3 ms·
There are no courses that focus on that approach for East Asian languages, but the material exists. Many polyglots are of the opinion that reading-first is the
by garmaine 7y ago
There are no courses that focus on that approach for East Asian languages, but the material exists. Many polyglots are of the opinion that reading-first is the fastest way to mastery. Not to conversational skill, but full mastery. They’ve filled the gaps.
There are good approaches to learning both Chinese and Japanese, but especially Japanese through reading. Start with Heisig to learn the characters, then a source of sentence forms like Kanji.Odessey.2001, then a couple of different textbooks to transition into longer form writing. Then read, read, read for hours a day and never stop.
- mcguire 7y agoIs there a reference list of these resources?
- garmaine 7y agoIsn’t that what you’re replying to?
- HuShifang 7y agoBeyond the books mentioned elsewhere in this thread, for Japanese, I think the Japan Times published books tend to be good, e.g. Seiichi Makino's grammar dictionaries. It's more app- and website-oriented, but the Tofugu website has quasi-monthly roundups of new Japanese learning tools. I feel like Chinese - for a variety of reasons - doesn't have the same high level of pedagogical curation. But the Fuller book is good for learning classical, and Pleco is a great platform for dictionaries, flashcards, etc -- some paid, some free.
- tasogare 7y ago> Start with Heisig Isn't this book skipping the most important part of learning kanji, ie their readings? If yes, it's a total waste of time.
- garmaine 7y agoThis is all explained very well in e introduction to the book, which IIRC you can read in the online preview. Basically learning the meaning and writing of all characters first, then their pronunciation is faster than learning each character fully, one at a time. Experience bears this out.