I JUST HAVE A QUICK QUESTION FOR YOU, KHATZ, OR ANYONE ELSE WILLING TO PROVIDE SOME INSIGHT.

i SIMPLY WANT TO LEARN JAPANESE WITH ONLY JAPANESE. FROM BEGINNING TO END. HOW DO I USE AN SRS WITH ONLY JAPANESE? ALL OF KHATZS SENTENCE PACKS HAVE THEIR ENGLISH EQUIVALENT AND THAT RUBS ME IN THE WRONGEST OF WAYS. I JUST CANNOT BRING MYSELF TO DO IT. WHILE LIVING HERE IN JAPAN, I HAVE PURCHASED A FEW CHILDRENS BOOKS FOR LEARNING THE KANJI AND HIRAGANA AND THEY LOOK TO BE PROMISING! THEY ARE A PART OF A SERIES INTENDED FOR JAPANESE CHILDREN (AGE 5 AND UP) SO I PLAN TO CONTINUE USING THEM AND ORDERING THE NEXT ONES IN THE SERIES.

IN SHORT!

hOW CAN AN SRS FIT INTO ALL OF THIS? SHALL I WAIT A BIT AND THEN SLOWLY BEING INPUTTING JAPANESE QUESTIONS WITH THEIR JAPANESE ANSWERS IN MY SRS? BECAUSE AS KHATZ SAYS, SENTENCES ARE KEY TO NATURALLY PICKING UP GRAMMAR, WHICH I WANT TO DO.

AND LASTLY, HEISIGS BOOK….SO MUCH ENGLISH WITHOUT THE PRONUNCIATION OF THE KANJI? HELP.
MAYBE I WILL JUST STICK TO THE CHILDRENS BOOKS, MOVIES, SHOWS, MUSIC, PODCASTS, AND HOPEFULLY AN SRS?

THANKS TO EVERYONE,
JUSTIN

I’m so-called ‘Emersing’ myself into a Japanese environment and finding it really easy, I’m using the SRS and that’s where my question comes in. I’m using SRS for Kanji of course but when I’m memorizing each of the characters, I don’t hear the ‘Audio’ of it.

Do I need to memorize the character and then find how to say it?
Sorry if I’m sounding like a total idiot but could you help me understand. Maybe I’m not just getting the concept with the SRS, but where does ‘Speaking Japanese’ come. Should I be learning Hirigana/Katakana first? I’ve been told that it is used my younger children to help them further understand the Kanji better?

I’m probably asking a question thats probably been answered but.. could you please help me understand. :/

Could you please answer here or reply it to my email.
Thanks (I really like your guide and the concept of ‘Self-Emersion’, It’s awesome)

- –

Jonathan.

Khatz covers how you learn to pronounce the kanji in his FAQs section. The fourth question down reads:

“Remembering the Kanji Volume 1 (RTK/RTK1) does not cover kanji readings. How will I learn pronunciations of kanji in Japanese?
You learn kanji readings on a sentence-by-sentence basis. When you input a sentence into your SRS, part of the input process will be for you to find out the readings for its kanji. Those readings will be part of the “answer” section on an item in your SRS. Go here to read Heisig himself explain the system.”

In the comments section of the article “10,000 Sentences: How” he answers a similar question with a more detailed answer:

“>how do you manage to memorize the kanji readings and stuff?
1. Learn the reading of each kanji as it used in the sentence. So, rather than learn all the readings of a given kanji, learn the one reading that is being used *in this case*–in the sentence at hand.
2. Add that kanji reading to the “answer” section of the SRS.
Note:
(i) A sentence has a kind of rhythm to it that will actually make the reading quite easy to remember, generally speaking. Certainly, it will be easier to remember than an isolated kanji reading.
(ii) Also, be sure to use SHORT sentences to begin with, don’t overwhelm yourself. Something like 「テレビを見る。」 or 「夕食の支度をする。」 or 「慌てて登校する。」　is a good length.
(iii) Use sentences that have multiple parts of speech. What I mean is, you want nouns, verbs and adverbs/adjectives all in there.”

So, to sum up:

1. Don’t worry about the readings when you are still learning the kanji.
2. After you’ve learned the kanji, then you learn the kana (hiragana+katakana). These are your pronunciation guide.
3. When you are ready to start picking out sentences from your immersion environment (listening, books, etc.), you will naturally and gradually learn the readings of kanji one by one in the context of individual sentences you enter into your SRS (start really simple!). At this point, dictionaries with sentences, beginner books and books with furigana (tiny hiragana printed over or beside kanji) are your best friend. (Some manga–especially those written for Japanese children–put furigana on all the kanji.)

Here is an example of how to learn pronunciation of kanji in the context of a sentence when you enter it into an SRS:

1) Put the sentence with kanji in the question of your SRS: 行こうよ！
2) Using hiragana, indicate the pronunciation of the kanji in the answer: いこうよ！ (or 行こう＝いこう, etc.）

The fact that each kanji has multiple readings can sound intimidating when you think of it all at once, but it’s easy when you take it sentence by sentence. Like Khatz says, you just get used to it. Kind of like how English speakers get used to how “ough” in words like “dough” is pronounced like “ow” in “snow”, but the “ough” in “cough” sound like “off”, and the “ough” in “rough” sounds like the “uff” in “cuff”. When you’re still learning the alphabet, if you worry about all the diffent ways you can pronounce the vowels, you might get a heart attack. You start out with something easy and fun like “The Cat in the Hat” and before you know it you’re sounding out the highly-processed ingredients on your cereal box and asking your mom what “dextrose” and “trisodium phosphate” are. Likewise, when learning Japanese pronunciation sentence by sentence, your knowledge gradually builds and connects until you develop a ’sense’ or ‘feel’ for how a kanji is probably read (even if you’re not sure). It’s a process that you go through a step at a time.

Ive got a question that someone might be able to help me with. Im plugging in sentences into Anki that contain the vocab that I need for JLPT level 1 working from a textbook. So far I have added 500 sentences and I am still enjoying it. I also downloading the premade Hesig deck and am working on that.

My problem is that I seem to be spending too much time on this each day. In particular the the adding and revision of sentences. In the earlier stages of my study with Anki I noticed I had a higher memory retention rate and a higher rate of answering correct the first time. And Im thinking that is because I would have to review the sentences that I entered the day after. This has the benefit of still being fresh in your memory when you review it but also retaining a better sense of the nuance of a particular word/sentence as you have looked through lots of examples.

Presently there is a 4-5 day space between the time that I enter a new sentence to the time that I first review it and I think this is bringing my review time up. I have anki set to the standard mode over reviewing sentences and learning 20 new ones per day. I guess I have been adding more than 20 per day so now there is this big space between when I add the sentences and when I first review them.

My question: Do you guys make sure that the amount you add each day is equal to the amount of new sentences that you need to study each day (in order to make sure that you can learn the new sentence the day after you entered it)? i.e. add 20 learn 20 new ones. If so do you think this has saved time?

Sorry for the long post!

thanks

http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/node/128

It’s a flashcard pack for the entire Remembering the Kanji Part 1 book.

頑張ってね！

I don’t know what to type, I thought in this program there was all the cards and kanji and sentence I needed… but there’s nothing.. how I can add all these things?

I don’t know where to find it…
Thank you so much I hope you can help me