>>30967569For me it was like this. That's a lot to read but I hope some of it helps you, anon. Ganbare.
Before vtubers:
- Learned kana really early on plus learned basics of the basics of grammar so I could at least look at sentences and have a very rough understanding if the words are nouns or verbs or adjectives, get a broad picture like "this says do a thing please" or "this asks about something that's a noun" or "these are just noises" (many such cases in eroge).
- Watched a lot of anime with subs for years. You can't leave it completely in the background, you have to listen at least somewhat actively. Just by doing this you get a lot of vocabulary and some basic expressions. Songs also helped immensely, I mean it. I listened to a lot of vocaloid and anisongs and I always looked up the lyrics side by side with translations.
- Tried different textbooks but I can't concentrate for shit. The only things I can comment on are Tae Kim's guide (you don't have to read all of it at once, first 10% are already helpful) and Cure Dolly videos (RIP, can't recommend her enough, her explanations are toddler level and they make everything click, just filter her clickbaity boomer talk about all textbooks lying to you).
- Learned some very basic kanji with wanikani but didn't go far with it.
When I discovered vtubers (and I still do these):
- Installed Yomichan extension and started reading all of their tweets, video descriptions and community posts. This gets you some vocabulary of basic words and expressions related to vtubing really quick.
- Started watching streams right away, didn't rely on clips. Instead of listening passively I at least tried to make out some words and expressions I know and try to guess the meaning. There are also JP clips, a lot of them have JP subs as well.
- When I have time, I look up new words on Jisho. First I had to get used to pronunciation enough to be able to type out the word even if I didn't know it. Now it goes like this: I hear a sentence which mostly makes sense but has an unfamiliar word, I search for this word on Jisho and instantly get all of its primary meanings and writings.
- I can't write for shit, only in kana and I struggle to make a coherent sentence without machine translations. However, I don't agree that you don't need to read either. Being able to read helps IMMENSELY. After some time you can read some tweets without Yomichan because you memorized how certain words look and kana is a nobrainer, or if the chuuba is playing a game or writing something on the screen text can help you to understand even if you didn't get enough information from listening. And vice versa, the stream can have some text that you can't read but chuuba helps by reading it out loud, also happens with song lyrics in MVs.
- I never deliberately studied kanji besides some first free wanikani levels but over time I memorized some of them that are used often, so when a word has one of those I can at least read half of it and often get an idea about the meaning. Example: 自動, jidou (automatic). Over time I memorized 自 because it's used in jibun (self) and 動 because it's used in undou (movement), so 自動 just kinda clicked by default. Add to that 感動 - kandou (emotion, passion), used super often, we already know the second kanji, and the first kanji is used in other popular word 感謝 kansha (gratitude) etc, the list goes on. Over time words that are used often get memorized even though I'm not specifically studying them.
