Reading One piece in Japanese

[Dark Ariel7]

Hey guys. I finally got my skills to the point where I can read one piece pretty damn well. I still miss some sentences but the message gets

across. Only missing the Kanji. Thank God for Furigana. I feel AWESOME about it. just wanted to share this with people that might be able to appreciate the effort it took to get here. (AKA bragging I guess?)

 

How hard is one piece by the way? Like in terms of JLPT and a full Light Novel?

[Down]

Well, it's supposed to be understandable by children, so that level. JLPT? No real equivalent, maybe N4/N3 but JLPT pre-supposes the knowledge of kanji and it doesn't follow the children learning program. 

Light novels usually have ultra-low level of language (basically lots of dialogs and easy to read at any time, that's the concept) so that's about the same level I suppose (though furigana are probably more scarce). I guess the chuuni ones would throw horrible kanjis at you though.

 

edit: I'm not saying that to lower your achievement though. But don't expect to read all VNs fluently, even with a text hooker, at this point

[Dark Ariel7]

Ha Ha. No discouragement here. I can already read Vn but with a lot less understanding than One Piece. I have Read all of the Routes for all 3 of the Majikoi A series + Agave route. I can read Vns Ok. I though LNs would be much harder than Vns and Manga. I assumed they were full fledged books.

[zoom909]

I can certainly appreciate the work you put into it (since I did basically the same thing)

 

And the LNs I've experimented with don't seem any harder than VNs.  Well, they are both novels, but they're pop-culture novels, which are easier to read, just as in any language, compared with all the other types of books out there.

 

Have you tried reading Japanese web pages yet?

[Nagisa_Fawkes]

Congratulations! I hope to be on your spot someday, although I'm doing kanji right now and leaving the vocabulary for later.

[Dark Ariel7]

Kanji is always a pain. I am only at about 500-1000. Vocab was easy for me though. I have about 5K hours of anime watched. It just got drilled into me. I am starting to need more though.

 

Honestly for Japanese web pages I still cannot do it very well at all. The pure Japanese and high Character content intimidates me. That is why I am nervous to actually try to read a Ln. Up until now I have only read with a visual aid.

[zoom909]

I bought one of those fancy little pocket dictionaries like they use in Japan.  I suppose they're gonna be obsolete due to Android etc, but that's what I use.

If I pick up some random manga and read w/o a dictionary, sure I can get the gist of it.  But it's not very satisfying.  So to me, access to a good dictionary is a must.

 

I have seen LN that are full of furigana, just like shounen/shoujo manga.  Most of them don't seem to, though.

 

For web pages, Rikai-chan for Firefox is a good visual aid.  But be careful not to over-use it or it will impede you eventually.

 

I'm on the second quest now.  I can read VNs and stuff nicely with a visual aid.  But I want to be able to pick up any Japanese book or magazine and read it nicely, with the occasional use of a dictionary.  Right now, I'm still very slow when reading that way.

Edited May 8, 2014 by zoom909

[Dark Ariel7]

I can probably do that with the grammar I have now but definetly not with the vocab and lets not even get into the kanji. another 500 vocab/kanji and I will feel confident about reading most things. i am making that my goal by the time I start college in the Fall.

[Nosebleed]

Nice! I hope one day I can achieve this level, right now i still am struggling way too much with kanji.

[Rose]

Congrats, bro! I'm just starting learning, I'm getting through hiragana right now. How much time did it took for you to get to this level?

[Dark Ariel7]

It has taken me about 3 years but that is a horribly inflated number. I have not worked on my Jp for 2 of those summers none of the springs 2 of the winters. Last time I sat down to study was over 4 months ago. Actual work puts me at about 1 year of work.