9 comments

1. Hi guys. I’m just going through genki atm as a beginner. Justttt started lesson one and I’ve been trying to remember all the vocab. Score I fully go into the lesson. Is this optimal btw? Also the only question on my mind is what’s the best way to practise my listening skills while I do the textbook as I don’t want to leave this out of the picture. Thanks 🙏

2. What do you guys recommend for learning n5 kanj, i’m almost a 3rd through genki and been trying wanikani but feels very slow and feel behind as my grammar and vocab are quite good but can’t read much genki due to wanikani slow pace but anki decks i struggle to remember readings recognising and english translation all at once

3. Any novel recommendations for upper n3 level trying to get into n2?

4. I have been doing The Moe Way/Usagi Spoon. Every day I watch 3 episodes of Cure Dolly’s grammar lessons, a handful of graded readers from tadoku, and using the anime “tutor method” for immersion where I watch first with English subs then again with Japanese. I’m also doing about an hour of RTK anki deck every day, and passively listening throughout the day with YouTube/Twitch/podcasts/anime.

   Doing all this, I feel like I’m not even progressing as quickly as I was on Duolingo. I’m hardly picking up any vocab. Should I just stick with it, add something else, or change it up entirely?

5. Is it better to learn Kanji from words or on their own? For example, would it work to study vocab, see 飲む and be like “oh, never seen that kanji before, I’ll copy it down and add it to the study pile”?

6. I live in America in a place that gets a decent amount of tourism. Today while out shopping in a curio store I overheard two gentleman speaking in Japanese which is very uncommon for my area. I was super excited to hear Japanese unexpectedly in my town but did not approach them because honestly my Japanese is pretty terrible still and I did not want to offend them. Is there a level of fluency I should have before attempting to speak to a native speaker out of respect for them and the language?

7. Earlier I read about a joke from another post. The joke:
   “What do you say after you fart when eating sushi? すみますし”

   So I took ‘すみますし’ and put it in google translate, which gave me ‘I’m glad’, but when I put ‘すみますし。’ in, I get ‘It will be easier.’ How does that work? Is google translate screwing up? And how should I understand すみますし?

8. 教会で讃美歌を歌ったこともあるわよ。
   I translate this sentence to mean “We even sing hymns at church sometimes.” But the conjugation at the end confuses me a bit. Can anyone check if it creates a different meaning to what I think, thanks.

9. Whats the difference between “さいしゅう/最終 ” and “さいご/最後”?, Im having a lot of trouble memorizing them because I tend to think of both as something like “the last”.