spend time getting 51-53 as perfect as possible. I really think if you have any funds, a tutor will help a lot. You can practice 51-53 for homework and have them check it and correct it in a tutor session. I always rewrote my writing with their corrections. It’s all just memorization 🫨

Ok that was long sorry HAHA but that’s what I did! I only studied for a month and my practice scores went from like 75 to 95 for reading and listening section. My real test score was lower due to nerves lol but it really helped. I did the practice tests 기출 문제 in full testing conditions too— 10 minute break between, no music, no lookups— to get my stamina up but I worked up to that since my brain was rlly fatigued the first couple tries.

[HopeWaterfall]

Thank you both for the advice!

@bungakushoujo

In my opinion, I think it’s best to use some resources specifically for the TOPIK, as the questions for each level have a really specific type of format and there is also specific vocabulary associated with each.

I’ll definitely do that then. I hadn’t actually realized it, since the only language test I’ve ever taken is the TOEFL, and there’s not much to do with strategy there, but the TOPIK does have some weird questions that you need to prepare for.

@ddochii

You probably won’t have time to read it all if you aren’t going for 5-6.

Definitely not going for those levels. I think that reasonably, I should get either TOPIK 3 or 4, depending on how well I do. I’m improving fast, but I’m still far from being advanced. Maybe if it was reading only, but not with listening and writing added into the mix.

@ddochii

I did the practice tests 기출 문제 in full testing conditions too— 10 minute break between, no music, no lookups— to get my stamina up but I worked up to that since my brain was rlly fatigued the first couple tries.

I’m definitely a bit worried about that part. The fatigue always hits me hard in exams, I often need to take some time to rest or my whole brain just stops working. I saw that it’s possible to get some special accomodations for disabilities, but if the process is anything like what I have to go through for Uni, I’d really rather not.

[HopeWaterfall]

The beginning of this month has been pretty hectic. It’s been unexpected thing after unexpected thing, but I’m happy to say that I’m finally out of administrative hell. (Although my computer screen is still broken, and I’ll need to pay around $200 for the reparations, yikes.) On the bright side however, I will be waking up earlier and spending some time on the tram, which means time to read and I’ll be able to do my WaniKani reviews earlier.

Korean

Not that many new things for Korean since my last post. I’ve been catching up on 죽이고 싶은 아이 | L25 for the book club, which has been pretty fun. Only 100 pages to go!

I’ve also started on the second volume of https://learnnatively.com/series/38799c1755/ and once again, I love it! I figured I would read it faster this time but so far it hasn’t been the case, which thinking more about it, makes sense. After all, since every chapter is focused on a different character and topic, that means I’m always coming across a lot of new vocab. I’m definitely planning on continuing further with this series, it feels almost like it’s made for language learners.

Now, time for some celebratory stats!

I don’t know exactly when that happened, but I’ve hit 50 recorded hours of reading on Natively! But since I don’t/can’t record everything there, looking at my Toggl stats, that’s 160 hours of reading, which I can’t believe either.

Japanese

A lot of things have happened however for Japanese. I’m still going strong with WaniKani, and hit level 4 after 10 days. That will probably go down a little as I’ll be waking up earlier, meaning more review sessions. I’ll see what happens. I’ve started making some of my own mnemonics, for the readings that are just not sticking. One in particular I’m very proud of. I was struggling with the reading of 冬 until I remembered the name of the character 轟とどろき冬ふゆ美み from bnha. I knew that her name was basically a pun related to her ice powers, but would you look at that, it even has 冬 in it!

I’ll be mastering my first radicals tomorrow, and kanji will be coming right after, so I’m excited for that. Also, so far, I’m quite happy about my accuracy. I’m struggling with readings the most, but I feel like making my own mnemonics for those couple kanji/words I struggle with has already been helping me with that a lot.

Now, reading wise, I’ve hit 500 pages on Natively. Things are starting to make more sense, and I feel like I can recognize a lot of kanji, and I’m learning other vocab words as I go. I’ve started tackling some of the free Tadoku graded readers at Natively L6. On another note, I almost bought a little kanji handbook, until I realized that I already basically recognized half of the kanji in it!

I also found this super nice website, watanoc, that I’ve tried reading from. The N5 reading practice is super nice, and the built in dictionary makes it possible not only to look up words but also to see the grammar separately. Once a word shows up once, the next time you also don’t have a link to the meaning, so it’s a great way to make yourself learn the vocab. So far however, it’s been the most useful to learn new grammar and understand sentence structure better. It’s nice to see at least that for a lot of these grammar points, I can directly think of a Korean equivalent, so the sentences make sense in my head. It feels weird to say that I’m sort of avoiding the “I know vocab and grammar yet I can’t understand anything other than textbook sentences” kind of stage that I went through for some time with Korean, but it’s nonetheless very nice.

And to finish, for grammar, I’ve found yet another ressource that I actually really like this time: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaQBL4XHuSo&list=PLA_RcUI8km1NMhiEebcbqdlcHv_2ngbO2](https://the Tokini Andy Genki 1 playlist). So far, I’ve gone through lessons 1 and 2, and I think this is the one ressource that I’ll be sticking to the most to start.

Genki 1 Lessons	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12

[HopeWaterfall]

There may be some spelling mistakes or forgotten words in there. But well, I wanted to upload this tonight, so here it is:

Korean

This week… was not a great week for my Korean. I redeemed myself with today however, as I’ve finally finished 우리는 조구만 존재야 | L22. It was a bit of a journey, what with the difficulty level from section to section being completely random and going from beginner to advanced, but super fun nonetheless. I struggled a bit at the end, since I was kinda stuck in a place with no wifi or data and therefore no dictionnary when I read the last 100 pages, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

On another note, I am still waiting on my delivery for 마녀 배달부 키키 1 | L25??, 아몬드 | L26 and https://learnnatively.com/book/0d79508687/. Hopefully they will arrive soon, but no news so far.

Japanese

Japanese is where I’ve spent most of my time.

Starting with reading, I was planning on reading the first volume of Crystal hunters again, but this time going with the natural Japanese version. That ending up flopping very quickly however, when I realized that it doesn’t have any furigana. The grammar is also a lot more complex, so I decided to go for the “easy” Japanese second volume. I ended up devouring it within a day, so that was really fun.

I’ve also just started reading a new manga: Read 遠くにある夢 :: ミステリアスな夢 (#3) | Tapas Community . This is honestly a gold mine. The chapters are relatively short, so it’s perfect to decipher, the vocab and kanji used are mostly super basic, and the grammar is so far either N5 or N4. I’ve just read the first two chapters, but this has already been super useful. The only con to this one is the lack of furigana. Which brings me to my next point.

So far, when coming across new kanji without furigana where I can select the text, I’ve been using the inbuilt OCR of google image search. That’s a slightly cumbersome process however, so I’ve started searching whatever Wanikani radical I can spot into WK, and then searching through the list. Now, that worked great and all, but I’ve noticed that when kanji that are later used as components of other kanji are introduced as radicals, it means that you can’t search for them with the partial radical. For example, I was looking for 意 and I spotted both 立 and 日, but that didn’t help me as it has 音 as a radical instead.
So, any solution for that? How do you usually search for new kanji without furigana that you can’t copy?

Grammar wise, I’ve been going nice and steady. I’m almost done with lesson 4 of Genki (through TokiniAndy). I’ve also come across a couple other grammar points, mainly through reading that second manga. So today’s new grammar points consist of: ~の (as a sentence ending), ~かな and ~ たら.

And then, kanji studies! I’ve kept up with Wanikani and I’m now level 5! I was a tiny bit faster than the last, that is just below 10 days, but still slower than I expected. And well, I’ve just realized that since I was spreading out my radicals over the first three days, it means that some of the kanji from that second batch took three more days to unlock. Soooo I’ve decided to switch to mainly prioritizing radicals at the beginning of levels. Those are easier to learn anyways as it’s mostly reading that I struggle with. I’ll see how that goes for the next level.

I also started actually writing down kanji. And as much as I know it’s not technically necessary, I really do feel like this is the thing that’s going to allow me to remember them much better. I’ve been using this anki deck and it’s been going well so far. I’ll see how much time it takes me and if it’s still worth doing in the long run. I’ve been doing only 10 new cards a day though, so that I don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of reviews later when combined with Wanikani.

Edit: I forgot to say this but I’m hoping to join the 玉藻の恋 | L19 bookclub on Wanikani starting of June 15th. Now, this is probably going to be incredibly difficult for me, but I’ll try my best. I’m also hoping to cover as much of Genki 1 as I can handle until then. So far at least, all the grammar has felt pretty natural and straightforward, thanks to Korean, so that shouldn’t cause me any problems.

Spanish

Not much for Spanish. I now sort of regret buying an edition of La Casa de Bernarda Alba with a huge literary commentary at the beginning. It’s interesting, so I don’t want to skip it, but my reading speed for that is super slow. To be fair, literary analysis in any language I’m going to read more slowly than a novel or play, but still, it’s annoying. I finished the introduction of the author this week, and I still have to read the analysis of the play. Hopefully I’ll finish it soon, so that I can move on to reading something else (like La Ciudad de las Bestias, that I’ve really been neglecting these past couple weeks).

[shitsurei]

@HopeWaterfall

So, any solution for that? How do you usually search for new kanji without furigana that you can’t copy?

There’s a “radical” input (probably better called component input) in jisho.org that lets you input all of the parts of the kanji and it will narrow down a list for you and you can pick them out. They also have a written input option and there’s also one on Google phone’s input called 手書き that you can enable. Eventually you’ll probably get to a place where you might know the kunyomi (or an ateji) for a given kanji and will franken-type a compound out to get the kanji that you need. There’s also SKIP codes if you want to get super old school.

[eefara]

@HopeWaterfall

So, any solution for that? How do you usually search for new kanji without furigana that you can’t copy?

My JP/EN dictionaries of choice, jisho.org and Akebi (on Android) are flexible enough that I can find 意 by searching with 立 and 日. On the small occasion I mistake what radicals I need to be searching for, both have a handwriting option that I can usually use to bring it up in the end.

[mic]

I usually draw them here: Handwritten kanji search at sljfaq.org Adv: you can be way more sloppy than on jisho.

Stroke order doesn’t matter, even strokes can be combined, which with time you’ll do without thinking much about it. On ‘jisho draw’ howewer you have to be very precise for it to recognize a kanji.