Manga
I have read a lot of Manga recently, so much in fact I needed a calculator to figure out just how much Manga I had actually read. This has actually been going on for a few months now. But in total I have read nearly a 200,000 pages worth of manga. I could get into details, but the sheer magnitude of the number is a bit much.
In the more I have included the short list version, the long list is… long.
194 Kanji
I am sure no one cares, but to update, I am up to 194 total Kanji, meaning with just about 50 more 2nd grade will be done.
Once again I am learning these from the great book Remembering the Kanji by Jame W. Heisig. It really helps you remember them.
I can read Hiragana!
Alright wow, 3 posts in such a short period of time. But I just felt I should make another post, since I finished the final lesson of the Hiragana half of “Remembering the Kana” which I mentioned in an earlier post. Its really strange though, all of a sudden I see this symbols and I can pronounce them, its really strange. Much stranger then just English translated into symbols, such as in the Artemis Fowl series of books (a good series).
It just blows my mind, since I managed to learn it in only 115 minutes (~2 hours) spread over a few days, since the book had me time each reading session where I actually learned the letters. However I did do some practice outside it, but thats just to make sure I continue to remember it.
However as amazing as it is to suddenly to make headway into a japanese publication, I still do not understand Japanese yet, so while I have a tool to help me learn it, its use is still fairly minimal. Also every other word I swear I run into Katakana, whats with that really. I can excuse a fair amount of Kanji, but really I never realized so much Katakana was used in everyday texts (manga, websites, etc).
Next on my list is of course Katakana and unlike with Hiragana I think I will also work on my Kanji at the same time. I have a great deal of Kanji to get through.
Remembering the Kana/Kanji
Well first of all I have taken to the AJATT method of teaching myself japanese, except for that fact its not actually all the time (I haven’t really started hard into the methods yet). He suggested two books, Remembering the Kanji and Remembering the Kana. I only got the first of each so far, but Remembering the Kana isn’t to expensive.
Here are some links for you: Remembering the Kanji and Remembering the Kana
The author is very adept at forming explinations that will make each Kanji and Kana easy to remember. Some of them are very strange, but that makes them even harder to forget.
Having recently just gotten these books. I decided to do a few out of each, hiragana and some of the Kanji. I was really quite surprised at how fast I took up the first 20 or so Kanji, I haven’t done any more yet, but I wanted to get an idea what I was in for. It was very simple, and in a moment I will explain the why I was so surprised at how quickly I took them up. The other book I started and learned the first 17 hiragana from the Remembering the Kana. These were a bit more difficult then the Kanji, despite the increased complexity of the Kanji.
The interesting thing in this case is that I had been slowly practicing and learning the Hiragana on my own, but I was having a tough time of it, weeks with little real progress. I get this and within the first 37 minutes (the book has you time yourself for each lesson), I had learned 17 kana, obviously it was a bit less since I already knew some of them, such as a, i, u, tsu and so on but thats beside the point I also retained the ones I had not learned before.
Of course being sure I do retain them forever may be a bit harder, of course I will be using an SRS to help me along. I realize the increased complexity of the Kanji and the fact they relate directly to complete words and ideas makes it easier to memorize them, which would explain why I am having such a hard time with the Kana, which represent only sounds.