I'm currently at a stage when I can read light novels (while using a dictionary), but I don't always know the correct readings for the words. So, when I'm "reading aloud" in my head, I either skip these words or try to guess the reading.
Sometimes. I read the light novel and listen to its audiobook (both in Japanese) at the same time, and it definitely helps, but sometimes I just want to read a book.
Could this cause issues in the long term when speaking/listening? Should I stick to reading + listening until I know most of the readings?
by Artgor
19 comments
I’d say write those words down and come back to them later or create flashcards so you learn those words then when you read the book again later you’ll know them.
I don’t think it will hurt you, but you could use it as an opportunity to grow. Like another comment mentioned, just write them down and look them up later, adding them to an SRS to study.
You don’t need to make all your immersion time into study time, but you should have a bit of both. Instead, just use immersion as a chance to find what you need to study.
EDIT: I should add, this is only if you have the bandwidth to take on more study material, if you are already spending a good amount of time studying every day, and you are spending time immersing *additionally*, you do not need to pressure yourself to study everything you encounter. Find how much new information you can take in at about 85-90% retention (it’s good to push yourself beyond things that are easy / 100% retention), and that’s how much you should study each day, everything else should be more relaxed, and serve to reinforce your study as well as use your Japanese brain. If you are reading light novels for entertainment, that’s already really good, just make sure you’re still studying something as well, unknown vocab from the light novels is just one source to draw from.
I don’t think it hurts. I do it all the time, anyway – and you do still learn those words, you just need to fill in the reading at some point.
Doesn’t hurt but will be a wasted opportunity to compound knowledge. I find it’s harmful to be looking up so often that it’s taking you away from a good flow, but wasteful to just ignore things out of laziness.
Does you’re dictionary not also come with readings?
Yes. Meanings you’ll naturally aquire overtime through usage and sometimes cna just be guessed if you forgot in general imo. Readings you gotta just learn. Also if you don’t know readings you won’t recognize spoken words ever.
I think you should learn both but if you cna only remember one readings are more important
I’m in the same boat.
I add those words to Anki to study later.
I’m someone who used RTK to learn kanji and I think this method has helped me in my other studies.
At first if I can attach a meaning or reading to the word I find that’s good enough the rest of the information eventually adds itself through SRS and immersion.
Although in saying that I definitely feel meaning carries more weight for me since my goal is to read Japanese and although reading can teach you a lot of new words it also has a lot of words you won’t find yourself using in daily conversation so don’t feel bad if they keep tripping you up.
There are a bunch of words that I visually understand (from the kanji or context) but never take the time to look up or learn the reading for, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. In fact, I feel like grasping the concept from repeated exposure in context and then learning the reading and meaning further down the line would help to prevent making false associations.
Rather than bothering with or sentences that I can’t fully pronounce in my head, I try to make the most of my time by tolerating ambiguity where possible and waiting for genuine i+1 sentences to mine. Don’t look up the reading or make a card unless you have a strong desire to learn that word in the moment or the sentence is a prime i+1 candidate.
The Japanese themselves do this, though probably not as often as you.
You don’t really know the word unless you know the reading. You can’t do the same thing with listening so while you can “get information” from characters, it’s not the same as actually having command of a word (and you’re also guessing at some words meaning without actually knowing). It’s also not growing your vocabulary realistically when you do this. Since it only applies to something you do while reading. Listening, speaking, writing are completely left out from benefiting from this.
>Could this cause issues in the long term when speaking/listening?
To a certain degree, it’s inevitable that you will, at least occasionally, run into words that you don’t know how to pronounce. This happens to me in English, even, albeit rarely.
But, you probably should know how to pronounce the words 99+% of the time.
Any time it happens, just take the word and throw it into Anki, then do the reps. That’ll fix your issue right up.
Nope, shouldn’t be a problem.
I usually only read without listening to audiobook. (Reason. I am lazy, and audiobooks geniuelly hurt my ears)
Altho I do look up the reading of unfamiliar words with the assumption of how it’s read
Like first time seeing 手当 in the text… and my brain goes like “てとう”
I type that into jisho, (alternatively, sometimes I google lense it, and copy paste into jisho)
And then jisho gives me a correct reading of 手当 (てあて ). And there I decide if I should add it to my anki deck or not.
I wonder if it depends on if you subvocalize/read aloud in your head at all? I wouldn’t even notice if I knew the word and not the reading, because I don’t subvocalize/read aloud in my head. It’s just not how I read, in any language.
But also, enjoy the book! There are infinite more pieces of media in any format to enjoy in the future with a different learning technique.
Maybe you should read the LNs 2 times. On your first read, you can keep on doing what you described in this post. Then you read the book again, now with the intent of studying every word/kanji/grammar down to the detail, even if it takes days or weeks.
Imo you should study any language properly from the get go because bad habits can snowball. Do it on your pace, but do it NOW rather than LATER.
For instance, english is my 2nd/3rd, language alongside japanese (fluent in english, N3/N2 in japanese), and I know tons of people here in my country that don’t pay attention to correct pronunciation. The end result is a weird type of fluency in which the person can read or listen to most things in english, but struggle hard to speak. Like, even some very basic words are pronounced wrong. I even struggled with this myself over the years and it’s taking me quite a while to course correct, having to re-check the pronunciation of many words and verbs every other day. Even then, it’s hard since I already built upon a shaky structure.
TL;DR: It’s easier to do things correctly now to avoid problems in the future.
edit: typo
In the long term? Absolutely.
To give an pseudo-equivalent in English: you know some words like lead/lead, minute/minute… they have different pronunciations depending on context. Not only that, but they can mean wildly different things. Knowing the correct reading in Japanese is the same thing- the meanings are often wildly different.
I have nothing but a gut feeling to back this up, so just take it with a grain of salt: Keep doing what you’re doing, but try to mark down the words you are skipping or understanding-but-not-pronouncing. It doesn’t have to be every one, but if it’s coming up 3 or more times, try to make note of it.
Like, I do the same in my native English. There’s words I can understand when written but that I don’t know with confidence how to pronounce. Obviously this issue isn’t on the same scale as Japanese, but I’m just trying to broadly illustrate an idea. My mispronouncing “epitome” in my head until I was, like, 20, didn’t impact my overall ability to read/speak English.
So, I don’t think there will be long term impacts. *Especially* if you start making even a small effort to review the mystery words after a reading session.
If you don’t know the reading you will be very limited.
No listening
No speaking
not even electronic writing
So yeah, you probably want to learn it.
I mean no don’t avoid reading because of it. But I’d try to fill in the readings over time.
It’s good to consume native materials even if you don’t know everything. Don’t worry about making all of your study time be perfectly efficient. It’s better to immerse and practice at all than to accidentally create a barrier between yourself and practice because you want it to be perfect. But make sure to have some sort of plan to fill this gap in eventually. I mean, you’ll want to know the readings eventually, right?