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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 113 of 1702 08 October 2011 at 10:59am | IP Logged |
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Sorry you feel like you're struggling. Japanese has a reputation for being harder for Europeans for a reason. But there are some quick wins over languages like French or German too such as the lack of genders and lack of irregular verbs.
I'm guessing from your earlier posts that with European languages you've studied one of your preferred methods is extensive reading however you are struggling to apply this to your Japanese. Is this correct? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5400 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 114 of 1702 08 October 2011 at 11:17am | IP Logged |
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Don't give up.
The Western logs may only frustrate you more. It sounds like you're doing fine. Just keep at it. I'm at almost 2 years now, and I feel I've been pretty efficient and pretty successful up to this point, but I wouldn't even hope to read something like Harry Potter right now. I can "figure" out what a lot of things say when I pick up a book, but I certainly can't "read" much, even "children's" manga like Doraemon at this point give me major troubles at certain points. With Japanese you'll probably be pushing it just to cover 1500 words a year along with an accompanying level of grammar, and the first year even less due to getting used to the writing system. To read Japanese text at that rate you'll probably need a solid 3 years of hard labor before you can read "semi-comfortably" I'd assume. I'm not sure exactly at what vocabulary level things will get massively easier (I'm at about 3500 and still waiting) but I am suspecting that at around 4000 to 4500 words that you are comfortable with and can understand in most grammatical contexts that you'll be approaching a natural reading level (with a ton to learn still, but at least a foundation to learn from "natural" sources). If someone has a trick to shorten that time, other than an AJATT method, I haven't seen it. Through study I've learned to read books/magazines/newspapers in Spanish without any problems, and understand Spanish TV/movies pretty well coming from a complete non-Spanish environment. Japanese compared to Spanish is a joke. Japanese is a lifestyle choice. Japanese compared to European languages is 3-4x longer (not harder, just longer). Hunker down, find study methods you can LIVE with, and you'll be fine ... just not any time soon. Edited by Sandman on 08 October 2011 at 11:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lexii Senior Member United States Joined 5214 days ago 162 posts - 194 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 115 of 1702 08 October 2011 at 3:28pm | IP Logged |
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I thoroughly understand your frustration, Kraemder. I do hope you'll keep plugging along. I know you have a variety of resources. Perhaps it may help to put Harry aside for a bit and go back to some of the others.
Have you looked into any follow-along audio books for the iPad? I don't have an iPad and my iPod is 1st gen so most of what's available now won't work for me (sniffle). I'd love to hear your opinions of some of the things you find! Hang in there. You can do it. You can push through this. You've made terrific strides so far and I know you'll continue to do so! 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 116 of 1702 12 October 2011 at 2:00pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you guys for the encouragement. I haven't been doing much potter. With rikichain it's really not as
bad as you might think. Yeah I look up the majority of the words but it's fast. But it's work and I get lazy. This weekend I got hooked on an anime tv series and watched it almost all weekend nonstop :/. Better for my Japanese than watching English but I didn't study. Lying in bed without sleeping came up with a new plan for anime. I'm gonna watch it without subs only. Yep. A lot is gonna go over my head. But that will make me want to hit the books more and I am obviously going to to be focusing harder on the language in an effort to understand the plot and jokes etc. Let's hope I don't break down and turn the subs back on.. No I haven't found much of any audio books for the iPad. I have found some on the computer. Actually stuff from other threads on this board. I'll post a link later when I'm on my desktop. I haven't tried said links on the iPad... I'm thinking they won't work due to lack of flash support. Yeah it's hard to say what vocabulary you'll need to read Japanese. People come up with estimates for for German, French, etc and its like a couple thousand but I don't think that includes all the free cognates you get already without studying. And yes reading was my favorite way to study foreign languages (prior to Japanese heh) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 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 117 of 1702 12 October 2011 at 7:53pm | IP Logged |
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Have you tried reading much manga? A lot of that comes with furigana so at least you are not worrying about dealing with the kanji, whilst still getting some exposure to them. The first manga I successfully read was よつばと. It's aimed at native speakers but is one of the easiest reads I have found for learners. I found the first couple of volumes a lot harder to read but by the time I got to around the fifth one it was plain sailing.
You're only six months or so in so don't expect miracles. Build up good foundations in the language and results will follow. 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 118 of 1702 13 October 2011 at 11:02am | IP Logged |
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No I haven't tried manga yet. Can you read it online for free? I'll check out that one you mentioned. One
reason why I haven't tries the manga option is that it's not text ie no rikaichan. But with all the drawings you can probably follow the story w/o even reading text. Obviously I like anime so I would think manga would also be a good fit. Watching an anime w/o subs at the moment while waiting for ios5 to update.. Man this takes discipline! Edited by kraemder on 13 October 2011 at 11:31am 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 119 of 1702 13 October 2011 at 11:30am | IP Logged |
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iOS 5 is done. I love the split keyboard. Watching el cazador de la bruja (yes it's Japanese). I really don't
understand much of the dialogue but you can still follow a lot just watching. Even though my vocab kinda stinks picking out the different words is pretty easy. Japanese really does have fewer sounds than other languages and I think this makes it easier. I remember being pretty mad about French and how the words all ran together. I don't have that problem anyway with Japanese as much. (French did get better even though I lost interest before going beyond intermediate) 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 120 of 1702 14 October 2011 at 4:21am | IP Logged |
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Here's a link to a post with a lot of good free resources in case anyone reading hasn't stumbled on it already:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=6241&PN=1 1 person has voted this message useful |
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