This is the most clear and concise guide I've seen that, honestly, cuts through all the bull crap and gets straight to the point. Will definitely be recommending this video to people starting their Japanese learning journey.
The discipline stuff is really important. Even if it's just 20 minutes a day make Japanese a part of your daily routine as much as possible. That discipline will be your new motivation.
I've been wanting to get started for a while, but I never really understood where to start and how to actually make progress. This breaks it down so well and actually gives me short term goals that are tangible and achievable. First off is to get those kana down because abstract sounds are so hard to remember for me. I'll learn them then completely forget half of them by the next morning.
Definitely going to send this video whenever someone asks me how to learn Japanese, instead of trying to explain it myself. You made all the same recommendations I normally would, just much clearer and wonderfully organized. Great vid!
not sure y i put myself through this self flagellating process of watching ppl succeed seemingly with one hand tied behind their back :P i have been learning japanese for 6 years and still nowhere near passing n5 - i guess languages just arent my thing lol edit: i hadnt watched the vid entirely before my 1st comment. i do think ur exp as a learner is on the upper percentiles of the bell curve. at my school, students learning japanese, took weeks to learn hiragana, not hours. i bought remembering the kanji about 4 years ago and gave up after reading the 1st explanatory section several times as i had no idea what it wanted me to do. to give u a benchmark of my ability, so as not to think im a pet rock :P i once used mnemonics to remember the 52 cards in a deck in 2hrs. 3 months later after shuffling, i could still remember the exact order after seeing briefly. i have a wani kani subscription as i do for kanji study, and bunpro and duolingo..the list is endless. i used anki cards initially - made the mistake of learning in romaji about 1000 words. most of those 1000 words were learnt in my 1st year studying and i have never gone back to anki until about 6 months ago - where i think i retained about 85% of the words. i guess it is not a race, ill keep plodding along and try not to click on all these success stories - as they are less a motivator than a deflator :P putting all the negativity aside - i still enjoy the process :) - nice video too! :D
Wanikani is certainly expensive, but I've been using it for almost half a year now and I'm proud of thr progress I've made. I'm still a ways away from finishing it, but overall it's totally worth it in my opinion. Try out the free trial (why not) and see if it suits you One thing to note, is that Wanikani is a mnemonics _and_ SRS system, since it teaches vocabulary + kanji.
I know this video is old, but as someone just getting started, I really appreciate how you’ve simplified each category. I’ve been told to, and also warned against, using RTK, so I’m glad you encourage it as I was leaning that way anyway. I plan to go alongside Genki I & II while doing RTK with an Anki deck I found for RTK. Then, when that’s all done, or perhaps partway through, I’ll do some Anki vocab. I found a Tango n5 Anki deck that seems like a good place to start once I’m there. Then I’ll also try graded readers and sentence mining too. If you have any critiques or suggestions, let me know!
I really liked the breakdown you made. I'm going with a modified approach where I'm learning from Genki I & II while simultaneously doing a small 450 Kanji recognition deck to get the radicals and top 250 most used kanji under my belt (with additional 800 after I get comfortable), and a 2K vocab deck with audio pronunciation. I'm hoping that a varied approach will help me learn and get the knowledge to "stick" faster without being overloaded, with a time frame of 6-8 months.
That doesn't sound like a good idea to me. There's a reason I recommend choosing exactly three resources - no more, no less - to get started with Japanese. Working through multiple resources at the same level will mean you cover the same stuff multiple times, which is a waste of time. Progress will be slow, it will be hard to balance your time, and you might get frustrated and quit. Maybe you have a plan that can make the method work for you, but generally I recommend against 'a varied approach'. Also, radicals are not an important thing to learn, and 250 kanji won't get you very far. Starting by choosing a kanji-learning method that will teach you all the 2,200 you need to know in one go will serve you much better in the long run. Again, you can avoid repeating yourself.
Great tips and personal experience that you included in this video! I would love it if you would make a video where you actually speak a bit of Japanese. 😊 It always gives me loads of motivation when I see people living out their goals 👍
Great video man! I really appreciate it since you were able to help me get out from my near burnout when I was learning Kanji after studying ineffeciently.
🇦🇬 My learning 20 kanji a day isn’t the problem. Retention and recall is. So many different methods out there, at age 60, I don’t think I’ll have enough time left to become truly …... Am still trying. 🙇🏾♂️
Thank you so much for this video, I've tried duolingo but found myself lacking a solid foundation. I'm taking it old school and ordered Nakama 1. I look forward to more videos on the channel and hopefully my comments will slowly turn Japanese!
I’m starting out on my japanese language journey and found the resources you mentioned and your advice helpful. How much time did you commit each study session and did you blend studying kanji in with grammar learning each day?
Damn, JLPT N2 in just 2 years is insane. Just wondering, how long would you say you studied every day, if it's not completely absurd, I'll probably adopt it too cause this language is just amazing. Great video
You might be interested in this video too, guy finishes JLPT N1 after 1.5years th-cam.com/video/CRbdTNLUi9k/w-d-xo.html and he documents his entire journey on his channel
At the beginner level, I did (roughly) 30 minutes of learning new kanji with RtK every morning, an hour or so of flashcard revision (both vocab and kanji) every evening, and textbook study whenever I could fit it in. I would read a new chapter on a day when I had a few hours to dedicate to it, usually Saturday, then slowly work through the exercises over the course of the week before tackling the next chapter. This was just the right pace for me.
@@Bonyari_Boy , That definitely seems possible for me, once this school year ends I'll try this method out for a month or two. I was gonna go to Japan for 4 weeks for intensive language learning but Corona put a stop to that so I definitely think I should start studying for more than just 1 hour and a half a day. thanks for the advice!
My copy of Nakama 1 just arrived! Do you have any tips on how to use the textbook as effectively as I can? Anything I should watch out for or any resources that would be helpful to work alongside it? Thanks! I came from reddit when you promoted this video. I got hiragana and was using the RTK method and got like 10% through the first textbook before losing motivation and stopped like a year ago. Been trying to get my life back together and you've really motivated me to give Japanese another shot. Always wanted to learn because I enjoy light novels.
Great to hear my advice helped! Set a study schedule that fits around your life and will allow you to progress through the book at a good pace. To start with, you just need the three bases covered (grammar, kanji, vocabulary) but when you've got enough of a handle on the language you can start pulling knowledge from a wider variety of sources. My latest video is about that.
Great advice - it reaffirmed all my choices. ;) I do think that 20 kanji a day is a bit much for everyone. It could get demotivating over time. I think people need to talk about an acceptable percent of correct SRS reviews when they talk about learning kanji. What’s an acceptable pass/fail ratio, in your opinion?
20 new kanji sounds like a lot, but it's really not! RtK's stripped-down approach means you can learn one a minute, so 20 new kanji is less than half an hour of study time. I find studying for months and still barely knowing anything to be far more demotivating, which is why I recommend keeping up the pace. I never paid too close attention to my pass/fail ratios - I just got a good feel for what felt like failing too many, and if that happened I would stop adding new cards and/or review what I didn't know.
It can be faster if you use only recognition cards, which has the caveat of not being able to write kanji from memory as well. Also I'd recommend the RRTK deck as it cuts down the kanji list to the most common ones, making it not as daunting for newcomers.
@@Bonyari_Boy I just touched the 1600 mark doing around 10 a day (writing, not RRTK) and even then there are days when I just don't feel it so skip kanji altogether. I do enjoy the process a lot and get 90%+ accuracy on most days. I haven't started Genki or grammar in a systematic fashion yet (hitting a textbook and sticking to it) but I watch TH-cam videos, Netflix or listen to Jp lang podcasts almost daily so there's some progress made even on "off days". It's obviously more satisfying ending a day having studied new kanji but I promise you, we're built different and my brain can only take so much. :) I'm not learning Japanese for any practical reason and have decided to make it a lifelong journey so, though I'm only human and can't help comparing my progress to others, I try not to beat myself up about it.
@@x123Juancho123x I guess it does make sense to eliminate writing which is largely unnecessary if you're on a crunch and really need to optimize your path to learning. To be honest it rubs me the wrong way when people *insist* that learning how to write is a waste of time (I'm not suggesting you're doing that but a lot of people do.) I think writing is an essential skill and people who go on literacy forums and advocate illiteracy drive me nuts. Matt vs. Japan changed his recommendation from RTK to RRTK - I don't know whether he suggests RRTK only for people who need to reach their goal within a strict time limit, if not, that's a disservice to his audience. I'm sure he puts a VERY high value on his own writing ability and wouldn't ever want to lose it.
Hiya, I started with a deck of Genki textbook vocabulary (you can just search for 'anki genki deck' and find a bunch). It's a good idea to use a deck of vocabulary from the textbook you're using, as you get to see those words in practice and start using them straight away as part of your textbook exercises. When I was done with that, I moved on to a core 10k deck, while also making my own deck of words I had found in the wild while reading/watching/listening to real-world Japanese media. I talk about that a bit more in my 'Beginner to Intermediate' video :)
I only used the first book. The second book teaches you on-yomi readings, which you can learn faster by learning vocabulary words instead. The third book is more of what you get in the first book, but it covers a few hundred more kanji that aren't in the everyday-use list. It's useful, but those kanji are rare enough that you can pick them up as you find them in the wild.
You’ll get writing practice as you do your textbook exercises, but you won’t improve much if you don’t get your work corrected. There’s not much point writing a paragraph if it’s full of mistakes that you aren’t aware of. There are sites (LangCorrect, HiNative), apps (HelloTalk) and Discord servers where you can get those all-important corrections. You could also pay an online tutor to look over your work. I have to clarify that writing practice is NOT the same as handwriting practice. You do not need to hand-write your essays, and doing so will probably make you spend more time trying to recall kanji or fussing over how your strokes look instead of focussing on what matters: putting the grammar and vocabulary you have learned into practice. I strongly recommend typing instead.
In my daily life in Japan, the only thing I ever have to handwrite regularly is my name and address, so I don't believe practising handwriting to be important at all. Unless you're aiming to become a calligrapher. That said, I did write out all the kanji as I recalled them with Kanji Koohii flashcards, as being able to write them served as physical proof that I had recalled the mnemonic that Koohii wanted me to remember. I have a notebook full of thousands and thousands of kanji from those flashcard revisions, but the important thing is that I didn't write those randomly or for the sake of brute-force memorisation, and I wasn't focussing on getting my handwriting beautiful. It was for the sake of recalling mnemonics.
It's a good supplementary resource, but it's not the full package with exercises and all that you get with a textbook. Absolutely refer to it if there's anything in your textbook that confuses you and you want a second explanation about, but you'd struggle to get far if it was your main study resource.
Whatever suits you! RtK is meant to be done before everything else and it's simpler to focus only on that one book at the start, but it can feel a bit rubbish to have been "studying" Japanese for months and still not know a word of the language. I did RtK alongside Genki and it took some time management skills, but it worked for me.
hi, I have a question you mention that the kanji section should just be skipped in textbooks i'm now on the first lesson in the genki textbook and they give some example vocabulary, but not kanji (stuff like jobs, countries, and so on) should I skip those as well or study them?
That vocabulary is vocabulary you need to learn, do not skip it! The part you should skip is the entire back half of the book, with the kanji grids and spaces for writing kanji repeatedly until you can't face it anymore.
That deserves its own video, but in short: lots of input (especially listening) followed by speaking practice in the kind of environment where you can get your mistakes corrected. Either with a tutor, or at a conversation group, or with a native speaker who will kindly point out what you get wrong. Just speaking without any kind of feedback will lead you to repeat the same mistakes and develop bad habits-you need corrections as you go.
Definitely not; the video was divided into these three sections to organize the content, not to tell you to learn them separately. Use a grammar textbook (e.g Genki), a Kanji course (e.g. Remembering the Kanji kanji.koohii.com), and a vocabulary program (e.g. Core 6k deck with Anki) at the same time.
Recommending RTK or Kanji Damage and saying you will learn every kanji in one year (never have to learn them after that) is gross underestimation of what you actually need to do to do. Also learning with RTK in vacuum outside of the context is the worst thing you can ever do and you will start forgetting those characters sooner than later. But I agree with mentioning SRS (wanikani, houhou srs or anki) and Human Japanese those are good resources. Genki is great but it's more suited for school environment rather than for self-learning. And the best way to learn vocabularly is by exposition to the language (reading, watching tv shows, etc.. the sooner the better)
idk why you've got so few subscribers, the quality is one of a channel at 750k subscribers, keep up the good work
More actually
This is the most clear and concise guide I've seen that, honestly, cuts through all the bull crap and gets straight to the point. Will definitely be recommending this video to people starting their Japanese learning journey.
The discipline stuff is really important. Even if it's just 20 minutes a day make Japanese a part of your daily routine as much as possible. That discipline will be your new motivation.
I've been wanting to get started for a while, but I never really understood where to start and how to actually make progress. This breaks it down so well and actually gives me short term goals that are tangible and achievable. First off is to get those kana down because abstract sounds are so hard to remember for me. I'll learn them then completely forget half of them by the next morning.
4 months in for you im presuming, how's it been?
日本語ってこんな学び方があったんですね！！日本で育った私には漢字もひらがなもカタカナも当たり前に使えてしまうものなので、外国の方から見た日本語学習は新鮮でした😆✨
Definitely going to send this video whenever someone asks me how to learn Japanese, instead of trying to explain it myself. You made all the same recommendations I normally would, just much clearer and wonderfully organized. Great vid!
not sure y i put myself through this self flagellating process of watching ppl succeed seemingly with one hand tied behind their back :P i have been learning japanese for 6 years and still nowhere near passing n5 - i guess languages just arent my thing lol edit: i hadnt watched the vid entirely before my 1st comment. i do think ur exp as a learner is on the upper percentiles of the bell curve. at my school, students learning japanese, took weeks to learn hiragana, not hours. i bought remembering the kanji about 4 years ago and gave up after reading the 1st explanatory section several times as i had no idea what it wanted me to do. to give u a benchmark of my ability, so as not to think im a pet rock :P i once used mnemonics to remember the 52 cards in a deck in 2hrs. 3 months later after shuffling, i could still remember the exact order after seeing briefly. i have a wani kani subscription as i do for kanji study, and bunpro and duolingo..the list is endless. i used anki cards initially - made the mistake of learning in romaji about 1000 words. most of those 1000 words were learnt in my 1st year studying and i have never gone back to anki until about 6 months ago - where i think i retained about 85% of the words. i guess it is not a race, ill keep plodding along and try not to click on all these success stories - as they are less a motivator than a deflator :P putting all the negativity aside - i still enjoy the process :) - nice video too! :D
英語勉強してる日本人からでもめちゃくちゃためになるビデオだった
Wanikani is certainly expensive, but I've been using it for almost half a year now and I'm proud of thr progress I've made. I'm still a ways away from finishing it, but overall it's totally worth it in my opinion. Try out the free trial (why not) and see if it suits you
One thing to note, is that Wanikani is a mnemonics _and_ SRS system, since it teaches vocabulary + kanji.
I know this video is old, but as someone just getting started, I really appreciate how you’ve simplified each category. I’ve been told to, and also warned against, using RTK, so I’m glad you encourage it as I was leaning that way anyway. I plan to go alongside Genki I & II while doing RTK with an Anki deck I found for RTK. Then, when that’s all done, or perhaps partway through, I’ll do some Anki vocab. I found a Tango n5 Anki deck that seems like a good place to start once I’m there. Then I’ll also try graded readers and sentence mining too. If you have any critiques or suggestions, let me know!
I really liked the breakdown you made. I'm going with a modified approach where I'm learning from Genki I & II while simultaneously doing a small 450 Kanji recognition deck to get the radicals and top 250 most used kanji under my belt (with additional 800 after I get comfortable), and a 2K vocab deck with audio pronunciation. I'm hoping that a varied approach will help me learn and get the knowledge to "stick" faster without being overloaded, with a time frame of 6-8 months.
That doesn't sound like a good idea to me. There's a reason I recommend choosing exactly three resources - no more, no less - to get started with Japanese. Working through multiple resources at the same level will mean you cover the same stuff multiple times, which is a waste of time. Progress will be slow, it will be hard to balance your time, and you might get frustrated and quit. Maybe you have a plan that can make the method work for you, but generally I recommend against 'a varied approach'.
Also, radicals are not an important thing to learn, and 250 kanji won't get you very far. Starting by choosing a kanji-learning method that will teach you all the 2,200 you need to know in one go will serve you much better in the long run. Again, you can avoid repeating yourself.
ありがとうございます
Awesome work man! Made it very clean and clear.
Thanks so much. This has just made my rough start so much better.
great video thank you
Great tips and personal experience that you included in this video! I would love it if you would make a video where you actually speak a bit of Japanese. 😊 It always gives me loads of motivation when I see people living out their goals 👍
This was super helpful! And also you're such a wholesome person! :) Thanks
I needed this. Thanks.
Great video man! I really appreciate it since you were able to help me get out from my near burnout when I was learning Kanji after studying ineffeciently.
Omg i need thisss
Thank you, i will do my best. I will be looking for more of your content, the quality is awesome. Gambarimashou.
This is perfect. Thank you!
Holy shit that's a great video, you just won a subscriber
すごいですね、がんばって下さい。私も英語がんばります
I am so bad at discipline, God only knows how I leaned English!
🇦🇬
My learning 20 kanji a day isn’t the problem. Retention and recall is. So many different methods out there, at age 60, I don’t think I’ll have enough time left to become truly …... Am still trying.
🙇🏾♂️
Thank you so much for this video, I've tried duolingo but found myself lacking a solid foundation. I'm taking it old school and ordered Nakama 1. I look forward to more videos on the channel and hopefully my comments will slowly turn Japanese!
Loved this video! I look foward to future japanese tips :)
I’m starting out on my japanese language journey and found the resources you mentioned and your advice helpful. How much time did you commit each study session and did you blend studying kanji in with grammar learning each day?
How is it going?
How is it going?
are u still learning?
Thank you for calling out the cursed kanji "grid sheet" method. Mnemonics and SRS for life!
Damn, JLPT N2 in just 2 years is insane. Just wondering, how long would you say you studied every day, if it's not completely absurd, I'll probably adopt it too cause this language is just amazing. Great video
You might be interested in this video too, guy finishes JLPT N1 after 1.5years th-cam.com/video/CRbdTNLUi9k/w-d-xo.html and he documents his entire journey on his channel
At the beginner level, I did (roughly) 30 minutes of learning new kanji with RtK every morning, an hour or so of flashcard revision (both vocab and kanji) every evening, and textbook study whenever I could fit it in. I would read a new chapter on a day when I had a few hours to dedicate to it, usually Saturday, then slowly work through the exercises over the course of the week before tackling the next chapter. This was just the right pace for me.
@@Bonyari_Boy , That definitely seems possible for me, once this school year ends I'll try this method out for a month or two. I was gonna go to Japan for 4 weeks for intensive language learning but Corona put a stop to that so I definitely think I should start studying for more than just 1 hour and a half a day. thanks for the advice!
@ErikunTV Yes, 20 kanji a day using RtK in the morning, and vocabulary with Anki flashcards in the evening.
great video and really focussed guide to learning :D
See i get this because i moved over here to the US I also had to learn the language to be able to understand everyone here.
Also, with Genki, do you do one lesson every Saturday and spend the week doing practice questions in the workbook till the next Saturday?
My copy of Nakama 1 just arrived! Do you have any tips on how to use the textbook as effectively as I can? Anything I should watch out for or any resources that would be helpful to work alongside it? Thanks!
I came from reddit when you promoted this video. I got hiragana and was using the RTK method and got like 10% through the first textbook before losing motivation and stopped like a year ago. Been trying to get my life back together and you've really motivated me to give Japanese another shot. Always wanted to learn because I enjoy light novels.
Great to hear my advice helped! Set a study schedule that fits around your life and will allow you to progress through the book at a good pace. To start with, you just need the three bases covered (grammar, kanji, vocabulary) but when you've got enough of a handle on the language you can start pulling knowledge from a wider variety of sources. My latest video is about that.
This is awesome, thank you!
Do I do all of these together, or do I do grammar-> kanji-> vocab?
All together. Make a study plan that helps you balance all three.
@@Bonyari_BoyAh I see, thanks! Is there a particular study plan you recommend?
How did you go about the practice exercises in Genki, since most of them require a partner. Or did you only do the workbook?
Great advice - it reaffirmed all my choices. ;)
I do think that 20 kanji a day is a bit much for everyone. It could get demotivating over time. I think people need to talk about an acceptable percent of correct SRS reviews when they talk about learning kanji. What’s an acceptable pass/fail ratio, in your opinion?
20 new kanji sounds like a lot, but it's really not! RtK's stripped-down approach means you can learn one a minute, so 20 new kanji is less than half an hour of study time. I find studying for months and still barely knowing anything to be far more demotivating, which is why I recommend keeping up the pace.
I never paid too close attention to my pass/fail ratios - I just got a good feel for what felt like failing too many, and if that happened I would stop adding new cards and/or review what I didn't know.
It can be faster if you use only recognition cards, which has the caveat of not being able to write kanji from memory as well. Also I'd recommend the RRTK deck as it cuts down the kanji list to the most common ones, making it not as daunting for newcomers.
@@Bonyari_Boy I just touched the 1600 mark doing around 10 a day (writing, not RRTK) and even then there are days when I just don't feel it so skip kanji altogether. I do enjoy the process a lot and get 90%+ accuracy on most days. I haven't started Genki or grammar in a systematic fashion yet (hitting a textbook and sticking to it) but I watch TH-cam videos, Netflix or listen to Jp lang podcasts almost daily so there's some progress made even on "off days". It's obviously more satisfying ending a day having studied new kanji but I promise you, we're built different and my brain can only take so much. :) I'm not learning Japanese for any practical reason and have decided to make it a lifelong journey so, though I'm only human and can't help comparing my progress to others, I try not to beat myself up about it.
@@x123Juancho123x I guess it does make sense to eliminate writing which is largely unnecessary if you're on a crunch and really need to optimize your path to learning. To be honest it rubs me the wrong way when people *insist* that learning how to write is a waste of time (I'm not suggesting you're doing that but a lot of people do.) I think writing is an essential skill and people who go on literacy forums and advocate illiteracy drive me nuts. Matt vs. Japan changed his recommendation from RTK to RRTK - I don't know whether he suggests RRTK only for people who need to reach their goal within a strict time limit, if not, that's a disservice to his audience. I'm sure he puts a VERY high value on his own writing ability and wouldn't ever want to lose it.
Hi Harry, could you share the anki decks you used when you were studying vocabulary? Thank you.
Hiya, I started with a deck of Genki textbook vocabulary (you can just search for 'anki genki deck' and find a bunch). It's a good idea to use a deck of vocabulary from the textbook you're using, as you get to see those words in practice and start using them straight away as part of your textbook exercises.
When I was done with that, I moved on to a core 10k deck, while also making my own deck of words I had found in the wild while reading/watching/listening to real-world Japanese media. I talk about that a bit more in my 'Beginner to Intermediate' video :)
@@Bonyari_Boy awesome! Thanks for the prompt reply.
Did you only use remembering the kanji 1, or did you also use all of the sequels as well?
I only used the first book. The second book teaches you on-yomi readings, which you can learn faster by learning vocabulary words instead. The third book is more of what you get in the first book, but it covers a few hundred more kanji that aren't in the everyday-use list. It's useful, but those kanji are rare enough that you can pick them up as you find them in the wild.
Hey thanks for the really detailed video! What about writing, do you spend time on this as well or does this come naturally along the way?
You’ll get writing practice as you do your textbook exercises, but you won’t improve much if you don’t get your work corrected. There’s not much point writing a paragraph if it’s full of mistakes that you aren’t aware of. There are sites (LangCorrect, HiNative), apps (HelloTalk) and Discord servers where you can get those all-important corrections. You could also pay an online tutor to look over your work.
I have to clarify that writing practice is NOT the same as handwriting practice. You do not need to hand-write your essays, and doing so will probably make you spend more time trying to recall kanji or fussing over how your strokes look instead of focussing on what matters: putting the grammar and vocabulary you have learned into practice. I strongly recommend typing instead.
can you recommend any specific anki decks?
How do you feel about learning to hand write Kana/Kanji? Necessary or optional?
In my daily life in Japan, the only thing I ever have to handwrite regularly is my name and address, so I don't believe practising handwriting to be important at all. Unless you're aiming to become a calligrapher.
That said, I did write out all the kanji as I recalled them with Kanji Koohii flashcards, as being able to write them served as physical proof that I had recalled the mnemonic that Koohii wanted me to remember. I have a notebook full of thousands and thousands of kanji from those flashcard revisions, but the important thing is that I didn't write those randomly or for the sake of brute-force memorisation, and I wasn't focussing on getting my handwriting beautiful. It was for the sake of recalling mnemonics.
Is Tae Kim's Japanese Guide to Grammar a good resource for beginners learning grammar?
It's a good supplementary resource, but it's not the full package with exercises and all that you get with a textbook. Absolutely refer to it if there's anything in your textbook that confuses you and you want a second explanation about, but you'd struggle to get far if it was your main study resource.
@@Bonyari_Boy Okay thanks
Quick question, would you recommend grinding out RTK in like 3-4 months prior to starting Genki or doing RTK alongside Genki?
Whatever suits you! RtK is meant to be done before everything else and it's simpler to focus only on that one book at the start, but it can feel a bit rubbish to have been "studying" Japanese for months and still not know a word of the language.
I did RtK alongside Genki and it took some time management skills, but it worked for me.
Hey man! Great video! Im Jordan. I also make videos about Learning Japanese. I look forward to seeing more of your content! お互いに頑張りましょう！よろしく頼む！
hi, I have a question
you mention that the kanji section should just be skipped in textbooks
i'm now on the first lesson in the genki textbook and they give some example vocabulary, but not kanji (stuff like jobs, countries, and so on)
should I skip those as well or study them?
That vocabulary is vocabulary you need to learn, do not skip it!
The part you should skip is the entire back half of the book, with the kanji grids and spaces for writing kanji repeatedly until you can't face it anymore.
@@Bonyari_Boy i see, thanks a lot!
How do we learn how to speak?
That deserves its own video, but in short: lots of input (especially listening) followed by speaking practice in the kind of environment where you can get your mistakes corrected. Either with a tutor, or at a conversation group, or with a native speaker who will kindly point out what you get wrong. Just speaking without any kind of feedback will lead you to repeat the same mistakes and develop bad habits-you need corrections as you go.
I have a question, so like after I finish genki 1 should I start kanji or just complete genki series before learning kanji?
You can (abdm if you've got the time, definitely should) do all three at once! Build a study schedule that will allow you to balance them.
@@Bonyari_Boy welp I lost motivation :/ thought about it and it's a waste of effort learning kanji just to watch anime without subs lmao
hello from reddit
As an oversimplification, I should learn Grammar, then Kanji and then Vocab? (I already know Kana)
Definitely not; the video was divided into these three sections to organize the content, not to tell you to learn them separately. Use a grammar textbook (e.g Genki), a Kanji course (e.g. Remembering the Kanji kanji.koohii.com), and a vocabulary program (e.g. Core 6k deck with Anki) at the same time.
@@FlyingWhales13 Understood, thanks
If anyone is lacking motivation, I HIGHLY RECOMEND listening to GOLDEN LIFE (AKINO from bless4)
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My goal is to understand Japanese when I watch ………..never mind.
Recommending RTK or Kanji Damage and saying you will learn every kanji in one year (never have to learn them after that) is gross underestimation of what you actually need to do to do. Also learning with RTK in vacuum outside of the context is the worst thing you can ever do and you will start forgetting those characters sooner than later. But I agree with mentioning SRS (wanikani, houhou srs or anki) and Human Japanese those are good resources. Genki is great but it's more suited for school environment rather than for self-learning. And the best way to learn vocabularly is by exposition to the language (reading, watching tv shows, etc.. the sooner the better)