Please help me with my reading skill.

[vgundam21]

Hello all,

I am fairly new to the Japanese language. I started studying about 2 weeks ago, and I decided that a good way to start learning Japanese would be to learn how to read. So far I have taught myself how to read Kana and will start Kanji here in the near future. So here's my question: I picked up a lot of books and a furugana dictionary to read to help get me started with vocabulary and grammar basics. I am having a hard time reading Kana, though, since there are no spaces in between words and I have a hard time telling where one word stops and another begins. Can someone maybe give me some advice for this? Thanks in advance.

[Kobukuro]

Hey!

The more you are into the grammar and vocabs, the more you will find out, where one word ends and where the other begins. I recommend the lesson notes of each lesson. Listening and reading the dialog is a great practice. But it takes a longer time to get it right.

I ordered these little books (Level 1 and 2 for me) from Whiterabbitpress:

http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/catalog ... 16457.html

Little tales mostly in Kana and some Kanji with furigana, beginner grammar AND a CD with nice voices who read the stories. Maybe you can have a try too !

Kobu

[QuackingShoe]

Just keep doing it. The way to get better at anything is to just keep doing it. Reading in all kana is inherently obnoxious, which is one of the reasons kanji are so invaluable, but it gets easier. Everything in language is about patterns, and as time goes on, you pick up the patterns, and it'll stop being a problem. There isn't really much practical advice to give, sorry.

I really encourage you to keep going with your current plan of learning through reading, or at least what sounds like your plan since you say you've picked up a couple books. Read even if you don't understand. It's good for you. Please keep in mind one thing at all times: You read to learn, you do not learn to read. If you spend all your time learning with the eventual goal of being able to read real Japanese texts, this point will never come - you'll spend all your time on the former (the learning), and not a very effective amount of that either. But if you read to learn, you'll accomplish both.

[vgundam21]

Thanks for all the help everyone!

My next goal is to be able to read Kanji, So i'm going to be putting all my time into that for the next few months. Planning on trying out the RTK books to see how well they work. Anyways i have a bunch of different ways i can study for 5 minutes at a time here and there, but the bulk of my "sit down and study" time will be done using untranslated manga and a good japanese-english dictionary. Knowing how I learn things, i'll pick up words and verb conjugations a lot faster if I continually see them used in sentences. Thanks for the advice, i'll just keep at it everyday so I can continue to get better.

[Javizy]

RTK1 is definitely worth giving ago. Not everybody gets on with it, but approach it with a good attitude, and see if it works for you, because the results can be astounding when it does. Definitely use anki to review as you learn, too. You could learn kanji just by using SRS, but with Heisig system as well, it takes a lot of the strain out of the process.

I think you will struggle with manga if you've only been studying for two weeks, though. If you build up a nice little grammar base, you can start expanding your horizons, but you're likely to feel out of your depth without that foundation in place. The PDF's offer a good opportunity to start reading, since they only include grammar that's been covered in the series up until that point, and a handful of new vocabulary words. After going through those for a few months, I found Doraemon very approachable. Test yourself, and see what suits you and your learning methods.

Try to work in a good amount of listening practice, as well. Everything begins to culminate at one point, and you'll hear words that you saw in your reading, and begin to reinforce them to the point of not having to think about what they mean. The jump to intermediate level can be quite daunting, but if you're doing a healthy amount of ear training from day one, you'll be well prepared.

Anyway, you seem to have a good attitude, and you'll find that over time it'll be the thing that helps you progress most.

[vgundam21]

Sounds like a plan. I do realize that it will take in the neighborhood of around 5-6 years to be semi-fluent; However, I am noticing that i get a little bit better every day. For some reason studying a foreign language is very interesting. I'll take your advice though, I've been loading up all the lessons on anki and that helps a ton. Here in maybe 5-6 months ill start trying to go through Doraemon to take my training wheels off so to speak.

Thanks for the help again.