Itazuraneko recommends reading Yotsubato with a specific reading pack. Is that still a good way to get started with reading?

Yotsubato is often recommended as a "beginner manga".

While Yotsubato is relatively simple compared to many other manga, it includes a lot of colloquial speech, slang, slurred speech, sentence endings, and grammar that can drive beginners crazy. The vocabulary in the manga is undoubtedly basic, and there aren't many words, but it's not the vocabulary that trips people up.

I've seen countless questions like, "What does this line in Yotsubato mean?" When reading the manga, people often get so confused, they can't find unknown phrases anywhere in grammar books or dictionaries, leaving them with no choice but to beg other learners for explanations on forums. This is not what beginner material should do to you.

Second, Itazuraneko recommends reading Yotsubato very early on, before you've had a chance to get used to the sounds of Japanese. Since there's no audio, you won't know how Japanese speakers pronounce what you're reading. Reading anything without accompanying audio at this stage is a recipe for failure and is going to negatively impact your listening ability.

As a result you're wasting hours trying to read a single page, and you're reading with a thick foreign accent in your head.

From day one, listen a lot. Listen all the time. Immerse both passively and actively in voiced Japanese media to train your ears. Complete Ankidrone Foundation. It contains natural, correct, and easy to understand sentences with clear native audio. Before starting to read manga, watch lots of anime with Japanese subtitles. Reading along with audio is easier and should serve as training wheels to prepare you for reading without audio. The general rule of thumb is to improve your comprehension using anime before moving on to manga.

After you've done that, feel free to go back and read Yotsubato if you want. Although I personally would choose some other manga, I don't find Yotsubato particularly interesting. As with anime, it is recommended to start with slice-of-life as your first domain and then gradually move on to other domains that feature more complex language as you gain proficiency in Japanese.

You also need to set up OCR to make it easy to select text and look up unknown words in manga.

Tags: faq