There is a new FAQ page up. Feel free to give it a look, it might save you having to send an email and wait for a reply. Of course, if your specific question is not answered, feel free to ask! When this site first started last year, I was getting these questions for the first time, so I can’t say they were “frequent”. Now, thanks to people reading and asking, I can!
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If you would like to support the continuing production of AJATT content, please consider making a monthly donation through Patreon.
Right there ↑ . Go on. Click on it. Patrons get goodies like early access to content (days, weeks, months and even YEARS before everyone else), mutlimedia stuff and other goodies!
Hello! I clicked on a link to this site through rainier’s tumblr (rainier.tumblr.com) and she was so impressed by your thoughts on language that I came back. I’m a linguistics major, and I’ve been taking French for the past three years. I’m around a year 6, if that’s quantifiable. To be honest, I’ve never applied myself to French in a way that was inconvenient to me, and I can see the consequences. I can think to myself in French, but I almost never used to and was convinced I “sucked at languages” which was rather disheartening because I am fascinated by them (hence the major).
I am planning to take Korean in the fall, and I literally stopped listening to English music two weeks ago. I do listen to it occasionally (because it’s hard to replace favourite artists, definitely) but when I turn on music, I reference my ever-growing kpop playlist. To some extent, it’s providing an immersion environment that I unconsciously absorb as I’m on the computer.
I really love your commentary on learning languages, and I want to learn Korean well as I am Korean by heritage, and would deeply appreciate being able to speak to my grandparents. I’m pretty sure I’m going to force my parents to talk to me in Korean this summer.
So thank you for your site, despite the fact that it’s for Japanese. You’re hitting all the right nails everywhere and I will continue reading what I can. Do you know of any Korean sites that are similar to yours? Over the years, perhaps you’ve heard of Korean sites with similar resources or methods.
Once again, thank you!
– Pauline
Hello. I first would like to say that I truly enjoy the information and encouragement given on this site. I’ve been an off and on learner of Japanese for quite some years, but have recently considered using the AJATT method. Ultimately, I’d like to become fluent in Japanese first, then Chinese. Which brings me to my questions: Do I have to use both versions of Heisig’s books, RTK and RTH? Or is there one book that I can use to remember the chinese characters that will benefit me for understanding both languages? (since I would just be learning the meanings here, and not the readings…) I apologize if I’m repeating a question that has been posted before. If so, please just direct me to that post. 何時もありがとう。
Hello. I started taking Japanese at my university this year (I know you’re not fond of classes, but I’d like to major in the subject). We use the Genki books in class, and I must say that at the end of a year I still felt like very much of a beginner. This is natural, of course. One year is a short amount of time, right? But then I came across your website. And I started to feel as if I’d almost wasted a whole year relying on classes. I’d always figured that I could become fluent by putting in maximum effort in class, but after reading your posts I started to wonder if I was really putting in my best effort to learn Japanese. So about a month ago I started SRS’ing with Hesig’s book. I’m trying to finish off the kanji in two more months, after which I plan on going on to sentences and the immersion environment. I do have one question about the SRS though. Since I’m trying to do RTK in about 3 months, I’ve set “New Cards” to about 30 a day. Now it’s really starting to catch up with me. I find that my max is about 30 new and 100 reviews (I know you mentioned a similar number somewhere in your posts). Rather than cut back on the number of cards, I’m considering breaking up the study sessions into more manageable units of time. I’ve read that this is known as timeboxing. I’m used to taking breaks while studying–usually to check up on facebook and other such addictive media. But I’m guessing that’s not really timeboxing, more just lack of focus. My question is: do you timebox while reviewing? If so, do you have any recommendations on how to split up sessions (e.g. 30 minutes of study, 30 minutes of something else, 30 minutes of study, etc). Maybe it’s just something that I need to try to see what works, but if you have any thoughts on the subject they would be much appreciated. I’m sure I’ll have a few more questions in the future once I graduate from Heisig (exciting, I know). For now, let me just say that I consider your website to be my most valuable resource for learning Japanese. I don’t know where I’d be right now without it (probably stuck studying Genki dialogues and watching Japanese media with subs).