@Nukemarine I just got to the SGJL 04 course and I was wondering why casual form was being taught first. In my past language experiences, it’s been です form and later the casual form. Is there any reason why this is?
It was Tae Kim’s opinion that it’s best to start with the simpler casual form that gets conjugated into other forms of which formal is a section of it.
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@Nukemarine, Thank you, these courses have been very, very helpful, I think I will be ‘finishing’ the basic courses in a few months, If there’s anything I could to help to advance the intermediate courses please let me know.
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Hi Nukemarine,
I’m currently on SGJL05. I found the sgjl 05 really enjoyable but I have some trouble retaining some the sentences from SGJL 04. Would it be advisable to use Genki instead for the grammar and continue with all the vocab/kanji courses? Thanks!
Any basic grammar resource can work. Genki I can replace SGJL 04 and 06, Genki II can replace SGJL 09 and 11.
I think a “not” is missing from 怖 “dreadful (恐)” in the second kanji course.
im a little bit stuck, learning vocab from the 2k/6k decks.
the problem is many words have similiar meanings/english translations and
use the same kanji like 増える and 増やす.
any advice on, how to deal with this kind of vocab?
are there any useful scripts to override answers?
any useful scripts in general that aid in learning vocab?
The pairs using the same kanji are likely transitive/intransitive pairs.The difference between, using your example words, “My vocabulary increased.” and “I increased my vocabulary.”
Pay attention when the definition says ‘vt’ vs ‘vi’ and you will figure out some rules that you can follow.
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Hey @Nukemarine, how’s progress on the advanced courses going? I haven’t’ seen you on the Learn Japanese reddit much recently
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Hello everybody, hello @Nukemarine !
First of all thank you for all the effort you made to put this giant course series together!
This is the first ,method" of learning Japanese that I really like.
But…
I have a dilemma for about 2 weeks now.
I already know the Hiragana and the Katakana.
I’m about to learn Kanji, but I don’t know how to do it, or which method is the ,best" for me.
I’m constantly reading forums about how to learn Kanji, but somehow I can’t sympathize any of methods. (Until yours.)
And I have questions:
- As I see, your method works like this:
1. Learn the meaning of the kanji.
2. Learn some grammar.
3. Learn how to pronounce the kanji.
4. Repeat all of this until you are the master of Japanese language.
I have little bit of problem with the organization (this is my opinion from my experience):
When I learned English, first I learned the meaning of the word and then how to pronounce that word.
In Japanese this is different because you can pronounce the kanji in ON’YOMI and KUN’YOMI, and it has multiple variations (common, not-common). So it means that I need more time if I want to learn the meaning and how to pronounce the kanji. and I’m completly okay with. My reason is this: if I see a sentence in Japanese, I don’t want to point to each kanji that it means this, that means that, and then I work around with grammar and then I got the meaning of the sentence, I want to say it out loud (as a Japanese speaker), the whole sentence, not just bits.
So because of this, would you recommend me to switch the grammar part (2.) with the vocabulary part (3.)?
My plan would look like this:
1. Learn the meaning of the kanji.
2. Learn how to pronounce the kanji.
3. Learn some grammar.
4. Repeat all of this until you are the master of Japanese language.
Or is it completly dumb, and just go with your organization and the pronunciation will come eventually?
Oh and one more thing:
In the vocabulary parts all of the words are in the most commonly used way? Or can I learn the ON’YOMI and KUN’YOMI pronunciation in these memrise lessons?
Thank you again for all your effort to make this list!
(Hopefully I was understandable, I haven’t used my English for a while.
I actually disagree with nukemarine’s method slightly so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I personally recommend skipping the kanji courses entirely and just doing vocab and grammar, writing out the vocab words as they come up. You still learn all the kanji that way along with pronunciations, and you’ll get a gist of the meanings from the words they are attached to.
Heisig’s methods have never sat right with me, and I worked through it, twice, to no effect. This method worked the first time.
The problem with Heisig is the keyword is generally unrelated to the meaning of the kanji. If you do Kodansha Kanji Learners’ Course instead then you can use the Heisig method while also learning ‘correct’ keywords, which really do help when you’re trying to guess from context.
Also, thanks again Nukemarine, please, please continue uploading courses, especially KO vocab ones, thanks.
Edit: new question, what sort of things can I do outside of the course to help in JP studies?
Hello!
I have a question about the “SGJL 04 - Tae Kim´s Grammar pt 01” course´s audio:
In level “6 04 Basic Sentences” the audio involving 高い´s cojugation doesn´t sound at all the way I´ve read and heard it sounds in the standard Japanese.
For example, according to what I heard and read, it has to start with a low intonation, then go high and then go down again.
I´ll try to visualize this with capitals. Capitals are high pitch, regular letters are low. It´s supposed to be something like this:
ta-KA-ku-NA-KA-tta.
(This is not exact, but here goes a link with te real standard pronuntiation for the whole conjugation: https://www.japandict.com/高い)
Instead, in the course it sounds like this:
TA-KA-ku-NA-KA-TTA
The same goes for the rest of the conjugations. Why is this? Would it be possible to change those audios to match standard Japanese intonation?
By the way, thank you very much for creating those courses, they´re great! And a few days ago I discovered more of them and I love them! Thank you so much!
Hello,
I have a little question. Your course is really great, and imho way better than Memrise’s, but I just started SGJL03 and I have no sound nor kanas to give me the correct pronounciation of kanjis. As this course teaches about 550 kanjis, I was wondering if I was supposed to learn and memorize them all, without being able to use them when talking or on my smartphone japanese keyboard (Romaji -> Kana).
Should I use another resource along with your course ?
Thank you.
The app is no good for SGJL courses, especially the grammar ones. There are pages that explain stuff between every few levels that do not show up on the app. And also that course is just to help you memorize the kanji and its english meanings. This is a common way to teach kanji because when it comes to actually learning words or sentences that use kanji, you’ll already recognise them and know their general meaning, which makes learning a lot easier. Also, I recommend that you do a course that teach the radicals for kanji’s(parts of kanji), it makes learning kanji significantly easier.
The Kanji course in meant to systemize how to recognize on sight and write from memory the 555 most common kanji in Japanese (then next 555 kanji in SGJL 08). Technically, this part isn’t meant to teach you Japanese so no pronunciation or vocabulary words. The pronunciation and vocabulary comes soon in the Vocabulary course where you learn how Japanese use Kanji in their language.
What you’ll find is that once you learn a word or two that has the same kanji/pronunciation combination, you know that portion of the kanji quite well. Having a vocabulary word for context is much easier than trying to learn pronunciation in isolation.
Hope this makes sense.
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Do you know when you might be able to add the remaining Core 2k/6k Optimized Vocabulary courses? Those have been a huge help. Thanks for all your work on creating/maintaining these courses!
I keep saying eventually and that’s the intent. Since I took 6 months away from studying, that pushed everything back. I’m now studying again so likely I’ll get to it.
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I saw a post of yours on the patreon that said you should watch native material to help, when should you start doing that to be able to benefit from it? And what sort of stuff should you watch, dramas? Should you be trying to make any sense of it even if you’re not nearly at that level yet?