hey guys this is matt and today i'm
going to be helping you make the
monolingual transition now this is
definitely one of the hardest parts of
learning japanese with the ajax method
but that's pretty much just because
katsumoto gave really bad advice on his
website so no one knows how to do it
right so in this video i'm going to be
telling you all the secrets you need to
make the monolingual transition easily
quickly and without wanting to kill
yourself so what does make this
monolingual transition so difficult the
simple answer is what i like to call
dictionary vocabulary there are a bunch
of words that are used repeatedly in
japanese dictionaries but rarely used
anywhere else like in novels or tv shows
if you don't know this dictionary
vocabulary there's no way you're going
to be able to understand monolingual
definitions but the good news is once
you get these down the rest will be easy
this is why if done correctly you can
make the monolingual transition quite
early in the process of learning
japanese so then the question becomes
how do we acquire this very specific
dictionary vocabulary katsumoto's advice
is to just throw away the english
dictionary completely and just start
branching this means that you look up a
new word in the japanese dictionary then
inside the definition there will be more
words you don't know so you look up
those in the japanese dictionary and
then you just keep this process going
inside definitions deeper and deeper
deeper until eventually you find
something you understand now although
this does sound pretty great in theory
i'm sure that anyone who has actually
tried it will agree with me that this is
awful advice to understand why you have
to understand what i call the difficulty
paradox the more simple and easy a word
is the more difficult the definition
will be and vice versa here are some
examples from the oxford english
dictionary try to guess the word that
goes with the definition freely transfer
the possession of
give
not too bad a written or printed work
consisting of pages glued or sewn
together along one side and bound in
covers
book
okay last one
an object that one need not can not or
does not wish to give a specific name to
thing
now those were english most likely your
native language imagine trying to
comprehend those definitions in a
language you barely even understand now
the problem is that dictionary
vocabulary i was talking about before
consists of some of the most basic words
in the language if you're someone who is
a beginner in japanese there's no way
you're going to be able to understand
their monolingual definitions so then
how are you going to learn that
dictionary vocabulary using english
definitions that's right you're going to
use english definitions to help you
understand japanese definitions and once
you get all that dictionary vocabulary
down then you can say goodbye to the
english dictionary forever
okay so now we're ready to get into the
details about how to go about this
process now it's really important that
you've already seen my video on how to
make srs cards because i'm going to be
assuming that you have that dictionary
program qualibry already installed
so first we have to talk about what
words you're going to be using the
dictionary to learn when you're a
beginner there's new words everywhere
you look when you open up your favorite
manga there might be multiple new words
on every single page now the pareto
principle tells us that if we know
around the most common 20 of words we'll
be able to understand close to 80 of the
material in other words not all words
are equal if you're a beginner you want
to focus all your energy on learning the
more common words that are going to most
greatly improve your comprehension a
basic principle i used to use was when i
was out in the wild either reading manga
or watching anime and i found a word
that i felt like i'd seen before then i
would decide that it was valuable enough
to be worth learning so when you're out
in the wild and you come across a new
word for the first time just skip it and
keep going when a word seems familiar
like you may have seen it once or twice
before then add it to your list so then
after a while you get this list of words
that you know are valuable and then
you're ready to hit the dictionary now
like i've said a billion times in order
to make the monolingual transition you
need to learn the dictionary vocabulary
words this means that any unknown word
that shows up in a definition is
valuable to you so it's important that
you understand this distinction when
you're in the wild only words that
you've seen multiple times are valuable
when you're in the dictionary every word
is valuable so now what you're going to
do is learn your wild words
monolingually and then learn your
dictionary words bilingually so let's
say we want to learn the word kakute
search colbury and then flip through and
choose the definition that looks the
easiest so we got monogotaga
let's say you didn't know the words
hakiri kimaru or
so we bring up our handy japanese to
english dictionary and search hakidi
clearly plainly distinctly and then we
have an example sentence hakki to you
since this is a dictionary word and we
want to learn it we're going to make a
sentence card for it so we could just
use this sentence right here copy it
over and then we're good to go then we
go to the next one kimoru to be decided
to be settled
now we need a sentence so i'm going to
search quality
scroll down and choose one of these ones
that i understand stick it in your text
file to make a card for it then do the
same thing for kimorou okay so now here
in our text file we have three ready to
go dictionary word sentences
now if all goes well once we learn these
three words we should be able to
understand our original word
so what you're going to do is put those
three bilingual cards in your deck and
learn them today and then tomorrow make
a monolingual card for kak day and you
hopefully you'll be able to understand
it since you already know all the words
in the definition so just to repeat the
process one more time you're going to
look up a word in the monolingual
dictionary then look up the words in the
definition you don't understand in the
bilingual dictionary once you know about
500 of the most common dictionary words
you'll have no trouble throwing away the
english dictionary for good and there
you have it it's really as simple as
that now in terms of just some general
tips you might want to keep in mind when
you really first start using a
monolingual dictionary for the first
time it can be helpful to look up words
you already know to kind of work
backwards and see how monolingual
definitions work this is something that
cats recommends that i highly agree with
also for the first while avoid looking
up nouns in the monolingual dictionary
words like dog or chair have amazingly
complicated definitions but can be
understood instantly by doing a google
image search and lastly don't forget
that it's a transition after you start
to get the hang of things you can start
to branch one or two layers deep before
hitting the english dictionary to try to
win yourself off and although it may be
hard to believe now after a while using
the japanese japanese dictionary will
become second nature you'll start to
understand how the english dictionary
doesn't really tell you what any of the
words actually mean and how much
learning the language in that language
will really speed up your progress
okay that's it for me if you got any
questions feel free to leave them in the
comments