Hello! I am currently restarting learning Japanese - I first started a couple years ago right as I was starting college, and ended up dropping it cause of life lol. I restarted a few weeks ago and am using WaniKani for kanji/vocab and Bunpro for grammar. I restarted Wanikani and I believe I was at level 4 before stopping, now I am only around halfway through level two but am finding it pretty easy to remember since I learned them all before and am relearning them now (I will enjoy that while it lasts haha) but I have been looking at Anki decks and started one but I really disliked the specific deck, and I kinda wanna make my own just because I think for me it could be helpful. I am unsure what I should use for a vocab list, and am interested in sentence mining, but am not sure when I would realistically be able to start mining. I can recognize pretty basic sentences and particles and make out a sentence here and there but rarely an entire sentence. I like reading lyrics of Japanese songs and dissecting what it says but am always worried the translations might not be accurate or it will not teach me Japanese like how people actually use it day to day. I also do not understand how sentence mining works - do I literally just copy/paste subtitles (if using YouTube videos for example) or is there a website or app I should download? I have seen pictures of people highlighting a transcript of videos and wasn't sure if that was through YouTube or something else. I think learning in context will help me but since I know so little kanji at this point I do not know if that is possible. I would say I only know about 50 kanji but feel pretty confident in those ones (they are the ones I have relearned so far). I also do not know what resources will have furigana options. Also I have heard of Satori reader, has anyone found helpful readings there? I just feel kinda stuck, as I would like to learn vocab and grammer beyond what I currently am and be able to use it in context. Literally any advice regarding anything mentioned would be greatly appreciated, thanks for reading!
Holy wall of text Batman.
There's a reason this is the highest-rated top-level comment.
Looking back it really is, sorry for the lack of formatting! Got a bit rambly there
ngl, I didn't read the whole wall of text. For a free way with a step by step guide on how to set up and sentence mine, I like the Lazy Guide.
Just keep in mind - if you are doing wanikani, bunpro, and also sentence mining, that's going to end up taking up a big chunk of time eventually, and easy to burn out. Plus less time actually spent engaging with Japanese media that you are getting the mined stuff from. Wanikani and bunpro start off not taking much time, but they can take a lot of time once you get into them.
Bunpro teaches you grammar points over a long time - I think this can be really useful, but also it's super spread out and hard to understand without also having a lot of exposure to Japanese (i.e. it's pretty effortless if you remember encountering the grammar somewhere, but if you find it the first time in Bunpro it'll be harder).
Wanikani is primarily a way of studying individual kanji, and a good amount of vocab to cement that. Whatever way you learn vocab works, but there's quite a bit of it that's not exactly the most common. Like 綺麗 is a pretty common word but due to the kanji being complex it'll be a while to get there with WK. WK in general introduces things really slow over time. But their owners themselves do recommend engaging with native content and getting vocab from it from like level 10 on.
Everyone's got to find their own way to study in the long run, and might change course over time as they learn more things. Like for me, I did WK + Bunpro + Anki for a while, but it was taking forever many mornings so I ditched two of them. However, that way can absolutely work - just may be good to be careful that 100% of your studies don't end up in just SRS.
One popular method for learning that uses sentence mining a lot is The Moe Way which I've been using. Somewhere in there it links the Kaishi 1.5k deck which is where I got started in vocab before mining. I also learned most of my grammar early on from the Yokubi and Tae Kim guides.
On iOS my app Manabi Reader helps with sentence mining (either for its own flashcard app or with the Anki integration). It can mine sentences from web, RSS, and ebooks currently. I am working on Mokuro and Bookwalker/web manga support. https://reader.manabi.io
When to start -when ever you are ready Sentence mining usually requires 10 to 40 minutes to mine 20 cards you should be able mine every day Or waste a Saturday or Sunday and mine cards for the whole week It is a life style choice How to mine Paid option - migaku Free option -asb player Most important point is finding a card template you like
Just type in migaku or asb player on YouTube and you will find setup instructions
THANK YOU this is exactly what I was looking for. I will look into both of those appreciate it!
right now!
Thanks! I did end up starting tonight and I think this could be very useful for me^ - ^
Learnjapanese.moe can answer pretty much all your questions. I'd recommend starting sentence mining afyer finishing kaishi 1.5k but you can do it rn too if you want
At your level, you're going to have to make peace with your understanding being very limited. You are definitely going to have places where you will not get it even trying as hard as you can, and you will definitely get things wrong. For some people, it's easy to be 100% okay with that. For other people it bothers them a lot.
There are a couple of ways to mitigate that if it bothers you. One strategy I've seen is to immerse using something you know well. A show you've already watched, a beloved manga that you've already read in English. Already knowing the media means that you won't get lost even when you're not capable of understanding any given sentence. Similarly, you can immerse in new media by reading/watching with English translation/subs, and then read/watch again in Japanese. I can't use these strategies because I get bored re-reading things, but it works well for other people.
Something I had success with at an early immersion level is reading things that are fun-bad. You can pick out something that you don't care much about but is still fun to read, and that way it doesn't matter if you miss things or don't really understand. If you like watching bad movies for fun this could be a good strategy for you.
This makes sense! Yesterday I tried using a minecraft Youtube video lol, just some dude playing and narrating what he was doing, and I really enjoyed that because I am not super invested in a storyline or anything, and I can see what he is doing even if I do not understand everything he says. I also thought it would help me understand pretty natural and casual speaking to start off. I spent like 20 minutes last night just on the first minute and a half of the video going through pretty much every single word I did not know which is a lot, and just going over all the different particles, both ones I did and did not recognize.
I probably should move a bit quicker haha but I found it not only helpful but pretty enjoyable! One thing I am stuggling with is when I save a vocab word, it generally is saved in one certain form, and I am unsure if I should try and save only the stem of the word or if I should study conjugated words. Either way though, I am really excited to keep experimenting with this! I feel like this is something I would just do for fun even if I was not studying it seriously. Thanks!
Yep, that's a great way to go. I didn't address how to mine because it's been addressed in a couple other comments before, but you should ideally be using asbplayer and yomitan to mine words from YouTube, so you should already be mining the deconjugated word in the first place.
I do actually prefer a different guide than was recommended, Kuri's Guide instead of the Lazy Guide, but the recommendations are basically the same, so just use whichever seems easier to you.
And I wouldn't worry about speed at this point. You can worry about speed once you start understanding more without a lot of lookups. Just don't burn out and have fun!
Thank you! Appreciate it, I will also check out the guide you sent! I think I am confused about conjugation as a whole I know Tofugu has a lotta good grammar guides so I am gonna look into that more as well haha
I also feel like the Minecraft videos are very calming to watch and has a lot of basic conversational phrases, like introducing himself and the game, and short phrases like "I think I will start here" or "Now I have 16 of these" for example. Also saying things like "First I will ______" and "Now I am going to ________" Or "for now, this is what I have" and just a lot of very basic sentences I think are helpful if that makes sense. Same with talking to the audience a bit like "that's cool, right?" or "What do you think?" The account is "Jiro, Just Japanese", and I believe makes videos specifically for learning Japanese from what I have seen. Excited to look more into it!
One thing that helped me was only mining sentences where I already kinda know the grammar and at least 50–70% of the vocab. That way each card feels useful instead of overwhelming, you’re reinforcing what you know and only adding a little new at a time.
This is good advice, I ended up saving a ton of long sentences last night with many words I did not recognize so I will try and focus more on this, and over time the amount I recognize will grow and I will be able to have a wider variety of what I save. Thanks, it was getting sort of overwhelming haha.
You can start whenever you want. Nothing is stopping you except you.
I use the core 6k Anki deck and I made it so that if I erase the word from the word field, the card turns into a sentence card.
So when I start remembering the word by itself, I make it into a sentence card to start seeing it in context. I found that it really helped. Also, I can turn it back into a word card by typing the word back in to the word field if I want to, I just haven’t seen the need for it yet.
Try as many Anki decks as you like and don’t be afraid to modify them to fit your needs.
Thanks! Sounds good!
I just went around emailing highschool japanese teachers for their curriculum. It's so much more efficient than digging around the internet.
Wait, did that actually work???
waht the fuck is sentence mining?
You find a sentence in the wild, then use that sentence to learn new words from it.
Oh, yea I do that with Twitter, I follow a lot of Japanese tekken and monster hunter players
If you’re already reading or watching stuff in Japanese, you’re more than ready.
So what I found easy to me was writing down phrases I say through out the day and translating those to Japanese. Simple things like, "what's for dinner?" "Are you hungry?' "what time is it?" Small entences but pretty commonly used ones and I'd go from there.
Ooooh this is smart! I gotta try this as well or maybe when watching videos use that as criteria. for what I save - like if I use it daily or have used the word or sentence that day. Thanks!