how long did it take you to learn to sightread?

[metablue]

I memorized hiragana before learning anything else about Japanese because it seemed like the most straightforward thing to do. But I still have to read the characters one by one and sound out words. It's really frustrating.

Those who have been studying for a while ... how long did it take you to be able to glance at some Japanese text - kana and kanji - and be able to read it automatically?

Did it help to stop using romaji altogether? I started out that way. I can't remember words unless I can visualize them, so I tried visualizing the hiragana instead of the romaji. But I found I couldn't remember much vocabulary that way - it just wouldn't stick - so I started learning the romaji instead. That really helps with vocab, but not with kana reading.

How have people approached this? What worked and didn't work for you?

[esp]

In my class we started off with just romaji and then my sensei introduced about 20 hiragana a week and then by the end of the 12 week semester nearly everything we wrote/read was in hiragana. I've done about 20 weeks of Japanese and i've been able to quite quickly read all hiragana, katakana and some kanji very quickly.

I think the best way to improve your reading speed is to write single words or small sentences in just hiragana, and also maybe just sitting and reading a hiragana chart and then testing yourself by rewriting the whole chart off the top of your head for 30min-1hr will help a lot.

[helen]

First of all I was using the Colloquial Japanese series which spreads the kana out over the first couple of chapters so they don't hit you with it all at once. They used a bit of romaji for what they hadn't taught yet. I think that was quite a useful way to start it I stopped using romaji pretty soon after I started Japanese, and I can read hiragana and katakana fine, but it is a bit slower. I don't know that many kanji though so it's hard to read a text with it all mixed in if it's not words I know, because I have to look up the kanji every two seconds.

[metablue]

皆さん、どうもありがとう
(I figured a good next step was to get JP text entry working on my mac)

You know what the really weird thing is. I have hiragana flash cards, and if I look at a single character I can recognize it without hesitation. But put a few of them together and suddenly my brain gets bogged down, even if I focus on them one by one. I wonder what's going on in there to cause that.

[Jason]

You know what the really weird thing is. I have hiragana flash cards, and if I look at a single character I can recognize it without hesitation. But put a few of them together and suddenly my brain gets bogged down, even if I focus on them one by one. I wonder what's going on in there to cause that.

You just haven't had enough reading practice yet. Recognizing individual characters and putting them together in the context of a word or sentence are two very different things. Your brain just isn't used to it yet.

You really need to ween yourself off rouma-ji. If you can't do it completely without rouma-ji yet, that's fine. But you need to start making an effort to reduce your dependence on it until you don't need it anymore. Too bad they don't make a rouma-ji patch.

I was able to read kana pretty quickly from fairly early on. We would typically go through about a row a day. What I would do was practice writing what we'd learned that day maybe 10 times, and then I'd practice writing everything we'd learned up until then maybe 5 times (less once we'd learned more). I would do this most everyday. I found that this was really good to imprint the new characters on my brain while reinforcing the older ones at the same time. It's not exactly exciting, but it works. But even after 4 years, I still stumble sometimes.

[Jonas]

When I started out, we used roumaji the first week, but from day 1, our teacher told us that "by the end of next week, you all have to master hiragana, and the week after that, katakana". I remember studying a lot to remember them all in 3 weeks, but it was well worth it. After about 2 months, I had no problem reading hiragana. When you start learning kanji, reading becomes even easier, because just looking at a character makes you realize the meaning, so it is a lot less "reading" than just recognizing and understanding. Reading kanji is much faster than reading the alphabeth. My stepmother is chinese, and she reads 3 lines at a time when she is speed-reading. A japanese person who is good at speed reading usually reads 2 at a time. I guess its because of the kana. They have to be read, and not just understood by looking.

[Kitsune]

First post to the forum...
My wife is nearly fluent in Japanese and has taught me a few phrases here and there until my curiousity got the best of me. Following that I would ask how to say certain words and gramatical structure as I was trying to figure out the world around me.
Numbers, animals, dinnerware, colors, etc...
Tonight I worked with the kana flashcards for about an hour and found that once I learned the characters, reading words and sentences was easy, not because I had been doing it for quite a while, but because I had a strong vocabulary base. I was able to "guess" the rest of the word; Ijust needed to check to see if the rest of the characters matched with the sounds that I was thinking!
Even before reading this form I was thinking to myself how funny it was that my Japanese study was mirroring learning of toddlers. First, words; then, sentences; then, letters; and finally reading...
Best of luck to all...

[metablue]

Welcome to the forum, kitsune!

I wish I had enough vocab to make learning to read easier. Reading seems like such an accomplishment when you're a kid, but really the bulk of the work is behind you since you already know the language.

I can vividly remember being a little kid and first learning to read by sounding words out. I read voraciously after that and can remember talking to other kids about how I could read books silently just by looking at the words, but they didn't believe it. But there was at least a year between those two memories, and I can't remember exactly how long or how much reading it took to get to that stage. Then I remember making little mistakes like reading "though" as "thought" for what seemed like ages after that.

It's really interesting learning Japanese because it's like going through the whole process again, but at the same time after all those years of English reading it's so hard to look at kana and have it not instantly make sense.

I wonder how many books you have to read before you can't help but read a Japanese sentence when it's put in front of you, the same way you can't help but read an English one.

[Squallman]

I heard from many people when I began learning that Romaji is a bad thing to learn, and will simply become a crutch that will hold you back. So the first thing I did, before even learning sentence structure and grammer was to learn the hiragana. Some people pick that up easily, but it's taken me 2 years to be able to read hiragana quickly and to write from memory. I have a hard time remembering things that don't make logical sense, but I find that Kanji is very easy. So kana was a large hump to get over, but now that I'm over it, I'll start progressing a lot faster than I was.

[tintinium]

As you read this
this sentence, you
you probably won't
notice every word.

Otherwise, you would've picked up on the fact that there are two "this" and two "you"

The point really is that when we read, we don't actually read... when we're reading quickly (ie. normal speed) we're actually recalling a picture of the word or phrase or sentence from memory... or rather, the overall shape of the word.

The point here is that knowing kana and reading kana are two different things. Some things to help you:

Use your finger. There's a reason kids use their finger to follow words on a page. It helps memory. The physical action reinforces the word to our brain. It gives us an extra input.

Write it out. Especially when learning kana, writing it is essential to memory. Don't rely just on flashcard. If possible write words, even if they're made up, or your friends names in hiragana or katakana. Make a game out of it. Try to make a crossword of sorts. eg, if you write カタカナ　(Katakana) horizontally on a page, you can use the タ　and write タバコ (Tabako)　vertically and continue on like that.

Sign Language. Make a distinct gesture (use as much of your body as you can) when you practice using a flashcard. For example, for 食べる (taberu) motion eating or for kana use your hand to write in on your other hand.

less is more. Practice a little each day. If you want to study for 2 hours, do grammar for 30 minutes reading for 30... Your brain can retain as long as it's interested, and that's usually about 30 minutes... you'lll notice jpod lessons are short.

[tintinium]

Duplicate Post

[Charles]

Some good suggestions, Tin.

But, yeah, the most important thing is to start looking at the words and phrases, not how they are spelled.

When you memorize hiragana and katakana individually, from then on you tend to think in terms of those letters. But, letters don't encapsulate thoughts, right? No one thinks in terms of letters unless they're asked to spell something.

So, forget about the letters. I know that sounds counterproductive, because you just spent time memorizing them. Don't forget them, just forget about them. :) Now is the time to memorize words and how they work together. Think about how words and sentences look and sound like and you won't have to worry about how they are spelled.

[tarokun]

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

This probably applies to reading Japanese too.

[JockZon]

I would be fun to read kana that well so you do not have to think

[tintinium]

It's not as hard as you think. I recommend singing. Singing forces you to keep up to the level of the song, it challenges your mind to keep pace, rhythm, tone etc.

Once you get away from reading letters and your brain starts recognizing patterns in words. When we read in our native language we don't read every letter, or even every word. It's because our brain memorizes the shape of words, and stores it more like a picture than as a logical set of letters. This is because it's quicker and our brain doesn't have to think so much. Imagine if you had to process every letter... like a computer. Your brain would work hard for simple tasks.

One of the reasons the brain is a marvel of design.