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I've been really enjoying it. I was surprised at how quickly I was able to start reading simple manga and subtitles with only a few hundred kanji learned.
You contradict yourself, in the video about RTK you said that 3 months was virtually nothing, and now because you want to sell this deck you say that RTK takes too long. I can understand the boring part, but that is more related to personal preferences, I personally enyojed the creative process of creating stories for RTK, and I don't enjoy at all the process of reading new words without knowing the kanjis. So I personally think that RTK is still the best method out there as you can just take a couple months and get rid of the kanji problem
That's your brain's visual memory taking over. If you train enough with a kanji memorization system that uses mnemonics, your visual memory will just take over after a while, and the mnemonic goes dormant (the steps have basically "spread" and created networks in your brain).
@@DarkStarRules There is an RTK kanji deck that includes the stroke order diagrams that you can use together with graph paper to make beautiful handwritten kanji in the proper stroke order. Specifically I'm referring to the NihongoShark Anki deck, but the diagrams themselves can also be seen on jisho dot org (not sure if typing a link will nuke my comment). 飛 is somewhat unique in that the vertical line is written after the "top feather", but that's really the easiest way to write the character, so that's why the stroke order is the way it is (going left-to-right, then right-to-left, then left-to-right again). Write the character five times a day for a few days, and you'll never forget it. Even 鬱 is simple after a few days of review. Gotta write it out by hand though to really remember (kinesthetic memory).
@@TokyoXtreme That's great but, I'm not so worried about writing characters. Just wanted to point out a fun fact. Though, if I do eventually start to produce Kanji, I'll follow what you wrote :)
Sweet- this is what I have wanted- the quickest way to build my vocabulary so that I can start gleaning input from media input. Right now, my vocabulary is so limited and formal that I have a hard time parsing most things in a way that feels like I gain anything.
I wouldn't say this is in the middle of RTK and brute force. Actually I don't see any relation that is unique to RTK. It's just a more relaxed or passive version of the brute force method. That being said, after having learned kanji the RTK way, I now never analyze the kanji via their stories, and probably cannot remember 90% of the stories I used. I feel like the passive brute force method might be better because looking back I sunk time into stories that became redundant and eventually started remembering kanji naturally/passively. Then again I did have all the benefits from RTK stored in my brain, so it might have not been as efficient without that RTK experience... I also think learning the radicals (the RTK way) would benefit as a primer because before that, I just saw kanji as unstructured random lines. After learning the radicals, I had comprehensible chunks that helped my brain learn patterns when I was learning kanji both actively and passively.
Been using this deck for about 2 months now and it just doesn’t work for remembering most kanji… big fan matt but quite disappointed with this one :( my brain doesn’t remember the kanji, but because i grade on meaning, it can give me up to 28 days to review again, and i just will not remember the character
I tried this method starting out, I quickly felt that I was cheating myself. I always knew the meaning, but rarely knew the reading. While it did get me to recognise kanji in a sense, I think that it missed a huge beneit on requiring the reading as well. if you memorise the reading, if it's a common one, it will help you read countless other words, often correctly on the first time. It's a bit more brutal at the beginning, but I think I'd just do reading and meaning. To develop "Kanji fluency", I felt it was better to just learn the radicals so things stopped looking like scribbles as people often say. Less painful than RTK, still able to make mnemonics if you have to, can learn some indications for reading, and teaches you stoke order critical for looking up in a dictionary on a phone.
I'll say that immersion is still really important while using the deck as with any learning tool. The deck exists as a way to Prime your brain to start to be and to recognize words and Kanji in the wild. Seeing the words used in real material and in context does a lot to help build the link between reading, visual recognition, and the meaning. Just looking at a word on an Anki card just can't do all of that by itself. For example, I had a lot of trouble remembering the reading for 絶対 (ぜったい, absolutely) when studying the card for the first time. It was actually from watching a Japanese TV show about skateboarding that I kept seeing the phrase "絶対無理" said by the people in the show and in the subtitles. Something about that experience created a mental link in a way that allowed me recall the reading and meaning without issue when I see the kanji now. The same process happened with hundreds of other kanji in different ways. I just had to keep going and trust that I would eventually improve my recall even if I had forgotten 100 times before. Some mental connections just need more time to create than others. People can debate the effectiveness of specific methods or tools all day, but if we never use the words in real life, all that study is for nothing. All that matters is finding something that makes sense to you and can be done consistently.
My personal experience is that indeed something like wanikani feels really "slow", but trying to recognize/memorize kanji "from nothing" felt bit counterproductive as well. By leaning straight from kanji words I would end up confusing a lot of kanji for similar ones. Sure in context this is not a "huge problem", because most of the time only one of the meanings "fits" the context, and you'll just know by process of elimination. But on the other hand, it can cause you to "brutally" misinterpret what you're reading in the case where it's "ambiguous" or in cases where you don't even realize there's a "second meaning". So if I were to create a method which would fit me perfectly, it would involve indeed to memorize mnemonics for "parts of kanji", but instead of learning a bunch of "obscure/uncommon" works first (just because the kanji has less strokes, or is taught early in Japanese school), I would indeed focus on the most common/useful first (but I would learn mnemonics for their "parts" first). Of course learning mnemonics takes quite a bit of time at first, but you "recoup" a good part of that time, because you end up "failing less" when learning/reviewing words later on. Memorizing the "reading" of a Kanji, from the Kanji alone (i.e. outside of context) I think it's a not a very productive exercise. Memorizing meaning from a kanji "alone", especially in cases where you're confusing with similar kanji, I think *can* be a productive exercise. Anyways, I would love to see research done in the matter, since it's extremely interesting.
I don't know Japanese but maybe because your learning the kanji "like a face" your able to notice the smaller details/strokes of the kanji. And because your learning such a wide variety of kanji. then maybe the ones that look similar to each other will still have differences that you will be able to recognize. especially if this is where your starting from. because if you don't know the "parts of kanji" and this is all your brain has to go on. maybe this would be quicker and more like how a child learns the language. if you see this matt. tell me what you think!
Feel like you could add readings to RTK/RRTK. I’ve found that extremely helpful. You basically just focus on the meaning and only pass the card if you recall the meaning, as you say with this method.
I think I did this method to begin with. I just went through the Fluent Forever 625 stuff and learned all the kanji through the words they're associated with, never actually studied any individual kanji, worked pretty well for me :)
1. Do you have good evidence that this approach to reaching "kanji (recognition) fluency" is effective/efficient in practice, or is it more theoretical at this point? Outside of a handful of the more basic/unique characters, I've felt like the systematic, component approach has been quite necessary for me personally (using RSH in my case) to build a base that I can use for points of reference/comparison, so I'm wary of something that purports to be a shortcut. 2. It might be ok to skip conscious consideration of the components as far as recognition is concerned, but they become rather important if one of your end goals is to write, or you want to be able to identify the radical (for any reason), or you want to use certain non-phonetic input methods (possibly more relevant for Chinese), or you want to be able to identify components as hints for the meanings/phonetics of new characters, or if you want to name certain characters when speaking (e.g. to differentiate homophones), etc. If that's the case would there really be a benefit to delaying it until later vs just starting with RRTK? I guess it might depend a lot on the individual. 3. This doesn't apply to mobile, but hovering with the mouse doesn't feel like the ideal workflow/UX when revising. I just display the reading on the answer side of the card, while doing what you said (attempting the reading but only grading the meaning) - it keeps the flow simple. Is there really that much of a reinforcement advantage in having them separated to justify the hover thing? You probably at least want the reading to be toggleable with a keyboard shortcut (like a hint with the "Hint Hotkeys" addon), assuming it's not already.
Personally as a person that did the lazy kanji back in the day. It doesn’t feel like learning the components has helped a lot with my ability to acquire them. But it does feel like being consciously aware of the components has been helpful in seeing them as meaningful writing as opposed to blobs of ink.
So i understand there is a feedback loop to getting the meaning correct or not. And having the furigana hidden allows a feedback loop just as having the meaning hidden (on back of card) creates a feedback loop. But on v3 of the JP1k deck which im using, as soon as the card appears there is audio of the reading of kanji which eliminates the feedback loop of recalling reading. I tried going to settings for deck and turning off the automatic audio but it didnt work. So my solution is to turn my volume down.
Okay, quick question I've been thinking about a lot lately. My method until now was to make these sorts of cards, but in two ways. So i practiced writing them out by hand. Will the approach with one sided cards make me able to write kanji as well or no?
Is that really all that different from taking whatever vocab deck we already have (Front: Vocab with kanji, Back: furigana + english translation), guessing pronunciation and meaning, then checking the back for feedback?
In Matts Remembering the Kanji video he says that you can learn 2k kanji in 3 months if you follow his method. But is his method posted anywhere? I’m just curious what pace to go at.
Yeah, this is kinda frustrating for me. Matt has changed is opinions on the best way to learn Japanese but I feel like there isn't nearly as much to work off of here as there is in RTK in general.
No, it doesn't teach the component radicals or the mnemonics to help remember them. The goal of this deck is to teach you whole Kanji and their meaning rather than the parts.
Wanted to start RTK since I love creating stories in my mind but stumbled upon this video. My only setback to start, in my case, is the fact you won't learn how to write the kanjis (if I understood how this works correctly), but since RTK won't teach you the pronunciation I think it's equally as good (a little bit going over the better side). Don't know how they'll teach me the onyoumi/kunyoumi though. Still, I'll give it a go. If it doesn't work for me there's always the book to come back too hehe
You actually can learn how to read kanji and thousands of words using the knowledge from RTK, watch this video: ruclips.net/video/pfAjdBj-p8U/видео.html there is no need to give up on knowing how to write kanji, you can have both. People forget that kanji radicals have their phonetic value with them
If someone can help me I'm a little confused >_> Short Version: How am I supposed to know the meaning of the Kanji if I don't know any? Also if I am only learning the kanji and the most common word they are associated with, how does this allow me to read new kanji since I'm not learning the components? Long Version: I have not started learning kanji yet so how am I supposed to learn them from this deck. Would I just associate the kanji with the meaning and keep going over the set until I know them all? I came from the 'Why "Remembering the Kanji" is The Best Way to Learn Kanji' video and he talked about how the book shows you the meaning, the kanji, and how to write them. This seems more effective because you're learning the joyo kanji and how to write them, while this method is 1,000 words and just recognizing them. When you learn the components that make up the kanji it allows you to figure out the meanings of new ones.
If you learn the kanji with remembering the kanji you know the meanings, but not all the words use the meanings of kanji, some use kanji with his sounds, like hiragana o katakana. For me, the best way is learning the first of all Kanji, because its more easy to recognise the kanjis with a lot of similarities between them if you know how to write and read his components, and in this way is easier to remember the words. When you know the kanji, you learn the use of each kanji studing vocabulary with kanji and furigana, because the same character have a lot of uses depending the word and dont have an specific rule. I´m not english speaker, i´m sorry if you don´t understad well ^^´
I'm currently learning via the 'brute force' method as described. For myself, I find only just knowing the meaning of the Kanji too easy because I happen to already know Chinese and can often guess the rough meaning correctly on the first try. I wonder if there's a study to optimise learning Japanese for Chinese speakers lol.
i'm a little confused, how is this better than RRTK? i thought the point was to learn to recognize kanji in their primitive parts, then kanji would become easier to learn later by combining the parts you already knew instead of memorizing a blob of random scribbles. from what i understand, this deck just has newcomers memorize the kanji without mnemoics. isn't that closer to the way they study kanji in language school, by sheer repetition? i'm not trying to belittle your work here, just curious about the logic behind this deck.
Hi there! The premise of Refold is that you need to understand your immersion to start acquiring the language. RRTK teaches Kanji, but it doesn't teach any vocabulary, so it's actually not useful for comprehension. This deck is primarily focused on teaching vocabulary, while also exposing the learner to the relevant kanji for that vocabulary. By teaching vocabulary, the learner can start to comprehend some of their immersion immediately. By the time a learner finishes the deck, they should know the 1000 common words and should be able to recognize/read most of the relevant Kanji for those words. This deck is meant to replace both RRTK and the Tango decks and save learners 1-2 months of study.
Wait I'm confused. So i just bought this deck and I know hirgana and some katakana. Do I need to learn vocab and grammar before learning from this? Because I don't have any knowledge of any words. Will it just teach as I go along or will I have to know some basic words and vocab before then? I am a beginner to learning Japanese so I would appricate it if someone replyed back. Thank you!
Thanks for the question! No, you do not need to know any grammar to use the deck. To mark a card correct, you just need to get the recall right. The example sentences are there to help you ease into the language and give you real world examples of how each word is used with context.
This is exactly how I've been learning vocabulary from the beginning, long before I came across this channel/Matt or I had any idea of how to learn a language! How interesting! What I do is that on the front I write the word in kanji (unless it's not written in kanji) and on the back, I put the word in kana and the meaning and other details of the word (like whether it's a transitive or intransitive verb, an adjective, noun, etc.). I have learned quite a lot of radicals, so I can recognize the differences of various kanji pretty easily (unless it's 木 or 本 on a very small text XD). I don't have that feature of hovering over the card and seeing the furigana nor any audio, but it's been pretty effective so far! I'd definitely buy this deck, but I already have 1963 flashcards, so I think it's a bit too late :p
@@BrokenScreen_desu No problem. I'll try to find something similar on reddit since I'm quite busy to make one myself. I hope I can find one that I like. Thank you for your response
Heisig made the error of making vol. 2, you made the error of making this video. The original video was irrefutable. You had it right the first time, kid. Vanilla RTK is the only way to do it.
You haters use that word so often it's lost all meaning. We invested thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of effort into this deck and we've received hundreds of positive reviews from learners who have used it. If you can't afford $5, then no worries there's plenty of free options available. No need to be a jerk about it. Good luck with your immersion.
I can't exactly see how this "completely" (as per your own words in a pinned comment) contradicts the reasoning you elaborated on your RTK video. All I'm seeing is an awkward attempt at purposely discrediting a sound and well-rounded 1-hour long development on kanji acquisition, in this lazy 15-min verbose, so that you can actually advertise your seemingly half-assed product. Now you're obviously a very intelligent individual, and your advice is still extremely valuable for Japanese learners, but the facets of your persona I happened to be aware of recently make me question your actual intentions and genuine care about your community, to the detriment of their language acquisition process. That is just sad. Or maybe you'll be willing to break the hiatus at some point and explain yourself - until then, I'd recommend not taking people for the fools you seem to think they are. Edit: By the way, these are my own assumptions, and I can't wait to be proven wrong. Still, thank you for your videos.
This is incredible for newcomers. Doesn't have any benefit for me at this point but stuff like this is really neat. Makes me really happy that beginning to learn is getting easier and easier for people due to the work you guys are doing!
@@koyomi4108 yea, I’m still a student with no income(with third world parents that completely reject the thought of spending money online), I have money saved up but I don’t have any way of converting my saved money to virtual currency that I can spend, if I could I would really spend 5 bucks, it’s a steal. Too bad.
@@simplyasloth3848 Yeah and remember that they probably don't even make enough money for even one man's income with the patreon income alone. This is also supposed to just be for early testing, so eventually the deck will be released for free. They're just monetizing the early development of something that will inevitably be free, and at that they don't even earn sufficient income according to their work, I don't think that's unfair at all.
@@simplyasloth3848 5 bucks is a lot for some people (It mostly depends on the country). For example here in Russia all prices that are in dollars are basically 3 times more expensive than for Americans (because Ruble's exchange rate is just a fuckin joke). I personally can afford it, but I'd assume that for some people these prices are EVEN more expensive.
A hundred times no. You were mostly right in the first place. Go through RTK at an early stage, not to the exclusion of everything else, but get going. If you're doing it right, learning with RTK should not be boring, because day by day you recognize more and more of the Kanji that you come across in your other activities.
i feel like it's such a marketing scheme the way he completely changes from "Remembering the kanji is great" to "I completely disagree, go use my product instead".
What interesting is that for over 15 years I've been wanting to study Japanese. The pandemic was finally the incentive to kick my butt into gear and start learning. At first I've been very upset with myself for not have studied it when I first wanted to but there wasn't nearly as many resources to learn as there is now! I can't tell you how I absolutely blessed I feel that all of this is beginning to show up as I begin my journey of studying this language.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is right now” Old proverb that i think is pretty fitting. Congrats on starting! Best of luck!
Lowkey kinda sounds like you're shilling. You had the whole ass video essay detailing your RTK ideology and it sounded pretty solid to me. The only issue is the obsesion with kanji study over taking time to go over atleast some grammar and vocab(no matter how you cut it you gotta grind so atleast have fun right?). Regardless pretty strange how you backpedaled on this to essentially offer a paid access anki deck after rebranding to Refold. Like if you really cared this would be free I do not need to give you 20 dollars for an anki deck. There are bigger ones with pictures and voice acting and custom sentences for FREE on anki.
Tried RTK. If you're dedicated and keep up with it it'll help. For me though I just found it boring and preferred to grind vocabulary sets while studying Kanji in isolation. That's what I think is fun and no matter how you slice it you need to study for hours. In that regard you could look on the learn japanese subreddit and use any of the Core 2k/6k/10k decks. Do note that the bigger the deck the more specific vocabulary will become. I've also seen lots of people recommending Tango N5 and N4 decks. Those might be worth checking out.
It doesn't work (at least for me, but there's at least one another person in the comments). It probably only starts working after you've learned at least 500 or so kanji/hanzi characters properly. RTK (RTH in my case, as I switched to Chinese) works wonderfully. With this deck the Kanji never stuck when I tried to dabble in Japanese, so I had to quit since I couldn't retain the sentences. Also it was 5$ with a Patreon subscription at the time, if it's 20$ now that's a bit too expensive. If you like Matt's advice, though, which is free and generally good and detailed, I think the price is fine if you want to show appreciation for his work. It's just not very easy to come up with ways to monetize his work. PS I've also heard he wasn't sure if kanji fluency is a thing and would work for beginners, so this was a way to test run it; apparently it works for some (many?) people.
I just want to confirm that the deck is for patrons? I don't mind it, I just feel like that information should be in the video or description somewhere so people (me) know upfront before clicking on any links. if it is in the video, I missed it making sure that link wasn't messed up or that I wasn't doing something wrong.
I believe it's only patron-only for now until they've added sentences and also I think Matt wanted to test its intended effect before putting it out there fully. Essentially, the patrons are beta testers for it
Just been directed to this video after a year or so of toying with learning Japanese, from watching tons of RTK guides for learning kanji that seemed like sound logic but way too long a process. Honestly, thank you so much. I will be doing a couple other of methods on the side to supplement this, but I'm happy to finally dive into recognising kanji.
I think combination of JP1K and RRTK will be better. Understanding words and sentences is of course great, But I think the meaning of the words themselves is also important. I just can't imagine how long it would take me to guess the meaning of individual characters if I will remember the words. What do you think? Does it have any sense or i misunderstand point of the JP1K?
I think the point of the JP1K deck is not to teach you the meaning of individual kanji, but rather to create a situation where you're teaching your brain to process kanji correctly (Matt calls this reaching kanji fluency, if I'm understanding him correctly). The English analog (idk if you're a native speaker of English, but this is my experience) is you start reading English by sounding out words, but then your brain learns how to process English text and can instantly associate the group of squiggles with a meaning and sound. For kanji the equivalent of sounding out the kanji is looking at the radicals and matching them to a mnemonic story in your head, and then getting the reading. Kanji fluency on the other hand is the analog of instantly recognizing the group of squiggles. As I understand it, the deck won't teach you what meaning or even necessarily what sound to associate to any individual kanji (though I suspect you'll pick up quite a few readings of the kanji via this practice method), but it'll build that skill of recognizing and distinguishing kanji without "sounding them out." Anyway, this is my interpretation of what Matt said. Idk if this is what he means or not.
I was redirected back to this video from the RTK one. I don't see how this addresses all of the issues raised in the RTK video. For example, what about the issue of efficiently learning all of the radicals that make up Kanji, as well as learning how to write them? I don't see how this method addresses this.
@@ultraman6950 Yeah, that may be it unfortunately. I haven't bought his deck, nor have I gotten RTK. So far, I've been making some of my own mnemonics of kanji in words I find in content. It's honestly pretty frustrating at times, and inefficient, but I haven't been convinced that I should buy either one of these methods yet.
Great video! As someone who has been basically using the brute force method of learning vocabulary by remembering the reading and meaning of a word rather than learning kanji separately, it was pretty interesting to hear your thoughts about things such as should one still hit "good" when they only got the reading or only the meaning right. I suppose its kind of an "art form" as well, as over time, I feel like I've built a subconscious intuition which tells me which one should I hit in the case where I reveal the card too fast for my brain to explicitly "spell out" the reading or meaning of the word, and then through gut feeling knows whether I should hit again or good.
Thanks!!! If you feel you've benefited Refold, it would be awesome if you could link it under the "alternative resources" section of the description of your "Why I'm Quiting Duolingo" video!!
Thanks for such great video. English is not my first tongue, so when you mistakenly said "you see a component", I actually heard "you see an opponent" hahaha it actually makes sense, gotta defeat all those crazy kanji! Lol
Generally, yes, creating your own cards will lead to higher emotional attachment and thus higher mental retention. We advocate for doing that in Stage 2 once you've built a foundation in the language. In Stage 1, you don't know anything yet so it's difficult to find appropriate 1T example sentences, or identify which words to learn. This deck removes all that uncertainty in Stage 1 and prepares you for Stage 2.
this sounds surprisingly close to my own method that i stumbled on through experimentation. if i dont have a word that uses the kanji then I just flat out wont remember it. I still like learning the meanings of the characters though. Partly because i just really enjoy having sentences like "i rode my self-rotate-cart to the gym for some carry-move" but also in general having the meanings of the kanji and the meaning of the word both in my mind kind of serves as a way for them to prop each other up. learning either without the other just feels painful
damn this sounds awesome. too bad i’ve already finished PRTK and i’m at like 3000 morphs now lol. nice work though, i really appreciate your commitment to continuing to refine the method. you’re doing great and important work.
Just FYI, you immediately dove into acronym hell in this video. I know you're speaking primarily to people who are already subscribed to your system and you expect many of them to know the abbreviations already, but you're creating a giant wall folks will just bounce off of if they come to the video organically. Literally all you have to do is say what each of them are -one time- at the beginning of the video, and then the acronym you'll use the rest of the 15 minutes, and the problem would completely go away. 'Remembering the Kanji, from here RTK,' etc.
sounds bad, bascially what i tried to start my learning from with a deck constructed in similar way, but i just found my brain ignoring the kanji because it didn't matter for correctness of answer as I would check the reading anyways, so after a while the card is just gone forever and brain is still empty. It ends up the same as having it always shown
Yeah same, as someone with a good level of vocab and basically no kanji this deck sucks. I don’t recognize the kanji at all then i see the reading and understanding because of the reading and pass it and bye bye see you in 1.2 years lmao. I guess i’ll get RTK
I remember doing RRTK and grinding my teeth on the train to work. I got so furstrated over that danm deck and when you finish you can't read still. This deck sounds way better than the older system, good luck to you all in your Japanese learning.
This deck sounds great, but I have one question about it. How does it teach people to actually write the kanji? Does it teach stroke order, or does that not really even matter? (I'm just now getting into learning kanji and I always heard that stroke order is important, so I was curious.)
That's the same question I have. I honestly don't see how. Honestly, this is disappointing because I don't see a great alternative for the RTK method here. I wish this would be addressed.
I did about 1200 card of RTK I qiuit and after a year I did 700 card out of RRTK and then I quit because college and finales but to be honest the result wasn't good enough to keep me motivated to make me create time to study. But again I won't forget that I gained so much knowledge and love for kanji while doing stories and write them in paper, but I would recommend to do this method because 2k or 3k kanji for someone who don't even know a 700 word is bad because 80% of the kanji you see you won't see it again outside the deck intel you gain enough vocab and grammar that you can read stuff made of these kanjis, but if you are doing this you will build a solid foundation of Japanese so you can read manga and some novels Then you can start doing RTK and instead of the English meaning you will use one of the Japanese reading and the stories will be in Japanese to so you can practice so much japanese while doing the deck instead of only memorize false English meanings and kanjis you won't see soon so probably you will forget them. And don't forget you are in a very good level of Japanese that most kanjis in the deck you will probably see in everyday life while immersing in the language
The time I had dedicated to learn kanji, oh man I could learn English again 🤣 -I am not native speaker as you can see- Not saying that kanji is hard or boring NO kanji is a reall fun and engaging but its need the right technique to do it
I'd say finish Tango N5 and skip this deck. this is an attempt to streamline RTK and not a replacement for sentence decks. learning sentences is way better than just single words because you also reinforce your understanding of all the words in the sentence you already knew.
@@jon7980 This was Matt's recomendation for me as well. I think the intention is in the long term for the JPL1K deck to be filled with example sentences instead of just words, like the N5 deck, it doesn't make much sense to drop the N5 Tango deck when I'm already 70% of the way through, even if I did want to play with the new toy, so to speak
@@jon7980 Yea I thought so, the benifit of learning the new words in a phrase rather than alone is great so yea i will stick with the Tango deck. Appreciate the response tho
Nice! I made my own version of this when I started with RRTK. I basically just added the most common word/ reading (via frequency list) associated with that kanji keyword. I really liked the radical/component aspect in the beginning, really helped me "get" kanji.
I think this method makes sense but I feel like I'm missing a system and the finality of being able to say "I know all the 2136 jouyou kanji." The first 1k words that are covered in the JP1K deck will probably cover only a few hundred of the jouyou kanji, while it's maybe a little over a thousand with JP2K. How do I obtain the rest in a systematic manner? With more JPxK decks that come out in the future? Or should I just start immersing like refold suggests until I notice someday that, by that point, I probably know the jouyou kanji? Am I perhaps overvaluing the significance of reaching the end of the jouyou list?
I feel the same way. I did most of the JP1K deck (admittedly I quit early because it felt inefficient without example sentences), and then I've just been immersing... But it feels like I'm still missing so many common kanji, I wish I started with a more complete kanji memorizing approach. Might do RRTK or something
This deck looks amazing! Personally I'm past the beginner stage but I can only imagine how many Japanese learners this will help out. Keep up the great work!
Two weaknesses of the JP1K deck, from my experience: 1. It felt inefficient going through this deck because there are no example sentences (or pictures or anything) to help the vocab stick in your memory. It's just really hard to get individual vocab words to stick in your memory without context. 2. It's not a complete solution to get all the way to kanji fluency, is it? A year after this deck's release, there is still no JP2K or any higher decks to my knowledge. Is JP1K suppose to be enough to get you to "kanji fluency" by itself? (My understanding is no.)
Hi Paul. Thanks for your candid feedback. 1. We released JP1K v2 in October 2021, which includes example sentences. Learners reported the v2 has been a game-changer for them. 2. This deck is meant to get learners to the sentence mining phase, but other learners share your concerns that 1K isn't enough to do that. We are planning a JP2K (and maybe 3K), but we're working on other languages first. Thanks again!
only issue i'm having is i use the mobile for iOS and i don't think there's any way to "mouse over" the kanji to see the reading before you flip the card, anyone know if there's a way to do this? i should probably post in the refold disc but might aswell ask here as i'm here
this is exactly what i was looking for. currently doing RRTK, but it feels kinda stupid that i'm not learning any japanese. this deck solves that problem. saves me about a month of my life ;)
@@jordeneatscerealstgh7755 I can only speak from my own experience, but the main reason why I decided to do it this way is because two months ago I was really motivated to start learning Japanese. If I had started with RRTK combined with not understanding any of my immersion, I probably would have given up. With that being said here's my review: In the beginning it's quite difficult to get both the kanji reading and the meaning in your head because you are learning two different things with each flash card. After a couple hundred cards this got a lot easier. It has really 'kickstarted' my comprehension. Did I achieve kanji fluency? I had to rewatch the video to know what that means, but yes I think so. Obviously there are many kanji that I don't know but more often than not I tend to recognize the kanji I've learned when I come across them in my immersion. To give an idea, in the first two weeks or so, I was not able to tell apart the kanji for money and the kanji for now (金 and 今 respectively). this isn't and issue now. Can I understand better Japanese? Yes, for sure. I went from understanding literally nothing to being able to follow the story of an anime with Japanese subs. but this didn't come automatically, I also spent a lot of time picking apart the language to understand the structure, which is in my opinion the biggest downside of vocab cards. learning vocab is not the same as learning the language, you still need to figure out how the individual words fit together. hope this helped ;)
@@remismith4012 I’m currently over halfway through with the deck, but I can hardly recall the readings for a lot of kanji. Did you end up just recognizing the words through tons of immersion? And are you able to read manga right now?
@@tongansoulja7378 Guys, To download the deck i just need to suscribe to his patreon and "download" it, like is it a program? Or is it more like a suscription web? I don't really get it
Hey I’m new do I have to join the patron to get the JP1k Deck and also I’m doing Anki on my iPhone is that good or bad and also I’m immersion every and reviewing hiragana and katakana and kanji , just would love To know how too get the deck for my immersion life style practice
This doesn't seem much better than wanikani tbh, I have a bunch of scripts on browser and flaming durtles lets me customize my experience but instead of a deck with only 1k words it has something like 10k. It's already very similar to how I currently use wanikani in any case, I pass isolated kanji till master regardless of being correct and then if I still get them wrong I push them back down the srs.
Is their a tutorial video on how to get started with your deck I've been using quizlet and learning by covering my hand over the hiragana and trying to just read the kanji bit but this is annoying I think what I gather ur refold will simplify this for me and I'm fine with becoming a Patreon but I have no idea what software refold uses or how to use it
this is amazing for newcomers i swear i literally just finished your other mass immersion deck so gutted i didn't have this but this new deck will be great
Great videos man, I appreciate the effort you make for us newbie Japanese learners. Even though I am not studying from flashcards, the method that I used to learn Japanese is the same one to memorize crucial fundamentals of certain sciences books that are considered the center of a particular science , and it is by repeating reading the Genki volume 1-2 for the purpose to absorb and transfer important vocabularies and grammar to my unconscious mind until it becomes normal and natural to me with its familiarity, while completely ignoring the Kanji for later due to its difficulty and time consuming. The grammar for me is important because I do write a lot, and it means every sentence should be in formal form. However, ignoring the Kanji in Genki is the worst idea I had made and it slowed me down dramatically; because if I spent my time to learn the simple 325 Kanji symbols even if without the pronunciation by remembering their drawn strokes (For Volume 1 and 2 combined) from the very beginning while repeating my readings, it would have stuck easier in my brain, and created a shortcut for me to learn not just faster, but also deliberately (as you have mentioned in the video) and more efficiently. Currently I am studying these 325 Kanjis and I will go through the process of repeating the readings again several times. It is obvious that Genki is not enough, so I did purchase three additional books "The Key to Kanji" and "A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar". The first includes around 1000 Kanji symbols (also clearly not enough), while the second consist of three volumes "Basic" "Intermediate" "Advanced" and it offers plenty of grammar sentences and examples. The third book is " Japanese Short Stories for Beginners" to test my Japanese reading once I believe myself that I have became advanced and can read beginner to intermediate (at least) Japanese fluently, later I will buy more stories from intermediate to advanced. I believe that the long path I have chosen to learn the language is perfect enough for generating input before the output process, moreover, I am serious about it. Unfortunately, I am still not used to learning from flashcards, and it is uncomfortable for me. I strongly believe that learning from books is easier if you have the doctrine of "repetitive" habit of highly important materials, because the flow of information, or context, are vertically organized in textbooks. You just need to have, and build a robust raw basics such as; Excellent Kana (with good pronunciation) and Kanji. Keeping in mind that I do not watch TVs, Netflix or Anime (since 5 years). I just love the language and its sounds plus the symbols.
Hello everyone!
I wanted to give you a quick update about our decks. We recently made a change from a Patreon model to a pay-per-service model. This means that our decks are now available for purchase on our website rather than on Patreon. We made this change so that you don't need to subscribe to Patreon to purchase the deck and then stay subscribed to receive updates.
When you purchase one of our decks, you will receive any updates made to it directly in your account, forever. Plus, we offer a 30-day trial period for you to try out the deck. If for any reason you're not satisfied, simply email our support team for a refund - no questions asked.
Interested? Check out the complete list of decks we offer at: refold.la/decks
Thanks for your support!
Hey! Are you guys working on the JP2K deck that Matt referenced in this video? Also do you have an analogous deck for Chinese yet?
I've been really enjoying it. I was surprised at how quickly I was able to start reading simple manga and subtitles with only a few hundred kanji learned.
You contradict yourself, in the video about RTK you said that 3 months was virtually nothing, and now because you want to sell this deck you say that RTK takes too long. I can understand the boring part, but that is more related to personal preferences, I personally enyojed the creative process of creating stories for RTK, and I don't enjoy at all the process of reading new words without knowing the kanjis. So I personally think that RTK is still the best method out there as you can just take a couple months and get rid of the kanji problem
This sounds like you thought RTK was the best method but then you changed your mind when you decided to start selling an alternative.
Exactly my thoughts... This doesn't address most of the problems RTK alternatives had as explained in the original video.
@@gaobot yeah I feel like core 2k/6k is almost the same? but a bit harder
Which one will u recommend @@quasa0
Evolution.
11:17 "because you have eye sight" something about the way you said this was so funny to me xD
If you see enough kanji, it’s starts looking familiar for some reason
THIS like after a while you "feel" them like 飛 I could imagine this as not having to do with flying
@@Geo-st4jv I just learnt the Kanji yesterday lol.
Apparently it's known for having a hard stroke order.
That's your brain's visual memory taking over. If you train enough with a kanji memorization system that uses mnemonics, your visual memory will just take over after a while, and the mnemonic goes dormant (the steps have basically "spread" and created networks in your brain).
@@DarkStarRules There is an RTK kanji deck that includes the stroke order diagrams that you can use together with graph paper to make beautiful handwritten kanji in the proper stroke order. Specifically I'm referring to the NihongoShark Anki deck, but the diagrams themselves can also be seen on jisho dot org (not sure if typing a link will nuke my comment). 飛 is somewhat unique in that the vertical line is written after the "top feather", but that's really the easiest way to write the character, so that's why the stroke order is the way it is (going left-to-right, then right-to-left, then left-to-right again). Write the character five times a day for a few days, and you'll never forget it. Even 鬱 is simple after a few days of review. Gotta write it out by hand though to really remember (kinesthetic memory).
@@TokyoXtreme That's great but, I'm not so worried about writing characters. Just wanted to point out a fun fact. Though, if I do eventually start to produce Kanji, I'll follow what you wrote :)
Sweet- this is what I have wanted- the quickest way to build my vocabulary so that I can start gleaning input from media input. Right now, my vocabulary is so limited and formal that I have a hard time parsing most things in a way that feels like I gain anything.
Awesome, I don't need it anymore but it looks good.
I wouldn't say this is in the middle of RTK and brute force. Actually I don't see any relation that is unique to RTK. It's just a more relaxed or passive version of the brute force method.
That being said, after having learned kanji the RTK way, I now never analyze the kanji via their stories, and probably cannot remember 90% of the stories I used.
I feel like the passive brute force method might be better because looking back I sunk time into stories that became redundant and eventually started remembering kanji naturally/passively. Then again I did have all the benefits from RTK stored in my brain, so it might have not been as efficient without that RTK experience...
I also think learning the radicals (the RTK way) would benefit as a primer because before that, I just saw kanji as unstructured random lines. After learning the radicals, I had comprehensible chunks that helped my brain learn patterns when I was learning kanji both actively and passively.
Been using this deck for about 2 months now and it just doesn’t work for remembering most kanji… big fan matt but quite disappointed with this one :( my brain doesn’t remember the kanji, but because i grade on meaning, it can give me up to 28 days to review again, and i just will not remember the character
Didn't work for me either. Better start with some RTK learning first.
Simply show the deck in action!
I tried this method starting out, I quickly felt that I was cheating myself. I always knew the meaning, but rarely knew the reading. While it did get me to recognise kanji in a sense, I think that it missed a huge beneit on requiring the reading as well. if you memorise the reading, if it's a common one, it will help you read countless other words, often correctly on the first time. It's a bit more brutal at the beginning, but I think I'd just do reading and meaning. To develop "Kanji fluency", I felt it was better to just learn the radicals so things stopped looking like scribbles as people often say. Less painful than RTK, still able to make mnemonics if you have to, can learn some indications for reading, and teaches you stoke order critical for looking up in a dictionary on a phone.
I'll say that immersion is still really important while using the deck as with any learning tool. The deck exists as a way to Prime your brain to start to be and to recognize words and Kanji in the wild. Seeing the words used in real material and in context does a lot to help build the link between reading, visual recognition, and the meaning. Just looking at a word on an Anki card just can't do all of that by itself.
For example, I had a lot of trouble remembering the reading for 絶対 (ぜったい, absolutely) when studying the card for the first time. It was actually from watching a Japanese TV show about skateboarding that I kept seeing the phrase "絶対無理" said by the people in the show and in the subtitles. Something about that experience created a mental link in a way that allowed me recall the reading and meaning without issue when I see the kanji now. The same process happened with hundreds of other kanji in different ways. I just had to keep going and trust that I would eventually improve my recall even if I had forgotten 100 times before. Some mental connections just need more time to create than others.
People can debate the effectiveness of specific methods or tools all day, but if we never use the words in real life, all that study is for nothing. All that matters is finding something that makes sense to you and can be done consistently.
My personal experience is that indeed something like wanikani feels really "slow", but trying to recognize/memorize kanji "from nothing" felt bit counterproductive as well.
By leaning straight from kanji words I would end up confusing a lot of kanji for similar ones. Sure in context this is not a "huge problem", because most of the time only one of the meanings "fits" the context, and you'll just know by process of elimination. But on the other hand, it can cause you to "brutally" misinterpret what you're reading in the case where it's "ambiguous" or in cases where you don't even realize there's a "second meaning".
So if I were to create a method which would fit me perfectly, it would involve indeed to memorize mnemonics for "parts of kanji", but instead of learning a bunch of "obscure/uncommon" works first (just because the kanji has less strokes, or is taught early in Japanese school), I would indeed focus on the most common/useful first (but I would learn mnemonics for their "parts" first). Of course learning mnemonics takes quite a bit of time at first, but you "recoup" a good part of that time, because you end up "failing less" when learning/reviewing words later on.
Memorizing the "reading" of a Kanji, from the Kanji alone (i.e. outside of context) I think it's a not a very productive exercise. Memorizing meaning from a kanji "alone", especially in cases where you're confusing with similar kanji, I think *can* be a productive exercise.
Anyways, I would love to see research done in the matter, since it's extremely interesting.
I don't know Japanese but maybe because your learning the kanji "like a face" your able to notice the smaller details/strokes of the kanji.
And because your learning such a wide variety of kanji. then maybe the ones that look similar to each other will still have differences that you will be able to recognize. especially if this is where your starting from. because if you don't know the "parts of kanji" and this is all your brain has to go on. maybe this would be quicker and more like how a child learns the language. if you see this matt. tell me what you think!
Feel like you could add readings to RTK/RRTK. I’ve found that extremely helpful.
You basically just focus on the meaning and only pass the card if you recall the meaning, as you say with this method.
I think I did this method to begin with. I just went through the Fluent Forever 625 stuff and learned all the kanji through the words they're associated with, never actually studied any individual kanji, worked pretty well for me :)
I'm level 26 in Wanikani. It's taken time but I feel pretty good about kanji now.
Wish I knew about this earlier though.
1. Do you have good evidence that this approach to reaching "kanji (recognition) fluency" is effective/efficient in practice, or is it more theoretical at this point? Outside of a handful of the more basic/unique characters, I've felt like the systematic, component approach has been quite necessary for me personally (using RSH in my case) to build a base that I can use for points of reference/comparison, so I'm wary of something that purports to be a shortcut.
2. It might be ok to skip conscious consideration of the components as far as recognition is concerned, but they become rather important if one of your end goals is to write, or you want to be able to identify the radical (for any reason), or you want to use certain non-phonetic input methods (possibly more relevant for Chinese), or you want to be able to identify components as hints for the meanings/phonetics of new characters, or if you want to name certain characters when speaking (e.g. to differentiate homophones), etc. If that's the case would there really be a benefit to delaying it until later vs just starting with RRTK? I guess it might depend a lot on the individual.
3. This doesn't apply to mobile, but hovering with the mouse doesn't feel like the ideal workflow/UX when revising. I just display the reading on the answer side of the card, while doing what you said (attempting the reading but only grading the meaning) - it keeps the flow simple. Is there really that much of a reinforcement advantage in having them separated to justify the hover thing? You probably at least want the reading to be toggleable with a keyboard shortcut (like a hint with the "Hint Hotkeys" addon), assuming it's not already.
Personally as a person that did the lazy kanji back in the day. It doesn’t feel like learning the components has helped a lot with my ability to acquire them.
But it does feel like being consciously aware of the components has been helpful in seeing them as meaningful writing as opposed to blobs of ink.
for your second point, you can just write kanji while going through flash cards
So i understand there is a feedback loop to getting the meaning correct or not. And having the furigana hidden allows a feedback loop just as having the meaning hidden (on back of card) creates a feedback loop.
But on v3 of the JP1k deck which im using, as soon as the card appears there is audio of the reading of kanji which eliminates the feedback loop of recalling reading.
I tried going to settings for deck and turning off the automatic audio but it didnt work. So my solution is to turn my volume down.
look in your deck setting not general settings and find audio and you can turn it on or off
Okay, quick question I've been thinking about a lot lately. My method until now was to make these sorts of cards, but in two ways. So i practiced writing them out by hand. Will the approach with one sided cards make me able to write kanji as well or no?
I find very unlikely to know the meaning of a kanji word without to know how to read it, it happens with single kanjis but words its a different story
Is that really all that different from taking whatever vocab deck we already have (Front: Vocab with kanji, Back: furigana + english translation), guessing pronunciation and meaning, then checking the back for feedback?
Is this to be used with Anki? Or is this an inclusive app and deck?
Soooo I’m 1400 Kanji deep into RTK, do I stop using this method??
no, just keep going. if you've already gotten that far, it sounds like that system is probably working for you just fine.
In Matts Remembering the Kanji video he says that you can learn 2k kanji in 3 months if you follow his method. But is his method posted anywhere? I’m just curious what pace to go at.
Yeah, this is kinda frustrating for me. Matt has changed is opinions on the best way to learn Japanese but I feel like there isn't nearly as much to work off of here as there is in RTK in general.
Does this still teach the basic parts of each kanji? Such as the flower or animal legs?
No, it doesn't teach the component radicals or the mnemonics to help remember them. The goal of this deck is to teach you whole Kanji and their meaning rather than the parts.
I really want something like this for Chinese! Amazing stuff!
Wanted to start RTK since I love creating stories in my mind but stumbled upon this video. My only setback to start, in my case, is the fact you won't learn how to write the kanjis (if I understood how this works correctly), but since RTK won't teach you the pronunciation I think it's equally as good (a little bit going over the better side). Don't know how they'll teach me the onyoumi/kunyoumi though.
Still, I'll give it a go. If it doesn't work for me there's always the book to come back too hehe
You actually can learn how to read kanji and thousands of words using the knowledge from RTK, watch this video: ruclips.net/video/pfAjdBj-p8U/видео.html there is no need to give up on knowing how to write kanji, you can have both. People forget that kanji radicals have their phonetic value with them
If someone can help me I'm a little confused >_>
Short Version: How am I supposed to know the meaning of the Kanji if I don't know any? Also if I am only learning the kanji and the most common word they are associated with, how does this allow me to read new kanji since I'm not learning the components?
Long Version: I have not started learning kanji yet so how am I supposed to learn them from this deck. Would I just associate the kanji with the meaning and keep going over the set until I know them all? I came from the 'Why "Remembering the Kanji" is The Best Way to Learn Kanji' video and he talked about how the book shows you the meaning, the kanji, and how to write them. This seems more effective because you're learning the joyo kanji and how to write them, while this method is 1,000 words and just recognizing them. When you learn the components that make up the kanji it allows you to figure out the meanings of new ones.
If you learn the kanji with remembering the kanji you know the meanings, but not all the words use the meanings of kanji, some use kanji with his sounds, like hiragana o katakana. For me, the best way is learning the first of all Kanji, because its more easy to recognise the kanjis with a lot of similarities between them if you know how to write and read his components, and in this way is easier to remember the words.
When you know the kanji, you learn the use of each kanji studing vocabulary with kanji and furigana, because the same character have a lot of uses depending the word and dont have an specific rule.
I´m not english speaker, i´m sorry if you don´t understad well ^^´
Never been happier so become a patreon of someone
I'm currently learning via the 'brute force' method as described. For myself, I find only just knowing the meaning of the Kanji too easy because I happen to already know Chinese and can often guess the rough meaning correctly on the first try. I wonder if there's a study to optimise learning Japanese for Chinese speakers lol.
i'm a little confused, how is this better than RRTK? i thought the point was to learn to recognize kanji in their primitive parts, then kanji would become easier to learn later by combining the parts you already knew instead of memorizing a blob of random scribbles. from what i understand, this deck just has newcomers memorize the kanji without mnemoics. isn't that closer to the way they study kanji in language school, by sheer repetition? i'm not trying to belittle your work here, just curious about the logic behind this deck.
Hi there! The premise of Refold is that you need to understand your immersion to start acquiring the language. RRTK teaches Kanji, but it doesn't teach any vocabulary, so it's actually not useful for comprehension. This deck is primarily focused on teaching vocabulary, while also exposing the learner to the relevant kanji for that vocabulary. By teaching vocabulary, the learner can start to comprehend some of their immersion immediately. By the time a learner finishes the deck, they should know the 1000 common words and should be able to recognize/read most of the relevant Kanji for those words. This deck is meant to replace both RRTK and the Tango decks and save learners 1-2 months of study.
Wait I'm confused. So i just bought this deck and I know hirgana and some katakana. Do I need to learn vocab and grammar before learning from this? Because I don't have any knowledge of any words. Will it just teach as I go along or will I have to know some basic words and vocab before then? I am a beginner to learning Japanese so I would appricate it if someone replyed back. Thank you!
Thanks for the question! No, you do not need to know any grammar to use the deck. To mark a card correct, you just need to get the recall right.
The example sentences are there to help you ease into the language and give you real world examples of how each word is used with context.
@@Refold Ok thank you so much!!
I'm using RTK. I'll try this deck!
Awesome! Thank you!
This is exactly how I've been learning vocabulary from the beginning, long before I came across this channel/Matt or I had any idea of how to learn a language! How interesting!
What I do is that on the front I write the word in kanji (unless it's not written in kanji) and on the back, I put the word in kana and the meaning and other details of the word (like whether it's a transitive or intransitive verb, an adjective, noun, etc.). I have learned quite a lot of radicals, so I can recognize the differences of various kanji pretty easily (unless it's 木 or 本 on a very small text XD). I don't have that feature of hovering over the card and seeing the furigana nor any audio, but it's been pretty effective so far!
I'd definitely buy this deck, but I already have 1963 flashcards, so I think it's a bit too late :p
Do you have a link for your personal deck? I was also planning on making a deck like that. So I'd like to check it out if that's okay
@@nimet8315 I don't think I have the file anymore bc I now have a different computer and I can't remember if I backed up the file T.T
@@BrokenScreen_desu No problem. I'll try to find something similar on reddit since I'm quite busy to make one myself. I hope I can find one that I like. Thank you for your response
Oh my god this is so GREAT video.
Hi,
Should you still pass the card if you can only recall the meaning of the word/kanji after the looking at the furigana?
In the gaming communities deliberate practice loops "labbing"(: now we're going meta with language learning
Let's go Refold!
JP2K would be so great!
I don't know what you exactly mean when you say that WK teaches you kanji out of context - other methods seem to be the same?
Maybe call it “Refold JP1K” to build brand awareness and help more people because of that brand awareness!
Or maybe Refold 1000 Kanji or Refold J1000
can u also just first learn the 214 radicals, and then kanji becomes easyer, or isnt that a smart way?
Do i have to pay the 4,50$ only once so i can download the deck?
Is this an Anki deck? Wasn't clear based on the video/description.
Yes: refold.la/decks
How do I download the deck onto anki?
I completely missed one info - so this is an Anki deck?
Yes its an anki deck
Ever heard of this app called Mochimochi?
this is revolutionary
Dude, I always hit "good"
$20 D:
😏🏴☠️
Immersion ruined
Kanji = QR code
Heisig made the error of making vol. 2, you made the error of making this video. The original video was irrefutable. You had it right the first time, kid. Vanilla RTK is the only way to do it.
...
$5? Jesus christ. I'll continue using the core 2k/6k deck. What a scam.
You haters use that word so often it's lost all meaning. We invested thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of effort into this deck and we've received hundreds of positive reviews from learners who have used it.
If you can't afford $5, then no worries there's plenty of free options available. No need to be a jerk about it.
Good luck with your immersion.
@@Refold you are definitely right, but this is an extremely unprofessional comment and I don’t think it reflects well on your company
@@konan8353 might have been a bay day lol
They give you a complete Kanji starter pack and you won't even buy them a coffee? Cool it kid.
I can't exactly see how this "completely" (as per your own words in a pinned comment) contradicts the reasoning you elaborated on your RTK video. All I'm seeing is an awkward attempt at purposely discrediting a sound and well-rounded 1-hour long development on kanji acquisition, in this lazy 15-min verbose, so that you can actually advertise your seemingly half-assed product.
Now you're obviously a very intelligent individual, and your advice is still extremely valuable for Japanese learners, but the facets of your persona I happened to be aware of recently make me question your actual intentions and genuine care about your community, to the detriment of their language acquisition process. That is just sad. Or maybe you'll be willing to break the hiatus at some point and explain yourself - until then, I'd recommend not taking people for the fools you seem to think they are.
Edit: By the way, these are my own assumptions, and I can't wait to be proven wrong. Still, thank you for your videos.
This is incredible for newcomers. Doesn't have any benefit for me at this point but stuff like this is really neat. Makes me really happy that beginning to learn is getting easier and easier for people due to the work you guys are doing!
@@koyomi4108 5 bucks brah. They gotta make money somehow
@@koyomi4108 yea, I’m still a student with no income(with third world parents that completely reject the thought of spending money online), I have money saved up but I don’t have any way of converting my saved money to virtual currency that I can spend, if I could I would really spend 5 bucks, it’s a steal. Too bad.
@@simplyasloth3848 Yeah and remember that they probably don't even make enough money for even one man's income with the patreon income alone. This is also supposed to just be for early testing, so eventually the deck will be released for free. They're just monetizing the early development of something that will inevitably be free, and at that they don't even earn sufficient income according to their work, I don't think that's unfair at all.
@@simplyasloth3848
5 bucks is a lot for some people (It mostly depends on the country). For example here in Russia all prices that are in dollars are basically 3 times more expensive than for Americans (because Ruble's exchange rate is just a fuckin joke). I personally can afford it, but I'd assume that for some people these prices are EVEN more expensive.
@@aeolian951 Well, this is a luxury, luckily if someone can't afford 5 dollars then they can get free RTK pdf or decks online.
A hundred times no. You were mostly right in the first place. Go through RTK at an early stage, not to the exclusion of everything else, but get going. If you're doing it right, learning with RTK should not be boring, because day by day you recognize more and more of the Kanji that you come across in your other activities.
lmao he wants more money
i feel like it's such a marketing scheme the way he completely changes from "Remembering the kanji is great" to "I completely disagree, go use my product instead".
What interesting is that for over 15 years I've been wanting to study Japanese. The pandemic was finally the incentive to kick my butt into gear and start learning.
At first I've been very upset with myself for not have studied it when I first wanted to but there wasn't nearly as many resources to learn as there is now! I can't tell you how I absolutely blessed I feel that all of this is beginning to show up as I begin my journey of studying this language.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is right now” Old proverb that i think is pretty fitting. Congrats on starting! Best of luck!
You’re in the right place bud!
Same here
how is it going?
@@HremHudson No, the second best time was 10 years ago (jking)
Lowkey kinda sounds like you're shilling. You had the whole ass video essay detailing your RTK ideology and it sounded pretty solid to me. The only issue is the obsesion with kanji study over taking time to go over atleast some grammar and vocab(no matter how you cut it you gotta grind so atleast have fun right?). Regardless pretty strange how you backpedaled on this to essentially offer a paid access anki deck after rebranding to Refold. Like if you really cared this would be free I do not need to give you 20 dollars for an anki deck. There are bigger ones with pictures and voice acting and custom sentences for FREE on anki.
do you have any suggestions ? i'm looking for a good deck to start with
Tried RTK. If you're dedicated and keep up with it it'll help. For me though I just found it boring and preferred to grind vocabulary sets while studying Kanji in isolation. That's what I think is fun and no matter how you slice it you need to study for hours. In that regard you could look on the learn japanese subreddit and use any of the Core 2k/6k/10k decks. Do note that the bigger the deck the more specific vocabulary will become. I've also seen lots of people recommending Tango N5 and N4 decks. Those might be worth checking out.
It doesn't work (at least for me, but there's at least one another person in the comments). It probably only starts working after you've learned at least 500 or so kanji/hanzi characters properly. RTK (RTH in my case, as I switched to Chinese) works wonderfully. With this deck the Kanji never stuck when I tried to dabble in Japanese, so I had to quit since I couldn't retain the sentences. Also it was 5$ with a Patreon subscription at the time, if it's 20$ now that's a bit too expensive. If you like Matt's advice, though, which is free and generally good and detailed, I think the price is fine if you want to show appreciation for his work. It's just not very easy to come up with ways to monetize his work. PS I've also heard he wasn't sure if kanji fluency is a thing and would work for beginners, so this was a way to test run it; apparently it works for some (many?) people.
I just want to confirm that the deck is for patrons? I don't mind it, I just feel like that information should be in the video or description somewhere so people (me) know upfront before clicking on any links.
if it is in the video, I missed it making sure that link wasn't messed up or that I wasn't doing something wrong.
I believe it's only patron-only for now until they've added sentences and also I think Matt wanted to test its intended effect before putting it out there fully. Essentially, the patrons are beta testers for it
5$.. This better be a damn good deck because I skipped lunch today for this lol
lmao
lol
Rtk >>>>
Just been directed to this video after a year or so of toying with learning Japanese, from watching tons of RTK guides for learning kanji that seemed like sound logic but way too long a process.
Honestly, thank you so much. I will be doing a couple other of methods on the side to supplement this, but I'm happy to finally dive into recognising kanji.
I think combination of JP1K and RRTK will be better. Understanding words and sentences is of course great, But I think the meaning of the words themselves is also important. I just can't imagine how long it would take me to guess the meaning of individual characters if I will remember the words.
What do you think? Does it have any sense or i misunderstand point of the JP1K?
I think the point of the JP1K deck is not to teach you the meaning of individual kanji, but rather to create a situation where you're teaching your brain to process kanji correctly (Matt calls this reaching kanji fluency, if I'm understanding him correctly).
The English analog (idk if you're a native speaker of English, but this is my experience) is you start reading English by sounding out words, but then your brain learns how to process English text and can instantly associate the group of squiggles with a meaning and sound.
For kanji the equivalent of sounding out the kanji is looking at the radicals and matching them to a mnemonic story in your head, and then getting the reading. Kanji fluency on the other hand is the analog of instantly recognizing the group of squiggles.
As I understand it, the deck won't teach you what meaning or even necessarily what sound to associate to any individual kanji (though I suspect you'll pick up quite a few readings of the kanji via this practice method), but it'll build that skill of recognizing and distinguishing kanji without "sounding them out."
Anyway, this is my interpretation of what Matt said. Idk if this is what he means or not.
I was redirected back to this video from the RTK one. I don't see how this addresses all of the issues raised in the RTK video. For example, what about the issue of efficiently learning all of the radicals that make up Kanji, as well as learning how to write them? I don't see how this method addresses this.
It addresses a new income for him.
@@ultraman6950 Yeah, that may be it unfortunately. I haven't bought his deck, nor have I gotten RTK. So far, I've been making some of my own mnemonics of kanji in words I find in content. It's honestly pretty frustrating at times, and inefficient, but I haven't been convinced that I should buy either one of these methods yet.
@@floatint2137 Yeah, perhaps I should. It would certainly make remembering these kanji easier.
Perfect! I just picked my RTK deck up again when this video dropped. This method sounds way more engaging and worth a try. Thanks for all you do.
Great video! As someone who has been basically using the brute force method of learning vocabulary by remembering the reading and meaning of a word rather than learning kanji separately, it was pretty interesting to hear your thoughts about things such as should one still hit "good" when they only got the reading or only the meaning right.
I suppose its kind of an "art form" as well, as over time, I feel like I've built a subconscious intuition which tells me which one should I hit in the case where I reveal the card too fast for my brain to explicitly "spell out" the reading or meaning of the word, and then through gut feeling knows whether I should hit again or good.
Thanks!!! If you feel you've benefited Refold, it would be awesome if you could link it under the "alternative resources" section of the description of your "Why I'm Quiting Duolingo" video!!
@@Refold Done! I think its a really great resource, so I absolutely don't mind shouting it out at all! :)
your channel is super underrated
Hey its you. You bring me back to learning japanese. Thank you.
Thanks for such great video. English is not my first tongue, so when you mistakenly said "you see a component", I actually heard "you see an opponent" hahaha it actually makes sense, gotta defeat all those crazy kanji! Lol
I thought you said to creat your own cards for a better understanding. So why should we download that deck?
Generally, yes, creating your own cards will lead to higher emotional attachment and thus higher mental retention. We advocate for doing that in Stage 2 once you've built a foundation in the language.
In Stage 1, you don't know anything yet so it's difficult to find appropriate 1T example sentences, or identify which words to learn. This deck removes all that uncertainty in Stage 1 and prepares you for Stage 2.
@@Refold on your website you might want to update the “Basic Anki Setup” section because some of the stuff on it is outdated to current anki.
this sounds surprisingly close to my own method that i stumbled on through experimentation. if i dont have a word that uses the kanji then I just flat out wont remember it. I still like learning the meanings of the characters though. Partly because i just really enjoy having sentences like "i rode my self-rotate-cart to the gym for some carry-move" but also in general having the meanings of the kanji and the meaning of the word both in my mind kind of serves as a way for them to prop each other up. learning either without the other just feels painful
"He's an ability-having employee."
damn this sounds awesome. too bad i’ve already finished PRTK and i’m at like 3000 morphs now lol. nice work though, i really appreciate your commitment to continuing to refine the method. you’re doing great and important work.
Just FYI, you immediately dove into acronym hell in this video. I know you're speaking primarily to people who are already subscribed to your system and you expect many of them to know the abbreviations already, but you're creating a giant wall folks will just bounce off of if they come to the video organically. Literally all you have to do is say what each of them are -one time- at the beginning of the video, and then the acronym you'll use the rest of the 15 minutes, and the problem would completely go away. 'Remembering the Kanji, from here RTK,' etc.
I am beyond hyped for this
sounds bad, bascially what i tried to start my learning from with a deck constructed in similar way, but i just found my brain ignoring the kanji because it didn't matter for correctness of answer as I would check the reading anyways, so after a while the card is just gone forever and brain is still empty. It ends up the same as having it always shown
Yeah same, as someone with a good level of vocab and basically no kanji this deck sucks. I don’t recognize the kanji at all then i see the reading and understanding because of the reading and pass it and bye bye see you in 1.2 years lmao. I guess i’ll get RTK
I remember doing RRTK and grinding my teeth on the train to work. I got so furstrated over that danm deck and when you finish you can't read still. This deck sounds way better than the older system, good luck to you all in your Japanese learning.
I mean you can still get the general meaning of the kanji but yeah you still can't read it which was ultimately by problem with working through RTK.
This deck sounds great, but I have one question about it. How does it teach people to actually write the kanji? Does it teach stroke order, or does that not really even matter? (I'm just now getting into learning kanji and I always heard that stroke order is important, so I was curious.)
That's the same question I have. I honestly don't see how. Honestly, this is disappointing because I don't see a great alternative for the RTK method here. I wish this would be addressed.
I did about 1200 card of RTK I qiuit and after a year I did 700 card out of RRTK and then I quit because college and finales but to be honest the result wasn't good enough to keep me motivated to make me create time to study.
But again I won't forget that I gained so much knowledge and love for kanji while doing stories and write them in paper, but I would recommend to do this method because 2k or 3k kanji for someone who don't even know a 700 word is bad because 80% of the kanji you see you won't see it again outside the deck intel you gain enough vocab and grammar that you can read stuff made of these kanjis, but if you are doing this you will build a solid foundation of Japanese so you can read manga and some novels
Then you can start doing RTK and instead of the English meaning you will use one of the Japanese reading
and the stories will be in Japanese to so you can practice so much japanese while doing the deck instead of only memorize false English meanings and kanjis you won't see soon so probably you will forget them.
And don't forget you are in a very good level of Japanese that most kanjis in the deck
you will probably see in everyday life while immersing in the language
The time I had dedicated to learn kanji, oh man I could learn English again 🤣
-I am not native speaker as you can see-
Not saying that kanji is hard or boring NO kanji is a reall fun and engaging but its need the right technique to do it
Great work! Glad to see a newer option that may be able to replace RRTK + Tango N5 as the starting Anki decks.
I have done around 30% of the Tango N5 deck and have finished RRTK, should i switch to this deck or just finish the Tango N5
Same question, but for 65% done? lol
I'd say finish Tango N5 and skip this deck.
this is an attempt to streamline RTK and not a replacement for sentence decks.
learning sentences is way better than just single words because you also reinforce your understanding of all the words in the sentence you already knew.
@@jon7980 This was Matt's recomendation for me as well. I think the intention is in the long term for the JPL1K deck to be filled with example sentences instead of just words, like the N5 deck, it doesn't make much sense to drop the N5 Tango deck when I'm already 70% of the way through, even if I did want to play with the new toy, so to speak
@@jon7980 Yea I thought so, the benifit of learning the new words in a phrase rather than alone is great so yea i will stick with the Tango deck. Appreciate the response tho
This is good man!! Good Job
Nice! I made my own version of this when I started with RRTK. I basically just added the most common word/ reading (via frequency list) associated with that kanji keyword. I really liked the radical/component aspect in the beginning, really helped me "get" kanji.
Hello my i get a copy? Because i can't really afford the jp1k...
Do you have a link for your personal deck? I was also planning on making a deck like that. So I'd like to check it out if that's okay.
This guy doesn't know that I've played basketball for 12 years and I never managed to be good at "getting the ball into the hoop".
I think this method makes sense but I feel like I'm missing a system and the finality of being able to say "I know all the 2136 jouyou kanji."
The first 1k words that are covered in the JP1K deck will probably cover only a few hundred of the jouyou kanji, while it's maybe a little over a thousand with JP2K.
How do I obtain the rest in a systematic manner?
With more JPxK decks that come out in the future?
Or should I just start immersing like refold suggests until I notice someday that, by that point, I probably know the jouyou kanji?
Am I perhaps overvaluing the significance of reaching the end of the jouyou list?
I feel the same way. I did most of the JP1K deck (admittedly I quit early because it felt inefficient without example sentences), and then I've just been immersing... But it feels like I'm still missing so many common kanji, I wish I started with a more complete kanji memorizing approach. Might do RRTK or something
Hey there, can you add a free version of JP1K as trial?
This deck looks amazing! Personally I'm past the beginner stage but I can only imagine how many Japanese learners this will help out. Keep up the great work!
Two weaknesses of the JP1K deck, from my experience:
1. It felt inefficient going through this deck because there are no example sentences (or pictures or anything) to help the vocab stick in your memory. It's just really hard to get individual vocab words to stick in your memory without context.
2. It's not a complete solution to get all the way to kanji fluency, is it? A year after this deck's release, there is still no JP2K or any higher decks to my knowledge. Is JP1K suppose to be enough to get you to "kanji fluency" by itself? (My understanding is no.)
Hi Paul. Thanks for your candid feedback.
1. We released JP1K v2 in October 2021, which includes example sentences. Learners reported the v2 has been a game-changer for them.
2. This deck is meant to get learners to the sentence mining phase, but other learners share your concerns that 1K isn't enough to do that. We are planning a JP2K (and maybe 3K), but we're working on other languages first.
Thanks again!
only issue i'm having is i use the mobile for iOS and i don't think there's any way to "mouse over" the kanji to see the reading before you flip the card, anyone know if there's a way to do this? i should probably post in the refold disc but might aswell ask here as i'm here
Don’t worry, i’m an idiot. The reading does appear if you tap on the text itself on iOS
this is exactly what i was looking for. currently doing RRTK, but it feels kinda stupid that i'm not learning any japanese. this deck solves that problem.
saves me about a month of my life ;)
finished it today ;)
@@remismith4012 opinion? Was it easy/hard? Did you achieve kanji fluency? What about your vocab? Can you understand japanese better?
@@jordeneatscerealstgh7755 I can only speak from my own experience, but the main reason why I decided to do it this way is because two months ago I was really motivated to start learning Japanese. If I had started with RRTK combined with not understanding any of my immersion, I probably would have given up. With that being said here's my review:
In the beginning it's quite difficult to get both the kanji reading and the meaning in your head because you are learning two different things with each flash card. After a couple hundred cards this got a lot easier. It has really 'kickstarted' my comprehension.
Did I achieve kanji fluency? I had to rewatch the video to know what that means, but yes I think so. Obviously there are many kanji that I don't know but more often than not I tend to recognize the kanji I've learned when I come across them in my immersion. To give an idea, in the first two weeks or so, I was not able to tell apart the kanji for money and the kanji for now (金 and 今 respectively). this isn't and issue now.
Can I understand better Japanese? Yes, for sure. I went from understanding literally nothing to being able to follow the story of an anime with Japanese subs. but this didn't come automatically, I also spent a lot of time picking apart the language to understand the structure, which is in my opinion the biggest downside of vocab cards. learning vocab is not the same as learning the language, you still need to figure out how the individual words fit together.
hope this helped ;)
@@remismith4012 I’m currently over halfway through with the deck, but I can hardly recall the readings for a lot of kanji. Did you end up just recognizing the words through tons of immersion? And are you able to read manga right now?
@@tongansoulja7378 Guys, To download the deck i just need to suscribe to his patreon and "download" it, like is it a program? Or is it more like a suscription web? I don't really get it
Hey I’m new do I have to join the patron to get the JP1k Deck and also I’m doing Anki on my iPhone is that good or bad and also I’m immersion every and reviewing hiragana and katakana and kanji , just would love To know how too get the deck for my immersion life style practice
This doesn't seem much better than wanikani tbh, I have a bunch of scripts on browser and flaming durtles lets me customize my experience but instead of a deck with only 1k words it has something like 10k. It's already very similar to how I currently use wanikani in any case, I pass isolated kanji till master regardless of being correct and then if I still get them wrong I push them back down the srs.
Amazing
Refold is great! Do think you'll be getting Mandarin any time soon?
Is their a tutorial video on how to get started with your deck I've been using quizlet and learning by covering my hand over the hiragana and trying to just read the kanji bit but this is annoying I think what I gather ur refold will simplify this for me and I'm fine with becoming a Patreon but I have no idea what software refold uses or how to use it
Update: I've read through your website roadmap was helpful I am looking to download anki rn !
How do you make it so that when you hover your mouse over the kanji it shows the furigana, is it some sort of add on.
this is amazing for newcomers i swear i literally just finished your other mass immersion deck so gutted i didn't have this but this new deck will be great
Great videos man, I appreciate the effort you make for us newbie Japanese learners.
Even though I am not studying from flashcards, the method that I used to learn Japanese is the same one to memorize crucial fundamentals of certain sciences books that are considered the center of a particular science , and it is by repeating reading the Genki volume 1-2 for the purpose to absorb and transfer important vocabularies and grammar to my unconscious mind until it becomes normal and natural to me with its familiarity, while completely ignoring the Kanji for later due to its difficulty and time consuming. The grammar for me is important because I do write a lot, and it means every sentence should be in formal form.
However, ignoring the Kanji in Genki is the worst idea I had made and it slowed me down dramatically; because if I spent my time to learn the simple 325 Kanji symbols even if without the pronunciation by remembering their drawn strokes (For Volume 1 and 2 combined) from the very beginning while repeating my readings, it would have stuck easier in my brain, and created a shortcut for me to learn not just faster, but also deliberately (as you have mentioned in the video) and more efficiently.
Currently I am studying these 325 Kanjis and I will go through the process of repeating the readings again several times. It is obvious that Genki is not enough, so I did purchase three additional books "The Key to Kanji" and "A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar". The first includes around 1000 Kanji symbols (also clearly not enough), while the second consist of three volumes "Basic" "Intermediate" "Advanced" and it offers plenty of grammar sentences and examples. The third book is " Japanese Short Stories for Beginners" to test my Japanese reading once I believe myself that I have became advanced and can read beginner to intermediate (at least) Japanese fluently, later I will buy more stories from intermediate to advanced.
I believe that the long path I have chosen to learn the language is perfect enough for generating input before the output process, moreover, I am serious about it. Unfortunately, I am still not used to learning from flashcards, and it is uncomfortable for me. I strongly believe that learning from books is easier if you have the doctrine of "repetitive" habit of highly important materials, because the flow of information, or context, are vertically organized in textbooks. You just need to have, and build a robust raw basics such as; Excellent Kana (with good pronunciation) and Kanji.
Keeping in mind that I do not watch TVs, Netflix or Anime (since 5 years). I just love the language and its sounds plus the symbols.
Enjoyed reading your story as a newbie, how is it going now?
thank god I felt insecure doing this before I saw this
Well... I'm already at level 47 out of 60 on WK, might as well stick it through at this point. As well as to get my money's worth.
I'm in a similar situation, gonna teach lvl 47 soon but wish I would've found this earlier
What about the writing part?
Yass slay!
is this any better than the Core2k/6k set?