Personally, I Agree With Your Point Of View On The Japanese YouTubers Community.It Gets Tiring And Sometimes

[8.11.19] very chilly in glasgow but very warm inside my fave café

ig: chavareads

Hey guys!

I’m so excited to share this language learning challenge that I created with you!

It’s called Brick-By-Brick Language Learning Challenge and it’s made for anyone who already knows the basics of their target language and wants to improve their knowledge :)

If you participate in this challenge, make sure to use the hashtag #brickbybricklearning and to tag me here on tumblr (@mylinguisticadventure) and on instagram (@mylinguisticadventure). 

That’s it for now. Happy language learning!

↳ 05.20.19.

i always make my new weekly spread monday mornings, look how blissfully empty :’) currently annotating chinese textbook readings while watching “love is a bonus book” on netflix, i loooooove it so far ✨

𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐲 𝐯𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐬. journal spread 29|04

i'm not journaling as often as i used to and i'm really okay with it. i guess what i want to say is that you don't have to be creative when you don't feel like it. it's as simple as that. to be able to enjoy your journey, you have to listen to yourself and honor your process.

🌸 my first time bullet journaling! This was done a while ago! Also this is my first post on tumblr💕 🌸

IG: @_akadanie

don’t we love a hidden calendar?

Hey, don’t cry. Free online database of Japanese folk lore

hello there! are there any sites that can help me practice reading in japanese for free? like news sites, manga sites, or sites that provide free e-books to read. also, can you recommend any japanese podcasts that can help me in my listening practice? thank you for answering this question!

Manga Library Z (Jコミ) has a bunch of out-of-print manga available

E-hon and Ehon hiroba are both good for picture books.

Hukumusume has classic tales. This one has the option to use parallel text with English.

NHK Easy News. any underlined words have a J-J popup dictionary entry attached to them.

Matcha for easy travel articles

Aozora Bunko for copyright expired books. Might be easier to use with an app. Just plug 青空文庫 into your app store and a few options should pop up.

Syosetu and Pixiv are good for finding fanfiction, pixiv has a lot of original stories mixed in there as well.

The podcasts I reccomend are the same as the ones Asta already recommended ＾＾;　ひいきびいき and Muggles’ Giggles You could also check out the RadioJapan app to listen to japanese radio stations or try browsing for Japanese Ted talks.

hello! i'm only starting to learn japanese and i'm finding it hard to know where i should start with the kanji. do you really have to learn kanji separately and memorize both their pronunciations or can you just learn the kanji in the vocabulary?

omg no! don’t stress yourself out like that anon!!

okay, i’m going to be real with the japanese language learning community: you all are doing waaaaaaaay too much when it comes to kanji.

there. i said it.

learning kanji does not have to be a headache!

i spent the first 6 months of my japanese learning “career” (for lack of a better word) trying to figure out the best way to learn kanji because every website and book was like “here’s the kunyomi, here’s the onyomi, now learn them both” but the fine print of that learning method says “you’re going to f*cking struggle”

but then i started realizing that kanji i read all of the time, i didn’t even “properly” study like those articles said. i didn’t know the kunyomi and onyomi for 行 for ages, but i knew it was read いく in 行く and こう in words like 旅行 and 直行. because i learned those words in context and on their own.

a few months after i came to japan, i started asking japanese people how they learned kanji and every single one of them answered the same way: they learn through vocabulary. i once asked my boyfriend how he learned kanji in grade school, and he said that they were basically given a kanji, and then they were given a list of vocabulary that included that kanji. they then memorized the vocabulary and grew to know the kunyomi and onyomi readings.

which, spoiler: kunyomi and onyomi is not always an accurate measure. lots of compounds use the kunyomi, some of them add dakuten (as in ちゅうごく instead of ちゅうこく in 中国), and others add っ (as in ちょっこう instead of ちょこう in 直行). this really isn’t something you can just magically guess.

but it’s important to remember that everyone learns differently. i don’t learn individual kanji – i learn kanji within various vocabulary words. i make sure to get as much exposure to the various ways a single kanji can appear within a larger compound, so 高 is not just a single kanji, but it is 高い and 高校生 and 高価.

i do, however, think it’s important to understand the meaning of a kanji. this can help you decipher the meaning of a word you don’t know yet. for example, 高価 (こうか) means “high price.” 高 means high and 価 means price. knowing their meaning individually can help decipher the meaning.

in this way you can argue that yes, knowing the individual readings of these two kanji makes guessing the reading of this word easier, but 価 can also be read “ke"! you can’t guarantee an accurate reading all of the time, but with more and more exposure to individual kanji, you will be able to tell.

which brings me to my main point: learning kanji is an individual experience. i, personally, think that learning onyomi and kunyomi readings for 2,000+ jouyou kanji is a HUGE WASTE OF TIME, but there are a lot of people out there that do this methodically and know lots and lots of kanji and vocabulary. i, personally, need kanji in a larger vocabulary word in order for it to stick, and my brain just catalogues the various readings away. that’s how my brain works and learns, but it’s not how everyone else works and learns. 

it’s important to find what works for you.

that being said, if you’re just starting out i highly recommend Jakka. it’s a website meant for japanese grade school teachers and has tons of grade school kanji material broken up into their appropriate grades. japanese school children are expected to learn and master a certain amount of kanji + vocabulary each grade level, so if you’d really like to learn like a child, learn like the school children do! (the website is in japanese but fairly simple to navigate.)

i hope this helps a little anon! and remember that learning kanji isn’t a race. if it takes you awhile to learn them, don’t worry. everyone learns languages differently.

hii i wanted to ask if there's a change in pronouncing the letters ㅈ,ㅅ,ㅊ when they're in the bottom like in 도넛 will it be doneos or doneot? i think these letters are pronounced as 't' when they're in the bottom. Could you clear the confusion please? Thanks!

Hi! Yes, that's correct! So when you have ㅅ, ㅆ, ㅈ, ㅉ, or ㅊ at the end of a syllable, it just makes a "t" sound. The word for donut, as you mentioned, is 도넛, and is pronounced do-neot, not do-neos.

If, however, a syllable ending in one of those is followed by a syllable that starts with ㅇ, then it makes the sound that it is supposed to. So if you have 도넛은, for example, that would be pronounced do-neo-seun. Think of that final consonant (known as 받침 in Korean) as "carrying over" to the ㅇ, which is silent in this case. Thanks for the great question and I hope this is helpful! 화이팅!