What level of Japanese to read light novels

Learning Japanese takes time and patience! Some people resort to means like watch anime and dramas orread manga to learn Japanese. We have already covered these 2 subjects on the site, and we recommend that you read as a complement to this article. In today's article we will give you another tip for you to study Japanese, this time using aLight Novel.

Light Novel is a Japanese book that follows light stories in the style of mangas, most containing romance or a very striking plot. Many Light Novels end up becoming anime, attracting people's interest. (you can read more about light novel by clickingon here.)

How to get a Light Novel?

One of the biggest difficulties of using a Light Novel to study is having one. If you don't live in Japan, you need to order through some websites. Not even in Anime Events in Brazil is it easy to find Light Novel in Japanese. The best place I know that sells light novels in Brazil is the pageYellow Manga.

Another alternative is to read online the free webnovels that are made available by some authors, but this has many limitations. It is worth remembering that Light Novel are books written for young adults, so most of them have little furigana and are full of kanji (ideograms). So we made it clear that to study Japanese using light novels it is necessary to have a basic knowledge of the language and a lot of patience.

Choosing and familiarizing yourself with the light novel

A large number of light novels depict stories filled with fiction, magic, or very complex themes. However, the best stories to study Japanese are always things that present something everyday. So prefer works that portray the day to day of certain characters.

Don't look for works like: Monogatari Series, Durarara and Sword Art Online. This is because they have a theme very distant from everyday things and in addition, they have complex language.

We also recommend that you choose Light Novel shorts, or that they are already complete. It will take you a long time to read and study them, and you may feel uncomfortable waiting 6 months for a new volume to come out. You may also end up rushing to finish the story quickly, disrupting your study results.

There is a multitude of Light Novels to choose from, try to choose something that suits you. Perhaps choosing a work that you have already seen in the anime, may make it easier to understand the story and the lines of the book.

Studying light novel

A chapter of a Light novel usually has around 5000 to 7000 words. A complete volume (book) is usually 40,000 words, and is usually divided into 5 chapters for around 200 pages.

Light novels have simple and short dialogues, they do not usually have very long dialogues and there are also few light novel exceptions that use complex lines.

Most light novels use more hiragana and katakana, kanjis make up about 30% of a Light Novel. And about 5% of these kanji have furigana. Light Novel are not like mangas, where the genre shounen always has furigana. But still, reading is quite simple.

When reading a Light Novel, aim to have fun and not learn. You should learn Japanese naturally and automatically, reading light novels will help you do that.

Below are some tips for you to study correctly:

Don't read what you don't know.- If you started a Light Novel, and you are always looking for meanings in the dictionary. We recommend that you choose another Light Novel at your level. You will only delay your learning, and you will not be able to memorize anything.

Read again.- If you find any words or phrases you know, read them again. The more you repeat, the more difficult it will be to forget, and the faster your reading will be.

Make reading short and fun.- You will only benefit from reading Light Novel, if you find it fun. Many have difficulty or laziness to read, for people like that, it is recommended to read a little to not get sick or to force the mind.

Copy Phrases.- If you use anki or another memorization tool, copy the phrases and meanings that you find interesting for the application. Also use a notebook to write the sentences if you intend to practice writing.

Problems when studying using Light Novel

You can use Light Novel to improve your Japanese learning, but we do not recommend that you use these books as your primary tool for studying the language. See why studying Light Novel can be dangerous for your learning if you do it the wrong way:

• Light Novel is full of slang and abbreviations. The authors also write the way they want, using kanji in the wrong places or that is not necessary. Some even swallow particles, and completely disregard Japanese rules. So be careful when using it as a study source;

• A Japanese student should focus on maintaining dialogues, listening to audios and learning simple phrases. Using book reading can become a very slow and arduous process. So if you want to get to fluency fast, Light Novel is not the best option;

• Already mentioned in the article, a light novel has several new and unknown kanji. It is recommended that you have at least one N4 to understand 40% from the book. Some students spent about half a year to understand a volume of a Light Novel;

What do I do to study Light Novel?

Despite the difficulties, do not be discouraged. I didn't find it so difficult to study a Light Novel. I already did it here on the site using a snippet from the Web Novel of Re: Zero.

Using the web novel, I selected and copied the excerpt I wanted to study, separated all the sentences and sentences leaving a large space between them. In this space I put reading in Romaji or Hiragana.

I select word by word from the sentence and search for its meaning using various online dictionaries such as Jisho, Google. In addition I search the word on Google images to have a better understanding. Then I put all the meanings of the words, and try to understand the meaning of the sentence.

In addition to books, I use this same tactic with music. To better understand what I did, read the article by clicking here.

I hope these tips help you Japanese students!