I really noticed the fact that novels, or books in general, are more difficult than other media when i was learning english a few years ago, and understood pretty much everything that was said in videos and movies. Than i switched to novels, and i found myself looking up things every 5 minutes lol
Maaan that happened with me in my native language one day lol, I did manage to get the general hang of the book but when I started reading it again and picking up the words I didn't know the meaning of, was I really realized how much I missed. As with english I've yet to started reading novel, I wonder what I'll make of it and how difficult it'll be when I do get into it.
@@kdabraa I'm now at the very start of my japanese learning journey. I'm satisfied with my english level for now, although I do want to eventually squeeze out everything I can from the language in terms of skills, I'll do that after learning japanese, and maybe a few other languages.
@@mandarinjourneyswithnanno Chinese people have a unique way of using metaphors and other figures of speech. For example i've heard of licking dog as in a "simp" or a "beta male" then a soft persimmon which is probably something along the lines of being weak, easy to bully or take advantage of, Then there's black belly which is when someone is mischievous?? Or petty very confusing... And i dont know any of the mandarin characters for them as i've only found them or heard of them through the translated, and mtl'ed chinese novels i usually read.
I think you are right. Native speakers normally learn their mother tongue to an intermediate level without reading novels, but they reach an advanced level reading novels as they are compelled to do so in school.
I know this is old now but I'm watching a bit of your stuff at the moment... I am sure you do this and perhaps just forgot to mention it but I read the novel and listen to the audiobook at the same time. I pretty much won't read a book unless I can find at least the audio, but preferably both and I read along with it. I actually think it engages your mind on an even deeper level, plus there's the pronunciation thing you mentioned; you get the best of both worlds.
@@klaushen Caffeine is a popular and legal method of overclocking the brain. There is stronger stuff out there, but I would never recommend them to anyone.
All I can say is that aside from this being a genius video it also contains an important truth. I learned English mainly from texts and as you say my (German) accent is very pronounced even a decade later and I constantly have to make a conscious effort to hide it. There are certain key words which I clearly remember learning from certain books (I still associate "above" with Harry Potter for some reason) and I often end up accidentally slipping back into the wrong pronunciation I came up with on my own when I first encountered the word. Mind you back then when I googled and translated vocabulary functions like on google where it would read the word for you in the correct pronunciation didn't really exist like that yet. Luckily I'm not too far into my Japanese learning journey so this advice really helps!
great video, I recommend difficulty tiers though with japanese. start at manga with furigana then ---> manga without furigana ---> light novels/visual novels ---> regular novels
@@karifurai8479 try manga aimed for highschool students or older. There will still be furigana on "harder" kanji but the words that a highschool student or an adult would be expected to know wont. I know when I got the first vol. of ミイラの飼い方 majority of the kanji hand no furigana so that might be an option.
Novels are also really good at expanding your vocabulary too! I still search up different words while reading English books. I liked reading when I was younger so I was very good at spelling tests and English language arts so it’s very useful
I totally agree with you’re saying. I’m a Taiwanese who is learning English and Japanese at the same time. Reading is fundamental when it comes to learning a foreign language.
Yeah I’m currently reading The Fantom of the Opera in French and I also play dating sim or “otome” games in French. Great way to pick up new vocab, see grammar stuctures, etc. Lucky for me, French uses the same alphabet so learning to read it isn’t hard ! 😄
Good video! Neat to see the narration audio track for Devil Crybaby, it's a great concept and an illustration for how accessibility for one can end up being accessibility for others too.
I'd say visual novels with voice acting is an accessible way for weebs such as myself to get into reading as it gives you both the listening and the kanji aspects but of course there is the 'anime vocabulary' problem I like how so many Japanese videos here on youtube have kanji on top of videos with speech, I don't fully understand why it's done but I find it really helpful to read along as the words are being pronounced and if there was one kanji I could remember the meaning of but not the pronunciation then now I can hopefully remember it
I also always wondered why that is (Kanji in japanese Videos) and the reason may be that they try to imitate TV. I mean there are also many english youtubers who still make subtitles for their Videos eventhough they might not need them. Another reason might be because japanese has many homophones meaning many word, that sound the "same" but have a different meaning. then again for a native speaker that might not be a problem, because of context.
Gonna drop a comment here to ask people (specifically for Japanese): 1) When you should start / are able to read a book without too much hassle (like having to look up more than 10 words per page)? 2) Which books to start with? (Kid's/Teenager books are okay, have to start somewhere right?)
The best answer is gonna be to smack your face into it! Find a book that you are interested and just go. If it's not working it will be obvious. But go as far as you can, and then come back to it later after becoming even more 上手. If you can get farther, it's a great benchmark!
1. Literally whenever you feel like it. If it's too taxing then stop and try again the next time you feel up to the challenge. 2. You could start with children's books, but I wouldn't recommend it. If you haven't already, start with TH-cam comments and short things like that. I also recommend using Quora, there are often pictures in answers and if you can understand the question you can usually guess what the answer is going to be. Otherwise just read whatever you're interested in. If it makes you excited to read it, start reading it. I'm no where near the level to understand the VAST MAJORITY of words I read in the novel I'm reading right now but I'm still getting exposure to grammar, learning next words along the way, and just plain getting tons of input. It's always going to be helpful and useful.
A good time to start is when you can read a passage and at least understand mostly what is being conveyed. You should also have a strong enough intuition of the grammar to be able to identify the sentence structure even if you don't exactly know the nuances of the meaning of specific words. Sometimes you may have to be content with accepting that you cannot understand and move on from more difficult sentences or passages that are beyond your ability. But it should not be so frequent as to cause you to miss out on half of the content. Which is why, a great place to start is to read something that you've read in another language first. I read The Stranger and The Count of Monte Cristo in English translation first, then read them in the French original later on when I got decent enough at French. Try to choose compelling content that hooks you in a way that makes you keep reading voraciously. Jin Yong's Wuxia novels were so good that I've read over 6000 pages of Chinese by now just in those novels alone over the last four years. (Chinese is my L2 even though I'm ethnic Chinese.)
Very interesting! It seems this is most helpful for advanced learners, but it's so true. It's the same reason novels are great for making you better in your own native language.
I am doing this, bought the book for Your Name and it is far more descriptive than the movie, for obvious reasons of course. I've picked up some great vocabulary simply from the first few pages and I've already seen a slight improvement in my comprehension
"since language is originally a spoken thing" great point Matt. When you read there is an added layer between meaning and sound, so that when you read a word and you understand it, it's not granted that you'll understand the same word when you hear it. This effect is obviously more evident in languages where the written form is not purely phonetical. For example when I was learning english as an italian person, I tended to read words with an italian phonetic (for example the pronoun "I", which is read "ai"... I read it "i", like the italian "i" or the japanese "い"). When I moved to spoken material I understood next to nothing. On the other hand, with Japanese, if you read the word あい with an italian pronunciation, which is "ai", when you listen to it it's more probable that you'll recognize it because it's written form is a (almost) pure rapresentation of the pronunciation itself. This would be true if words were written in kana, but we know that most of them are written in kanji. On one side kanji helps you to infer meaning of words, but on the other side this "crutch" is like an added layer when you learn a word in its written form. Because you'll attach it's meaning to the visual rapresentation of the word. The meaning of 反射 is so obvious from the kanji, it's almost like having a definition of the word right here every time you encounter the word in written form, so that when you see it you'll recall it's meaning easily. But then if I watch the news and they say はんしゃ I may or may not recall it's meaning. This won't happen when I learn the word "アルバイト" in it's written form, because I will attach the meaning to "ARUBAITO" which is a direct phonetical rapresentation of the word. There aren't kanji to help you with the meaning, exactly like in the spoken form. Even Katsumoto talked about this in his "Chinese Project Notes 8" blog post: "Another motivation was that I found my Chinese LISTENING RELATIVELY WEAK. But literacy is crucial and I love text. So, what this does is both use and build strength in both writing and listening at the same time. Given a phonetic representation of Chinese, you have to produce the text (and of course in order to produce the text correctly, you have to have understood the phonetic representation). In that sense it’s like taking a dictation. Could you do this for Japanese sentences/phrases, too? My first answer was actually, “no”. But Momoko said “yes”. And after trying it, I would say, “yes”, too. So, yes. You definitely can, and in fact I would heartily recommend you try, because I think it would DO WONDERS for your kanji production skills and your LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILLS (remember, there are NO SUBTITLES IN REAL LIFE)."
E' bello vedere altri italiani interessati a migliorare con la lingua. Non ho capito però se stai consigliando di lavorare più sulla trascrizione di audiobook o di ciò che uno sente oppure se consigli di leggere di più
Thanks for the comment! Just because you know the word "アルバイト", doesn't necessarily mean you will be able to pick it out while listening. Many people have the experience of trying to understand something raw, missing it, then turning on the subtitles and finding that they "knew" every word in the sentence, but missed it anyway. This is because due to the fact that native's speak at the incredible pace of around 300 words per minute, whether or not you will be able to discern what is said is mostly determined by your unconscious ability to parse language, which is only trained through mass listening. Just because you consciously memorized a word, doesn't mean your unconscious mind has gained the ability to parse it within native speech. Also, the main reason I said that reading too much will fuck up your accent is that even if you know the kana spelling of a word, that doesn't tell you exactly how it is pronounced. You still need to know the pitch accent, and if you are not already very advanced, you most likely still have not have acquired perfect pronunciation and divoicing patterns. For this reason, each time you read a word that you have not heard many times, you are most likely mispronouncing it in your head, which will negatively affect your accent.
Thank you for your answer! Yes, you're perfectly right, I just think that kanji make it even worst because often they give a hint about words meaning, hint which is not there when you hear the same words in speaking. This is why when I listen I tend to recognize more easily words which I learned "phonetically" from the beginning. But that's just me, maybe I'm more of a "auditive" learner? I don't know asd But I've tried a little experiment, I've taken two texts with their audiobooks, and I've read both of them alternating between one and another. But I read one in kanji, and the other in kana. When I listened to the two audiobooks, I understood way better the one of the text that I read in kana. When I read kanji I tend to do this reasoning "ok, this word means x; this word is pronounced y", while I learn a word without kanji, I'm more like "word pronounced x has the meaning y" (direct relationship between pronunciation and meaning). But again that's just me, but at least for me this confirm what you said in the video about audiobooks and I must say that they're doing wonders for my listening compehension!
Fa tanto piacere anche a me sapere che c'è qualche altro italiano lì fuori che conosce ajatt e tutto il resto (conosco altri italiani che studiano il giapponese ma all'università ed hanno un approccio molto più accademico e tendono a snobbarmi xD ). Per quel poco che può valere, io consiglio di ascoltare il più possibile, soprattutto materiale accompagnato da trascrizione, così se non capisci qualcosa puoi controllare il testo. Io sto usando delle storie horror che si trovano su TH-cam, purtroppo nei video non ci sono i link al transcript però ti basta trascrivere una piccola parte dell'audio e cercarla su google per trovare la storia completa. Io sto cercando di raccogliere quanti più transcript possibili per queste storie horror, man mano che le ascolto li uploado su uno spazio Google Drive. Se sei interessato vai su: justanotherjapanesejournal (punto) blogspot (punto) com e nel menu rosa in alto alla pagina clicca su "horror stories"
I agree that novels are better for learning. That’s why I’ve been reading « Le Petit Prince » in my spare time, since I get to practice vocabulary and pronunciation
I just started my journey with Japanese! Your videos have been my go to for guidance:) I would love to know some of your favorite novels to read! Are there ones better for beginners?
Think about smart and well-spoken people you know from your native language. How did they become so adept in their own language? The answer will tell you many of the things one must do in learning a second language. Massive amounts of input, higher level content, reading copious amounts of literature.
Hmm I think I'll have to change my entire backlog of light novel epubs that are english translated to their native japanese counterpart... Time to read spice and wolf in japanese I guess.
Thanks Matt i have just started listening to the Harry Potter audio books and am finding just what you describe in this video i am picking up a lot of new vocabulary.
I have no interest in reading Japanese, I like anime and I want to talk to people. Is it worth the effort to learn Kanji? I’m not a big fan of the effort it takes. I don’t care about the work I’m putting into listening because it’s fun for me. Kanji is less so, but I’ll do it if I have to in order to learn (and maybe if it triples my learning rate. I wouldn’t if it only increases it by 30 percent).
There’s these two books called Read Real Japanese that have been super helpful for me! They’re a collection of Japanese essays/short stories with line by line phrase translation on the opposite page, a glossary, a section explaining certain grammar points, and a CD with audio forms of the essays! Oh, and of course furigana. It’s been so helpful for me!
unfortunately, novels dont interest me much but ive been thinking about how much more useful novels are.I just read articles although its good I cant escape the feeling that novels would help me more, i like watching the news n alk shows but Maybe i need to force myself into novels
Novels come in every different genre and style you can think of! If you don't like the concept of a "novel" in general, you are probably just allergic to reading!
where can I find japanese audiobooks? I went on audible a while back to see if I could use my credits for jp audiobooks, but all I found was scientology and self help books rather than fiction. where can I find japanese audiobooks?
If anyone out there is at JLPT ~N2 level and is looking for a novel that is more difficult than picture books but easily understood by a Japanese junior high school student kind of level, I suggest looking for novels that have an English translation, and perhaps reading the English version first before challenging yourself to the original Japanese version. For example, "The devotion of suspect X" by Keigo Higashino has an amazingly captivating storyline (genre: mystery, crime) which I first read in English and then because I knew the imagery and story already, I wasn't put off by the difficulty of some kanji/phrases in the original novel and I learnt a lot about how scenes were described in Japanese. I found this way was very helpful for me in improving my receptive understanding/written Japanese so just wanted to share my 2 cents for anyone who is looking to challenge themselves with a regular fiction novel!!
I think for beginners when your vocabulary/grammar isn’t that great manga/anime can be really helpful because you can use visual clues to try and piece together in your head a better understanding of what what they’re saying means. Because obviously if you come across a sentence in a novel you don’t understand you can’t really use google translate, you’d have to ask a native (which not everyone has access to). So having visual and context clues can be really helpful
I'd recommend ハリーポッターと賢者の石。you can get the e-book in the 青空文庫 file that is floating around on the net (some 5k books in it) for free, and one of the audibook versions is free on youtube. The translation is very good (my japanese tandem partner was full of praise for it) and I like the narrator a lot (he's using the rather oldfashioned "ng" sounds but apart from that he's cool).
A very interesting clip. I have never been into audiobooks, I must admit. Not in my L1, and as a result, it did not become a thing in my L2s. But what you said about the description facility for the visually impaired on Netflix etc is extremely interesting. It interests me because I am a high school teacher if Japanese. It is something I can throw out to my senior students. Thank you. I read for pleasure when I am not working, and I particularly love doing so in my L2s as well. I am of a generation that never really got hooked into manga, but my love of reading literature in my L1 made for an easy transfer into reading for pleasure in my L2s. There was something on Tofugu, I think, about ploughing ahead and reading literature, regardless of language level ability. That is something I subscribe to - reading without running to a dictionary. When you have a decent slab of L2 under your belt, it perhaps works best. I know you promote audiobooks, and your points are very cogent, especially the input that leads to a better accent. But for me at least, part of the appeal in reading Japanese is the script and kanji choice the author makes. Wayback when, I was studying Japanese at University in my final year, and the textbook passage we were reading made reference to a comparison of English and Japanese. English was likened to a Radio Language, as you can turn a radio on and simply hear the sounds of the words and expressions in the language, and not much else is needed for comprehension. Japanese is more like a TV language, where you have both sound and image being used to convey a story, report etc. Sure, this is a very simple comparison, but I feel the analogy fits. I look forward to checking in on your posts! Happy reading!
haha first of all most "audio dramas" are extremely low budget, cliche, and cheesy... but that aside. Audiobooks come from normal books (obviously), and because the original text was meant to be read, not listened to, the author expected the readers to be able to read at their own pace, as well as benefit from seeing what kanji was used. This means that often times when texts get converted to audiobooks they become very difficult to understand in real time, since they use words that one normally would only seen in text. This is what makes training with audiobooks so powerful. Audio dramas are written to be listened to, so it won't be nearly as difficult. Also, the quality of writing will most definitely be much higher coming from a published novelist, than a random, free audio drama.
How am I supposed to read my book when there is kanji every three characters? I ended up g-translating(not dictionary but I should’ve) every word because they change sound depending on what come after. Very tiring and I learned nothing.
You're not supposed to start reading the novels until you know like 5000 words. It was too hard because you didn't know enough Japanese yet. Start easy with graded readers or manga for kids.
I'm learning german, I am probably A2 level so I can hold a conversation, make many mistakes (I don't bother with grammar rules because I can't think about them all the time and I'll just pick it up as Krashner said) and my vocabulary is quite small. Started with a premade anki deck of 1k words, got halway through it and I still remember many words from school and living in Switzerland for a few months. Stopped the deck and got into Harry Potter (already read once 10y ago so that makes it easier) Point is, just audio doesn't work on my level. I have audio and the ebook at the same time, I try my best to look up definitions in german but I don't understand all of them so I rely on english translations in that case.
Found Harry Potter with complete furigana. Just reading it is helping me with onyomi and kunyomi but I'm even picking up on new grammar and speaking styles.
"Show, don't tell" is actually a saying for pretty much all storytelling mediums, and is pretty common advice when writing novels, but yeah I get where you're coming from
@@Emile.gorgonZola The point is, you can show something and not tell with words. So even in a visual medium you can still do it. I doubt there's much of a correlation between number of words and how good something is.
Great but the biggest problem is : *what should I read ?* Gotta find something fun/interesting to read otherwise you just won't do it. Well, that's already why most people don't read novels in their target language (and main language). People also recommand going increasingly in difficulty (manga->light/visual novels->novels), but what could be *some fun/interesting novels to read ?*
Hello Matt I've been using AJJAT for a month and a half, but right now I'm in the stage 1, part 4 of your studying path. (I studied Japanese before, for a year and a half, I completed RTK 1 and some chapters of some texbooks) With this background, do you think is it good if I start immersing in Light Novels? I know it is early but I really want to improve my Japanese I will start using the Light Novel of Your Name, because I know the context of the movie and I love the story. Thank you Matt. 1-. This video was amazing, I will follow your advice with audiobooks and novels 2-. I feel I have made more progress in this month and a half using AJJAT than using the "Conventinal" method for a year and a half
@@SalmonSalmonfish Wow... it has been already 10 months. I am doing great! Thank you for asking. I stuck to AJATT immersion principle and it work pretty well, so far I have read 2 novels, right now I am reading 化物語 (上). It was pretty hard at the beginning, no vocabulary and 0 reading experience. But by time the more vocabulary I got, and reading experience, the easier it became reading. Right now I am in the Stage 2 of Matt’s guide (Intermediate) By the end of next year I will be arriving to the third (Advanced) If you are reading this and you are in this journey with me, I hope you are doing great and I wish you the best of achieving your language goals! This is a long path, so if you see no instant progress don’t get upset, or demotivated. You will see it later May the immersion be with you
@@Samuel-uv6gp Aweesssommmee I'm so happy to hear! I'm currently reading my first novel! And funnily enough I'm watching the anime of 化物語 right now 👀! How is the novels so far? Your progress is great I'm hoping to reach where you are right now in time!! (Being following Matt's principles for about 10 months so far) It's so awesome to see someone go through the same thing I'm going through (that makes it sound horrible but I didn't mean it like that) I'd love to hear how you're doing in a year or two as well to see the further progress
@@SalmonSalmonfish Novels are great and funnier because you are capable of understanding them more and more. 化物語 is a great anime, sometimes the vocabulary is complex, but the main point is doing immersion. Amazing! The first novel will be always the one you appreciate the most. What novel are you reading? An advice I give you is DO NOT feel bad if you dont understand you will come up with the meaning soner or later. Also, learn vocabulary it will help you tremendously with reading (but this vacabulary HAS to be of YOUR interest and related to what you are reading) Yeah, I know what you mean, it is great to get to chat with someone who is in the same part of the journey Wish you succes in your journey! Hope we can see both of us in the native level in the following years PS. if you are interested i can give you my e-mail, so we can chat normally. We can give us advices and change experiences on language learning
@@Samuel-uv6gp I'm kinda enjoying reading a lot more than I am watching shows right now 👀... I just find myself enjoying it a lot more lately! I've really been being harsh on myself when it comes to progress for real 😭 it's nice to be reminded that I shouldn't be so hard on myself! The novel I'm reading is 人間失格! I picked a super difficult one for my first one and I really don't know what's happening most of the time 😭😭 but it's not that bad I kind of just enjoy attempting to read it in general!!! I'm sure by the end I'll be really happy with the progress I made during it! Thanks so much and the same to you! It definitely feels like you're a great way there towards your goals ! I'd love to chat about progress and our processes of learning! I don't use email very much but do you have a Discord or even a HelloTalk account? I'm on most other social media too if you have it as well
Hey Matt, how long have you been studying for? I am at 8 months and know around 2.2k words. I have terrible grammar and I keep studying lessons for it but nothing seems to stick. Anyways, great videos, keep it up.
I have been studying for 6 years. Sounds like you need to get red-pilled when it comes to Japanese learning! Check out some of my other videos on AJATT (ideally the second half of my 3 hour video where I fully explain AJATT)
I think it's just reeeally tiring cause I have to look up soo many new words in a novel..^^' I can't really get a flow.. (As for my level, I'm taking N2 coming December)
In my experience, even if you're looking up every single word you're coming across, as long as you continue you'll naturally need to look up fewer words since the author is going to use the same words over and over again. If it gets way too much you could also opt to just not look up any words for a while and just enjoy the book for the parts that you can understand without looking things up. For me personally when I first started I was looking up like 15 - 25 words a page. It's only that bad for a little bit of time unless if you're constantly reading really technical books in a bunch of different fields of study or something.
@@jessesjapanese8484 Thanks for the advice! Yea the results of my research said pretty much the same. -Enjoy the parts you understand. -Words will repeat themselves. (not always tbh 😭😂) I guess I'll keep trying.. thanks!
@@beats876 I did that with a couple stories as well. Biri Gyaru was one that I really like. If a word almost never repeats you might have very little need to remember it or even look it up at all. But, of course, it doesn't hurt if you wanted to memorize it because you like the word or are simply curious.
Anyone know if Konosuba LN is worth it for reading practice? (in term of vocab is it too fantasy-ish) i'm planning to buy it after finishing RRTK and Tanggo N5
There are many benefits for reading a novel: 1) like Matt said, there is a much richer vocabulary. Reading a novel makes one realize how poor and basic one's existing vocabulary knowledge actually is. The authors use different words and expressions for basic actions such as speaking, sitting, running, etc, in a way that makes the scenes in the novel feel more vivid. 2) as a direct consequence of 1, one will find several words and expressions that they might not have found elsewhere through visual medium. 3) because one needs to understand the sentence using the Japanese knowledge they already have, it helps them move away from mentally translating the sentence in their head and start "thinking" in Japanese or the target language. (this will of course depend on how far they are in their language skill) 4) reading a novel forces one to review and reinforce one's existing knowledge of Japanese grammar. Novels often make use of grammar points from several JPLT(or is it JLPT, I never seem to get it right...) levels throughout the book. Even better is that you get to see the grammar "in action". 5) reading novels help you get used to several words written in kanji. This means that, over time, you'll get to recognize words even if you are not actively studying kanji. This is the most natural way of learning kanji, as they are meant to be tools to help you distinguish between homonyms, and not something you memorize to pass some random test. Knowing how individual kanji are read by themselves is not helpful most of the time. 6) above all, novels are fun! You're basically learning new words, reviewing the grammar, learning to recognize kanji, all for "free" while you enjoy a chapter of your favorite novel! There are different levels of novels, aimed at different levels, similar in a way to how different manga can have varying levels of Japanese difficulty. There are novels aimed at elementary, middle, high, and college students/adults. As a general rule of thumb, you usually can't go wrong with the most popular novels written for a given target audience.
I just finished my first novel a week ago, 世界の終わりとハードボイルドワンダーランド！I think it being quite bizarre fit it nicely with tolerating ambiguity haha. That book and playing through ペルソナ5・ザ・ロイヤル really brought my Japanese from somewhat poor to almost functional. Also my reading speed increased eight fold between the 上巻 and 下巻.
Waa maybe I should play P5R in Japanese too, it's kinda boring considering I played P5 last year (or 2 years ago?) And that I still remember most of the stuff, but maybe I should actually take advantage of the fact I already know the storyline (well except for the added chaps)to play it in Japanese
I was never a reader as you can see not a writer either. However I made a bucket list to learn a new language and I was wondering if anyone could suggest me a simpler novel to get started. Much appreciated.
I have to agree, when I was still a kid a large piece of fanfiction was in English, not in my original language (which is Spanish). Wanting to read more content I tried to read and grasp whatever I was reading, even if my level was still too low. I learned by grasping the context of the sentences and the place where each word was used. Granted, I ended up learning some weird expressions and grammatically incorrect forms here and there because some works were made by amateurs. Reading in Japanese is still a daunting task according to my knowledge, but maybe I will try to start by reading light novels, not published works yet. I would die if I started by trying to read classic literary works.
Yet I tried to read a few books from the Monogatari Series and I just couldn't xD So I went to read something that I felt was slightly easier I was already interested in reading novels but I started thinking that maybe i should wait until I can understand more japanese... Well, now I'll try to read a bit more novels no matter how difficult. I'm hoping reading really is one of those things you get better at the more you do it xd
Do any AJATTers speed read? I've been reading some novels in Japanese lately, and wondering if I could speed up the process by learning how to speed read. Not sure how fruitful it would be, though, if speed reading involves a lot of skimming over words and dropping sub-vocalization, which I could see reducing the effectiveness of reading as a language aquisition method.
I personally think it would get in the way of acquisition, not help along the process. Speed reading is for trying to get the gist of what you are reading as quickly as possible by ignoring all of the details. For language acquisition, it's all those little details that you are trying to acquire
Step 1: Do RTK for 6-8 weeks til you've learned all the kanji step 2: Dive into reading, looking up words constantly, struggle, and learn Step 3: ??? Step 4: Be fluent
Don’t you need to be at a B level at least to be able to read a novel in target language and not be frustrated? Would you recommend this for a beginner? I’ve tried reading novels but because I couldn’t understand nearly anything it felt like a waste of time and was really frustrating, so I eventually gave up. Thoughts?
Yes definitely B1 level at least. Trying to read any interesting novel at A2 is just an exercise in frustration. Even at B1 it will be tedious at first, especially if they are for adult audiences. It helps greatly if you've read the said novel in translation first (to your native language or other strong language). Reach B1 first, then do this for the first two or three novels and then you'll be all set to read novels in the target language.
@@Bavubuka I think something like The Little Prince is manageable at A2 level. I haven't been reading young adult novels recently so I'm not sure about those. Comics/Manga are a good way to bridge the gap too. At first you might read comics at a slow pace, maybe 15-20 seconds each image with text. But since comics are mostly text-light and there are images it's still enjoyable. You'll be ready to start on novels (albeit still tough and slow at first) when you are able to read comics quickly at about 3-5 seconds per image with text which will come with more practice. I like comics/manga because you can find content originally written in the target language, so it feels at least you're consuming some original content in the language rather than doing "practice" for the sake of it. (e.g. Tintin/Asterix in French and of course manga in Japanese).
@@Qladstone amazing. I actually have the little prince in both franch and spanish because I'm studying both languages and I already know the story. Happy to hear about the comics approach because Iove comics! 😆. Thanks again for your in-depth and thoughtful replies.
5:05 A lot of things have their own set of vocabulary. Yea! Everybody has his own vocabulary. After watching Matt's several videos, I've got familiar with his set of vocabulary.
@@futurez12 haha, life happened. Between all the exams I had in uni it was hard to find time. I resolved to read like 5 articles a day instead, it doesn't always work but I'm getting better. Hoping to take the c1 exam around sep 2022. Ask me then
@@dogtopius4100 haha, I must be the biggest flake in the world. My Spanish has gotten much better. But Ive had to postpone my hopes of doing the exam just cos I've got other priorities atm. Hw about you @dogtopius what language are you working on?
@@JideOjo I'm learning japanese, currently a year and a few months in and I'm at a high intermediate / low advanced level. Just enjoying immersing in light novels and watching anime and some other Japanese youtubers.
My only issue is trying to figure out the reading level of the thousands of books I just downloaded. Oh and the other thousands of Aozora books… I have so many friggen books that are in Japanese…
![เกิดใหม่ทั้งทีก็เป็นสไลม์ไปซะแล้ว ซีซั่น 3 - ตอนที่ 58 [ซับไทย]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TgNEbYSTY0Y/mqdefault.jpg)
![Yoshi Rinrada - 'มาทำไม' [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/r41xbfRLkLs/mqdefault.jpg)
I really noticed the fact that novels, or books in general, are more difficult than other media when i was learning english a few years ago, and understood pretty much everything that was said in videos and movies. Than i switched to novels, and i found myself looking up things every 5 minutes lol
Maaan that happened with me in my native language one day lol, I did manage to get the general hang of the book but when I started reading it again and picking up the words I didn't know the meaning of, was I really realized how much I missed. As with english I've yet to started reading novel, I wonder what I'll make of it and how difficult it'll be when I do get into it.
@@chilael6892 update?
@@kmradosevich Update: I procrastinate a lot.
@@chilael6892 update?
@@kdabraa I'm now at the very start of my japanese learning journey. I'm satisfied with my english level for now, although I do want to eventually squeeze out everything I can from the language in terms of skills, I'll do that after learning japanese, and maybe a few other languages.
Give us a list of your favorite novels
I want that !!!
Same!!! 👌💕
吾輩は猫である
かいけつゾロリ it s for kids, but it can be a good book to study Japanese
giannisniper96 did u get that from Aurora Bunko?
This is so true. I learn most of my English and Japanese by watching TH-cam and anime, and describing physical movements is my biggest weak spot.
yeah, i suck at describing shit. i'll say things like "the fast balll goes vuuush"
Your English is amazing just based on the vocab you used “weak spot” I don’t even know how to say that in mandarin yet.
@@mandarinjourneyswithnanno Chinese people have a unique way of using metaphors and other figures of speech. For example i've heard of licking dog as in a "simp" or a "beta male" then a soft persimmon which is probably something along the lines of being weak, easy to bully or take advantage of, Then there's black belly which is when someone is mischievous?? Or petty very confusing... And i dont know any of the mandarin characters for them as i've only found them or heard of them through the translated, and mtl'ed chinese novels i usually read.
the facial hair really suits you
Yeah
I will copy and paste this because I really need an answer. What is a RTK equivalent to Chinese? Or if there is a better method, what?
@@blackdeth-uo9mx remembering the hanzi.Same author. Im not learning chinese btw.
I think you are right. Native speakers normally learn their mother tongue to an intermediate level without reading novels, but they reach an advanced level reading novels as they are compelled to do so in school.
I know this is old now but I'm watching a bit of your stuff at the moment... I am sure you do this and perhaps just forgot to mention it but I read the novel and listen to the audiobook at the same time.
I pretty much won't read a book unless I can find at least the audio, but preferably both and I read along with it. I actually think it engages your mind on an even deeper level, plus there's the pronunciation thing you mentioned; you get the best of both worlds.
the crossovers just never end, huh?
@@kurootsuki3326 i knowww hahahahha
@Jannes Ebeling shiiiiiit man, that's sooo fucking deep
@Jannes Ebeling I mean you're clearly practicing something, I think it's a big stretch to say it's not improving either skill.
@@bbb111-jr9ny It's somewhere in between pure listening and pure reading, it's definitely a category of it's own
summary: guys there's more words in books
“truly breaking out of the gaijin ghetto” 😂
Agree, but this only works for me when I have reached an appropriate level or else it becomes a giant pain.
oc
@@nannibboy8521 overclock? The brain? Wtf
@@klaushen ofc*
@@klaushen Caffeine is a popular and legal method of overclocking the brain. There is stronger stuff out there, but I would never recommend them to anyone.
@@Kojitsu xDDD
僕だけがいない街 has that extra voice feature for blind people. Also a good show!
@古明地さとり yes
I love erased
Do you know any site where I could watch it with that feature??
All I can say is that aside from this being a genius video it also contains an important truth. I learned English mainly from texts and as you say my (German) accent is very pronounced even a decade later and I constantly have to make a conscious effort to hide it. There are certain key words which I clearly remember learning from certain books (I still associate "above" with Harry Potter for some reason) and I often end up accidentally slipping back into the wrong pronunciation I came up with on my own when I first encountered the word. Mind you back then when I googled and translated vocabulary functions like on google where it would read the word for you in the correct pronunciation didn't really exist like that yet. Luckily I'm not too far into my Japanese learning journey so this advice really helps!
great video, I recommend difficulty tiers though with japanese. start at manga with furigana then ---> manga without furigana ---> light novels/visual novels ---> regular novels
yeah except that i cant find manga without furigana
@@karifurai8479 try manga aimed for highschool students or older. There will still be furigana on "harder" kanji but the words that a highschool student or an adult would be expected to know wont. I know when I got the first vol. of ミイラの飼い方 majority of the kanji hand no furigana so that might be an option.
@@karifurai8479 kaguya sama, any inio asano manga, mostly manga which are aimed at high school students (seinen) won't have furigana
@@karifurai8479 just don't look at the furigana lol
Great and informative content as always! Thank you.
Dies ist eines deiner besten Videos.
Thank you.
Also quite refreshing to see a chaotic bed in the background.
Every youtuber ever nowadays is all about aesthetic.
30 seconds of the normal Audio track. Nothing at all happens.
Thanks for the video! Looks like a great resource :)
Novels are also really good at expanding your vocabulary too! I still search up different words while reading English books. I liked reading when I was younger so I was very good at spelling tests and English language arts so it’s very useful
I totally agree with you’re saying. I’m a Taiwanese who is learning English and Japanese at the same time. Reading is fundamental when it comes to learning a foreign language.
Yeah I’m currently reading The Fantom of the Opera in French and I also play dating sim or “otome” games in French. Great way to pick up new vocab, see grammar stuctures, etc. Lucky for me, French uses the same alphabet so learning to read it isn’t hard ! 😄
If you don't know what to read, I'll just remind you that No Game No Life has no season 2, but it has light novels.
Good video! Neat to see the narration audio track for Devil Crybaby, it's a great concept and an illustration for how accessibility for one can end up being accessibility for others too.
I'd say visual novels with voice acting is an accessible way for weebs such as myself to get into reading as it gives you both the listening and the kanji aspects but of course there is the 'anime vocabulary' problem I like how so many Japanese videos here on youtube have kanji on top of videos with speech, I don't fully understand why it's done but I find it really helpful to read along as the words are being pronounced and if there was one kanji I could remember the meaning of but not the pronunciation then now I can hopefully remember it
I also always wondered why that is (Kanji in japanese Videos) and the reason may be that they try to imitate TV. I mean there are also many english youtubers who still make subtitles for their Videos eventhough they might not need them. Another reason might be because japanese has many homophones meaning many word, that sound the "same" but have a different meaning. then again for a native speaker that might not be a problem, because of context.
@@ochinchin1048 or to be inclusive to the hard of hearing :))
actually thats enough
@@koo-core7274 exactly. That's always my first guess and i wish it was done much more in every language!
Gonna drop a comment here to ask people (specifically for Japanese):
1) When you should start / are able to read a book without too much hassle (like having to look up more than 10 words per page)?
2) Which books to start with? (Kid's/Teenager books are okay, have to start somewhere right?)
(just commenting to know if someone answers)
The best answer is gonna be to smack your face into it! Find a book that you are interested and just go. If it's not working it will be obvious.
But go as far as you can, and then come back to it later after becoming even more 上手. If you can get farther, it's a great benchmark!
1. Literally whenever you feel like it. If it's too taxing then stop and try again the next time you feel up to the challenge.
2. You could start with children's books, but I wouldn't recommend it. If you haven't already, start with TH-cam comments and short things like that. I also recommend using Quora, there are often pictures in answers and if you can understand the question you can usually guess what the answer is going to be. Otherwise just read whatever you're interested in. If it makes you excited to read it, start reading it.
I'm no where near the level to understand the VAST MAJORITY of words I read in the novel I'm reading right now but I'm still getting exposure to grammar, learning next words along the way, and just plain getting tons of input. It's always going to be helpful and useful.
A good time to start is when you can read a passage and at least understand mostly what is being conveyed. You should also have a strong enough intuition of the grammar to be able to identify the sentence structure even if you don't exactly know the nuances of the meaning of specific words. Sometimes you may have to be content with accepting that you cannot understand and move on from more difficult sentences or passages that are beyond your ability. But it should not be so frequent as to cause you to miss out on half of the content.
Which is why, a great place to start is to read something that you've read in another language first. I read The Stranger and The Count of Monte Cristo in English translation first, then read them in the French original later on when I got decent enough at French.
Try to choose compelling content that hooks you in a way that makes you keep reading voraciously. Jin Yong's Wuxia novels were so good that I've read over 6000 pages of Chinese by now just in those novels alone over the last four years. (Chinese is my L2 even though I'm ethnic Chinese.)
favorite audiobook/written novels?
Are light novels good?
I've gladly learned enough Japanese to be able to read the thumbnail "難しい本" or "difficult book"
Thank you your videos are always really helpful
Where can we get Japanese audio books?
Very interesting! It seems this is most helpful for advanced learners, but it's so true. It's the same reason novels are great for making you better in your own native language.
I am doing this, bought the book for Your Name and it is far more descriptive than the movie, for obvious reasons of course. I've picked up some great vocabulary simply from the first few pages and I've already seen a slight improvement in my comprehension
When did you start reading novels?
"since language is originally a spoken thing" great point Matt.
When you read there is an added layer between meaning and sound, so that when you read a word and you understand it, it's not granted that you'll understand the same word when you hear it. This effect is obviously more evident in languages where the written form is not purely phonetical. For example when I was learning english as an italian person, I tended to read words with an italian phonetic (for example the pronoun "I", which is read "ai"... I read it "i", like the italian "i" or the japanese "い"). When I moved to spoken material I understood next to nothing.
On the other hand, with Japanese, if you read the word あい with an italian pronunciation, which is "ai", when you listen to it it's more probable that you'll recognize it because it's written form is a (almost) pure rapresentation of the pronunciation itself.
This would be true if words were written in kana, but we know that most of them are written in kanji. On one side kanji helps you to infer meaning of words, but on the other side this "crutch" is like an added layer when you learn a word in its written form. Because you'll attach it's meaning to the visual rapresentation of the word.
The meaning of 反射 is so obvious from the kanji, it's almost like having a definition of the word right here every time you encounter the word in written form, so that when you see it you'll recall it's meaning easily. But then if I watch the news and they say はんしゃ I may or may not recall it's meaning. This won't happen when I learn the word "アルバイト" in it's written form, because I will attach the meaning to "ARUBAITO" which is a direct phonetical rapresentation of the word. There aren't kanji to help you with the meaning, exactly like in the spoken form.
Even Katsumoto talked about this in his "Chinese Project Notes 8" blog post:
"Another motivation was that I found my Chinese LISTENING RELATIVELY WEAK. But literacy is crucial and I love text. So, what this does is both use and build strength in both writing and listening at the same time. Given a phonetic representation of Chinese, you have to produce the text (and of course in order to produce the text correctly, you have to have understood the phonetic representation). In that sense it’s like taking a dictation.
Could you do this for Japanese sentences/phrases, too? My first answer was actually, “no”. But Momoko said “yes”. And after trying it, I would say, “yes”, too. So, yes. You definitely can, and in fact I would heartily recommend you try, because I think it would DO WONDERS for your kanji production skills and your LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILLS (remember, there are NO SUBTITLES IN REAL LIFE)."
E' bello vedere altri italiani interessati a migliorare con la lingua. Non ho capito però se stai consigliando di lavorare più sulla trascrizione di audiobook o di ciò che uno sente oppure se consigli di leggere di più
Thanks for the comment! Just because you know the word "アルバイト", doesn't necessarily mean you will be able to pick it out while listening. Many people have the experience of trying to understand something raw, missing it, then turning on the subtitles and finding that they "knew" every word in the sentence, but missed it anyway. This is because due to the fact that native's speak at the incredible pace of around 300 words per minute, whether or not you will be able to discern what is said is mostly determined by your unconscious ability to parse language, which is only trained through mass listening. Just because you consciously memorized a word, doesn't mean your unconscious mind has gained the ability to parse it within native speech. Also, the main reason I said that reading too much will fuck up your accent is that even if you know the kana spelling of a word, that doesn't tell you exactly how it is pronounced. You still need to know the pitch accent, and if you are not already very advanced, you most likely still have not have acquired perfect pronunciation and divoicing patterns. For this reason, each time you read a word that you have not heard many times, you are most likely mispronouncing it in your head, which will negatively affect your accent.
Thank you for your answer! Yes, you're perfectly right, I just think that kanji make it even worst because often they give a hint about words meaning, hint which is not there when you hear the same words in speaking. This is why when I listen I tend to recognize more easily words which I learned "phonetically" from the beginning. But that's just me, maybe I'm more of a "auditive" learner? I don't know asd
But I've tried a little experiment, I've taken two texts with their audiobooks, and I've read both of them alternating between one and another. But I read one in kanji, and the other in kana. When I listened to the two audiobooks, I understood way better the one of the text that I read in kana. When I read kanji I tend to do this reasoning "ok, this word means x; this word is pronounced y", while I learn a word without kanji, I'm more like "word pronounced x has the meaning y" (direct relationship between pronunciation and meaning). But again that's just me, but at least for me this confirm what you said in the video about audiobooks and I must say that they're doing wonders for my listening compehension!
Fa tanto piacere anche a me sapere che c'è qualche altro italiano lì fuori che conosce ajatt e tutto il resto (conosco altri italiani che studiano il giapponese ma all'università ed hanno un approccio molto più accademico e tendono a snobbarmi xD ). Per quel poco che può valere, io consiglio di ascoltare il più possibile, soprattutto materiale accompagnato da trascrizione, così se non capisci qualcosa puoi controllare il testo. Io sto usando delle storie horror che si trovano su TH-cam, purtroppo nei video non ci sono i link al transcript però ti basta trascrivere una piccola parte dell'audio e cercarla su google per trovare la storia completa. Io sto cercando di raccogliere quanti più transcript possibili per queste storie horror, man mano che le ascolto li uploado su uno spazio Google Drive. Se sei interessato vai su:
justanotherjapanesejournal (punto) blogspot (punto) com
e nel menu rosa in alto alla pagina clicca su "horror stories"
@@cophnia61 grazie per il tuo contributo! Mi rincuora trovare qualche messaggio in Italiano ogni tanto!!
Imagínate yo que hablo español, un poco de Inglés y trato de aprender japonés con tus vídeos
Animo master, pongase verga, si se puede
cómo te fue?
I agree that novels are better for learning. That’s why I’ve been reading « Le Petit Prince » in my spare time, since I get to practice vocabulary and pronunciation
I just started my journey with Japanese! Your videos have been my go to for guidance:)
I would love to know some of your favorite novels to read! Are there ones better for beginners?
so, how is it going?
Have you found any other shows with the extra audio description yet? And a list of your favorite Japanese novels would also be helpful. :)
Think about smart and well-spoken people you know from your native language.
How did they become so adept in their own language?
The answer will tell you many of the things one must do in learning a second language.
Massive amounts of input, higher level content, reading copious amounts of literature.
Hmm I think I'll have to change my entire backlog of light novel epubs that are english translated to their native japanese counterpart... Time to read spice and wolf in japanese I guess.
Thanks Matt i have just started listening to the Harry Potter audio books and am finding just what you describe in this video i am picking up a lot of new vocabulary.
I have no interest in reading Japanese, I like anime and I want to talk to people. Is it worth the effort to learn Kanji? I’m not a big fan of the effort it takes. I don’t care about the work I’m putting into listening because it’s fun for me. Kanji is less so, but I’ll do it if I have to in order to learn (and maybe if it triples my learning rate. I wouldn’t if it only increases it by 30 percent).
I need to know how you liked devil man
There’s these two books called Read Real Japanese that have been super helpful for me! They’re a collection of Japanese essays/short stories with line by line phrase translation on the opposite page, a glossary, a section explaining certain grammar points, and a CD with audio forms of the essays! Oh, and of course furigana. It’s been so helpful for me!
unfortunately, novels dont interest me much but ive been thinking about how much more useful novels are.I just read articles although its good I cant escape the feeling that novels would help me more, i like watching the news n alk shows but Maybe i need to force myself into novels
Novels come in every different genre and style you can think of! If you don't like the concept of a "novel" in general, you are probably just allergic to reading!
難しい本😂😂😂
I am learning Japanese precisely because I wanted to read Japanese literature. How much Japanese do you need before you can start?
Do you have recommendations?
Where can I find them?
Lol auto-generated english captions at 8:06
Th-there’s your *butt*
And then I'm staring at the molester's hand reaching out from the shadow to grope my butt...saying "だいじょうぶ?"
Japanese badass quotes - 大は小を兼ねる. You can’t just poop. It always comes along with pee.
This really made me laugh. Thanks!
where can I find japanese audiobooks? I went on audible a while back to see if I could use my credits for jp audiobooks, but all I found was scientology and self help books rather than fiction. where can I find japanese audiobooks?
th-cam.com/video/Ct_CXn7mHf4/w-d-xo.html
.
finally someone recognized my favourite Japanese author, Hon Muzukashii
would this still work if my mental imagery is very weak?
If anyone out there is at JLPT ~N2 level and is looking for a novel that is more difficult than picture books but easily understood by a Japanese junior high school student kind of level, I suggest looking for novels that have an English translation, and perhaps reading the English version first before challenging yourself to the original Japanese version.
For example, "The devotion of suspect X" by Keigo Higashino has an amazingly captivating storyline (genre: mystery, crime) which I first read in English and then because I knew the imagery and story already, I wasn't put off by the difficulty of some kanji/phrases in the original novel and I learnt a lot about how scenes were described in Japanese. I found this way was very helpful for me in improving my receptive understanding/written Japanese so just wanted to share my 2 cents for anyone who is looking to challenge themselves with a regular fiction novel!!
I think for beginners when your vocabulary/grammar isn’t that great manga/anime can be really helpful because you can use visual clues to try and piece together in your head a better understanding of what what they’re saying means. Because obviously if you come across a sentence in a novel you don’t understand you can’t really use google translate, you’d have to ask a native (which not everyone has access to). So having visual and context clues can be really helpful
the background music is nice
Visual novels are a good alternative imo if you’re like me and cant stand pages of words.
Being a total beginner, I can't read any Japanese books, regardless of the level. What is a good resource to learn how to read Japanese writing.
can you list some audiobooks or books we should try? I have been trying to find audiobooks and audible does not provide them in Japanese.
I'd recommend ハリーポッターと賢者の石。you can get the e-book in the 青空文庫 file that is floating around on the net (some 5k books in it) for free, and one of the audibook versions is free on youtube. The translation is very good (my japanese tandem partner was full of praise for it) and I like the narrator a lot (he's using the rather oldfashioned "ng" sounds but apart from that he's cool).
Hi Matt, could you kindly share the top 10 Japanese novels that you like? Thank you!
A very interesting clip. I have never been into audiobooks, I must admit. Not in my L1, and as a result, it did not become a thing in my L2s. But what you said about the description facility for the visually impaired on Netflix etc is extremely interesting. It interests me because I am a high school teacher if Japanese. It is something I can throw out to my senior students. Thank you. I read for pleasure when I am not working, and I particularly love doing so in my L2s as well. I am of a generation that never really got hooked into manga, but my love of reading literature in my L1 made for an easy transfer into reading for pleasure in my L2s. There was something on Tofugu, I think, about ploughing ahead and reading literature, regardless of language level ability. That is something I subscribe to - reading without running to a dictionary. When you have a decent slab of L2 under your belt, it perhaps works best. I know you promote audiobooks, and your points are very cogent, especially the input that leads to a better accent. But for me at least, part of the appeal in reading Japanese is the script and kanji choice the author makes. Wayback when, I was studying Japanese at University in my final year, and the textbook passage we were reading made reference to a comparison of English and Japanese. English was likened to a Radio Language, as you can turn a radio on and simply hear the sounds of the words and expressions in the language, and not much else is needed for comprehension. Japanese is more like a TV language, where you have both sound and image being used to convey a story, report etc. Sure, this is a very simple comparison, but I feel the analogy fits. I look forward to checking in on your posts! Happy reading!
Matt VS Japan
what about audio dramas? they seem to be pretty descriptive and theres loads of them on podcast apps etc. dyou think theyd work well?
haha first of all most "audio dramas" are extremely low budget, cliche, and cheesy... but that aside. Audiobooks come from normal books (obviously), and because the original text was meant to be read, not listened to, the author expected the readers to be able to read at their own pace, as well as benefit from seeing what kanji was used. This means that often times when texts get converted to audiobooks they become very difficult to understand in real time, since they use words that one normally would only seen in text. This is what makes training with audiobooks so powerful. Audio dramas are written to be listened to, so it won't be nearly as difficult. Also, the quality of writing will most definitely be much higher coming from a published novelist, than a random, free audio drama.
Matt VS Japan lololok thanks
How am I supposed to read my book when there is kanji every three characters? I ended up g-translating(not dictionary but I should’ve) every word because they change sound depending on what come after. Very tiring and I learned nothing.
You're not supposed to start reading the novels until you know like 5000 words. It was too hard because you didn't know enough Japanese yet. Start easy with graded readers or manga for kids.
@@coolbrotherf127 I actually discovered those yesterday. Took me a while. The first one I read was nice.
This is true! I did the same with English. Hahahhah
In the beginning I started with English Graded Books.
I would LOVE to listen to audiobooks in Portuguese.. however I wouldn't understand them. So is there s point? 😅
I'm learning german, I am probably A2 level so I can hold a conversation, make many mistakes (I don't bother with grammar rules because I can't think about them all the time and I'll just pick it up as Krashner said) and my vocabulary is quite small.
Started with a premade anki deck of 1k words, got halway through it and I still remember many words from school and living in Switzerland for a few months. Stopped the deck and got into Harry Potter (already read once 10y ago so that makes it easier)
Point is, just audio doesn't work on my level. I have audio and the ebook at the same time, I try my best to look up definitions in german but I don't understand all of them so I rely on english translations in that case.
What's the poster on the right next to K-On?
I will copy and paste this because I really need an answer. What is a RTK equivalent to Chinese? Or if there is a better method, what?
What's the best way to get access to japanese novels living in the US?
Amazon has a lot
Found Harry Potter with complete furigana. Just reading it is helping me with onyomi and kunyomi but I'm even picking up on new grammar and speaking styles.
can you link please?
"Show, don't tell" is actually a saying for pretty much all storytelling mediums, and is pretty common advice when writing novels, but yeah I get where you're coming from
but even when writers are 'showing' something, they're still using language rather than a visual medium
@@Emile.gorgonZola The point is, you can show something and not tell with words. So even in a visual medium you can still do it. I doubt there's much of a correlation between number of words and how good something is.
Thank you bro
Great but the biggest problem is : *what should I read ?* Gotta find something fun/interesting to read otherwise you just won't do it. Well, that's already why most people don't read novels in their target language (and main language).
People also recommand going increasingly in difficulty (manga->light/visual novels->novels), but what could be *some fun/interesting novels to read ?*
where can I find download or buy japanese novels?
Amazon
Hello Matt
I've been using AJJAT for a month and a half, but right now I'm in the stage 1, part 4 of your studying path. (I studied Japanese before, for a year and a half, I completed RTK 1 and some chapters of some texbooks)
With this background, do you think is it good if I start immersing in Light Novels? I know it is early but I really want to improve my Japanese
I will start using the Light Novel of Your Name, because I know the context of the movie and I love the story.
Thank you Matt.
1-. This video was amazing, I will follow your advice with audiobooks and novels
2-. I feel I have made more progress in this month and a half using AJJAT than using the "Conventinal" method for a year and a half
How are you doing now, bro? 👀
@@SalmonSalmonfish
Wow... it has been already 10 months.
I am doing great! Thank you for asking.
I stuck to AJATT immersion principle and it work pretty well, so far I have read 2 novels, right now I am reading 化物語 (上).
It was pretty hard at the beginning, no vocabulary and 0 reading experience.
But by time the more vocabulary I got, and reading experience, the easier it became reading.
Right now I am in the Stage 2 of Matt’s guide (Intermediate)
By the end of next year I will be arriving to the third (Advanced)
If you are reading this and you are in this journey with me, I hope you are doing great and I wish you the best of achieving your language goals!
This is a long path, so if you see no instant progress don’t get upset, or demotivated. You will see it later
May the immersion be with you
@@Samuel-uv6gp Aweesssommmee I'm so happy to hear!
I'm currently reading my first novel!
And funnily enough I'm watching the anime of 化物語 right now 👀!
How is the novels so far?
Your progress is great I'm hoping to reach where you are right now in time!! (Being following Matt's principles for about 10 months so far)
It's so awesome to see someone go through the same thing I'm going through (that makes it sound horrible but I didn't mean it like that) I'd love to hear how you're doing in a year or two as well to see the further progress
@@SalmonSalmonfish
Novels are great and funnier because you are capable of understanding them more and more.
化物語 is a great anime, sometimes the vocabulary is complex, but the main point is doing immersion.
Amazing!
The first novel will be always the one you appreciate the most.
What novel are you reading?
An advice I give you is DO NOT feel bad if you dont understand you will come up with the meaning soner or later.
Also, learn vocabulary it will help you tremendously with reading (but this vacabulary HAS to be of YOUR interest and related to what you are reading)
Yeah, I know what you mean, it is great to get to chat with someone who is in the same part of the journey
Wish you succes in your journey!
Hope we can see both of us in the native level in the following years
PS. if you are interested i can give you my e-mail, so we can chat normally. We can give us advices and change experiences on language learning
@@Samuel-uv6gp I'm kinda enjoying reading a lot more than I am watching shows right now 👀... I just find myself enjoying it a lot more lately!
I've really been being harsh on myself when it comes to progress for real 😭 it's nice to be reminded that I shouldn't be so hard on myself!
The novel I'm reading is 人間失格! I picked a super difficult one for my first one and I really don't know what's happening most of the time 😭😭 but it's not that bad I kind of just enjoy attempting to read it in general!!! I'm sure by the end I'll be really happy with the progress I made during it!
Thanks so much and the same to you! It definitely feels like you're a great way there towards your goals !
I'd love to chat about progress and our processes of learning! I don't use email very much but do you have a Discord or even a HelloTalk account?
I'm on most other social media too if you have it as well
Hey Matt, how long have you been studying for? I am at 8 months and know around 2.2k words. I have terrible grammar and I keep studying lessons for it but nothing seems to stick. Anyways, great videos, keep it up.
I have been studying for 6 years. Sounds like you need to get red-pilled when it comes to Japanese learning! Check out some of my other videos on AJATT (ideally the second half of my 3 hour video where I fully explain AJATT)
I will check it out for sure. Thanks for the reply.
@@tims2927 How far have you come now?
Just came here to comment that the thick book in the thumbnail that said "Muzukashii Hon" on the cover was quite funny.
I think it's just reeeally tiring cause I have to look up soo many new words in a novel..^^' I can't really get a flow..
(As for my level, I'm taking N2 coming December)
In my experience, even if you're looking up every single word you're coming across, as long as you continue you'll naturally need to look up fewer words since the author is going to use the same words over and over again. If it gets way too much you could also opt to just not look up any words for a while and just enjoy the book for the parts that you can understand without looking things up. For me personally when I first started I was looking up like 15 - 25 words a page. It's only that bad for a little bit of time unless if you're constantly reading really technical books in a bunch of different fields of study or something.
@@jessesjapanese8484 Thanks for the advice! Yea the results of my research said pretty much the same.
-Enjoy the parts you understand.
-Words will repeat themselves. (not always tbh 😭😂)
I guess I'll keep trying.. thanks!
@@beats876 I did that with a couple stories as well. Biri Gyaru was one that I really like. If a word almost never repeats you might have very little need to remember it or even look it up at all. But, of course, it doesn't hurt if you wanted to memorize it because you like the word or are simply curious.
If anybody is learning Chinese, please share with me some of your favorites :)
this is a whole fresh idea to me
but at what level one should start doing this
Anyone know if Konosuba LN is worth it for reading practice? (in term of vocab is it too fantasy-ish)
i'm planning to buy it after finishing RRTK and Tanggo N5
There are many benefits for reading a novel:
1) like Matt said, there is a much richer vocabulary. Reading a novel makes one realize how poor and basic one's existing vocabulary knowledge actually is. The authors use different words and expressions for basic actions such as speaking, sitting, running, etc, in a way that makes the scenes in the novel feel more vivid.
2) as a direct consequence of 1, one will find several words and expressions that they might not have found elsewhere through visual medium.
3) because one needs to understand the sentence using the Japanese knowledge they already have, it helps them move away from mentally translating the sentence in their head and start "thinking" in Japanese or the target language.
(this will of course depend on how far they are in their language skill)
4) reading a novel forces one to review and reinforce one's existing knowledge of Japanese grammar. Novels often make use of grammar points from several JPLT(or is it JLPT, I never seem to get it right...) levels throughout the book. Even better is that you get to see the grammar "in action".
5) reading novels help you get used to several words written in kanji. This means that, over time, you'll get to recognize words even if you are not actively studying kanji. This is the most natural way of learning kanji, as they are meant to be tools to help you distinguish between homonyms, and not something you memorize to pass some random test. Knowing how individual kanji are read by themselves is not helpful most of the time.
6) above all, novels are fun! You're basically learning new words, reviewing the grammar, learning to recognize kanji, all for "free" while you enjoy a chapter of your favorite novel!
There are different levels of novels, aimed at different levels, similar in a way to how different manga can have varying levels of Japanese difficulty. There are novels aimed at elementary, middle, high, and college students/adults. As a general rule of thumb, you usually can't go wrong with the most popular novels written for a given target audience.
could you give me a site or a pdf file that contains japanese novel
would really help me out here
Rooke Ron kindle
Thank you I will try
I just finished my first novel a week ago, 世界の終わりとハードボイルドワンダーランド！I think it being quite bizarre fit it nicely with tolerating ambiguity haha. That book and playing through ペルソナ5・ザ・ロイヤル really brought my Japanese from somewhat poor to almost functional. Also my reading speed increased eight fold between the 上巻 and 下巻.
Waa maybe I should play P5R in Japanese too, it's kinda boring considering I played P5 last year (or 2 years ago?) And that I still remember most of the stuff, but maybe I should actually take advantage of the fact I already know the storyline (well except for the added chaps)to play it in Japanese
I was never a reader as you can see not a writer either. However I made a bucket list to learn a new language and I was wondering if anyone could suggest me a simpler novel to get started. Much appreciated.
I'm too beginery-beginner to be able to read in Chinese :)
But I can read other languages that I learn(ed)
I have to agree, when I was still a kid a large piece of fanfiction was in English, not in my original language (which is Spanish). Wanting to read more content I tried to read and grasp whatever I was reading, even if my level was still too low. I learned by grasping the context of the sentences and the place where each word was used.
Granted, I ended up learning some weird expressions and grammatically incorrect forms here and there because some works were made by amateurs. Reading in Japanese is still a daunting task according to my knowledge, but maybe I will try to start by reading light novels, not published works yet. I would die if I started by trying to read classic literary works.
Yet I tried to read a few books from the Monogatari Series and I just couldn't xD So I went to read something that I felt was slightly easier
I was already interested in reading novels but I started thinking that maybe i should wait until I can understand more japanese... Well, now I'll try to read a bit more novels no matter how difficult. I'm hoping reading really is one of those things you get better at the more you do it xd
I understood the thumbnail
*Wipes tears*
Do any AJATTers speed read? I've been reading some novels in Japanese lately, and wondering if I could speed up the process by learning how to speed read. Not sure how fruitful it would be, though, if speed reading involves a lot of skimming over words and dropping sub-vocalization, which I could see reducing the effectiveness of reading as a language aquisition method.
I personally think it would get in the way of acquisition, not help along the process. Speed reading is for trying to get the gist of what you are reading as quickly as possible by ignoring all of the details. For language acquisition, it's all those little details that you are trying to acquire
i didn't even understand novel in english lol,like a lot of strange vocabolary
Essentially start hitting those light novels.
how do you read a novel in japanese without first learning kanji? It seems so time consuming.
Step 1:
Do RTK for 6-8 weeks til you've learned all the kanji
step 2:
Dive into reading, looking up words constantly, struggle, and learn
Step 3:
???
Step 4:
Be fluent
you should look more into the actual MIA method.
Milark It’s more like Recognition RTK, Tango N5/N4 and Tae Kim, Sentence Mining and start reading.
So, should we only read novels in our target language?
Don’t you need to be at a B level at least to be able to read a novel in target language and not be frustrated? Would you recommend this for a beginner? I’ve tried reading novels but because I couldn’t understand nearly anything it felt like a waste of time and was really frustrating, so I eventually gave up. Thoughts?
Yes definitely B1 level at least. Trying to read any interesting novel at A2 is just an exercise in frustration. Even at B1 it will be tedious at first, especially if they are for adult audiences. It helps greatly if you've read the said novel in translation first (to your native language or other strong language). Reach B1 first, then do this for the first two or three novels and then you'll be all set to read novels in the target language.
@@Qladstone what about reading young adult novels while you're at an A2 level? Would that be still pretty frustrating?
@@Bavubuka I think something like The Little Prince is manageable at A2 level. I haven't been reading young adult novels recently so I'm not sure about those.
Comics/Manga are a good way to bridge the gap too. At first you might read comics at a slow pace, maybe 15-20 seconds each image with text. But since comics are mostly text-light and there are images it's still enjoyable. You'll be ready to start on novels (albeit still tough and slow at first) when you are able to read comics quickly at about 3-5 seconds per image with text which will come with more practice.
I like comics/manga because you can find content originally written in the target language, so it feels at least you're consuming some original content in the language rather than doing "practice" for the sake of it. (e.g. Tintin/Asterix in French and of course manga in Japanese).
@@Qladstone amazing. I actually have the little prince in both franch and spanish because I'm studying both languages and I already know the story. Happy to hear about the comics approach because Iove comics! 😆. Thanks again for your in-depth and thoughtful replies.
5:05 A lot of things have their own set of vocabulary. Yea! Everybody has his own vocabulary. After watching Matt's several videos, I've got familiar with his set of vocabulary.
I've been immersing in a lot of Spanish recently. But, I think I'm gonna add a lot more reading to what I do - ask me in 4 months how it's going
How's it going?
@@futurez12 haha, life happened. Between all the exams I had in uni it was hard to find time. I resolved to read like 5 articles a day instead, it doesn't always work but I'm getting better. Hoping to take the c1 exam around sep 2022. Ask me then
@@JideOjo How's it going?
@@dogtopius4100 haha, I must be the biggest flake in the world. My Spanish has gotten much better. But Ive had to postpone my hopes of doing the exam just cos I've got other priorities atm. Hw about you @dogtopius what language are you working on?
@@JideOjo I'm learning japanese, currently a year and a few months in and I'm at a high intermediate / low advanced level. Just enjoying immersing in light novels and watching anime and some other Japanese youtubers.
My only issue is trying to figure out the reading level of the thousands of books I just downloaded. Oh and the other thousands of Aozora books… I have so many friggen books that are in Japanese…
This may be off topic but I rate the Ikea bed and chest 😁
I read books in English and Esperanto :-)
You can get audio novels which are even better, if you want to improve your accent.