Made my way through learning to write 75% of the Joyo Kanji via Rembering the Kanji and Kohii. Love the way this satisfies the number-go-up instinct in my brain, even if going through doing isolated kanji study isn’t the most valuable thing.
I’ve also just generally been kinda absorbed in Anki this weekend. Had a few days where I couldn’t really watch/listen to anything, but I could kill time on my phone w/ flashcards. Caught up on my Core 2k/6k deck (I’m about 1100 cards deep into that).
Also messed around with importing media decks from Jiten and messing with those. It’s like a buffet tho, where my interest is higher than my capacity. Looked at these decks, but ultimately realize I should be focusing more on my core deck if anything, to get all these common words out of the way. The media decks are more compelling when they can be less than 1000 cards for high coverage, but for a season of anime or something, I’m still looking at about 2k card decks for 95% coverage.
Oh hey, my niece bought me that Koohi book just last Christmas. I haven’t gotten into it since I’m already knee deep in MaruMori SRS. But I’ll probably dig into that app and etc for when I start trying to write. Never knew how popular it was. Neat.
I think RTK has definitely been good for me. I was doing Genki stuff and common words in Anki for a while before I tried it. Building up kanji knowledge the RTK way helps with not getting similar characters confused near as often, and not having to copy every time I write one.
You can get a lot of milage out of just reading the first bits about the method if you don’t want to go all in on flashcards.
But getting that strong familiarity with kanji makes it easier to learn new words and such, so earlier is probably better if you want to do it.
MaruMori has it’s own system for learning both the readings and the meanings, but I honestly skip them completely since I just ignore the stories made since they never help me remember them any better. I feel the best way to memorise a hard to figure out word is always a more personal story. For instance I had issues with the word “とにかく”, and the pre-made story wasn’t helpful. So I just imagined a mobster called Tony being dismissive going “anyway…”. And that helped me remember a lot better than the pre-made stories.
MaruMori does have a building of sorts for their words, but you need to sort of get in to them early to help make earlier meanings make sense of later meanings, so I’m far too deep to start them properly now which is another thing I can’t really jell with it fully. I guess it can work, but just not the way I use it.
MaruMori also doesn’t stay to a strict N5 list then N4, they do it based on what they think is more useful, and in terms of usefulness, it’s not always about word frequency, but about how a kanji you just picked up relates in words its used to indicate how it’s used. Like I learned 機体 in Japanese, despite hardly ever using that word in English. MaruMori also builds from base kanji into more and more complicated kanji, using older kanji as references to newer kanji in order to cement meanings of the strokes.
It’s not the best way to pick up Japanese vocabulary, but at the same time I don’t think there could ever be a realistic best scenario. So it works for what it is I guess.
Made my way through learning to write 75% of the Joyo Kanji via Rembering the Kanji and Kohii. Love the way this satisfies the number-go-up instinct in my brain, even if going through doing isolated kanji study isn’t the most valuable thing.
I’ve also just generally been kinda absorbed in Anki this weekend. Had a few days where I couldn’t really watch/listen to anything, but I could kill time on my phone w/ flashcards. Caught up on my Core 2k/6k deck (I’m about 1100 cards deep into that).
Also messed around with importing media decks from Jiten and messing with those. It’s like a buffet tho, where my interest is higher than my capacity. Looked at these decks, but ultimately realize I should be focusing more on my core deck if anything, to get all these common words out of the way. The media decks are more compelling when they can be less than 1000 cards for high coverage, but for a season of anime or something, I’m still looking at about 2k card decks for 95% coverage.
Oh hey, my niece bought me that Koohi book just last Christmas. I haven’t gotten into it since I’m already knee deep in MaruMori SRS. But I’ll probably dig into that app and etc for when I start trying to write. Never knew how popular it was. Neat.
How does MaruMori handle kanji?
I think RTK has definitely been good for me. I was doing Genki stuff and common words in Anki for a while before I tried it. Building up kanji knowledge the RTK way helps with not getting similar characters confused near as often, and not having to copy every time I write one.
You can get a lot of milage out of just reading the first bits about the method if you don’t want to go all in on flashcards.
But getting that strong familiarity with kanji makes it easier to learn new words and such, so earlier is probably better if you want to do it.
MaruMori has it’s own system for learning both the readings and the meanings, but I honestly skip them completely since I just ignore the stories made since they never help me remember them any better. I feel the best way to memorise a hard to figure out word is always a more personal story. For instance I had issues with the word “とにかく”, and the pre-made story wasn’t helpful. So I just imagined a mobster called Tony being dismissive going “anyway…”. And that helped me remember a lot better than the pre-made stories.
MaruMori does have a building of sorts for their words, but you need to sort of get in to them early to help make earlier meanings make sense of later meanings, so I’m far too deep to start them properly now which is another thing I can’t really jell with it fully. I guess it can work, but just not the way I use it.
MaruMori also doesn’t stay to a strict N5 list then N4, they do it based on what they think is more useful, and in terms of usefulness, it’s not always about word frequency, but about how a kanji you just picked up relates in words its used to indicate how it’s used. Like I learned 機体 in Japanese, despite hardly ever using that word in English. MaruMori also builds from base kanji into more and more complicated kanji, using older kanji as references to newer kanji in order to cement meanings of the strokes.
It’s not the best way to pick up Japanese vocabulary, but at the same time I don’t think there could ever be a realistic best scenario. So it works for what it is I guess.