Learning Japanese in Duolingo seems very... inefficient. It assumes you already know Hiragana while it's teaching you Hiragana. Well, I do already know Hiragana but that's besides the point. It even throws some Kanji in there, I'm not sure this is a good way of learning a new language with their own set of characters.
@trinsec@qoto.org If you want, I can give you on advice of how I started, and how i've been doing it for the last year.
@robflop I wouldn't mind some advice. I've been slacking the past few months, but I can still (slowly) spell out hiragana, so I've not really forgotten that, which is good!
I'd been using this site as a starting point:
https://www.tofugu.com/learn-japanese/
and via that site went on to memorize the characters here:
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/
and then tested myself via:
https://kana-quiz.tofugu.com
I suspect I probably should go learn Katakana next, via that same site.
Keep in mind that I cannot hear, so ponouncation is lost on me. I really need to know what (Latin) letters those kana are associated with so I can spell them with my inner voice.
That is another thing Duolingo really was bad at. It allows you to hear the pronouncation, but doesn't show the Latin letters for it so I can't memorize those Kanji because I have no point of reference to remember them by.
@trinsec@qoto.org Tofugu is a very good resource to use already, so I recommend continuing to use that. Was about to suggest you use Tofugu's sheets for learning hiragana and katakana, actually.
For a quiz, I can recommend https://kana.pro.
Once you've memorized hiragana and katakana (which is to say you should know hiragana very well and katakana decently well - even if you don't recognize some you will pick it up with time), I recommend starting a grammar textbook (+ workbook if you want to do handwriting). I suggest the Genki series for this. When I bought mine, it was on its Second Edition, but they have since released a Third edition, so you might want to look into how those compare. Can't make comments on the 3rd edition of course, but can recommend the 2nd Edition.
If you want to (and I recommend you do) use a SRS system for grammar points, then I'd point you towards the service I use, which is https://bunpro.jp. It has built-in support for various textbooks (and online guides) so you can jump right into setting up revisions for exactly the grammar points the book is teaching you. There's a free trial of 30 days as well, and the cost after that is pretty low, so I'd definitely check it out.
Then, once you've gotten past the first 2-3 Chapters of the first Genki book, they will start introducing Kanji. This is where you'll definitely need to have your hiragana down (having incomplete katakana knowledge will not hurt you much here, but incomplete hiragana knowledge definitely will). Once the Genki series starts introducing Kanji, I very highly recommend starting to use the Kanji / Vocab SRS that I am using, which is https://www.wanikani.com.
The order in which WaniKani and Genki teach you words or kanji are largely different, so that will be weird, but I believe WaniKani's way of teaching them to be better, so imo don't miss out on that. Similarly to Bunpro, Wanikani's first 3 levels (of 60) are completely free to do, and according to what they say "includes a whole school year's worth of kanji" as well as "55% of the Kanji needed for N5". That will allow you to know if you like the approach WaniKani takes or not - a friend of mine for example prefers the "Remembering the Kanji" book approach, so it's not for everyone. Compared to Bunpro, WaniKani is a lot more expensive, but it's still worth it in my opinion. I personally opted for a lifetime plan during their last sale, which I can recommend once you've steeled your resolve and are really willing to stick with learning JP for the coming years.
If you've decided to use WaniKani, then I recommend using https://kaniwani.com alongside it. It's a free website that hooks into your WaniKani account and acts as a sort of reverse-WaniKani.
From then on, I think it's really just a matter of keeping at it every day (if your schedule allows it) and gathering that knowledge little by little.
And oh right, the online japanese dictionary I use is https://jisho.org - highly recommended too.
@trinsec@qoto.org Oh and yeah, of course you can go give Anki a shot as well, I personally just prefer WaniKani / Bunpro.
@trinsec@qoto.org Aaaand a textual explanation from Tofugu here: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/spaced-repetition/
Shortly forgot that a video would be inconvenient 😅
@robflop Hehe, I'll check those later. But Spaced Repetition System sounds familiar, I believe my note systems got plugins for that. I guess I might actually investigate those then, thanks!
@trinsec@qoto.org No problem at all!
@trinsec@qoto.org It stands for "Spaced Repetition System". Basically, after you learn something (e.g. one word), the system will initially quiz you about it. After that, it will quiz you again about it after a certain amount of time. The amount of time between each time it quizzes you grows each time you get it correct - and goes back to the initial stage if you get it wrong. It's laid out to ask you about the word right as you are about to forget it, so that it's refreshed in your memory.
Here's a 9min video that goes into a bit more detail on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVEcTd6LEwo
(Highly recommended channel from me)