#heisig

[uncountry]

#heisig #Proto-art & Meta-life

[sanssouci-hakunamatata]

Bernhard Heisig (1997) Frederick the Great

#my quest for rare fritz images continues #frederick the great #Bernhard Heisig

[oldsardens]

Bernhard Heisig - Dresdner Altstadt vom Königsufer. 1996

#Bernhard Heisig

[pear-spective]

Johannes Heisig

Bernauer Straße III, 2008                

#johannes heisig #21st century art #painting

[kulturell]

#johannes heisig #maler #kunst #ausstellung #berlin

[corgitation]

resources I'm using for studying japanese

vocab/kanji:

wanikani: I use daily reviews to learn kanji and vocabulary using the kanji. This resource isn't free, but this has really helped me stay consistent. I like the UI and find the content helpful

renshuu: this is my favorite mobile app, I use this to learn JLPT-specific vocab and kanji. I use the free version

mochi srs: the best flashcard app! The UI is super easy to use and has lots of shortcuts for making and reviewing cards fast. You can easily create and edit templates for cards, and have cards reference other cards. I have a deck for kanji and one for vocab, and my vocab template references any kanji that are used in the vocab tab. There's also super easy furigana, lots of features for japanese.

grammar:

bunpro: really good for grammar, this has lessons for each grammar rule and divides them into groups through popular textbooks and their own groupings for jlpt grammar

genki textbooks: pretty standard textbook for learning vocab, grammar, and kanji

genki study resources: great site with activities for all the genki lessons

tokini andy genki reviews: extra practice for genki lessons, explains some grammar more clearly, introduces new dialogue.

reading:

japanese folktales for language learners and japanese stories for language learners: folktales are a really great way to learn, because these references come up a lot. I've seen references to urashimo taro in evangelion, and the new pokemon dlc is a reference to momotaro. This book has the japanese on one page and english on the other, with vocabulary after the chapter. (here and here on natively)

animal crossing new leaf tobimori: I've recently started playing this and it's so much fun. I'm already really familiar with the game so I don't depend on any of the text for playing, and it's good for more common expressions, differences in speech between polite/casual/male/female etc. I have a post describing how I'm able to play this here. (here on lingotrack)

listening:

japanese with shun: big fan of this podcast, it's free on spotify and youtube, which scripts on patreon. Each podcast is about a short subject, and they're all in japanese. (here on lingotrack)

learn japanese pod: some free podcasts on spotify with more paid content, this one is both about japanese and in japanese. It will teach phrases for specific scenarios, like ordering sushi or refusing situations.

tracking:

lingotrack: I started time tracking a couple of months ago and it's been so helpful! This site is great for quickly logging study activities and seeing how the time stacks up. It helps me identify which areas I'm spending enough time in and which ones are lacking. I also use the library section for keeping track of my japanese native content

toggl: I use this online stopwatch for tracking the time for different study activities so I can log them in lingotrack. It also has a browser extension which I usually use

finding native content:

natively: excellent site for finding comprehensible input content and tracking days read. This site has a lot of reviews for books so it makes it easy to find books that are on level. You can follow me here

lingotrack: collections in lingotrack provides user generated groups of content so that you can create an see groupings of native material content. There aren't as many reviews for material here as there are for natively though, so I find material there and then add them here. You can follow me here

other:

tofugu: this blog has everything. Use it for finding reviews on japanese language resources, learning grammar rules, etc.

jisho: dictionary app, I use it as my source of truth for vocab and kanji meanings

heisig's remembering the kanji: a different approach to learning kanji, this focuses on first teaching the simplest kanji and building from ones you already know. This is different from wanikani, which will make sure you know (its own) particles before introducing the kanji that uses them, but focuses on learning kanji and vocab in priority order. I'm listing it here because I don't use it much anymore

deepl: ai translator, works much better than google translate. You can also put sentences in chatgpt and ask it for broken down explanations. Take any translations from ai with a grain of salt - they are great tools but do not ensure accuracy

edit 3/10/2024: added tracking and native content sections, added links to lingotrack and natively for media

#japanese studyblr #studyblr #langblr #language #japanese

[kafkasapartment]

Ohne Titel (Untitled), nd. Bernhard Heisig, 1925-2011. Oil on masonite.

#painting #art #cubism #peinture #pittura #pintura #maleri #abstract

[rigelmejo]

Comprehensible Input Study Plans

If anyone would like to go on a Comprehensible Input/Automatic Language Acquisition/Direct Method journey with me, I have got a list of resources for you! This list is basically going to be: if I was studying a language primarily through comprehensible input, this is the resources I would try in roughly this order.

Japanese:

1. Glossika Japanese Old audio course. Teaches approximately 2000-3000 words (the course has around 3000 sentences but I think some sentences have no new words). Course seems to be a few hundred hours (150-300 hours I'm going to estimate), and lets say 300-600 hours if you repeat audio files to re-listen and study. This is "audio flashcards" materials so sentences are given in japanese then english then japanese. They are "comprehensible input" in that you can completely understand the sentences, but they do teach using english. Also, Glossika courses are easier if you have some basic grammar knowledge first as the course does not explain word order, verb endings, conjugations, particles etc.

2. Comprehensible Japanese youtube channel. If you are a total beginner, I would recommend this resource first and go through a LOT of the material. Then use something like Glossika Japanese old audio courses, some japanese anki sentences deck's audio files, some textbook with a few thousand word's audio files, to study 2000-3000 common words.

3. ***While doing step 1 and 2, I would recommend beginning study of the writing system. Look up some app for "learn hiragana and katakana mnemonics" and study for a few weeks until you're roughly familiar with hiragana and katakana, as afterward you will read them so much you'll learn them more firmly. Look up japanese kanji radicals and read through a table, it should take a few hours or less. Understand that all kanji are built with those radicals (so maybe think of radicals as letters and kanji as the 'word' piece). Learn that kana (hiragana and katakana) stand for syllables, and have no meaning besides sound. Anything can be spelled with kana. Hiragana are usually for japanese words, particles, and conjugation. Katakana are usually for foreign words. Kanji are symbols that stand for a word (or a piece of a word like "airport" is air-port, 2 kanji may build a word). Kanji have various pronunciations depending on the word they are building. Hiragana often attach to the end of kanji words to spell out the conjugations. Look up "mnemonics" if you've never used them before so you can learn how to use them: they are stories you make up to help remember the pronunciation, meaning, or 'radical building blocks' of a new word. For studying kanji there are many options, I personally recommend finding one that includes mnemonics. As a total beginner I recommend: Learn Japanese Today by Len Walsh. It is easy to read in a couple weeks, it's mnemonics/explanations include pronunciation and meaning, it's a good introduction and you can find it free in a ton of libraries/e-libraries. I also recommend the books on japaneseaudiolessons.com if you want mnemonics provided for meaning AND pronunciations, and reading practice, but be aware they are in depth and dense reads. Many people will recommend Heisig Remember the Kanji... and I recommend it with one caveat: do NOT wait to continue your studies until you finish Heisig. If you use Heisig's book, keep studying japanese with other materials at the same time. I wasted 2 years on Heisig's books because they didn't include any actual pronunciations or vocabulary, so I waited to learn real words. You should start learning new words ASAP. I personally recommend you look up what mnemonics are, look up kanji radicals and practice making up some stories to remember them, then start learning real words and making up mnemonics to remember the new kanji words as you learn them (or going to kanji.koohi.com and using someone else's mnemonics story to remember). Mejo's bare minimum advice: read an explanation on radicals (2 hours), read an article explaining japan's writing system (2 hours), cram through a hiragana katakana free mnemonics app with quizzes for 2 weeks, look up mnemonics for kanji and learn how to make the mnemonic stories yourself, cram through Read Japanese Today for 2 weeks, proceed to learn kanji as part of words normally. If you are struggling a lot with remembering kanji words or written words in general, I recommend you check out the "SRS" section further down.

4. Look up a pronunciation guide, on youtube or any site with audio. Listen to it, should take a few hours. This is just to help you get used to the syllables and features you'll hear. You may want to hear some explanations of pitch tone at this point. I'll be real with you: I'm intermediate and still don't really understand pitch tone much. So I figure the sooner you hear about it, the more time you'll have to start figuring it out than I did. My obviously amateur advice (but it worked for me): do your best to pronounce new words the way they sound in japanese (sort of the way English puts stress on words "BLACKbird, old-FASHioned, underSTAND"). Try your best to pronounce as you hear the word, and move on. If you notice later you're making errors, correct them then. As a beginner, do not PAUSE your learning out of fear you will make mistakes or miss something. I feel that can be one of the biggest hurdles in learning a language: dwelling on how to perfectly do something before moving on, and so you never move on, and never learn more. It's better to move forward and learn new things everyday then to HALT all progress out of fear you're doing something imperfectly. So yeah... be aware of features like pitch tone, but also understand it's okay if it takes you a while to hear it, to understand what it means, to correct your mistakes. And this applies to anything in language learning.

5. Japanese Graded Readers: you can search the web for graded readers of various levels. I would recommend starting with the free Tofugu graded readers (they can be found here). The Tofugu books are very easy to start, make sense from context, and can help you feel much more comfortable reading in japanese. If you would like a more textbook approach, I like the following two books: Reading Japanese by Eleanor Harz Jorden and Hamako Ito Chaplin (this book goes slow and very in depth if you want a lot of beginner reading practice), A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons for Mastering the Written Language (Tuttle Language Library) by Roy Andrew Miller (this book goes fast and it's dense but it will prepare you for reading newspapers and literature). White Rabbit Press has some graded readers. Satori Reader app I highly recommend from early-beginner to intermediate but not ready for real novels yet.

6. Immersion with material for native speakers! Get yourself a translator app downloaded on your phone (I like imabi and while it's subpar I like Google Translate to quickly speak in new words when I'm watching anime). Get an on screen reader OCR translation app if you plan to read a lot of manga (I use Ichigo Manga Translator because it's free). Bilingualmanga.net is a good place to start if you want to read manga, they provide english translations of the japanese and you can copy/paste the japanese text into translator apps. Animelon.com has dual subtitles and click-word lookup if you like watching anime. Parallel translations of books app by Kursx is great for reading novels (it has Text To Speech, click translations of words, parallel translations of sentences) you will need to import txt/epub files if you use this app (annas-archive.org is a good place to find those). If you already have a favorite eReader app (I use Moon+ Reader) then know that most reader apps already have built in click-translation features and text to speech audio. If you use Kindle, kindle has click translations (and if you use Android Talkback accessibility tool it will text-to-speech read kindle books aloud). Amazon Kindle app is probably the easiest place to purchase japanese ebooks and manga. I highly recommend when you start immersion: start with easier materials where you understand the main idea of scenes without word lookups or with minimal keyword lookups. So materials you've seen/read before, slice of life daily stuff where most words are common etc. Also I recommend always watching/reading in japanese primarily before turning on things like dual subtitles or parallel translations: basically at least TRY to understand the japanese before leaning on another language. You want to get used to being primarily in japanese.

7. ***A note on SRS: I go through this more down below in the Chinese section, so please skip down to that. In short: SRS can be a great way to push through that "beginner hump" where you feel you will never learn the language, ASAP. At least, if you can get yourself to reliably do 30 minutes+ per day of SRS regularly. My suggestion for you if you're struggling to go from study materials, to immersion in content for native speakers? Pick SOME SRS study resource for japanese that teaches 2000 words or more. Start it and focus on studying new materials, review OPTIONAL only if you completed 1 or more new sections per day (so study at least 20+ new words per day before doing reviews, cut reviews if you have limited study time). If you're a crammer like me, do 50-200 new words/sentences per day and only review if you have time after that. It should take you approximately 4 weeks on a cram schedule (so 1-2 hours of study per day) to study 2000 words. After that, you can do reviews for another 1-2 months if you want of the 2000 words OR you can jump directly into immersion at that point. That plan will get you from upper-beginner (you know 500-1000 words from comprehensible input, graded readers, audio flashcards, but immersion feels exhausting and you can't understand anything) who just CANNOT handle any immersion, to able to study from immersion primarily, in about 1-3 months. Yes it's 1-3 months of studying 1+ hour a day in flashcards... so you need to be able to concentrate on getting through flashcards. But it will push you over the hump. This is what I did after 2 years of japanese study where I knew 500-1000 words and felt hopeless as an "eternal beginner": I crammed through 2000 cards of Nukemarine's Lets Learn Japanese memrise decks for 3 months. Then I tried to read manga and lookup words: to my surprise I could actually follow a manga plot main idea by just looking up some keywords! I tried playing Kingdom Hearts: and likewise realized I could now play with just some keyword lookups here and there every 3-5 minutes (given I was already familiar with the english version of the game). It made immersion possible for me to do. Once immersion was possible, I continued reviews by immersing and seeing words I'd studied before, and continued learning by guessing new words from context in immersion and looking up words every 5ish minutes or when they looked like key words for main idea understanding. I personally recommend Nukemarine's Lets Learn Japanese SRS decks, as I feel getting through parts 1-6 will make immersion possible (that's what i did) and then the other parts are well structured to help you get the words needed to read novels/watch more complex shows. Nukemarine's decks also has combine sentences, audio and text, new vocabulary, kanji, and grammar points. So if you only have 1 resource you use? It covers the key areas. If you like another SRS course more, use that instead. The main thing is find something teaching AT LEAST 2000 words and get through studying NEW words quickly. Part of the eternal "beginner hump" is people thinking japanese is hard, and taking years studying 300 kanji or 500 words, when the sooner they increase vocabulary the sooner immersion material will become accessible.

(Fun little things: Genki textbooks cover vocabulary immensely slowly in my opinion and I wish each book had at least 2000 words, since they're meant to cover 1 year in college each and typical language introduction books for OTHER languages usually cover 2000 words at minimum... which is doubly annoying because with few cognates, you need more basic vocabulary in japanese to start reading/watching compared to a language like French where with 500 common words and cognates to rely on you can start reading nonfiction...which is what I did. Whereas I NEEDED at least 1000 japanese vocabulary words to start reading anything in japanese. Be aware that a lot of japanese learner material is paced slower than some other languages - like french and spanish - because the writer thinks it's more difficult. the problem is... the lower amount of content per chapter/lesson means less learned per minute... and then japanese is going to take thousands of hours more to learn than a similar language to yours already, so slow learning material is extra frustrating to me. When you run into learning material that presents information slowly? Either find a different learning material, or push through it faster than the learning material recommends. Since Genki 1 and 2 only teach 1700 total... I'd suggest getting through both textbooks in under a year, at least studying their vocabulary sections in under a year. Or get a 2000+ word anki deck and get through it in 3 months lol. A typical Teach Yourself introduction book teaches 2000 words, and certainly expects the student to learn those words at least vaguely in under a year. So personally... I think it's a good idea to push yourself to learn at least that many words in japanese ASAP. If you're a beginner, aim for 1 year (and if it takes longer for some reason that's okay). If you've been studying japanese for years, like I was, and still stuck in the beginner rut? Cram 2000 common words NOW. Go find a word list, an SRS anki deck, get glossika japanese audio files, Something, and get vaguely familiar with a few thousand common words now. Aim to get through the words in 4 months or less, then start immersing (or start intermediate level textbooks/courses if you prefer studying that way, or both).

Chinese:

1. Go through a pronunciation guide (2 weeks or less) like the dongchinese one here. Anything with audio. Look up tone explanation guides on youtube, including on tone sandhi, and then look up a few tone trainer quizzes online and do them every once in a while. All of pronunciation beginner study may take 1 month or less. You're getting used to hearing tones, recognizing tones, recognizing language features, and getting used to pinyin pronunciation.

2. Look up how the chinese writing system works. This may take a few hours to a week. Read a few articles that explain hanzi, that explain and show a table of the radicals and how they combine to build hanzi, how often a hanzi is built of a pronunciation component and meaning component from radicals. The main thing is to learn that hanzi usually are pronounced one way, are a piece of a word (or whole word), and a limited amount of radicals build hanzi (sort of like letters build to make a word). Understanding radicals build hanzi will help you break down new hanzi you see into recognizable radical components. Look up mnemonics if you've never used them before: they are stories you make up to help remember a word or hanzi's meaning, pronunciation, and radicals. Mnemonics can be useful later when learning hanzi, so it's important to know how to make them yourself if you want to use mnemonics later.

3. Hanzi study: you will do this alongside whatever else you do early on. You can use anki flashcard decks for studying hanzi (I recommend searching "chinese hanzi mnemonics anki deck" or "chinese hanzi mnemonics memrise" or whatever app you use with "mnemonics"). I personally mostly relied on a book which had pre-made mnemonics for 800 hanzi, and it gave me a solid foundation. (My FAVORITE chinese study book, it indirectly is also how kanji in japanese got eons easier for me, I love it intensely more than Heisig lol: Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1 -3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters). I simply read through the book for 2 months. After that I just learned new words regularly (through comprehensible input, graded readers, SRS decks of common words/sentences), and made up my own mnemonic stories when I had a hard time remembering a new hanzi. I recommend that if possible you find a hanzi resource that provides pronunciation, meaning, and example words. And that the resource includes mnemonics if they help you remember things better. I recommend using an SRS program if you like using SRS apps, and if that study method works well for you. You will likely be studying hanzi or words with a focus on remembering their hanzi for at least 6 months, possibly 1-2 years, so it's okay to take 1-2 months to search for resources and then decide on using something you really like using. I also recommend getting a hanzi resource that teaches AT LEAST 2000 hanzi, ideally all hanzi on the HSK (but the HSK recently changed so just do the best you can), and at minimum you're going to want to learn around 1000 hanzi (roughly the amount on HSK 4 which is when immersion starts to feel possible). The exception: the book I heavily relied on only taught 800 hanzi, but it gave me a strategy to further study new hanzi as I encountered them later in words... so that book in combination with any vocabulary resource and you should smoothly be able to learn over 1000 hanzi in the first 6 months. I learned about 2000 hanzi in the first 6 months using that book for 800, and then Ben Whatley 1000 Common Chinese Words and Ben Whatley 2000 Common Chinese Words in memrise. It personally helped me to learn a majority of hanzi in the context of words. The memrise decks I spent 4 weeks cramming through, then continued reviewing the words by running into them during immersion. Alternatives: Chinese Spoonfed Anki deck has words in sentences, theres a LOT of anki decks specifically for learning hanzi with mnemonics and I think all are fine if they have audio pronunciation and meaning (and ideally example words).

4. ***Optional: read through a grammar guide summary. This is not part of comprehensible input method, but I did it and it helped me so I figured I'd mention it. I simply read through all the lessons on this site (without doing the exercises) and it took me about 3 weeks.

5. Start Comprehensible Input learning materials. You can start immediately, or after 1-2 months of preparing with the materials above. Comprehensible Chinese is a good youtube channel to start with.

6. Graded Readers. These can be started soon after starting to learn new words with comprehensible input lessons (like Comprehensible Chinese youtube). Mandarin Companion graded readers start at only 50 words so a total beginner could start there, then just gradually read the higher level graded readers until you are reading the highest unique word count graded readers Mandarin Companion has. After that, I recommend downloading Pleco app (***which you will use a lot for other things too), and browsing the graded readers offered for sale on Pleco. They're often 2 dollars for individual stories to 20 dollars for collections of stories/long stories, and reading them in Pleco you have click-translations, text to speech, extensive dictionary entries, and mtl parallel text translations of passages. Some of the graded readers you can buy on Pleco go up to 2000+ unique words, after which you are certainly ready to move to immersion with novels for native speakers. If you want to move to immersion ASAP, I would recommend using graded readers that go up to 800-1500 unique words (I used Mandarin Companion 800 word graded readers and Sinolingua 1500 word graded readers) then going to Heavenly Companion's site (*more details later) and starting with novels for native speakers that start at 1000-1500 unique words.

7. Aim for trying to learn 3000 common words (you can aim for at least 1000 if you're desperate to move on to immersion). Glossika Chinese old course audio is an audio flashcard option to learn 2000-3000 words (audio flashcards teach with chinese sentences then english translation so you can comprehend what is said). The sentences are around 300 hours, then more hourse depending on how much you re-listen to study. Chinese Spoonfed Anki audio files are another good option (have around 7000 sentences, 19 hours, I imagine the sentences teach at least 4000 words). You could use these kinds of resources as a supplement to Comprehensible Input youtube videos and Graded Readers, to keep growing your vocabulary and reviewing things you've learned. (You may have noticed at this point, I'm offering 3 lesson options: videos on youtube, audio flashcards, and graded readers. Depending on the study activity you like best, you may find yourself relying more heavily on one of these 3 and that's fine. Just aim to keep increasing your vocabulary no matter what you rely more on - so if you use youtube videos be aware you may need supplemental vocabulary exposure, and aim to get some listening AND reading practice - so if you use audio flashcards primarily then try to get some transcripts and read along occasionally or anki/memrise companion flashcards to read or turn on chinese subtitles on Comprehensible Chinese when you do occassionally do a video instead of audio flashcards. If you read graded readers mostly, try to listen along to the audiobook or text-to-speech sometimes so you get some listening practice).

8. ***Optional: SRS. Spaced Repetition Study. I did not use SRS much, but I did cram study this way for around 4 weeks in the first 6 months of studying chinese, because it really helped me get vague recognition of 2000 common words in written form ASAP. If you can focus on flashcards/flashcard apps for 30 minutes to 1 hour regularly, this is possibly the fastest way to get vaguely familiar with new vocabulary so you can make immersion doable and easier ASAP. For japanese and chinese in particular, SRS may be the route to go if you feel you "cannot get over the beginner hump." If you are not using graded readers much, you may need some kind of SRS study to get reading practice in and review of written form of words. (You can actually do SRS study with paper flashcards you make or a printed out wordlist you read through or a wordlist website you have open on the computer, all SRS really is amounts to studying the least amount of repetitions you'd need to review information right before you forget it... something like study today, then tomorrow, then in 3 days, then in 1 week, then in 2 weeks, then in a month, then in 2 months, then in 4 months etc). I recommend Chinese Spoonfed Anki deck for chinese since it's got thousands of words, grammar examples, audio, text, and it's a solid foundation to jump to immersion from. I used "2000 common HSK words" deck on memrise, it had no sentences, just audio and text, it worked fine for me and took 1 month to cram through. This is my advice for people who want to get over the endless "beginner hump" or who like me want to immerse ASAP and get past learner materials. It can also be found up in the japanese section. Cram! If you've done hundreds of hours listening to Comprehensible Chinese, audio flashcards, and reading graded readers, but still find immersion too hard or still find you have not learned over 1000 words? Or find you're really struggling with hanzi recognition? Look up an SRS app like anki or memrise, look up an SRS course (again I'd say just use anything with 2000+ words and audio and text, like Chinese Spoonfed anki deck). Do the SRS app 1-2 hours a day for 2 weeks, prioritizing studying 50-200 new words per day. Only do reviews if you have time at the end, after getting through your 50-200 new words goal daily. At the end of 2 weeks you'll het through 1000 words, then spend 2 weeks getting through the backlog of reviews. Then for 2 weeks go through 50-200 new words daily again, 1-2 hours per day, skip reviews unless you have time. After those 2 weeks you'll have gotten through all 2000 words. Take another 2 weeks to do reviews now if you wish (or just skip it). It will take approximately 1-3 months to get through 2000 common words and have a vague familiarity with them. At that point, you can start immersing and stop SRS app usage (unless you like SRS apps, in which case you might want to transition to 10-30 minutes daily with 5-20 new words daily and no more so you don't get overwhelmed). This is how I get vague familiarity with a few thousand common words ASAP. Once there's vague familiarity, when you immerse you might look up those words and 'review' them a few more times by looking them up until they stick in your memory, but they won't be totally unfamiliar. And you will NEED them to understand the immersion content, so your brain will try to remember them quickly since they're needed daily and used daily in immersion. The SRS apps also work well for drilling hanzi when you're trying to learn the first 1000 common hanzi or so. If you find nothing else is helping you get vaguely familiar with hanzi recognition, try an SRS app of 2000+ common hanzi with mnemonics for a couple months.

(***A small warning: a lot of apps "use SRS for their study cards" but how fast you go through new words depends on the app. If you're trying to get vague familiarity with a lot of words quickly, either pick an app that doesn't take you more than 1 hour to get through 50+ words, OR honestly pick a regular word list or a bare bones Anki deck where you know you can easily read through 100 words in 1 hour). One thing that slowed me down a LOT is apps where I'd see 20 new words an hour... I could watch literally any show as a beginner and get exposed to 20 new words in less time. I try to avoid picking resources that slow down my exposure to stuff to learn.

9. Immersion time! If you're extremely tolerant of ambiguity and/or like looking words up, you can immerse as SOON as you can follow the main idea of a scene with just the help of looking up 1-2 keywords for meaning per scene (or without looking up anything). Think about how you felt when reading your first Graded Reader: it probably had more words than you actually knew yet, so it felt HARD, but you could at least follow the main idea of what was going on. And if you couldn't follow the main idea, you could get by on just looking up 1-5 unknown words per page to understand the main idea. And by the end of the graded reader, you didn't need to look up any words to grasp the main idea. If it was a rather easy graded reader, you might even have understood almost everything including most details without any word lookups by the end of the book. That's the feeling you want to get with your immersion materials, at least ideally. And after a few months of immersion, once you've learned more words and gotten comfortable "understanding what you already studied" then some easier immersion materials should feel like a graded reader used to feel. The first few months of immersion I'd recommend picking easier material: shows/books with few unique words (ideally less unique words than you know so if you know 2000 words then picking a kid's book with 1000 unique words), shows you've seen before in your native language (so you can guess what the words mean because you know what happens in those scenes), books based on shows you've seen, books for kids, reading summaries before watching/reading something (so you have prior context to guess what words mean because you know what should be happening). At first, you will have to learn how to "understand what you already studied" so you'll be practicing understanding words you know at speaking speed, in the grammar of actual sentences, reading words you maybe haven't read much, listening to words you maybe haven't listened to much, getting used to accents and emotion and background noise, getting used to understanding stuff you've studied QUICKLY because its all so much quicker than in learning materials. It will feel hard, stick with it for a few months, and eventually you can tolerate immersing for longer time periods and get better at immediately understanding stuff you already studied. At that point, you can gradually start picking more difficult and challenging immersion material.

***If you find immersion INTENSELY difficult and you can NOT understand the main idea, even when you look up key words, or you notice you need to look up like 20 key words per 5 minutes to even guess the main idea? Even after a few months of trying to immerse and see if it gets easier? You may benefit from going to study more words. If you don't like ambiguity and get frustrated by only vaguely understanding things, you'll probably be the kind of person who prefers to study more words BEFORE immersing. I would recommend a. cram studying 2000-3000 words in some SRS app or audio flashcard course like glossika (and if you have time and energy you may even wish to cram study 5000-7000 words... but if it's been over 5 months, you may just be avoiding immersion and hoping Ever More Vocabulary will make it easier... it won't at a certain point. You have to practice immersion eventually for immersion to get easier). b. Reading a LOT of graded readers. Graded readers will feel the most like immersion, because they force you to read a LOT all in the target language. Read increasingly difficult graded readers, so for chinese this is where you'd read 5+ 2000 word graded readers. Practice reading graded readers without relying on word lookups and attempt to grasp the meaning from context, so you can practice skills you'll need in immersion in an easier enviornment. Try to read graded readers through multiple times, attempting to read FASTER the second and third times, to practice comprehending things you have learned faster... this skill is needed for immersion, and practicing it now will make immersion easier. Listen to audiobooks/text to speech OF graded readers, and listen repeatedly until you comprehend most of what you hear. Graded readers in particular will help you both increase vocabulary AND develop the skills you'll be using and relying on a lot in immersion like: learning new words from context, parsing sentences, following audio at spoken speed (if reading along to an audiobook), getting a feel for how difficult a material is to you and if you personally can comprehend enough to learn new words from context alone or if you personally need to look up some key words (and how to identify key words for understanding quickly then move on), being engaged with only the target language for several minutes to an hour without much of another language to rely on.

For chinese, I recommend the Heavenly Path site to find immersion materials if you don't know where to start. You can start with their stuff recommended "Newcomer" with immersion materials that are around unique word counts of 1000, so they should be the most easy to transition into after doing some graded readers and studying 1000-3000 words. In particular I recommed starting with 秃秃大王 if you can read an 800 unique word Mandarin Companion graded reader, or a 1000-2000 unique word sinolingua graded reader. It is excellent for a beginner, it's not too long so you'll be able to finish it in a few days to a month (I think it took me 3 weeks of 30 minutes per day). After 秃秃大王, the other Newcomer recommendations should feel doable to you, and then from there just progressively pick slightly harder novels with slightly higher unique word counts when you're no longer running into as many new words as you wish to. Apps like Pleco (in free version you can copy-paste text into it's Clipboard Reader section, in paid you can import files) and Readibu (copy-paste in a website page to read the webnovel in the app, or find webnovels in Readibu's recommendations) let you read webnovels and click-translate words. Pleco has a ton of other features (and is a great free dictionary app so I suggest downloading it). Parallel translations of books app by Kursx is another good app for reading chinese novels, you'll need to import the novel files though. All reader apps have click-translate and text to speech tools like Moon+ Reader, Kindle, Kybook Reader, so if you have a favorite eReader app you can probably just open chinese epubs or txt files in your preferred app. I use Microsoft Edge for nothing else, but its Read Along tool has the most natural sounding text to speech I've ever heard, if you want to listen to text as you read. All web browsers have click-translate tools (sometimes you need Google Translate installed as an app on your phone, then just hold down any word/sentence you want a translation of when on a web browser and you'll have a Translate option). So honestly, any web browser and webnovel link and you'll be all set to read with click-translations and text to speech. If you like manhua, Bilibili Comics app has english and chinese versions of comics so you can read manhua in chinese, then read the english versions if you want to look up a particular word or check your understanding of the plot. If you like shows, youtube has a ton of free cdramas, often with chinese subtitles, so you can pause shows to see words and then go to a translation app of your choice (Pleco, DeepL, BaiduTranslate, Google Translate) and look up words. LingoTube is a free app where you can open youtube videos and get dual subtitles, audio line replay, click-translations of words.

#comprehensible input #study plan

[minimalist-language-learning]

My advice on Remembering the Kanji (RTK)

Before I share my learning routine and advice for RTK I would like to write about my personal experience first:

When I started to learn Japanese, kanji seemed incredibly difficult. They were just a complicated combination of strokes to me. Then I came across the book Remembering the Kanji (RTK) by James W. Heisig. Volume 1 presents a total of 2.200 kanji (including most of the Jōyō kanji).

I used the german version of Remembering the Kanji

The beginning was promising. I easily learned the first few hundred kanji. This experience was amazing. I never thought that this could be possible. But then I made the mistake of proceeding too fast. I saw forum posts of other RTK users who claimed that they “finished“ RTK in 3 months or even less. This motivated me and I tried to learn 25 kanji a day. Even though it was difficult to create memorable stories for this amount of kanji every day I moved on. After my first try to learn kanji with RTK, I forgot a great part of it after I "finished" the book.

I was not satisfied but I decided to move on and tried to read as much as possible instead. My idea was that I would make faster progress if I don't learn kanji consciously. It's not impossible to learn some kanji by seeing them repeatedly in context but it didn’t worked as well as I expected. 

Kanji seemed not as complicated like before but because of the great number of kanji and a lot of similar looking kanji they were still a great obstacle for me. Then I noticed that I still remembered the meaning of a number of kanji I learned with RTK. When I came across these kanji in context, I was able to understand new words without looking them up. Knowing their (rough) meaning really made a big difference. This made me think.

Around this time, I gave RTK a second chance and learned from my mistakes. I realized that if I really wanted to benefit from RTK I need to think long-term. It's not that you do RTK for only 3 months and you are done. What I needed were sustainable strategies. 

I finished all 2.200 kanji (RTK volume 1) a while ago and I know most of them well now. By reviewing my RTK deck my recognition rate will further improve over time. My RTK knowledge helps me enormously with reading japanese books. I’m really happy that I gave it a second chance. That’s why I want to share my experiences and tips in this blog post. I hope that this post can be helpful for Japanese learners who struggled with RTK.

My learning routine

My usual learning routine looked like this (more detailed tips below):

1. Review

Every day, I used Anki to review my own RTK deck. 

Read the keyword and (if in doubt) the hint

Try to remember the elements of the kanji and their positions and write the kanji in the air

Turn the card and check the kanji

If it was wrong, change the hint and/or improve the story

2. Adding new kanji

After reviewing I usually added around 10 to 15 new kanji a day. My cards contain not only keyword and kanji but also fields for hints, elements of the kanji and the story. Here's an example (my original cards are in German so this is just a rough translation):

Hints: If the keyword was very similar to another kanji I added a hint to reduce the risk of mixing them up.

Elements: I also added the elements of the kanji. This is useful for two reasons: By writing them out I become more aware of the elements which helps to remember new or complex elements correctly. Plus, by putting them on the back side of the card I can refresh my memory during reviews without using the book.

Story: Instead of creating a story only in my head I added the story to my cards. The reasons are the same like for the elements (see above).

. . .

After adding 5 new kanji I made a small break, came back and reviewed the new kanji. Then I repeated this process for another 5 kanji.

I usually added around 10 to 15 kanji a day. This was my sweet spot. Since I work full time and because my main focus was on reading japanese books I hadn't a lot of time for RTK. By not adding more kanji that I can handle I made sure that I remember them well. 

Then I continued reading a book in Japanese and/or listened to something in Japanese. RTK was just a small part of my learning routine. My goal was not to finish it as fast as possible but to make sure that I remember these kanji as well as possible. Slowly but steady I learned more and more kanji. This gave me a noticeable advantage while reading.

RTK is not a race

As I wrote above, I made several mistakes myself but instead of blaming RTK I realized that I need to take the explanations in the book more seriously. It's really important to make sure that the stories are memorable and that you pay attention to the details. 

The most important lesson I learned was that RTK is not a race. During my second attempt, it was not my goal to "finish" RTK as fast as possible but to remember these kanji LONG-TERM because this makes reading and learning new words much easier.

By proceeding too fast, the risk of forgetting a lot of kanji is very high. When it comes to RTK, a high recognition rate is more important than speed, in my opinion. That’s why I created sustainable strategies that helped me to remember most of the 2.200 kanji long-term.

5 Tips on Remembering the Kanji

Tip #1: Don't underestimate the power of writing

In the beginning, I used to write every kanji on paper. Now, I only write them with my finger (either in the air or on the table). This is much faster and easier.

Why writing them at all? Some people say, being able to recognize them is enough. Personally, I remember them much better through writing (even if I just write them in the air; the movement of the hand makes a great difference for me). In my experience, writing works much better than just looking at a kanji because through writing I become aware of every detail. Many kanji look pretty similar. Sometimes only one little detail is different. The risk of mixing them up is much higher. 

I tried the "recognition-only approach" in the past and it didn't work well for me. The ability to recognize and distinguish kanji just by looking at them has its limits. It's not very accurate, that's why I still mixed up similar kanji. 宇 and 字 or 烏 and 鳥 for example look very similar at the first glance. The original RTK method on the other hand helps to avoid that because you pay much more attention to the details.

Plus, writing in Japanese by hand is important to me. I love writing and kanji are very beautiful! That's the reason why I want to be able to write in Japanese. But even if you don't want to be able to write kanji, I recommend to write them in the air during reviews to reduce the risk of mixing them up. It may not seem like this could make a big difference but in my experience it's really helpful. The power of writing should not be underestimated.

Tip #2: Add hints

When I repeatedly mix up kanji or when I can't remember how to write them correctly, it's a sign that the story is weak. I pay attention to the story and try to make it more memorable. Plus, when I confuse a kanji with another I add a hint to the card like "Don't confuse with [similar keyword]".

It's also helpful to copy the definition of the keyword from a dictionary and/or a japanese word written in hiragana that contains this kanji and add it to the card. This way I have more context and this prevents me from confusing a keyword with a similar one (because the definitions are different). 

Using little hints is a great way to make the learning process less frustrating. Over time, I need these hints less and less. Eventually, I remember difficult kanji correctly. 

Tip #3: Take the time you need

It's also very important not to rush. I barely added more than 15 new kanji a day. Most of the time, I only added about 5 or 10 a day. Since I work full time and because my main focus was on reading japanese books I hadn't a lot of time for RTK.

During reviews I pay attention to the things I described above. Do I mix them up? Can I remember them correctly? Whenever I have trouble to remember certain kanji, I improve the story and/or add some hints. Some kanji may be more difficult than others, but over time you can learn every kanji by paying more attention to them. Paying attention to why you didn’t remember some kanji correctly and eliminating sources of error is really important. If a story doesn’t work don’t hesitate to improve it.

However, there's no need to be too strict. You don't need to nail them down to 100% before you move on. But I think it's a good idea to give new kanji time to sink in a bit before continuing. That's why I recommend to slow down the pace instead of rushing through the book.

Tip #4: Be creative

The meaning of some primitives chosen by Heisig are not optimal for everyone. It works much better if you choose something that has a strong meaning to you (like, characters from your favorite series). Just make sure that your personal meaning doesn't conflict with later keywords or elements. Ideally, it's as close to Heisig's word as possible or it's so unique that it's impossible to mix it up with other words.

If a kanji is used as part of another kanji (like 青 in 請 for example) you don't necessarily need to use it in it's combined form if it's difficult to create a good story. You can split or combine the elements of a kanji the way you like if it helps you to remember the kanji.

Tip #5: Combine RTK with reading

Some people recommend beginners to do RTK at the very beginning of their Japanese learning journey. The idea is, to complete RTK as fast as possible so that you can focus 100% on the language itself afterwards. However, I think depending on the person this can be counterproductive. RTK is probably more difficult for people who just started with Japanese because they can’t see the benefits of RTK yet. When you have no use for what you are learning it’s hard to stay motivated over an extended period of time. I think this is one reason, why people who tried RTK gave up.

When I started RTK I wasn’t a complete beginner of Japanese. I did RTK in addition to my other Japanese activities like reading books. This way, I often came across kanji I just learned. I saw them in context and they helped me to understand new words without looking them up. Experiences like these were a strong proof for me that RTK really pays off and this gave me a motivation boost.

So instead of doing RTK at the beginning and doing nothing else, I recommend to wait until you can read at least graded readers or easier novels, for example. Otherwise it’s probably too hard to stay motivated for so long. 

. . .

I hope these tips can be helpful for someone. It's sad when I read that some people gave up because they constantly mix up or forget a lot of kanji. There are also people who rush through RTK without creating memorable stories for each kanji and stop doing their reviews after "finishing" RTK. And then they claim that RTK is a waste of time and doesn't work because they can't remember most of the kanji — which is no surprise in this case. 

While I absolutely understand that RTK may not work for everyone it's not fair that people who didn't take the explanations in the book seriously claim that it doesn't work in general. 

Learning kanji takes time. This is absolutely normal. It's not a shame if you need more than 3 months or a year to complete RTK. In my opinion, if the goal is to remember these kanji long-term 3 months are very unrealistic for most people. Seeing people who "finished" RTK in a short amount of time creates false expectations. RTK is not about breaking records. To me, it’s much more important to make sure that you remember these kanji long-term. Every learned kanji is already a little advantage, that's why speed is not so important anyway.

Without RTK learning kanji would have been much more time consuming and frustrating for me and the risk of forgetting and mixing them up would be much much higher. To me, there's no real alternative to RTK and now that I finished it I'm very happy that I put in the work and time.

Maybe I will also learn the additional 800 kanji from volume 3 in the future. But for now I'll focus on consolidating the 2.200 kanji from volume 1 and on other learning activities.

#langblr #languagelearning #self study #japanese learning #languageblr #learning japanese #language learning tips #remembering the kanji #kanji #learning kanji

[simena]

Heisig, Johannes - Stilleben mit Lilien

[nanonana39]

If you've started learning Japanese, either self taught or in a course, Genki was probably recommended to you. But what if you don't have the money to buy the book? I sure don't. Fear not, this Reddit thread has got you covered (with more resources like the Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig).

Genki I & II PDF + Audio Lessons (Reddit Thread)

Other Resources

#japanese langblr #learning japanese #self taught langblr #japanese immersion #japanese language #langblr #japanese resources

[ganbarunihongo17]

How to Learn Kanji

Learning kanji is all about moving into a daily study habit. whether or not you'll be able to only spare a quarter-hour of every day to check, it’s consistency that counts.

follow it and observe after you start to determine results because your successes will keep you motivated to succeed in further successes.

Starting out using Hiragana and Katakana will really facilitate your learning of the structure of complex kanji.

But there’s plenty more thereto than this! Kanji is created of small parts called radicals that give clues to their meaning, sound, and sometimes even their pronunciations.

Once you get conversant in these radicals, you'll be able to guess at pronunciation sometimes. try our handy orient kanji radicals to induce started!

There are plenty of internet sites that show you the way to associate images with Kanji.

Some people find it easy to recollect characters after they make image associations. as an example, the character for “person” 人 (ひと）looks sort of a person.

The character for “tree” 木（き）looks sort of like a tree. the foremost famous book about this is often Remember the Kanji by James Heisig.

Mastering useful kanji vocabulary will facilitate your sound more authentic and assured when speaking Japanese.

As a beginner, I might recommend using a dictionary to look up words you're not used to, but as you progress, there are online resources that can be very helpful.

the Japanese language has been sparingly represented by Japanese people themselves.

That's to not say that there aren’t many books written in Japanese and these are mostly focused on sentences or grammatical rules.

These books don't explain the meaning or the way to use it. this is often where Kanji Flash comes in as a great tool that explains all about kanji, how it absolutely was formed, and its origin, pronunciation, and uses in the standard of living.

#japanese culture #japanese kanji #n5 kanji #Kanji #learning japanese

[brunbyers24]

How to effectively self-study Japanese

If you're a new Japanese learner asking yourself the same question: can I really learn Japanese on my own?, don't worry, you're not alone. My first thought was that it was insane to think that anyone could learn one of the hardest languages in the world without real teachers. After completing college, I decided to challenge myself with a tough goal, and I ended up reaching it in some way. A year after self-studying full-time, I passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level N2, only to realize that it was not as impressive as I thought. Afterwards, I'll explain how I learned Japanese alone and passed the JLPT N2 with a score of 97 / 180 (the passing score is 90). I think learning 2000 Kanji characters is the harder part, not remembering the hiragana and katakana charts. After learning Kanji for a while, I decided to temporarily skip it for a month, doing so gave me a headache. Considering how Koreans use hangul as a writing system, why don't Japanese use only hiragana? It would save everyone a lot of time and effort. Although I originally hated Kanji, I later got hooked on it. Heisig's book Remembering the Kanji is legendary. Blog For Pet Lover is an indispensable book for anyone learning Japanese who wants to save time and effort. In this exercise, you learn how to not forget the Kanji characters by using your imagination to create a story or picture for them. Although this book is not guaranteed to work for everyone, it certainly stands out among hundreds of Chinese characters books on the market. It is a downside to this book that you aren't given a reading for each character in on and kun. The author wants to teach us the best way to remember the characters because he is aware that we can learn to read each character elsewhere. If you're a serious student, you shouldn't have much trouble searching for the on and kun reading for each character. Write as many sentences and short essays as you can to practice writing the Kanji. Make sure you use the same word repeatedly in various sentences until you remember it. In addition, type your sentences onto your computer and have someone proofread them for you. In addition to audio, video, and pdf lessons, they also have a lot of other resources. A site like this probably offers more Japanese lessons than any other. There are four main categories for the lessons: Absolute Beginner, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. There are several seasons within each category, each containing more than 20 lessons. Alternatively, you can download the pdf and MP3 files to learn offline from the website.

#Blog For Pet Lover

[wyattborre95]

Effective self-study techniques for Japanese

New Japanese learners may ask themselves: is it possible to learn Japanese by myself?, but you're not alone. The idea that anyone could learn one of the hardest languages in the world without a teacher seemed crazy to me. When I graduated from college, I decided to challenge myself with this tough goal, and I successfully achieved it (to some extent). My first attempt at the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level N2 took me a year to pass, but it wasn't quite as big an achievement as I thought it would be. Let me first tell you exactly how I learned Japanese by myself and passed the JLPT N2 with a score of 97 / 180 (90 is the passing mark). A lot of people think that learning the hiragana and katakana charts is the hard part, but actually learning the 2000 Kanji characters is probably the most challenging part. During the first month of my 1-year journal, I decided to temporarily omit learning Kanji because it gave me headaches. Why don't Japanese use only hiragana in their writing system, like Koreans do? That would save everyone a great deal of time. The Kanji used to annoy me, but I totally fell in love with it over time. The famous book Remembering the Kanji by Heisig may be familiar to you. It is an indispensable book for anyone learning Japanese who wants to save time and effort. Using your imagination, you can create a story or image for every Kanji so you don't forget them. The book is certainly the best among hundreds of books dedicated to learning Chinese characters, but it's not guaranteed to work for everyone or to make you an expert. This book lacks the character's on and kun readings, which is a slight drawback. He knows that we can easily learn to read each character somewhere else, so he focuses on teaching us the best way to remember them. You shouldn't have too much trouble googling the on and kun reading of each character if you're a serious learner. Write as many sentences and short essays as you can to practice writing the Kanji. Repeat the same word in different sentences until you are finally able to remember it. If you are writing a paper, you should also type it and ask someone else to proofread it. You can find thousands of lessons in audio, video, and pdf formats on their website. The Japanese lessons contained in this website are probably the most comprehensive you will find online. There are Blog For Pet Lover of lessons: Absolute Beginner, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. There are several seasons in each category, each with over 20 lessons. To learn offline, you can download the pdf and mp3 files from the website.

#Blog For Pet Lover

[arcane-offerings]

Amador Vega. Ramon Llull and the Secret of Life. Translated by James W. Heisig. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002. Paperback. 277 pages. 

Shop link in bio.

#mysticisim #Instagram

[ayatoraiwa]

The Shift of Focus (2023)

Concept and Choreography: Isabelle Schad / Co-Choreography and Dance: Johanna Ackva, Viviana Defazio, Forough Fami, Josephine Findeisen, Veronika Heisig, Jasmin İhraç, David Kummer, Yen Lee, Manuel Lindner, Jan Lorys, Jennifer Schecker, Yusuke Taninaka, Claudia Tomasi, Aya Toraiwa, Maja Zimmerlin / Setdesign and Visuals: Umberto Freddi / Composition and Sound: Damir Simunovic / Voice training: Ignacio Jarquin / Lighting design: Emma Juliard / Video technician: Josef Maaß / Stage technician: Arnaud Lesage / Costume: likabari / Social Media: Rike Nölting / Editing and Outreach: Elena Basteri / Assistance choreography: Manuel Lindner, Claudia Tomasi, Nir Vidan / Production management: Heiko Schramm Production: Isabelle Schad Co-production: HAU Hebbel am Ufer

images by D.Hartwig, all rights reserved