I feel lost :(

[sefearion9050]

Hey folks, I desperately need some guidance before I lose my marbles.

I've been studying Japanese for a couple of months now but despite my best attempts to try and learn the language I feel as though I'm making very little progress. I've finally managed to get a solid understanding of Hiragana and Katakana, it was a lengthy process but I've memorized the characters fairly well (ｼ and ﾂ always make me pause now and again ).

My biggest concern write now is Kanji, which I'm sure tends to terrify a lot of newcomers when it comes to learning Japanese and I honestly don't know where to begin. Peoples opinions on what resources to use tend to vary a great deal as some folks consider writing the Kanji out repeatedly and memorizing the stroke order for them is a good way to drill the information into ones head. Others mentioned books like "Remembering the Kanji" which has a truly bizarre approach to learn the Kanji characters.

It just feels like there is so much to learn. When I finally managed to get a firm grip of Hiragana and Katakana I felt as though I just finished climbing a huge mountain only to find another, infinitely larger mountain lying before me: Kanji . I feel a great sense panic that is making it very difficult to focus on what to do next.

My focus is very crippled here. Any advice you can offer me would be greatly appreciated.

ありがとう！

[community.japanese]

sefearion9050-san,
kon'nichiwa!
Thank you very much for sharing your feelings and concerns!

No worries; kanji still terrify even me (Japanese native) too
How long have you been learning Japanese?
I have great respect to all the Japanese learners, as I wouldn't want to study all those hiragana, katakana
and kanji (which I really shouldn' say ) if I were not Japanese.
My advice is always to take as much time as you need!

Regarding similar letters, here's my suggestion:
ツand ソ: Wright a horizontal line on the paper. Start all the strokes from the line and go downwards (a bit lean).
シand ン: Short ones go slightly downwards, but quite to the right. The long one goes from the bottom as if it "scoop" the "dots" (= short strokes). In that way, シ looks a bit like a smile face, and ン is smile face without one eye
I'd call this my freaky method as "synical smile" and "TS (or ToriSontal) line" (T for tsu and S for so)
Yup; I'm insane

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[sefearion9050]

Ah, time is something that I wish I had more of. Without going into too much detail my health is not at it's best (It's failing, regretfully) which means my time on this Earth has become severely limited One of my goals is to learn the Japanese language while I still have the chance, my desire to learn is great but my ability to do so....not so much.

I know there are no true "shortcuts" in learning the language but any advice that can be offered to make the learning process more efficient would be most helpful.

Thanks for reading

[Zelg]

こんにちは
I'm sorry to hear about your health but I thought I share some of my experience with tackling Japanese. I'm still a bit of a noob here myself and have been learning Japanese for a few months now. I honestly had no idea what I was getting into when I started. I think I assumed I was going to learn these crazy chinese looking characters and that was it. I had no idea hirigana and katakana existed. So when I found out where I should start (hirigana) I was slightly crushed and a had second thoughts about continuing when I learned there was not only these crazy characters that seemed like a bunch of mushed together lines that I needed to learn, but TWO alphabets in addition to that. I thought about giving up and maybe learning something more familiar like french or spanish but I'm glad I continued on.

So I learned hirigana and katakana (I still struggle with katakana as well. Those examples you mentioned annoy me. Too similiar for my liking but whatever). After I felt comfortable enough being able to sound things out with those two I found JPOD101 and began at first watching video lessons but then noticed there was a whole lot more beginner content in the audio lessons. As I listened to each audio session, I created a flashcard deck for each lesson and spent a lot of time working on flashcards and learning simple words. I think I might be relying on flashcards too much but I feel like I'm progressing in my knowledge of Japanese so I guess no harm done.

As I progressed in my audio lessons, I started seeing actual kanji used in the lesson notes and also on the flashcards for the words. So I guess my point is that I'm using a learn as you go approach and I gave up on trying to rush what I was learning and to just take in what I can, come back next time and review a little and then continue to progress with my flashcards. I started ended up seeing many more flashcards with kanji in them and have since been able to pick out individual kanji from other words and it often gives me a piece of the word that I can figure out the meaning to.

When I was first looking into kanji and feeling like the mountain was too steep to climb, I came across radicals and explanations that kanji can often be divided into different parts and that kanji are simply multiple radicals used in different combinations. Now I didnt go and learn all of the radicals and I sure as hell dont want to go and learn the onyomi and kunyomi of each kanji, but just knowing how to look at a kanji and pick out the different parts has helped a great deal with the feeling of being overwhelmed with the task of learning to read kanji.

One turning point for me was　大丈夫. Each character is pretty similar but still unique enough to tell them apart. I ended up writing that one down and then wrote it down out of order to see if I could keep the pronunciations the as they should be and for whatever reason just doing that has help me tell the difference between 看護し　and　警察官　and break them down into bits I can recognize. Its still not easy for me but its getting there. I'm sure I dont go about this the most efficient way though. I definitely see the plus side to the remembering the kanji and I see the plus side to other ways of learning as well but I guess I have a decent enough way of going about it right now.

One other thing I enjoy doing with the flashcards is, say I have a deck of 100 words and two or more ofthem are confusing me...they look similar..I made a deck titled Spare Words and any time I come across some words that are confusing me and I keep mixing up then I throw those couple words in that deck and spend 5-10 minutes doing those flashcards and then I'm good. 靴　and 桃　(shoe and peach, respectively) were giving me fits and in a few minutes I was able to get the differences between the two in my head and those are no longer a problem.

Anyways I hope my ramblings are able to at the very least encourage you to continue studying and achieving your goal, as I wanted to give up more times than I can count but made it a point to at least do a few flashcards at night if anything and before I knew it months had gone by and I've learned a good bit. Grammar is going to be tough for me but thats for another thread. Keep at it and you'll start picking things up bit by bit. Just dont get discouraged if you can help it. Its not easy but to me its rewarding as heck to go and watch and anime or tv a japanese game show and be able to pick out a few things even if I dont know what exactly they're talking about.

ニール　（neil)

[Zelg]

I just wanted to add one more thing really quick. When I first started looking into kanji, I saw the videos on here talking about thinking certain kanji looked like something. Like the kanji for fire looked like fire and tree looked like a tree and so on. The problem I initially had with that was that I didnt think most of them looked like anything they described. It wasnt for a little while when I started getting into more and more kanji that I started doing that on my own and picking out parts of kanji that, in my head, I could somehow relate to the word it represented. I think the first one I did was 腕。It means "arm" and I ran into some similar looking one and for remember this one I said "ok that looks like a guy standing there on the right, and on the left is his arm" even though it looks like a really weird arm and is not attached to his body. They dont have to totally make sense but in my experience, as long as you can relate the picture to the meaning it becomes much easier to recognize them. 医者　(isha=doctor) I viewed that as a doctor on the right and a patient lying on the table. Whatever you can come up with that works is good, right?

[mmmason8967]

I know there are no true "shortcuts" in learning the language but any advice that can be offered to make the learning process more efficient would be most helpful.

It's very late here and past my bedtime, so I'll have to keep this short. Start trying to use Japanese ... go to the 'Practice Japanese' forum and start writing stuff in Japanese ... it'll be really difficult at first, and you'll make loads of mistakes ... then the rest of us will point them out, and you can try again. I guess it's like learning the guitar: you have to spend a while making horrible noises if you're ever going to get anywhere with it.

マイケル

[sefearion9050]

Thank you for your responses everyone.

@ ニール, I'm happy you took the time to write such a lengthy response, it was a good read. In fact it's ironic how similar our starting mind sets were because I was seriously taken aback as well when I learned about Hiragana and Katakana and looking back at it now they seemed borderline impossible to do. But now I'm so familiar with them that it's starting to feel...normal (I'm still slow at piecing them together but these characters are "known" to me). However, Kanji seriously caught me off guard. (Kinda like an鬼 hit me over the head ).

With regards to a Flashcard deck are you using the study tool on the Jpod site or something like Anki to create your own personal study deck? I do like the idea of separating the troublesome or confusing Kanji into it's own little corner, kinda allows you to REALLY focus on the things giving you the biggest headache.

@ マイケル: Sleep my friend! With regards to your suggestion, I can barely string a sentence together at the moment so there would be very little to critique at this point in time but after I make my way through the J-Pod lessons I'll most certainly try. I did sign up on Lang-8 as well, some nice folks there. I think I might have found a study-buddy. He needs help with English and I need help with Japanese .

[Zelg]

Sefearion

I do use the flashcards here on JPOD101 in the study tools. For a while I was just adding the vocab words from the audio lessons into flashcard decks (you can click a link that will do it automatically) and then, getting more familiar with the site, I came across the core words. You can find those under Japanese Resources towards the middle of the pull down and its titled 2000 Most Common Words. They're split into 100 words each.

When you get into a flashcard deck, you may notice theres a settings option (Edit) when you mouse over them. There you can (and this is why I love the flashcards here) set how you want the card presented. Either all the options or just individual ones. So if you just want to see the kanji if the card has kanji, you can select that without the hirigana and katakana. If you just want hiri and kata then you can have just that. If you just want the english word or the audio then you can select those as well. I generally start using all of them until I learn the words a bit and then I take away everything but kanji and for the most part audio. I find it very hard to try to recognize the kanji and actually put words and sounds to it until I've learned the word a little with the other options.

Its a bit time consuming and a little tedious I suppose but I feel like my vocab is increasing at a personally accepted pace. I'm currently working on my 300 set and know 100-200 pretty well, including the kanji though of course theres a few that I dont see for a while and need a little reminder.

Also I totally relate to the hirigana and katakana being familiar now and I'm able to sound things out now. Its a bit hard to just rattle off words like I do with English but at this point I'm happy to be able to see random pictures or videos of things in Japan and say "ha! I know what that sounds like!" even if I dont know what the words are. A work in progress.

[sefearion9050]

I've finished the Absolute Beginner series season 1 and assembled all the vocab that I have trouble with into a single deck. Basically any word that has Kanji in it has been placed into the deck . I have no idea how well this will work but for now I've got the flashcards showing Hiragana and Kanji only. Once I've gotten comfortable with these cards I'll disable Hiragana as well and see how well I retain the Kanji.

From there I'll continue through the J-Pod series and build my deck up as I go along (I may need to create separate decks to avoid creating a monster deck). Learning the Kanji in context seems to be more effective than just randomly plucking them out of thin air

It's still a little intimidating but I hope through repetition things will get easier.

[community.japanese]

Kon'nichiwa, everyone!! (namely, sefearion9050-san, ニールsan and マイケルsan)
First of all, I'm sorry for late reply, and hope I can still sneak "in" to this conversation

> stefearion9050-san,
we're very sorry to learn about your health problem...but at the same time, VERY impressed how much
you're encouraged and driven to learn something new!!
Now, I can personally understand completely (or I shouldn't really say "completely") that ALL hiragana, katakana
and kanji are one of the biggest "discourgaging factors" to learn Japanese...I myself say (again, I know I really
shouldn't say...) that I'd not learn Japanese if I were not Japanese... All those strange letters and
"unique" grammar? The language that some Europeans in ancient time call as "language of devil"??? Please...
So, I really have a huge respect to Japanese learners.

I think マイケルsan's "guitar example" was a brilliant one; there are not really "a shortcut" if you seriously want to
study any languages. Any "shortcuts" that people call should be ways to speak some prases; not really "acquiring" it.
I myself am a noob (like ニールsan said) of a foreign language at the moment, with very different letters.
Although the number of "alphabets" they use is a lot smaller than Japanese, their grammar is not very much
"established" (at least it seems not). This makes language learning VERY difficult.
And I'm rubbish in memorising...so very limited vocab.
We have very different "difficulties", but the one thing is common: we both wish there's a way to learn faster
I don't really have time to focus on my study, so I'm trying not to think about this "learning fast" things any longer.
Instead, I try to enjoy learning this language. The situation is different, but can I maybe suggest you the same?

As far as I'm concerned, language learning should be fun (otherwise no one wants to spend any of their precious time
for leaning languages, right?). And the ways to have fun can be anything: it could be anime, manga, JP songs, TV drama, etc. Enjoying the learning itself might reduce your stress, maybe?

And of course, if there's ANYTHING we can help you with, please let us know!
Like マイケルsan suggested, try writing something in Japanese, and we (including helpful kind listeners like him)
will definitely help you and give you feedback!

> ニールsan,
thank you SOOOO much for taking time to reply to your colleague!! It really is nice of you
I admire you to continue studying Japanese after "countless times" of thinking of giving up. As I wrote above,
I have a huge respect to anyone who learns Japanese, but more respect to those who continues without giving up really!
It was indeed a good read. It was even interesting to know how you started studying Japanese...
Now it seesm you're one the most keen learners!! I was impressed how well you're doing with flashcard and
some other features on out site! Thank you very much for sharing your study way
Hope you'll keep enjoying saying "ha! I know that"

> マイケルsan,
thank you very very much for taking time to post a reply so late!!
Your example of guitar lessons was really "spot-on" good one! And thank you for the good suggestion of
writing in Japanese! You're absolutely right about it, of course!
Hope you had a enough rest after posting the kind comment, and come back "fully-charged"

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[Zelg]

奈津子さｎ

Thank you for the kind comments. I felt compelled to write all that because I whenever I see someone else talking about being in the initial learning stages of Japanese I always seem to notice the same struggles and concerns (usually regarding kanji) and seeing sefearion's post I think made me realize that my struggles with the language are very common.

As far as wanting to quit countless times, I have to admit that the only thing that kept me from quitting (any reason is good, right?) was that I had already learned a certain amount and didnt want that bit to go to waste. I took on the task of learning hirigana and was happy about it and then realized I needed to learn NEW characters for the same sounds I just learned. I wanted to quit but then I realized I would have wasted all that time for no reason. So I learned Katakana and had the same feeling of wanting to quit when I started to look deeper at kanji and again had the same feeling of not wanting to waste the time I spent learning katakana so I may as well start learning kanji.

Kanji left me with probably a couple of weeks of trying to figure out the best way for myself to stick with learning it and also how to go about learning it. Do I write all the kanji down 30 times? Do I do RTK and learn all these kanji but not know what words they represent? All of this was very daunting to me and, like I said I spent a couple weeks kind of spinning my wheels and was just unsure how to proceed. I think once I made myself realize that theres no shortcuts and that I cant rush anything, I was able to settle in and learn at my own pace. If that means learning even just one new kanji/word per day, then so be it.

I do think its important to do even just a little bit every day (even if its 5 mins) and to keep it fun. If you're sick of doing flahscards, listening to lessons, etc, then go on youtube and watch an anime or movie. Maybe go on google japan and see what you can read even if its just a few words. Those little rewards are a great motivator during the times you get burned out on studying. Of course its also important to keep in mind to not get too disappointed when you cant follow a movie w/o subtitles yet

[community.japanese]

ニールsan,
you're right! Any reason is good for not quitting
In your case, your own achievement encouraged you and that's amazing!!

Studying everyday even a little bit...you're so right and I'm failing there
As to watching anime or TV drama, Japanese ones are quite difficult because they often use special ways of
talking...so, definitely, you have no reason to feel disappointed anyway

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[mrmoonfield2239]

Anime and Drama, often alot of people use slangs plus not everyone in the show speaks
"Standard Japanese"(標準語 ひょうじゅんご)


Most common is the Kansai speakers. ( i believe kansai-ben sounds wonderful though)

[mrmoonfield2239]

I'm glad you didn't quit, but yes kanji is quite difficult, i even know alot of japanese people who can't write kanji possibility because they don't use it often enough. I say use what you know and add a few words everyday. Watch anime. listen to music, talk to people, post in forums, name your things in japanese, put stickers on things you commonly use in japanese.

[community.japanese]

mrmoonfield2239-san,
you're very right; in TV dramas and anime, they often speak slung, dialects, etc.
Sometimes they even sound very much "screen play language"; I don't think people in real
world speak like that.

Nowadays, because of very convenient computer functions, we don't necessarily need to know kanji
perfectly, and native Japanese people (expecially young ones) are less and less good at
both writing kanji and using them properly.

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com