Learning 日本語

Background

I began learning Japanese in January of 2022 as part of my life project. The purpose was twofold: 1. I didn't want to rely on translations for things coming out of a country that I consumed a lot of cultural capital from (anime, games, etc). 2. I wanted to prove to myself that it was possible for me to learn a lagnauge after having a terrible experience learning Russian in college.

This page will will serve as both a progress tracker of sorts, and a repository for any cool or useful things I find along the way.

"Coursework"

There are three primary tools I'm using: - The Japan Times Genki textbook - Anki - Duolingo

Genki Textbook

Anki

Gwern writeup: [[https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition]]
For those who are not familiar with Anki: go read Gwern's writeup on the topic (and then Google around for some more of the literature and learn why people are so crazy about it).

For those who are familiar with Anki: I use three different Anki decks for studying Japanese: this Genki I 3rd edition deck, this Kanji deck, and my own deck of grammar rules, conjegations, etc. I should note that I only use the recognition sub-deck from the listed Kanji deck, and I aim to get the general idea of the listed definitions.

Duolingo

There seems to be much debate for language learners around the usefulness of Duolingo. I'll keep the summary of the consensus brief: Duolingo is good as part of language learning, but should not be the only resource (and this applies to any resource).

My primary function for Duolingo was learning the two kana alphabets. I have yet to find a resource that was both as enjoyable and as useful as Duo. I attempted it with Anki at the start of my studies, but it didn't seem to be as effective as Duo.

Other Resources

Wanikani

Wanikani is a kanji learning platform. It looks very nice and gives a wonderful dopamine rush when you type the right answer and everything turns green. However, some of the definitions it expected me to learn were in conflict with what I'd already memorized from Anki. These were small differences in wording, but enough for WK to mark them as wrong. I've stopped using Wanikani.