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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 81 of 1702 30 July 2011 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think reading is the biggest barrier to start with in Japanese but seriously, I don't think it's the hardest part of learning the language. The sheer amount of vocabulary that you will eventually need to learn is much tougher and I think the learning curve is probably quite different to tackling a European language from scratch.
Anyway, if reading is your preferred method of getting to grips with the language there is no other way around it than starting to read Japanese. If you are happy to settle with things like readers for adult learners, children's books and manga aimed at children/teenagers, kanji doesn't have to be a barrier to start off with as there is plenty of material with full or partial furigana - and in books aimed at Japanese school kids who are too young to have learned much kanji, you often find there are even spaces between the words to make it easier to read - check out this graded reader on amazon (aimed at first graders) to see what I mean. Edited for minor English fail. Edited by g-bod on 30 July 2011 at 5:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 82 of 1702 30 July 2011 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I guess I could read anything. But I'm not too keen on importing books from Japan... expensive. I actually have a couple Harry Potter books in Japanese. Only problem is looking up words in the dictionary - it seems rather difficult for kanji. They have furigana for some words but not all. I was thinking of scanning the book into my computer. Unfortunately my OCR program (finereader 9.0) only seems to be 70% accurate for Japanese characters. Obviously looking up stuff on the computer is fast and easy. Would be nice if they had actual ebooks in Japanese but apparently ebooks haven't caught on yet in Japan.
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 83 of 1702 30 July 2011 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I guess you could read the whole Japanese internet with the help of a pop up dictionary (e.g. rikaichan on firefox).
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| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5199 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 84 of 1702 30 July 2011 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | ||
That's why it's useful to be able to write them! The easiest way to look up kanji is to use an electronic dictionary and just write the character you don't know. If you don't have one, the next easiest way is to draw the character with your mouse in the IME pad (when you switch your keyboard language to Japanese). You have to know basic stroke order, but even if it's messy it will usually show up in the list of characters that it pulls up. You click on the right one, and then you can paste the character into an online dictionary, or even simpler, mouse over it with Rikaichan. Oh, and you don't have to import books to get reading material. There are lots of scanned Japanese novels online (and manga, which might be easier for you to start out with). There are plenty of English forums where you can download light novels and manga. Edited by galindo on 30 July 2011 at 7:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 85 of 1702 31 July 2011 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll stick to actual digital material and stay away from the scanned stuff for the time being. I need to keep it as easy as possible.
Unfortunately the majority of my Japanese studying has been watching anime lately. I think part of the blame for that is that I decided to tackle the kanji at the same time I learned new vocab and it's just a bit much. I'm going back to studying them separately now. I think I'm more motivated to learn raw vocabulary than I am Kanji since the whole point of learning Japanese is to enjoy anime more. When I was studying German I found I liked reading so much that reading became the real goal of studying the language. Not so with Japanese. I haven't touched Rosetta Stone in over a month. I'm thinking of brushing it off and giving it another go. I would like to do another tutor session but frankly the 1st one was too stressful since it was all japanese. If it were two way video and I could do hand motions etc it might go better but as it is it's mostly just audio. The Rosetts Stone tutor does have a video camera but it's very small and there's no support for student video at all. I chopped up and scanned a couple of the Japanese textbooks into my computer in PDF format. Now I can use my ipad to study them anywhere. I guess my ipod too but I haven't tried that yet. I'm not sure what the best app is for reading Japanese PDF's but iBooks isn't bad. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 86 of 1702 31 July 2011 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know I talk about how frustrated I am with kanji a lot. I am making an effort to learn it though and I am learning some. Lately, I've started seeing kanji whenever I close my eyes even. Still - I really want to learn new vocabulary and catching up my kanji to my vocabulary first would slow that down a -lot-.
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| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 87 of 1702 09 August 2011 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Updating on My iPad so sorry for typos. It also does auto corrections that aren't always good. Anyway. I
discovered crunchy roll. Man this site is awesome! I signed up for the premium right away. I love having no ads and the quality of the programing is great in 720hd and it plays on my roku on my tv. Awesome. I also broke down and got satellite tv to get tv japan. It's one whole standard definition channel and 25 bucks per month.. Plus the costs of the other channels. I got the Latino package too for practicing Spanish and becuse I felt obligated to have some channels in hd. I Cgually like the channel and think it's worth it although I wish they had more channels etc. It's very intersdti g to watch. I wish there were more Ds. There aren't very many. I don't u derstand much from the language just from the visuals right now. And I started writing kanji and hiragana and katakana by hand. Is not so bad lime I thought it would be. A bit empowering even. It's a nice break from studying flashcards too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 88 of 1702 14 August 2011 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Listened to some language learning audio on my bike yesterday and I'm definitely making progress. A lot of
it was really easy to understand. Also, I was using jflash while watching anime and it's set to hiragana only and I'm much more comfortable reading it whereas before I had to slowly sound out the letters... Now it's much faster. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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