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Once you have the basics down, I like anki or memrise better for picking up vocab. You can do decks based on JLPT levels or do Core 2k/6k. Here's the memrise course series I am using (6000 words broken up into chunks of 500, frequency optimized):

https://www.memrise.com/course/1091685/sgjl-05-core-2k6k-voc... (first of 500 of 6000)

https://www.memrise.com/course/1125407/sgjl-07-core-2k6k-voc... (next 500 words)

https://www.memrise.com/course/1125874/sgjl-10-core-2k6k-voc...

https://www.memrise.com/course/1125879/sgjl-12-core-2k6k-voc...

The "SGJL" series also does grammar but it was easier to just reread tae kim every so often: https://community.memrise.com/t/course-forum-suggested-guide...

Nice resources. I should probably elaborate on my actual study methods:

- Vocabulary study with Anki

- Kanji study (RTK order) with a script that shows vocab on my desktop

- Grammar study via Tae Kim

- Listening practice with regular consumption of Japanese music & television

- Reading/writing practice by engaging in Japanese discussions on Mastodon, IRC, 2channel

- Reading practice with Japanese manga and novels

- Regular meetups with friends (native speakers) IRL

- Translating anime and manga from Japanese to English

Soon I'd like to start blogging in Japanese, too, but that's a lot of work. Can also recommend jisho.org as the best Japanese/English dictionary on the web, and djt's bunpou guide as a deep grammar reference resource.

Can you share how you're showing the vocab on the desktop? That would be a neat study tool.

Try the rikaikun chrome extension?

https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/lib/python3/kotd

Warning: this is a mess

Thanks! What do you use to display this on your desktop?

This binary puts a porcelain command on the Python library:

https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/bin/kotd

This command is run by my status bar, which prints each line sent to stdout on my desktop:

https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/dotfiles/tree/bin/custom_statusb...

Which is powered by sway:

http://swaywm.org

I liked Tagaini when I was learning Japanese a couple years ago.

https://www.tagaini.net/

Nice, I like this. Cross platform too

For me, I think this list is almost optimal. I'll only add a couple of things. I recommend karaoke as a way to learn pronunciation, tones and pacing for language. Songs aren't in any way indicative of actual language, but it gets you listening for rhythm and tones (even though it's different than natural speech). It also allows you to internalise common contractions, especially with fast songs.

Another great way to learn to speak fluently (mechanics, not content) is to shadow other speakers. I recommend going to someplace like http://news.tbs.co.jp/ (news site). Most of the stories are written and they have the video above. The commentator reads exactly the same thing that is written. Create an understanding of the text, watch the video a couple of times, then try to read along with the commentator. News is super hard, but if you google you should be able to find some readings of children's books, etc as well (I eventually found some when I was looking years ago, so I suspect there is more now).

Finally, I don't recommend RTK order for Kanji. I learned to recognise and write the jouyou kanji with RTK. Then I learned vocabulary. Yes, being able to recognise all the kanji was useful... but it's an obtuse way to do it. Worse, by the time I was learning more complex vocabulary I had completely forgotten the kanji (because it takes years and years to learn a language). Unless you have some strategy for keeping your kanji recognition current, I think it's a waste of time. The RTK approach is awesome, but the order is pants. I recommend doing chapter 1 of RTK and then throwing the book away. Then learn vocabulary, memorising the kanji as you go. Make up stories using the radicals and feel free to revise stories as you go. Once you see kanji regularly, you won't need the stories anyway -- so optimising order to make your stories consistent is a wasted effort. My 2 cents. Other people I know did RTK the RTK way and had no problems -- however, I think all of the people I know either did shodo as a hobby or were really active in studying for the kanji kentei. So they had a way of keeping that knowledge current.

>Finally, I don't recommend RTK order for Kanji. [snip]

I learn most new kanji naturally as I study with Anki and look up unknown kanji I encounter in the wild. I only idly pay attention to the RTK-order kanji on my desktop status bar. The purpose is basically to have some vocab stuff to glance at throughout the day, it doesn't really settle in but it keeps my eyes used to reading Japanese.

I can second your suggestion to do the first chapter of RTK, though. I would recommend learning maybe the first 100 RTK kanji just to establish a baseline understanding of how kanji work and familiarize yourself with important radicals.

"Then learn vocabulary, memorising the kanji as you go. Make up stories using the radicals and feel free to revise stories as you go. Once you see kanji regularly, you won't need the stories anyway -- so optimising order to make your stories consistent is a wasted effort. My 2 cents."

Not just your 2 cents...this is the way they teach in Japan, both to natives and at language schools. They have a kanji ordering that is loosely based on frequency, and the kanji are individually presented for reading(s) and (hand)writing, but the actual learning involves memorizing lists of words. In fact, now that I'm not taking exams in Japanese anymore and I care very little about handwriting, it's more efficient to memorize words. I find that new kanji sink in automatically. It's kind of magical, really.

To overgeneralize a bit, the folks I've met who are most dedicated to the RTK method are the ones who have been "studying" Japanese for years and years with little discernable progress. Lots of people get sucked into the kanji memorization black hole because it's gives the impression of steady, incremental progress to a process that is not incremental at all.

For raw vocabulary, my favorite app is CleverDeck (https://cleverdeck.com). I really like their simple UX and well curated content.

...trying to cram their prepackaged square-shaped tools into a variety of circle-shaped holes. All languages are different and each requires a different approach.

The first half of this is dead on. The second half is wrong.

Duolingo's top languages are in the Indo-European family. (Their most learned language is English, next is Spanish.) Their techniques are perfectly adequate for gaining elementary vocabulary a basic grounding in the grammar of those languages. The most common languages in that language family are positional. You really do need to learn to say "black shirt" in English versus "camisa negra" in Spanish. Saying it in the other order is wrong.

Their tools don't work well for other language families. However they do work for lots of languages that people want to learn.

No, languages are indeed different. Providing elementary grammar or vocabulary is next to useless in real conversation with natives. I highly doubt anyone is SOLELY learning English or Spanish through Duolingo.

It's important to look at resources that languages provide- English and Spanish also have immense amounts of media to listen to and read, and obviously a lot of people to talk with. I would say that helps far more than learning simple grammar.

I'm not sure what point you think you are responding to.

My point is that a particular approach tends to work similarly well across many languages within a language family. Duolingo's method is effective at providing elementary grammar and vocabulary within Indo-European languages. I agree that it does not get you a sufficient vocabulary to read, or the verbal reflexes for speech. But it is an effective approach for an absolute beginner.

Everything that I've heard about it says that it is basically useless for various Asian languages. Even for absolute beginners. For example my wife used Duolingo with languages like Polish and Spanish. She was quite happy with the results, even though she outgrew what the app can do. However despite these good experiences it took her less than a week to decide that it was useless for Japanese, and move on to a random flashcard program instead.

As an interesting aside, we have objective evidence of these linguistic differences from machine learning. Google Translate originally worked by a form of statistical pattern matching across large numbers of original and translated documents. This worked brilliantly for Indo-European languages, but did badly for various Asian languages. To my understanding for much the same fundamental reasons that Duolingo does.

Funny that you say the example of ADJ+NOUN and NOUN+ADJ, since in Spanish both are valid! But not for every adjective, and many times the meaning actually changes:

- Different meaning: Es un pobre hombre (pity). Es un hombre pobre (poor).

- Same meaning: Tienes un excelente humor. Tienes un humor excelente. [1]

- Emphasis: ¿Ya os habéis mudado a la nueva casa? ¿Ya os habéis mudado a la casa nueva?

In your specific example, "negra camisa", while it is valid it does sound archaic. However this does not mean that ADJ+NOUN are wrong in Spanish. Not at all.

Edit, more on the topic here: http://adjetivos.org/adjetivos-especificativos-y-explicativo...

[1] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjetivo_especificativo

The Japanese lessons are listed as being in beta.

But yeah, I think they're going to have to do a pretty complete revamp of the Japanese course, and possibly add some more features like handwriting recognition for learning the characters. I did a little of that on my own, putting together a flash card deck that I could type in Japanese in, and used Android's Japanese handwriting input method to enter characters, and found that pretty good for learning kana, but I didn't feel like putting all of the work in for building such decks for the kanji I was learning as well.

I find Duolingo much better for the lessons that are more well developed, and which the software was originally written for, like French. I think that they could eventually get to the point where the Japanese lessons are useful, but now is not that point; they will need both some software updates that make Japanese learning work better, and a revamp of the curriculum.

> - Their approach to learning Kanji (borrowed Chinese characters) is completely ineffective

It's not only useless for learning the kanji, it's useless for learning the rest of the language is well. Long strings of kana are harder to read/parse (even when you don't recognise the kanji, you can parse to something like <noun><grammar><verb><grammar etc. just based on the structure and see where the parts you don't understand are, which is much harder to do with just the kana form), and there are multiple times where after learning the kanji I've thought "Oh, _now_ that thing in Duolingo makes sense.

It's also easier to remember when building off the other kanji, and lets you build understanding. Say you know that 姉 is "older sister" and 妹 is "younger sister" -- you can make a pretty good guess that 姉妹 just means "sisters", even if you can't actually pronounce it. You can't really do that when all Duolingo has taught you is "older sister" is ane/あね and "younger sister" is imouto/いもうと and not the kanji form, and you certainly won't see how they are connected when "sisters" is introduced as shimai/しまい. Learning the kanji steepens the learning curve for sure (which is why I suppose Duolingo introduce very few), but it gives you a _much_ better understanding and I felt more comfortable manipulating the language.