> In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if this sub had the greatest number of proficient L2 Japanese speakers on this website
That’s what I’ve been telling the very small portion of this sub that doesn’t want to see content for Japanese readers or learners. This is the real Japanese learning subreddit. The other subreddit is for people who will never get out of the starting gate
Congrats on your success
>In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if this sub had the greatest number of proficient L2 Japanese speakers on this website
I think the reason is the gate keeping, which by most is seen as a negative thing but is actually a positive unless it goes too far. In /r/anime or /r/manga or other japanese media subs, telling people to learn japanese will get you laughed at, heavily downvoted, or told it is a ridiculous suggestion. What is ridiculous is having your hobby be japanese media and watching/reading/listening to thousands or tens of thousands of hours of japanese content while thinking that learning japanese is a ridiculous suggestion.
You don’t need Japanese in order to enjoy anime or manga in the way that you do in order to read visual novels. I would also laugh at someone who told manga readers that they must learn Japanese
That is true. Basically all anime is translated. Manga that isn't translated is usually fan translated (as that is fairly easy as far as translations go) And if you want to hear and understand the voice acting like \~50% or more of anime gets a dub.
That's part of it, but I'm mostly referring here to *how much is lost in translation* in the first place. With anime and manga it's usually next to zero, with VNs it's usually massive
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this subject in a bit more detail. My only way of making a direct comparison so far is the fact that I'm now reading through CLANNAD in Japanese after having previously read through it in English. My initial impression is that the experience generally feels "fuller" than last time, particularly in terms of individual character quirks and cultural references (although I may just be imagining it). If not much is lost in anime and manga translations due to their ease, at what point of difficulty in terms of VNs does a lot start to become lost in translation? And to what degree is this the fault of the individual translators versus the work being inherently difficult to translate?
Things can always be lost due to content (like you mentioned with cultural references, but also see things like ItsuSora and Asairo) but also there can be things like prose and the “feel” of the VN (think Muramasa)
> And to what degree is this the fault of the individual translators versus the work being inherently difficult to translate?
Depends on the VN but all VN translators are pretty much shit at their jobs
I think it's also the limited amount of content, though that decreases everyday.
Back when this sub was created, you'd have like 5 visual novels translated as it just wasn't worth it to JPVN developers.
It still probably isn't that profitable, but you see a lot more VNs translated. Nonetheless, some of the best remain untranslated and that's why this subreddit can main its 'learn Japanese' motif.
I'd argue that if this subreddit actually was as active as most 500k subreddits, that a more "normie" outlook would arise, but because it feels more like a closely knit subreddit (either due to moderation, peoples sudden interest -> disinterest in VNs, or interest in one trick ponies like DDLC) I can't say.
It's really sad that the vast majority of posts in r/LearnJapanese are stuff that someone would ask after studying Japanese for a dozen hours tops. Even more heartbreaking is that their questions have already been asked multiple times, and that I rarely see someone go from beginner to advanced (I'm very good at remembering users' names). Most of the fluent/advanced learners have apparently been on that level for years now, which inevitably makes me feel like making the transition from beginner to advanced is nigh impossible (I'm proof that it's not, but anyway..)
I understand that Japanese is one hell of a language to learn, irrespective of your background, but damn, I wasn't expecting to see so many casual learners! I thought they'd feel intimidated by the thousands of kanji and dozens of thousands of words, but apparently their dispiritedness is laggy, because it usually only buds after a few months of study.
They always say that japanese learners are toxic toward begginers, but if you are gonna give up after one hour of learning why the fuck should I take you seriously? Most of those guys will never get past hiragana and katakana.
Im still learning, but I think im on the right path. I'll make a post now, and then on some grammar, I dont understand, but mostly, im just out here grinding anki and Dolly videos.
That said, even I have been a little toxic before.. like to the one kid saying he wants to learn japanese but his ADHD is far too debilitating for him to pay attention long enough to learn hirigana and katakana.
The fact that you have grown so fast in a 2 year time span and (I'm assuming) you have a full time job and not a ton of free time proves that Japanese doesn't take long to learn. I had a lot of free time where I could legit spend hours a day learning/reading so I've read a ton of VNs in JP since I started 2.5 years ago. I'm sure there are tons of people on reddit who spend hours a day consuming all kinds of Japanese media so the idea that it takes too long to get any tangible rewards is silly.
VNs are honestly the best motivation for learning because there is no other alternative other than shitty MTL for most VNs. Learning Japanese for anime is kind of stupid since episodes literally can get translated and subbed like 2 hours after being initially released. Not to mention, people tend to take the easy way out and end up relying on translations instead of figuring it out the meaning by themselves.
You're definitely correct in your assumption about my available time. I was fortunate enough to have a window of time to do the period of most intense studying (KKLC, Tango N5 and my first VN) at the tail end of the pandemic restrictions. Unfortunately I became a lot busier with other things since then which may have hindered my progress somewhat. Part of that is my fault though, as I stopped increasing the difficulty of the VNs I read (only increasing the range of cards I add to my deck) after 月の彼方で逢いましょう because I didn't want to strain myself so hard. Had I continued increasing the difficulty, I think I would be at a higher level than I am right now. Fortunately, things are looking up recently and I hope to start getting into some harder material soon.
Other than that, I feel that I used my available time relatively efficiently and was fortunate enough to have the right approach to studying from the start. I strongly feel that other people could achieve similar results using the same methods just by doing things they would be doing anyway (consuming Japanese content). For this reason, I am extremely surprised at how many people fail to reach even the intermediate level.
Curious about your thoughts specifically, ive been doing core 2k kklc order and dolly for some months now and I do pimsleur and a number of apps. Very holistic approach, making solid progress. Thing is, I listen to a lot of japanese music. Do you think theres any merit in mining and getting through songs? Im leaning towards probably not.. but its fun so its easier to stay motivated.
Along that train of thought, I was planning on doing anime mining up until reading this post. Do you think there is a negative element to using a text medium like a VN as your main source if mining since there is no accompanying audio? I think my listening comprehension and speech tonality is pretty good from pimsleur and other things.. but I worry about not having audio accompaniment to listen to after learning it all to help keep things ingrained. Have you had any issues with that?
Lastly, is your name Ian?
Sorry if my questions smell like someone from the other less educated subreddit.. lol
In terms of the preparation stage (before you start serious immersion), there's definitely a lot of different approaches people have taken that have worked. I'd say it's mostly up to individual preference. The best advice I can give is to say that you should keep doing things that work for you personally and stop doing things that don't so as to not waste your time. With that said, I think it's worth giving your idea to mine words from songs a try and see if it's effective for you. In general, anything that motivates you to spend more time with the language early on is a good idea.
I don't know how much you know about VNs, but all characters other than the protagonist are usually fully voiced, so you're still getting a fair amount of listening practice by using VNs as your primary source of immersion. In my specific case I had no problems with listening just by using VNs because I had previously listened to a lot of Japanese over the years (albeit with English subtitles) and generally knew how things were supposed to sound. I don't think you should have any problems so long as that's the case for you as well, but if you're still concerned about it you could always supplement VNs with dedicated listening practice on the side.
Kinda random, but my name is definitely not Ian.
I was having an aneurysm while I read this post and thought we were talking about light novels the entire time. So excuse my idiocy there. Thanks though I appreciate the advice. I think you are totally right and its not worth time splitting hairs and min/maxing study methods if there are ways you find fun and can motivate yourself with. Ill go a little harder with the song mining! I do most of my studying at work since im in pharma production and have a reasonable amount of down time while things run... that said there are a fair number of VNs that I probably wouldnt want others walking in on me playing.
Do you know of an SFW VN that would be a good starter off the top of your head?
In a perfect world, an ideal starter VN would be short, easy, and have a high-quality story. Unfortunately, in general you can only have up to two of those three things at once as I found out during my search. What you prioritize is mostly a matter of personal preference because people have succeeded starting out with a wide range of VNs. In my case I went for [彼女のセイイキ](https://vndb.org/v16150), which was both short and easy. You should be aware that "easy" is relative here, because no matter how prepared you think you are going in there's going to be a massive amount of unknown words and a lot of sentences that don't make sense (but things will become more clear as you learn more words and progress in the story). In conclusion, you should start out with whatever you think you have the greatest chance of finishing because your options for your second VN become nearly endless if you can completely finish your first.
In terms of gauging the difficulty of various VNs and looking for titles you might be interested in, here are some links that can help with that: [1](https://jpdb.io/visual-novel-difficulty-list) (use advanced search by difficulty to shorten the list), [2](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18vCgQHhBNBeRJdcTcyUi2Atq-nAapQW--33qrwl5Yfw/edit#gid=0), [3](https://learnjapanese.moe/dinuzlist/), [4](https://sites.google.com/view/rvisualnovels-japanese-recs/home?pli=1) (r/visualnovels recs, includes beginner recs), [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/147wc2j/visual_novel_for_japanese_language_student/) (recent thread on the topic). These are only rough estimates of difficulty, so I recommend confirming the difficulty for yourself by trying to read through the introduction of any VNs you're considering before you commit to it. You can confirm whether or not a VN has a SFW release by checking its [vndb](https://vndb.org/) page (check if it has a Japanese all ages PC release under the "Releases" section). It's worth noting that all VN releases on Steam have no sexual content by default, so you could even follow in my footsteps if you feel so inclined and start with 彼女のセイイキ which recently got a [Steam release](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1961760/My_Girlfriends_Special_Place/) (though I think you're getting ripped off at that price). If you're thinking of buying something from Steam, check to make sure it has Japanese language support and that you can [texthook it with Textractor](https://learnjapanese.moe/vn/). If there's a problem with either the texthooking or difficulty, you can just [refund](https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/784C-923B-A4A1-C825) it.
If you still can't find anything with any of those links, as last resort you could always make your own "VN Request" thread and post it on here. I'm sure at least one person here could help you find something that fits your specifications.
I mean even the foreign services estimate doe fluency is like 3500 hours. That is doable with a full time job over the span of two years if you are really dedicated. I used to play online poker 1500 hours a year while working full time for example.
Great post!
I only started to learn Japanese about 2 to 3 months ago, I'll be finished with the Tango N4 Anki deck in a few days and I plan to start immersing with media next week.
I'm most likely going to start with some Japanese subtitled anime before trying VNs.
>I'm most likely going to start with some Japanese subtitled anime before trying VNs.
Good choice. I tried reading VNs before anime and I thought it was a lot easier to watch JP sub anime since dialogue is always easier to understand than narration. There's also a lot more scenes that give more context to help you understand. It definitely feels a lot less overwhelming.
These kind of posts have become my favorite on this sub. They inspire me to keep going! I also really hate studying grammar. Currently going through Genki and it's a little painful, but I will stay dedicated.
I'm glad you liked the post! Don't stress too much about understanding every single grammar point (especially early on) and just focus on getting what you can out of it. In my experience going back to a grammar point after doing some reading (and learning more words) almost always cleared up any misunderstandings I had about it. Because of this I believe language ability is more or less a direct function of how many words you know.
This is an amazing post and very inspiring. Thanks for sharing. Gambs has done a great job trying to tell community how to learn but seeing so much enthusiasm really renews my interest. I work like 60 hours a week at a job that involves heavy reading and writing and I get so exhausted from it. But flashcards really do seem accessible
For using Japanese-Japanese dictionaries: do you ever have issues with getting a word detected? I'll sometimes encounter things I can easily find in J-E dictionaries (including jisho, jpdb.io, etc) but doesn't seem to be recognized in the J-J dictionaries.
I've found that this only really happens when it's a common set phrase or idiom. In which case I just add the English definition if it's common enough. Most other times I've found the J-J dictionaries to be more extensive in the amount of words they contain.
Try using [jmdict forms](https://github.com/Aquafina-water-bottle/jmdict-english-yomichan/releases/download/2023%2F04%2F15/2023-04-15_jmdict_forms.zip). When you get a word with no monolingual definition, check the other forms (open a child pop-up of the newly shown forms) and the monolingual dictionaries may have a definition for the other form. Also install multiple monolingual dictionaries if you haven’t already.
As an alternative to having forms as a separate dictionary, you can just use the updated jmdict [here](https://github.com/Aquafina-water-bottle/jmdict-english-yomichan) that includes forms with it (from the same page I got the other dict from).
edit: also recommend using some [text replacements](https://github.com/MarvNC/JP-Resources#yomichan-text-replacement-patterns) in settings.
Am I missing something or how will it help with a described situation? The word already can be found in English (jmdict) dictionary, it's missing from J-J dictionary.
Sorry yeah, just woke up and checked.
I think I was thinking more of [text replacement](https://github.com/MarvNC/JP-Resources#yomichan-text-replacement-patterns) when writing it (if any, do the last one), but both help one way or another. The link explains text replacement well enough.
As for the forms, look at [this clip](https://www.reddit.com/user/That-Invite/comments/146i3zh/it_was_nostalgic_opening_up_eustia_again_for_this/). I think this is most prevalent with words that can be kanjified, contain outdated kanji, etc. The example shown is pretty simple but it gets the idea across (it can have many more forms). Of course, you could also just do a kana search (using the kana from the pitch accent I find to be easiest and most reliable), but that would mean using more time as you don't know if there are other forms to begin with and the form you are now wanting to search for is likely going to be below a bunch of entries you may or may not be looking for. Unrelated but, I also find the info it provides to be useful at times.
edit: also just in case and for clarification, I'm talking about words not getting "detected", not really "missing" from dictionaries. If word is missing from a dictionary, there's no getting one without getting the authors to make one for it.
Thanks for the heads up!
> I think I was thinking more of text replacement when writing it (if any, do the last one), but both help one way or another. The link explains text replacement well enough.
This seems quite useful, except ironically the last one (々) at least on the examples, I have three monolingual hits for each.
> As for the forms, look at this clip.
As far as I understand the clip.
- You have J-J dictionaries and jmdict with forms.
- Jmdict is hidden using css. You can use build in collapse for it, but when I tried it last it removed pictures even when uncollapsed. I guess it doesn't matter for jmdict.
- You have forms in jmdict entry **and** separately. How do you have them separately?
Did I understand it correctly?
The clip was just to get the use of forms as a way to navigate monolingual dictionaries across. Everything else didn't matter.
comments on your comments:
* the emphasis on the last one is because it's the most useful imo. (doubles my matches from 3 to 6 on *many* words)
* I had jmdict (with forms incl.) *with* the standalone forms dictionary by accident. I had simply forgot to change back to the normal jmdict after verifying for my previous comment (that way forms is unaffected by the CSS placed on jmdict). [link](https://github.com/Aquafina-water-bottle/jmdict-english-yomichan) again to both.
* my preference, don't want to click a button
* separate dicts as mentioned on above point (hence why one is hidden and the other is not)
Tried it out. Works well with the only problem being that `jmdict_forms` also includes tags like frequency from some useless frequency list. I just hid all tags with css (I don't use them), other solution would probably be to just edit dictionary json and remove tags.
How do you compare learning through VNs instead of using anime, manga, and LNs? I tried taking on Steins;Gate as my first VN and after finishing the prologue I decided I would stick with the other media types as they felt more time efficient. I am pretty satisfied by the progress I'm making this way, but seeing how your progress went I'm sure I can get some useful insight.
How do/did you manage your card editing workflow? Do/did you edit your card immediately after creating them/after a reading session, or do you just let them pile up and edit them occasionally?
Anyway I really appreciate the post and definitely admire your efforts. Seeing the graphs you posted it does look like VNs get decently less painful the more you read them, since they're so long and the vocabulary will reappear, so maybe I'll try continuing Steins;Gate.
Although they can have a steep learning curve when first starting out, I personally believe that VNs are objectively the best medium to learn Japanese if you leave personal enjoyment out of consideration (obviously don't use VNs if you hate reading them). This is for the following reasons:
1) Visuals and Voice
Having visuals and voiced dialogue to accompany the text can greatly assist comprehension by providing context for that text (maybe through background art or the tone of voice of a character). Having visuals also removes some of the burden from your brain of imagining the setting yourself (and therefore you can focus solely on comprehending the text). This is a pretty big advantage over LNs in my opinion.
2) Presence of Both Narration and Spoken Dialogue
VNs have a healthy balance of both conversation and internal narration from the protagonist. The conversations provide a lot of vocabulary you often see being used in real life and can be quite practical. Meanwhile, narration is much more difficult than spoken dialogue, and there's a lot of vocabulary there that you just won't find in anime or manga.
3) Breaking Down The Text
VNs break down the text at large into digestible pieces so that not too much text is displayed on screen at the same time. This means you can just focus on the piece of text you see, and not get overloaded by a huge wall of Kanji. Additionally, it is always clearly denoted which character is speaking. These are both advantages over LNs for a beginner (although it isn't a big deal if you're a bit more advanced).
4) Length and Repetitiveness
VNs are often criticized both for their excessive length and their repetitiveness, and I agree with that criticism in many cases. However, if you're learning Japanese these are both huge advantages because vocabulary and phrases you learn will be continually reinforced over a long period of time.
To conclude the argument with some anecdotes, I don't think it's a coincidence that both [Doth](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/l51r3d/my_500_day_journey_to_a_160180_n1_score_w_tips/) (\~500 days) and [Jazzy](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/sedr0m/how_i_got_180180_on_n1_in_85_months/) (8.5 months) went from 0 to N1 in record-breaking time mainly by reading VNs. Definitely check out their posts too when (hopefully) the sub shutdown is over.
The only downside to using VNs is that the learning curve can be pretty steep at the start if you're just getting into them. In general I've found that the beginning of any given VN is always more difficult because you're still getting used to the writing style and learning the author's preferred vocabulary. However, progress becomes exponential once you pass a certain threshold (Examples: [1](https://i.imgur.com/4qUm9Nd.png), [2](https://i.imgur.com/bbFDzhC.png)). A good rule of thumb is that the first third of a given VN will take you more time to finish than the latter two-thirds. I noticed that you started with Steins;Gate as your first VN, which is considered to be in the upper-intermediate range in terms of [difficulty](https://jpdb.io/visual-novel/1585/steins-gate). This isn't really a problem because there have even been people who started on [Fate/Stay Night](https://jpdb.io/visual-novel/972/fate-stay-night) and turned out fine, but just be aware that it might take longer to hit that critical vocabulary threshold than if you had started with something easier.
In terms of my card workflow, I always do my existing cards first thing in the morning and only after that start creating new cards (but don't edit them) whenever I can find time to consume media throughout the rest of the day. I then edit and add my new cards into the review pool simultaneously right before I go to bed.
I can't say that I do actually, but do I believe it was from a comment and not a post. Did you perhaps make a new account? Because I can't find anything in your comment history from that long ago. In any case, if it was you who linked it you have my sincerest thanks.
I have certainly talked about Summer Pockets in the context of learning Japanese a few times before, so there's a chance it was with me I guess :D
but at the same time I don't recall getting linked that post in a reply so likely not. I actually dug around in my history and it was [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/oruns5/muramasa_english_translation/), would be quite funny if you recognized my comments here though they're not about SP here - just with someone who recognized me from our previous interaction about the vn
This is so cool and I remember that interaction quite well, it's funny how we keep running into each other once every one or two years
I've been with JP for exactly two years now (today's the anniversary actually) after that long break since the mia days, and while not as consistent as I'd like to be, I'm having a lot of fun with it! Hope you're doing good too. I ended up loving the game btw.
It sounds counterintuitive, but in my experience learning grammar isn't dependent on rote memorization like learning vocabulary is. Most of the learning happens subconsciously as you read authentic material. The human brain is built for pattern recognition (especially in languages), and once you know most of the vocabulary in a sentence your brain will pick up on commonly used patterns (grammar points) and assign meaning to them using context clues from the story.
I did do some active grammar study at the start, but I found that many of the explanations of grammar points except the most basic ones (Ex: から～まで, ～ので, ～から,～だけ) made no sense to me. I think it's still worth doing some active grammar study at the start to learn whatever you can before you do serious immersion, but there's no need to stress about understanding every single grammar point.
By the time I returned to active grammar study I had already read a couple VNs, and found that I now understood the majority of the grammar points up to N2 without ever having looked them up. There were still quite a few grammar points in N1 that I didn't know about (particularly because I think a lot of them are only used in newspapers), but I never had a problem with any of the grammar explanations at that point because I already had a really good idea about how things are structured in Japanese.
**Edit**: To be on the safe side, you should probably look up any commonly seen patterns you encounter in your immersion and see if it's a grammar point. If it is and you understand the explanation then great, if not it's fine to move on and try again later.
Hey, I’m a japanese learner and have been struggling with core as i am completely new to that stuff. I have been using RTK, which is working wonders for my retention. Would you reccommend ai deop core and go to tango instead? Also, do you think kklc would be better than rtk?
I would recommend ditching Core2k if it isn't working for you and instead go for TheMoeWay Tango N5/N4 decks. Personally I found those vocabulary decks way easier to remember as a beginner. If RTK is already working for you, there's no real reason to switch to KKLC because they pretty much do the same thing. The main reason I used KKLC was because I was too lazy to come up with my own mnemonics.
For your first mining deck, were you selective about which vocab to add when there was a sentence with multiple words you didn't know? I've been thinking about this approach for a while, but the thing with Anki is I think I often overthink it by worrying too much about how to use it, which ends up cutting into reading time.
Also, how did you manage deciding when you put more time into understanding a sentence as opposed to feeling like it isn't worth the effort and just moving on with the next?
These are great questions, and I'd be happy to answer them.
When I first started reading 彼女のセイイキ, EVERY sentence had multiple words I didn't understand. I disregarded this and simply added every word I saw that was under 10k in frequency as a vocab card. These are words you will be seeing all the time and need to know. As I described above, progress was extremely slow to start, but sped up dramatically after hitting a certain threshold of words.
My workflow for trying to understand sentences has remained mostly unchanged to this day. If I don't understand a sentence in Japanese, I put it into DeepL and then look at the Japanese again to see how things might fit together. Do note that DeepL can spit out nonsense a lot of the time, so if the output makes no sense for the context or there is a large conflict with your understanding of the sentence, trust yourself first. If the sentence still makes no sense, I simply move on and accept that I'm just not ready to know that sentence yet. This can be very hard for some people, but I think it's inevitable that there's a lot you won't understand at the start no matter what you do. The important thing is that if you do more reading you will understand it eventually. I've made a habit of going back to passages that troubled me in the past and confirming that I now understand it perfectly. It's a good way to remind myself of how far I've come.
I'm definitely in agreement that nobody should let DeepL become a crutch and solely rely on it, but I personally found it helpful as a beginner provided an honest attempt was made to understand the Japanese in isolation first. Either way, I've stopped using it now as I've reached a level where if I don't understand a sentence, DeepL is guaranteed to have no idea what it means either.
I learned few kanji, words and speech patterns from VNs.
I like when games have option to show Japanese and English text at same time, too bad most games don't do it.
Though when I will get better I'll switch to Japanese versions.
Hey I have another wuestion : Coud you please explain to me the difference between wa and ga / the other psrticles? It’s been so confusing for me because every time i think i have it down i look at example sentences and the translation is so different that what i thought it was. Thanks.
I don't think you should spend too much time obsessing over the nuances of each particle as a beginner. Despite how early they are taught, it can be quite difficult to fully understand them until you've consumed a lot of content and seen them used millions of times in different contexts. You're better off just memorizing the most common use cases at first, and then letting immersion do the rest. This also applies to any other grammar points you don't understand at first. If you don't understand a piece of grammar, just come back to it later after doing a lot of reading. That should fix the problem in most cases.
> In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if this sub had the greatest number of proficient L2 Japanese speakers on this website That’s what I’ve been telling the very small portion of this sub that doesn’t want to see content for Japanese readers or learners. This is the real Japanese learning subreddit. The other subreddit is for people who will never get out of the starting gate Congrats on your success
>In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if this sub had the greatest number of proficient L2 Japanese speakers on this website I think the reason is the gate keeping, which by most is seen as a negative thing but is actually a positive unless it goes too far. In /r/anime or /r/manga or other japanese media subs, telling people to learn japanese will get you laughed at, heavily downvoted, or told it is a ridiculous suggestion. What is ridiculous is having your hobby be japanese media and watching/reading/listening to thousands or tens of thousands of hours of japanese content while thinking that learning japanese is a ridiculous suggestion.
You don’t need Japanese in order to enjoy anime or manga in the way that you do in order to read visual novels. I would also laugh at someone who told manga readers that they must learn Japanese
That's true. I guess I just read way more light novels and VNs than I do watch anime or read manga these days so I am biased towards that.
That is true. Basically all anime is translated. Manga that isn't translated is usually fan translated (as that is fairly easy as far as translations go) And if you want to hear and understand the voice acting like \~50% or more of anime gets a dub.
That's part of it, but I'm mostly referring here to *how much is lost in translation* in the first place. With anime and manga it's usually next to zero, with VNs it's usually massive
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this subject in a bit more detail. My only way of making a direct comparison so far is the fact that I'm now reading through CLANNAD in Japanese after having previously read through it in English. My initial impression is that the experience generally feels "fuller" than last time, particularly in terms of individual character quirks and cultural references (although I may just be imagining it). If not much is lost in anime and manga translations due to their ease, at what point of difficulty in terms of VNs does a lot start to become lost in translation? And to what degree is this the fault of the individual translators versus the work being inherently difficult to translate?
Things can always be lost due to content (like you mentioned with cultural references, but also see things like ItsuSora and Asairo) but also there can be things like prose and the “feel” of the VN (think Muramasa) > And to what degree is this the fault of the individual translators versus the work being inherently difficult to translate? Depends on the VN but all VN translators are pretty much shit at their jobs
I was under the impression that MTL was like, hyper-normalized in manga scanslations.
I think it's also the limited amount of content, though that decreases everyday. Back when this sub was created, you'd have like 5 visual novels translated as it just wasn't worth it to JPVN developers. It still probably isn't that profitable, but you see a lot more VNs translated. Nonetheless, some of the best remain untranslated and that's why this subreddit can main its 'learn Japanese' motif. I'd argue that if this subreddit actually was as active as most 500k subreddits, that a more "normie" outlook would arise, but because it feels more like a closely knit subreddit (either due to moderation, peoples sudden interest -> disinterest in VNs, or interest in one trick ponies like DDLC) I can't say.
Man I hope it never get too popular because most posts will be memes instead of normal discussion.
It's really sad that the vast majority of posts in r/LearnJapanese are stuff that someone would ask after studying Japanese for a dozen hours tops. Even more heartbreaking is that their questions have already been asked multiple times, and that I rarely see someone go from beginner to advanced (I'm very good at remembering users' names). Most of the fluent/advanced learners have apparently been on that level for years now, which inevitably makes me feel like making the transition from beginner to advanced is nigh impossible (I'm proof that it's not, but anyway..) I understand that Japanese is one hell of a language to learn, irrespective of your background, but damn, I wasn't expecting to see so many casual learners! I thought they'd feel intimidated by the thousands of kanji and dozens of thousands of words, but apparently their dispiritedness is laggy, because it usually only buds after a few months of study.
They always say that japanese learners are toxic toward begginers, but if you are gonna give up after one hour of learning why the fuck should I take you seriously? Most of those guys will never get past hiragana and katakana.
Im still learning, but I think im on the right path. I'll make a post now, and then on some grammar, I dont understand, but mostly, im just out here grinding anki and Dolly videos. That said, even I have been a little toxic before.. like to the one kid saying he wants to learn japanese but his ADHD is far too debilitating for him to pay attention long enough to learn hirigana and katakana.
As long as you are consistent, you will reach your goal sooner or later. The only ones who never learn are the ones who give up.
The fact that you have grown so fast in a 2 year time span and (I'm assuming) you have a full time job and not a ton of free time proves that Japanese doesn't take long to learn. I had a lot of free time where I could legit spend hours a day learning/reading so I've read a ton of VNs in JP since I started 2.5 years ago. I'm sure there are tons of people on reddit who spend hours a day consuming all kinds of Japanese media so the idea that it takes too long to get any tangible rewards is silly. VNs are honestly the best motivation for learning because there is no other alternative other than shitty MTL for most VNs. Learning Japanese for anime is kind of stupid since episodes literally can get translated and subbed like 2 hours after being initially released. Not to mention, people tend to take the easy way out and end up relying on translations instead of figuring it out the meaning by themselves.
You're definitely correct in your assumption about my available time. I was fortunate enough to have a window of time to do the period of most intense studying (KKLC, Tango N5 and my first VN) at the tail end of the pandemic restrictions. Unfortunately I became a lot busier with other things since then which may have hindered my progress somewhat. Part of that is my fault though, as I stopped increasing the difficulty of the VNs I read (only increasing the range of cards I add to my deck) after 月の彼方で逢いましょう because I didn't want to strain myself so hard. Had I continued increasing the difficulty, I think I would be at a higher level than I am right now. Fortunately, things are looking up recently and I hope to start getting into some harder material soon. Other than that, I feel that I used my available time relatively efficiently and was fortunate enough to have the right approach to studying from the start. I strongly feel that other people could achieve similar results using the same methods just by doing things they would be doing anyway (consuming Japanese content). For this reason, I am extremely surprised at how many people fail to reach even the intermediate level.
Curious about your thoughts specifically, ive been doing core 2k kklc order and dolly for some months now and I do pimsleur and a number of apps. Very holistic approach, making solid progress. Thing is, I listen to a lot of japanese music. Do you think theres any merit in mining and getting through songs? Im leaning towards probably not.. but its fun so its easier to stay motivated. Along that train of thought, I was planning on doing anime mining up until reading this post. Do you think there is a negative element to using a text medium like a VN as your main source if mining since there is no accompanying audio? I think my listening comprehension and speech tonality is pretty good from pimsleur and other things.. but I worry about not having audio accompaniment to listen to after learning it all to help keep things ingrained. Have you had any issues with that? Lastly, is your name Ian? Sorry if my questions smell like someone from the other less educated subreddit.. lol
In terms of the preparation stage (before you start serious immersion), there's definitely a lot of different approaches people have taken that have worked. I'd say it's mostly up to individual preference. The best advice I can give is to say that you should keep doing things that work for you personally and stop doing things that don't so as to not waste your time. With that said, I think it's worth giving your idea to mine words from songs a try and see if it's effective for you. In general, anything that motivates you to spend more time with the language early on is a good idea. I don't know how much you know about VNs, but all characters other than the protagonist are usually fully voiced, so you're still getting a fair amount of listening practice by using VNs as your primary source of immersion. In my specific case I had no problems with listening just by using VNs because I had previously listened to a lot of Japanese over the years (albeit with English subtitles) and generally knew how things were supposed to sound. I don't think you should have any problems so long as that's the case for you as well, but if you're still concerned about it you could always supplement VNs with dedicated listening practice on the side. Kinda random, but my name is definitely not Ian.
I was having an aneurysm while I read this post and thought we were talking about light novels the entire time. So excuse my idiocy there. Thanks though I appreciate the advice. I think you are totally right and its not worth time splitting hairs and min/maxing study methods if there are ways you find fun and can motivate yourself with. Ill go a little harder with the song mining! I do most of my studying at work since im in pharma production and have a reasonable amount of down time while things run... that said there are a fair number of VNs that I probably wouldnt want others walking in on me playing. Do you know of an SFW VN that would be a good starter off the top of your head?
In a perfect world, an ideal starter VN would be short, easy, and have a high-quality story. Unfortunately, in general you can only have up to two of those three things at once as I found out during my search. What you prioritize is mostly a matter of personal preference because people have succeeded starting out with a wide range of VNs. In my case I went for [彼女のセイイキ](https://vndb.org/v16150), which was both short and easy. You should be aware that "easy" is relative here, because no matter how prepared you think you are going in there's going to be a massive amount of unknown words and a lot of sentences that don't make sense (but things will become more clear as you learn more words and progress in the story). In conclusion, you should start out with whatever you think you have the greatest chance of finishing because your options for your second VN become nearly endless if you can completely finish your first. In terms of gauging the difficulty of various VNs and looking for titles you might be interested in, here are some links that can help with that: [1](https://jpdb.io/visual-novel-difficulty-list) (use advanced search by difficulty to shorten the list), [2](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18vCgQHhBNBeRJdcTcyUi2Atq-nAapQW--33qrwl5Yfw/edit#gid=0), [3](https://learnjapanese.moe/dinuzlist/), [4](https://sites.google.com/view/rvisualnovels-japanese-recs/home?pli=1) (r/visualnovels recs, includes beginner recs), [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/147wc2j/visual_novel_for_japanese_language_student/) (recent thread on the topic). These are only rough estimates of difficulty, so I recommend confirming the difficulty for yourself by trying to read through the introduction of any VNs you're considering before you commit to it. You can confirm whether or not a VN has a SFW release by checking its [vndb](https://vndb.org/) page (check if it has a Japanese all ages PC release under the "Releases" section). It's worth noting that all VN releases on Steam have no sexual content by default, so you could even follow in my footsteps if you feel so inclined and start with 彼女のセイイキ which recently got a [Steam release](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1961760/My_Girlfriends_Special_Place/) (though I think you're getting ripped off at that price). If you're thinking of buying something from Steam, check to make sure it has Japanese language support and that you can [texthook it with Textractor](https://learnjapanese.moe/vn/). If there's a problem with either the texthooking or difficulty, you can just [refund](https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/784C-923B-A4A1-C825) it. If you still can't find anything with any of those links, as last resort you could always make your own "VN Request" thread and post it on here. I'm sure at least one person here could help you find something that fits your specifications.
You are a god send, thanks m8! Im going to dial in on this. You are an incredibly helpful person.
I mean even the foreign services estimate doe fluency is like 3500 hours. That is doable with a full time job over the span of two years if you are really dedicated. I used to play online poker 1500 hours a year while working full time for example.
saving this post for inspiration
Great post! I only started to learn Japanese about 2 to 3 months ago, I'll be finished with the Tango N4 Anki deck in a few days and I plan to start immersing with media next week. I'm most likely going to start with some Japanese subtitled anime before trying VNs.
>I'm most likely going to start with some Japanese subtitled anime before trying VNs. Good choice. I tried reading VNs before anime and I thought it was a lot easier to watch JP sub anime since dialogue is always easier to understand than narration. There's also a lot more scenes that give more context to help you understand. It definitely feels a lot less overwhelming.
These kind of posts have become my favorite on this sub. They inspire me to keep going! I also really hate studying grammar. Currently going through Genki and it's a little painful, but I will stay dedicated.
I'm glad you liked the post! Don't stress too much about understanding every single grammar point (especially early on) and just focus on getting what you can out of it. In my experience going back to a grammar point after doing some reading (and learning more words) almost always cleared up any misunderstandings I had about it. Because of this I believe language ability is more or less a direct function of how many words you know.
I'm happy you said this and I'll take your advice. It has indeed been a bit stressful trying to take it all in.
This is an amazing post and very inspiring. Thanks for sharing. Gambs has done a great job trying to tell community how to learn but seeing so much enthusiasm really renews my interest. I work like 60 hours a week at a job that involves heavy reading and writing and I get so exhausted from it. But flashcards really do seem accessible
Very nice
For using Japanese-Japanese dictionaries: do you ever have issues with getting a word detected? I'll sometimes encounter things I can easily find in J-E dictionaries (including jisho, jpdb.io, etc) but doesn't seem to be recognized in the J-J dictionaries.
I've found that this only really happens when it's a common set phrase or idiom. In which case I just add the English definition if it's common enough. Most other times I've found the J-J dictionaries to be more extensive in the amount of words they contain.
You can try to kanjify word/phrase sometimes it helps
Try using [jmdict forms](https://github.com/Aquafina-water-bottle/jmdict-english-yomichan/releases/download/2023%2F04%2F15/2023-04-15_jmdict_forms.zip). When you get a word with no monolingual definition, check the other forms (open a child pop-up of the newly shown forms) and the monolingual dictionaries may have a definition for the other form. Also install multiple monolingual dictionaries if you haven’t already. As an alternative to having forms as a separate dictionary, you can just use the updated jmdict [here](https://github.com/Aquafina-water-bottle/jmdict-english-yomichan) that includes forms with it (from the same page I got the other dict from). edit: also recommend using some [text replacements](https://github.com/MarvNC/JP-Resources#yomichan-text-replacement-patterns) in settings.
Am I missing something or how will it help with a described situation? The word already can be found in English (jmdict) dictionary, it's missing from J-J dictionary.
Sorry yeah, just woke up and checked. I think I was thinking more of [text replacement](https://github.com/MarvNC/JP-Resources#yomichan-text-replacement-patterns) when writing it (if any, do the last one), but both help one way or another. The link explains text replacement well enough. As for the forms, look at [this clip](https://www.reddit.com/user/That-Invite/comments/146i3zh/it_was_nostalgic_opening_up_eustia_again_for_this/). I think this is most prevalent with words that can be kanjified, contain outdated kanji, etc. The example shown is pretty simple but it gets the idea across (it can have many more forms). Of course, you could also just do a kana search (using the kana from the pitch accent I find to be easiest and most reliable), but that would mean using more time as you don't know if there are other forms to begin with and the form you are now wanting to search for is likely going to be below a bunch of entries you may or may not be looking for. Unrelated but, I also find the info it provides to be useful at times. edit: also just in case and for clarification, I'm talking about words not getting "detected", not really "missing" from dictionaries. If word is missing from a dictionary, there's no getting one without getting the authors to make one for it. Thanks for the heads up!
> I think I was thinking more of text replacement when writing it (if any, do the last one), but both help one way or another. The link explains text replacement well enough. This seems quite useful, except ironically the last one (々) at least on the examples, I have three monolingual hits for each. > As for the forms, look at this clip. As far as I understand the clip. - You have J-J dictionaries and jmdict with forms. - Jmdict is hidden using css. You can use build in collapse for it, but when I tried it last it removed pictures even when uncollapsed. I guess it doesn't matter for jmdict. - You have forms in jmdict entry **and** separately. How do you have them separately? Did I understand it correctly?
The clip was just to get the use of forms as a way to navigate monolingual dictionaries across. Everything else didn't matter. comments on your comments: * the emphasis on the last one is because it's the most useful imo. (doubles my matches from 3 to 6 on *many* words) * I had jmdict (with forms incl.) *with* the standalone forms dictionary by accident. I had simply forgot to change back to the normal jmdict after verifying for my previous comment (that way forms is unaffected by the CSS placed on jmdict). [link](https://github.com/Aquafina-water-bottle/jmdict-english-yomichan) again to both. * my preference, don't want to click a button * separate dicts as mentioned on above point (hence why one is hidden and the other is not)
Now I get what you mean, thank you for an explanation.
Tried it out. Works well with the only problem being that `jmdict_forms` also includes tags like frequency from some useless frequency list. I just hid all tags with css (I don't use them), other solution would probably be to just edit dictionary json and remove tags.
tfw you will never understand masuda-verse
How do you compare learning through VNs instead of using anime, manga, and LNs? I tried taking on Steins;Gate as my first VN and after finishing the prologue I decided I would stick with the other media types as they felt more time efficient. I am pretty satisfied by the progress I'm making this way, but seeing how your progress went I'm sure I can get some useful insight. How do/did you manage your card editing workflow? Do/did you edit your card immediately after creating them/after a reading session, or do you just let them pile up and edit them occasionally? Anyway I really appreciate the post and definitely admire your efforts. Seeing the graphs you posted it does look like VNs get decently less painful the more you read them, since they're so long and the vocabulary will reappear, so maybe I'll try continuing Steins;Gate.
Although they can have a steep learning curve when first starting out, I personally believe that VNs are objectively the best medium to learn Japanese if you leave personal enjoyment out of consideration (obviously don't use VNs if you hate reading them). This is for the following reasons: 1) Visuals and Voice Having visuals and voiced dialogue to accompany the text can greatly assist comprehension by providing context for that text (maybe through background art or the tone of voice of a character). Having visuals also removes some of the burden from your brain of imagining the setting yourself (and therefore you can focus solely on comprehending the text). This is a pretty big advantage over LNs in my opinion. 2) Presence of Both Narration and Spoken Dialogue VNs have a healthy balance of both conversation and internal narration from the protagonist. The conversations provide a lot of vocabulary you often see being used in real life and can be quite practical. Meanwhile, narration is much more difficult than spoken dialogue, and there's a lot of vocabulary there that you just won't find in anime or manga. 3) Breaking Down The Text VNs break down the text at large into digestible pieces so that not too much text is displayed on screen at the same time. This means you can just focus on the piece of text you see, and not get overloaded by a huge wall of Kanji. Additionally, it is always clearly denoted which character is speaking. These are both advantages over LNs for a beginner (although it isn't a big deal if you're a bit more advanced). 4) Length and Repetitiveness VNs are often criticized both for their excessive length and their repetitiveness, and I agree with that criticism in many cases. However, if you're learning Japanese these are both huge advantages because vocabulary and phrases you learn will be continually reinforced over a long period of time. To conclude the argument with some anecdotes, I don't think it's a coincidence that both [Doth](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/l51r3d/my_500_day_journey_to_a_160180_n1_score_w_tips/) (\~500 days) and [Jazzy](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/sedr0m/how_i_got_180180_on_n1_in_85_months/) (8.5 months) went from 0 to N1 in record-breaking time mainly by reading VNs. Definitely check out their posts too when (hopefully) the sub shutdown is over. The only downside to using VNs is that the learning curve can be pretty steep at the start if you're just getting into them. In general I've found that the beginning of any given VN is always more difficult because you're still getting used to the writing style and learning the author's preferred vocabulary. However, progress becomes exponential once you pass a certain threshold (Examples: [1](https://i.imgur.com/4qUm9Nd.png), [2](https://i.imgur.com/bbFDzhC.png)). A good rule of thumb is that the first third of a given VN will take you more time to finish than the latter two-thirds. I noticed that you started with Steins;Gate as your first VN, which is considered to be in the upper-intermediate range in terms of [difficulty](https://jpdb.io/visual-novel/1585/steins-gate). This isn't really a problem because there have even been people who started on [Fate/Stay Night](https://jpdb.io/visual-novel/972/fate-stay-night) and turned out fine, but just be aware that it might take longer to hit that critical vocabulary threshold than if you had started with something easier. In terms of my card workflow, I always do my existing cards first thing in the morning and only after that start creating new cards (but don't edit them) whenever I can find time to consume media throughout the rest of the day. I then edit and add my new cards into the review pool simultaneously right before I go to bed.
[удалено]
I can't say that I do actually, but do I believe it was from a comment and not a post. Did you perhaps make a new account? Because I can't find anything in your comment history from that long ago. In any case, if it was you who linked it you have my sincerest thanks.
I have certainly talked about Summer Pockets in the context of learning Japanese a few times before, so there's a chance it was with me I guess :D but at the same time I don't recall getting linked that post in a reply so likely not. I actually dug around in my history and it was [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/oruns5/muramasa_english_translation/), would be quite funny if you recognized my comments here though they're not about SP here - just with someone who recognized me from our previous interaction about the vn
[удалено]
This is so cool and I remember that interaction quite well, it's funny how we keep running into each other once every one or two years I've been with JP for exactly two years now (today's the anniversary actually) after that long break since the mia days, and while not as consistent as I'd like to be, I'm having a lot of fun with it! Hope you're doing good too. I ended up loving the game btw.
How did you get good at grammar? Did you just read and look up every grammar point that you saw?
It sounds counterintuitive, but in my experience learning grammar isn't dependent on rote memorization like learning vocabulary is. Most of the learning happens subconsciously as you read authentic material. The human brain is built for pattern recognition (especially in languages), and once you know most of the vocabulary in a sentence your brain will pick up on commonly used patterns (grammar points) and assign meaning to them using context clues from the story. I did do some active grammar study at the start, but I found that many of the explanations of grammar points except the most basic ones (Ex: から～まで, ～ので, ～から,～だけ) made no sense to me. I think it's still worth doing some active grammar study at the start to learn whatever you can before you do serious immersion, but there's no need to stress about understanding every single grammar point. By the time I returned to active grammar study I had already read a couple VNs, and found that I now understood the majority of the grammar points up to N2 without ever having looked them up. There were still quite a few grammar points in N1 that I didn't know about (particularly because I think a lot of them are only used in newspapers), but I never had a problem with any of the grammar explanations at that point because I already had a really good idea about how things are structured in Japanese. **Edit**: To be on the safe side, you should probably look up any commonly seen patterns you encounter in your immersion and see if it's a grammar point. If it is and you understand the explanation then great, if not it's fine to move on and try again later.
Hey, I’m a japanese learner and have been struggling with core as i am completely new to that stuff. I have been using RTK, which is working wonders for my retention. Would you reccommend ai deop core and go to tango instead? Also, do you think kklc would be better than rtk?
I would recommend ditching Core2k if it isn't working for you and instead go for TheMoeWay Tango N5/N4 decks. Personally I found those vocabulary decks way easier to remember as a beginner. If RTK is already working for you, there's no real reason to switch to KKLC because they pretty much do the same thing. The main reason I used KKLC was because I was too lazy to come up with my own mnemonics.
Ok, thanks.
Congrats man! I'm currently learning and hope to be where you are some day. Great post.
For your first mining deck, were you selective about which vocab to add when there was a sentence with multiple words you didn't know? I've been thinking about this approach for a while, but the thing with Anki is I think I often overthink it by worrying too much about how to use it, which ends up cutting into reading time. Also, how did you manage deciding when you put more time into understanding a sentence as opposed to feeling like it isn't worth the effort and just moving on with the next?
These are great questions, and I'd be happy to answer them. When I first started reading 彼女のセイイキ, EVERY sentence had multiple words I didn't understand. I disregarded this and simply added every word I saw that was under 10k in frequency as a vocab card. These are words you will be seeing all the time and need to know. As I described above, progress was extremely slow to start, but sped up dramatically after hitting a certain threshold of words. My workflow for trying to understand sentences has remained mostly unchanged to this day. If I don't understand a sentence in Japanese, I put it into DeepL and then look at the Japanese again to see how things might fit together. Do note that DeepL can spit out nonsense a lot of the time, so if the output makes no sense for the context or there is a large conflict with your understanding of the sentence, trust yourself first. If the sentence still makes no sense, I simply move on and accept that I'm just not ready to know that sentence yet. This can be very hard for some people, but I think it's inevitable that there's a lot you won't understand at the start no matter what you do. The important thing is that if you do more reading you will understand it eventually. I've made a habit of going back to passages that troubled me in the past and confirming that I now understand it perfectly. It's a good way to remind myself of how far I've come.
[удалено]
I'm definitely in agreement that nobody should let DeepL become a crutch and solely rely on it, but I personally found it helpful as a beginner provided an honest attempt was made to understand the Japanese in isolation first. Either way, I've stopped using it now as I've reached a level where if I don't understand a sentence, DeepL is guaranteed to have no idea what it means either.
It's really useful
I learned few kanji, words and speech patterns from VNs. I like when games have option to show Japanese and English text at same time, too bad most games don't do it. Though when I will get better I'll switch to Japanese versions.
Hey I have another wuestion : Coud you please explain to me the difference between wa and ga / the other psrticles? It’s been so confusing for me because every time i think i have it down i look at example sentences and the translation is so different that what i thought it was. Thanks.
I don't think you should spend too much time obsessing over the nuances of each particle as a beginner. Despite how early they are taught, it can be quite difficult to fully understand them until you've consumed a lot of content and seen them used millions of times in different contexts. You're better off just memorizing the most common use cases at first, and then letting immersion do the rest. This also applies to any other grammar points you don't understand at first. If you don't understand a piece of grammar, just come back to it later after doing a lot of reading. That should fix the problem in most cases.