No, I have not given up Japanese.
I’ve been practicing on smart.fm the incomplete goals that I had. After that, I started on Season 2 of Textfugu (which btw, I finished today).
Why am I going so fast? I can explain it: After reaching the real Kanji lesson in Textfugu, I realized something, and that is that I am learning on rails. And for some that might be a good thing, but not for me.
Some think I am trying to speed through learning Japanese. In a way, that is true, but in another it is not. I like being efficient and to the point. Learning “on rails” just takes me through places that I consider “not to the point”. So I’ve decided that I will most likely not renovate my monthly subscription with Textfugu. I am going to read all of it before my subscription goes out, and then I will continue to learn with other resources.
You might be asking how I’m gonna be learning now. I haven’t completely made up my mind, but it’ll basically be something like reading a lot of Japanese websites, reading manga, and playing video games. I will build vocabulary as I find it in context, not in “pointless” bulks of Kanji.
I want to have a good collection of base resources. A language is split into Grammar & Vocabulary, basically.
For vocabulary it’s easy: as I find vocab, I make my own lists in Anki (more on this later) and, parallel to those vocabulary decks, I will study with the different JLTP lists.
Now, for grammar is the part that I am not so sure about. Basically, I want to find the best book/online resource for this. A bible of Japanese Grammar. I learn very systematically, so I think this would be a good choice. It’s just that I can’t seem to find a good one. Actually, I did find one, but… it’s all in Romanji and I don’t like that idea. Another book that I am looking at is this one, but it looks as if it was a little too much of a dictionary.
Anyway, I’ve dropped smart.fm because it’s too buggy. I want to focus on learning, not getting around pesky bugs. I found Anki and realized how good it is. You create “Decks” which are formed by “Facts” those facts can have many different fields, and you can show them in any way you want. If you want to create a “Model” that will help you learn from Hiragana to Kanji, you can do so, or from Kanji to Hiragana. If you’re learning Kanjis, you can make it so it shows the Kanji and on the “other side” of the card it shows anything you’d want (its onyomi, its kunyomi, its number in the dictionary, you name it).
Websites worth noting:
- http://kanjidamage.com/
This is hands down the most learning-friendly Kanji dictionary of them all. - http://jisho.org/
This is the best Japanese dictionary for general lookups. - http://www.yamasa.cc/members/ocjs/kanjidic.nsf/SortedByKanji2THEnglish?OpenView
If you want to learn Kanji stroke orders, this is where you go. - http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
Excellent grammar guide, haven’t found anything close to it
On top of those resources: all of those websites have active forums.
