Duolingo is ok for getting some introductory exposure to a language you haven't studied before. The game format may help motivate you when you're starting out. But you won't get to a very high level of language ability by playing a few games on Duolingo.

There is no substitute for diligent study. Get a solid foundation on basic grammar. Then, memorize vocabulary. Review what you've already learned. Repeat. Repeat again. And again. At some point, start incorporating reading into a daily routine. Find words you don't know. Read more. Repeat.

These days, there are great resources on YouTube and Netflix to get listening practice. Start doing that - maybe with subtitles at first. Play on a slow speed if you need to.

iTalki is a great resource for conversation practice.

Through all of it, you have to keep practicing. And keep reviewing. And keep repeating.

Duolingo is cute for its games, but no substitute for real language learning...

Maybe most important is to be passionate. If you are passionate, it's a lot of fun to keep learning every day. Practicing every day is important, too.

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be immersed

Yeah, well, I am now doing Duolingo for over a year, every day. I have my own way to get something like spaced repetition out of the courses: there are three bubbles on level 1, then four oun level 2, then five on level 3 etc. I am writing down every question (the japanese part, question or answer) to get familiar with kana and kanji.

Additionally, I use an app to practice only kanji (it's called »write japanese«), and I have a JLPT N5 app with some more exercises (but somewhat sloppy content). These I use a bit more irregularly, though.

Finally, I try to decipher some real texts, such as japanese twitter accounts that I'm following, an old »Go Club« magazine, youtube videos etc. There is definitely some progress.

I was worried that duolingo did something fundamentally wrong. I'll check that reddit link for more info. Thanks!

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

It is my experience that almost all go players who show an interest in Japanese are doing so because they want to read Japanese go texts, and that's all. Or, as a variation, primarily to read Japanese go texts and, if that goes well, learn a bit more general Japanese later on, perhaps including how to speak.

For that kind of student, I think most of the advice above is misguided and/or makes study far too slow, burdensome and inaccurate. I am not familiar with Duolinguo or any other such package, but the descriptions above tell me enough. As to spaced repetition, the latest language cult, it's quite unnecessary if you just read go texts.

And you don't need grammar in the traditional sense. Imagine a note in English from you mother: "Dinner in oven. Back soon." You understand that without most of the usual grammatical apparatus, or even a verb. In a context-rich go text, a go player wanting just to read can minimise grammar in the same way.

The best advice for such people is to buy a Nelson, preferably the original version, not the Haig re-hash. Memorise the 214 radicals as much as you can. Learn how to look up words. Learn also katakana then hiragana. This whole process will take you about 12 hours. That's nearly all the hard work done.

Then start looking at go texts, but concentrate on the headings and crossheads.

I am aware that the usual reaction to radical advice on L19 is to pooh-pooh it. But if a decent number of people are willing to give this approach a go (pun intended), I'd probably be willing to supply some study material and tips here. You should be able to understand more than a reasonable amount of go technical texts in around 50 hours. Your postilion will be struck by lightning. DeepL may then be able to fill some gaps for you.

If you want to do much more than just read, and learn the general language, I would recommend the Alfonso books.

From my own experience, which goes back several decades, I can only support this assessment.

I had first worked through a German Japanese textbook, and consequently learned hiragana and katakana first.

After that, I had a Japanese Go book (that was either Life-and-Death or Tsume-Go, the details have slipped my mind in the meantime) completely translated for me -- Kanji for Kanji.

After that, I had to take a break from Japanese for several years for professional reasons. After this break, I was very surprised at what knowledge I still had at hand, especially about the most frequently used radicals (i.e. their numbers).

Comments on diagrams remained easy to understand.

More general texts in prose, on the other hand, continued to be far more difficult. However, in my estimation, these are not necessarily needed for technical topics such as Life-and-Death, Tsume-Go, and also Joseki, Fuseki and Yose.

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The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

Yeah, well, I am not that narrowly focused. I am also not giving advice, I just tell what I'm doing, and that it works for me, as I (1) have fun, (2) see progress and (3) see that I'm sticking to it.

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

If only it were that easy for me. I spent around 12 hours over a few weeks just to learn hiragana and katakana, practicing with simple vocabulary. Memorizing the radicals would probably take me an equal amount of time. Maybe 12 hours of intense study is sufficient, but I suspect that 12 hours might be an underestimate for most people, especially those with a job and possibly kids.

So, what technique would you recommend to learn the Kanji radicals? You're the only one I've seen that is against spaced repetition. Thousands of Japanese language learners have found flash cards with spaced repetition to be the best way of learning vocabulary. Those people are working to learn 2000+ kanji, not just radicals and Go terms. But people also find spaced repetition to be helpful in learning the limited number of kana.

And what about the radicals would you suggest memorizing? Just recognition of them, their meaning, and their pronunciation? Or actually writing them with proper stroke order?

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By the way, just to recap my own studies. I'm using flash cards with Go terms/phrases from Just Enough Japanese supplemented with terms that I find in Go World or books, including non-Go terms like 読売新聞 (Yomiuri Shimbun), etc. Then I also review/study the grammar in Just Enough Japanese 3. And then I practice by reading the game commentaries in Go World or other books, looking up terms and grammar as I go. I have the Maeda Tsumego book I read here and there and I've found many hints and solutions to be readable for me.

You are basically saying "learn how to use a dictionary" or what?

I don't want to pooh pooh the suggestion but this is not really the hard work, but I suppose it is a starting point if you want to be able to read a foreign language. Some typical beginner lessons would also be in order, if for nothing else then just to get a basic feeling for how to put all that dictionary wisdom together.

When people talk about grammar for languages it often seems to revolve around some higher concepts but grammar is also just how you put together the simplest sentences and how you parse them back in. This kind of simple grammar is usually a huge weak point of dictionaries. So I'd again suggest that taking a real course (not duolingo) could be helpful for anyone motivated enough to take this dictionary approach.

Read what I wrote: "for such people".



Still sounds like pooh-pooh to me. It is the hard work. Learning to use Japanese dictionaries is a big task. A further point is, once you can look words up you can start reading the texts you want to read - and only those texts are needed. You expect to enjoy them. That's why you want to read them. Enjoyment is not what most people understand as hard work.

To repeat, because you read only what you want to read, you encounter only the words you want to encounter and in the exact proportion that is useful to you. That's why spaced repetition of the Anki type is unnecessary. You can say that the kind of reading I describe is spaced repetition, and it is, in a way. But it's more efficient because you don't waste time on words you don't encounter. Furthermore, you encounter the words in their proper go contexts, so you are learning contexts (and go concepts) as well as words. Which is why "such people" want to read Japanese in the first place.

This is not just an idea in my head. I successfully taught a 49-hour course of this type at Newcastle University's School of Naval Architecture. I also devised such a course for myself to read Korean go books in about 20 hours.



Yes. Which, with the exception of the word "typical", is precisely what I offered ("study materials and tips."

Maybe what we really need is not a Japanese reading course but an English reading course.

Offer now withdrawn.

Another thing I'd add is that, at least for me, if I just put some kanji into an Anki deck, it takes awhile to learn them well. But if I take a pencil and paper, and keep repeating the new characters, I remember them for longer.

I think there's something to the physical sensation of writing the characters that helps me to remember them for longer.

So sometimes I will learn a new character the "old fashioned way" by writing with pencil and paper several times until I've memorized it. Then I can throw the already-learned character into Anki to repeat later.

Typically it also seems better to review newly learned words by reading those words in context. A flashcard can be OK, especially if you have words as parts of sentences, but it's more natural to review by reading.

That being said, it can be hard to keep reading all of the new characters you've learned, so maybe there's a place for the flashcards.

But again, flashcards seem to work best for me when I first memorize the character with pencil and paper prior to entering it into a flashcard app.

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Also, my way of learning may not be efficient, but I get enjoyment from doing it. There is something that makes me feel good about sitting down for an hour, writing new words. I don't know exactly what it is, but I feel happy doing it.

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be immersed

This reminds me of the time when I manually copied out the text of the Go book, with two lines between each. One line for a "word" by "word" translation, the other for a final, fluent, translation.

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The really most difficult Go problem ever: https://igohatsuyoron120.de/index.htm
Igo Hatsuyōron #120 (really solved by KataGo)

Please don't rescind your offer just because of my pooh-poohing. I'd charge that you were not serious about it at all. I mean you did suggest someone's postilion could be struck by lightning as a result, which sounds like the joke is really on them. That they'd have learned some nonsense. So much for my reading comprehension here.

I just think "such people" could be motivated to actually try a regular study of the language, which may or may not have been the intention behind the offer.

this is silly.

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Another thing that isn't being considered is the convenience of having flash cards in your pocket at all times. You can easily go through flash cards any time that you have a few free minutes. And the words aren't so random, it's something you can design yourself, even using statistics similar to what John Tilley did. It's true that you can get Go World, OCR, and a dictionary on your phone, but it's so much more cumbersome than doing the same at a desk on computer that I do not bother.

When it does come time to read Go commentaries with a dictionary at my desk, I have more vocabulary down than I would otherwise. It's not one study technique vs the other. It's both together.

Public Anki flash card decks:
Hiragana + Katakana + Dakuten + Handakuten + Yoon (with audio): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/66384999

Kanji Radical (Primitive): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1044119361

Japanese Core 2000 - Complete 01 - 09 (Generally common Kanji and phrases. 240.58MB. 3989 audio & 1959 images) https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1723306405

Maybe I'll make a new Go term deck for sharing from Sensei's Library along with my own terms. I don't want to upload something with copy-paste from Just Enough Japanese.

Probably at the end of the day, whatever keeps you studying consistently is at least reasonably good. Some methods are more or less efficient, but if you're consistently studying and enjoying it, it's probably a good method (even if it's possibly not the most efficient way).

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be immersed