So I added core 2000 to my anki decks. And finished part 1 already.
I didn't want to deal with the sentences yet so I just clicked easy on. They will quickly be pushed forward a lot while I review the words.
I guess I will review for a few weeks before I start on part 2.
Every part contains 200 words and 200 sentences which includes those words.
I don't know if it's a smart idea to do both the kanji and the core 2000 at the same.
I'm done with 25% of the kanji deck.
It took me 24 days to get to 550, which averages at 22,9 new kanji per day.
I think this amount is quite doable and it makes sure I will be finished within 3 months.
I actually feel like a could add more new cards per but I don't want the review count get to high. It stays below 150 now which takes me about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile I'm still reviewing my kana. I'm also doing the lingodeer course and I feel like this combination is working quite well.
I tried different methods to learn the kana, some of them didn't work well and others did.
There are more options out there of course. But I will keep this to the things I tried.
Let's list them in the order that I tried them.
So the first one is the link that I still have on the sidebar. It's the site I shortly used 5 years ago before I gave up. This already shows this didn't work for me. I will remove the link soon as I don't think it's worth looking at.
The first thing I tried since my new start was duolingo. As I said in my last post I was a bit disappointed in the Japanese course after my great experience with duolingo for Italian.
I think I will write a post later on duolingo as I don't want to dismiss it as a learning tool yet. But the reason why It didn't work to learn my kana, it trows grammar, kana, vocabulary and kanji right at you from the beginning. That was way too overwhelming for me as a beginner.
Next up was memrise, it's official Japanese course had the same issue. A bit less extreme though.
It was still too frustrating so I checked the unofficial courses and found a course (split up in 4 parts) basic hiragana/katakana. This worked quite well but for some reason I still didn't like it.
This was the moment I started questioning if I could really learn it and gave it a break.
I decided I really want to learn Japanese so I continued looking. By this time duolingo brought out its other app called tinycards. It's basically just a flash card system but I like the design and I think the little smiley faces are very rewarding.
It has two separate sets for hiragana and katakana.
I started with hiragana which has a total of 66 cards (the basic, a few combinations and a few practise words)
Then the katakana which has 46 cards (just the basic). This worked well for me but it didn't have the modified kana.
I heard about anki so I gave that a try. I downloaded a kana deck with a total of 452 cards. It was a mix of hiragana and katakana which caused a bit of confusion. But with sticking with it I was trough it fairly quickly.
Almost all cards from that deck are 'mature' by now and it gives me just a few cards to review per day.
Although I knew the kana fairly well by the time I finished the anki deck I wanted some practice to not confuse the hiragana and katakana.
I found a unofficial deck in tinycards which was a match up of the hiragana and katakana. This got my memory pretty solid.
I continued to look for ways to learn Japanese and found jalupnext. I found it because of the kanji but I checked out its kana course as well.
I think it's way it teaches kanji is quite interesting but the kana course was just confusing me. It's also a paid course so my verdict is not worth it.
I did just the free trial of the kana and kanji. I won't see anything about the quality of the other courses like jalup beginner but I must say it's quite expensive, so I rather check our free courses.
And last but not least.
My new favourite app : lingodeer. I quickly went trough the kana section and if I could do my kana learning over I would choose this.
I will write more about the app later as I'm currently working trough the lessons.
Stay tuned
I restarted my Japanese learning with a lot more confidence and ways to learn.
The options are pretty endless with all the new apps and content on the Internet.
I also have a friend who is studying Japanese in Japan.
My current approach is not very structured yet but I learned a lot more already and I believe my current approach works a lot better and faster.
My interest to learning again sparked this summer when Duolingo brought out its Japanese course.
I had been using it for a few months to learn some Italian for my summer holiday. The app worked amazingly well for me and I think it's a great app for European languages.
Anyway I was very excited when they brought out Japanese but I quickly found out that the way of learning didn't work as well for me as for Italian.
So I gave learning a break again, but after a month or so I felt really determined to learn Japanese so I started looking for other places to start.
After a bit of trial and error I decided I needed to focus on learning kana to have a decent chance.
It felt like a massive and almost impossible task before I started but it wasn't so bad in the end.
It took me about a week I think to feel confident about my hiragana and a bit longer for the katakana.
I'm a month further now and it really starts to settle down.
One of my biggest mistakes in the past is that I tried to learn Japanese with just romaji. So I will go over my old content again but with kana this time.
I also started learning kanji. I have a 20 day streak now and did 470 kanji so far. I don't properly know them yet of course but I keep on struggling trough the 2200 in my anki deck.
More on that later, stay tuned.
