Best way to learn to read Japanese?

[Mr Khan]

vivster said:
Just 2 things are needed since you don't necesssarily want to actually speak japanese.

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/complete

http://ankisrs.net/

I've been learning with these for a few years now and I'm making good progress.

Anki is the cornerstone of vocabulary training.It has a very good flashcard system that practically forces you to regularly learn and remember new vocab. My tip from experience is: Do not just learn one way(japanese-english) and do not just learn with romaji. Also do not learn Kanji seperately. This is absolutely useless and you will thank me for it.

To get a good start I suggest reading the complete guide to Japanese from Tae Kim. This will give you an overview about what Japanese is about and how it is structured. There is no need to read everything at once but it is the best side literature besides the vocab training. There you will get the grammar basics. Although grammer is not as important as you might think. Japanese is structured in a way that makes it easy to understand even with minimal grammar knowledge(especially games). Most Japanese courses are setup to make you actually speak japanese but for your uses this will only be a useless hurdle. You only need to understand, the ability to form sentences by yourself is irrelevant so just concentrate on simple grammar and vocabulary.

The most important cornerstone is Anki. It will hammer you with new vocab every single day. You will be able to adjust the pace but you shouldn't skip days of learning. I recommend the "Monster Japanese Kanji + Vocab + Phrases" pack. It is huge with the most essential vocabulary that you will need. It is also structured in a way that it teaches you same sounding vocabulary or vocab with the same Kanjis together so you can better compare them. Also some nice mnemonocs in there. Sometimes it will teach you weird or abstract words that you think you might never need but just roll with it. I also recommend to delete the Kanji cards manually from the deck as they are useless and will only hinder your progress.

Why just learning the ~2000 Kanjis by themselves is bad you might ask? Because almost all Kanji have multiple meanings and pronunciations. Even if you learn all Kanjis with all their meanings and pronunciations you will not be able to read a single thing because not only are there numerous exceptions but also so many compounds that you will never truly know the exact meaning or reading of the word. So only learn full vocabulary and you will soon see what I mean.

Another thing you have to think of is Japanese proper names which you will most likely encounter. They are a whole different beast altogether because all of them have very specific readings and even more exceptions. Last names are relatively fast to grasp but first names are just bonkers with all their special readings. So if you want to be able to read them you have to learn them seperately. There are some good Anki decks for this as well.

I don't know what else to write anymore but I'm sure I forgot something.

Those are some good-looking resources. Thanks for that. My Japanese is in that weird place where i'm too far up for most textbooks to really help me, but nowhere near being able to say that i speak Japanese at a level that would do any good (e.g. get me a damn job). Some more effective independent tools are needed