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Question Recommendation Thread: (Use this thread when you seek advice.)

Utsune

風立ちぬ いざ生きめやも
有名人 / Yuumeijin / Celebrity
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Hiya, welcome to the forum :)

I think the best way to learn more vocab is to read more. I recommend news site such as this one:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/index.html

It tends to write in very simple structures, and it has furigana to boot (the hiragana aide on top of kanji.) This makes it easy for you to identify terms. News sites also expose you to a wide range of vocab. It is essential to look up the dictionary any term that you do not understand, even if you are not able to take it all in right away. A lot of things will come back to you when you're exposed to them again and you would eventually get used to them through rinse and repeat. (This is assuming you know the most common of kanji.) Or you could go about it more logically and prioritize some terms, then memorize them the way you would do for other languages at school. (See last link down below.)

My go-to JP->ENG dictionary is this: http://ejje.weblio.jp/
It gives very simple definitions of the terms you are looking for, very much straight to the point, and by clicking the 英語例文 tab (at the top,) you can find examples of the terms in phrases or sentences with English translation. So for example, you want to know what 危険 means. Copy+paste the term into the search bar would bring you to this page:
http://ejje.weblio.jp/content/危険
And clicking on the 英語例文 tab would give you a bunch of phrases using that particular term:
http://ejje.weblio.jp/sentence/content/危険


Also, for more fundamental learning, you could click through some of the PDF files offered here:
http://www.kodomo-kotoba.info/booklet/basicsearch_booklet_04_05.html
These give you a taste of the basic exercises Japanese kids go through.
--- Double Post Merged, , Original Post Date: ---
Forgot to mention, if you have trouble identifying terms, for example "英語例文" might appear to be some mess of moon runes, just plug the thing through Google Translate:
https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/英語例文
Next, you press the Ä at the bottom (first button from left.) The reading would then be revealed: "Eigo reibun"
This is useful if you have trouble separating 'compound' terms because the space in between gives it away. From here on, you could simply look up the words separately: "Eigo" and "Reibun."
 

Radizh

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Thank you for all the help, I'll be sure to use all of the sites and advice you've given me. Also I just checked out that news site but because I only know around 100ish vocab words I pretty much can't read anything on the site. (!_!)
 
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Ominae

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初心者/ Shoshinsha / Beginner
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Haven't been back for a bit since I went dormant when my attempts to scanlate when bust.

Long story short, everyone went AWOL and didn't bother to tell me.

Question is whether I'm pushing my luck that one can be a translator on a N5 level. My older brother and family thinks I can easily speak Japanese due to this...
 
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