Sterogyl Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4362 days ago 152 posts - 263 votes Studies: German*, French, EnglishC2 Studies: Japanese, Norwegian
| Message 977 of 1702 31 May 2013 at 9:36am | IP Logged |
20k words in order to well understand Japanese is realistic. But the more advanced you become, the more you will be able to figure out the meaning of unknown words.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 978 of 1702 31 May 2013 at 5:25pm | IP Logged |
I found a really awesome tool for android to read japanese texts. The link was in the forums for that RTK
website. Great posts there from other learners. The program is called dokusho and it costs 2 bucks and
comes with some chosen short stories to get started reading. Basically just tap the first letter of a word
and get a pop up translation. I have wanted this on my mobile device for ages. I'm returning the iPhone so
I can use this haha. Somehow whenever I try to get rid of this note 2 phone something happens to make
me keep it. Now I'm back to hoping swiftkey gets japanese support every time I see an update. I wish there
were another program that supported Japanese and English and did it well. Smart keyboard seems like
the best Android option but I prefer smart key and switching to Google ime for Japanese. It's annoying but
so is typing in English on anything besides swiftkey pretty much.
Dokusho is a little buggy... I've had it crash a few times, but I guess in part that's android not using
memory very well (according to what I hear). But it's stable enough to work well. You just tap first letter..
You don't have to highlight any words which I'm terribly glad for.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 979 of 1702 01 June 2013 at 9:02am | IP Logged |
I'm gonna read a book in German. I haven't taken German in a while so I was thinking I might do it in the
fall. But I probably won't. It would take too much away from japanese. And japanese is definitely the
language I'm working on right now. But I'm curious how long it'll take me to read a book in German. It's
taking me years to get through harry potter in japanese. Of course I let myself get distracted by anime a
lot. It sort of counts as studying, but not as much as reading. I turn on the subs for the good shows too.
When I'm not tired I do listen to the Japanese closely but when tired not so much. Anyway, I'm curious
about the German.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 980 of 1702 02 June 2013 at 8:27am | IP Logged |
I was thinking that I could make German flashcards of whatever book
I read and just toss it into the combination SRS deck I have and that
will make me study more than one language at a time. If I test
English to German I'll have to make a note in the English flashcard. I
haven't started my book yet. I'll keep track of how long it takes. Right
now I'm doing the とびら kanji workbook which I've agreed to do
with a friend from my class. Honestly the exercises seem silly and
backwards to me since I've done RTK. But she hasn't. She didn't like
it. Something about wanting to learn the sounds of the kanji at the
same time which is well way too hard which is why it didn't work out.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 981 of 1702 03 June 2013 at 11:20am | IP Logged |
I haven't started the German book yet. I did a review with a friend of
Tobira, watched some anime, and now I'm reading harry potter
before bed. On the phone. I think it's better this way. Although I can
save words for studying later I'm not on the computer so I can't take
that step and make a new deck if cards to study. I need to just read.
And not worry about the vocab for a bit.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 982 of 1702 09 June 2013 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
German may wait a bit. I seem to be hooked on anime right now. It's hard to pull myself away from my TV. とびら is going ok. My partner wants to do a review of Yookoso using the review packet our teacher gave us though before going forward. I've read the 1st chapter. I think I started out doing the exercises but I'm thinking I might just change it to reading everything and well that's enough really. I'm not that into doing the exercises. The website has audio for the written stuff and it's good listening practice.
I logged into Livemocha again for the 1st time in a year or so. I really haven't used the site since I started Japanese. They do have a course though and I was playing with it. It's not bad practice. Of course they don't teach you anything so if you haven't studied on your own already you'll be really lost doing it but it's good practice if you have already studied. I like the native feedback too, although it's really hit and miss if you'll get someone who feels like taking the time to give you decent feedback. Their exercises make you record yourself and listen to yourself which I think is also good for me. I could improve my accent some if I put the effort in.
I switched up my RTK deck. I reset the scores when I decided to test for sounds so I'm just now catching up to where I was before. And I gave up on the sounds.. sort of. I changed it so the sound plays along with the English meaning on side 1 and I have the sound on side 2 underneath the kanji I'm testing. I probably won't learn tons of kanji sounds but I think some will stick. And it satisfies my curiosity but doesn't slow me down tons getting through reviews. A little time consuming to pull up the dictionary and find the most common sound in compounds (usually a Chinese sound but not always) but not too bad.
I ordered a Japanese learners dictionary from Japan. I could only find a paper one. I don't think I'll use it to make flashcards much like some really hard core learners do.. I'm sticking to using English to learn new material thanks. But I think it'll be fun to flip through.
*edit*
I might change my mind on that last bit. lol. I love trying out new ways to study.
Edited by kraemder on 09 June 2013 at 9:00pm
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 983 of 1702 09 June 2013 at 9:07pm | IP Logged |
I need to get going to work soon. My new schedule is so different. I work the evening shift.. they call it nights but I get off at 9 pm so it's no graveyard shift. So far I've gotten a lot more sleep than the 5:50 AM shift where I had to wake up at 4:50.. but I wake up periodically and go back to bed. All that sun light. And I think my body is still getting used to the schedule. But I'm not exhausted and unable to focus after work.. but I have been letting myself get a little too distracted by anime. Watching new shows is good because you can only watch 1 and then you have to wait a week for the new one.. old shows.. you can marathon it indefinitely and never get anything else done O.o. 大変だ。 I'll have to work on disciplining myself. But I do think the anime helps too, with or without subs.
I altered my flashcard set to not include English > Japanese. Just Kanji to English and Audio to English. I'm including too many new words that I don't need an active command of and it slows me down to try to learn them that well. Basically expressions you see in writing (from Harry Potter) that I won't use unless I decide to write short stories in Japanese. Which I might do.. but I would be content to use the more limited spoken vocabulary appropriate to my level.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 984 of 1702 11 June 2013 at 11:12am | IP Logged |
I got the monolingual Japanese dictionary in the mail from Japan. It's actually a children's dictionary so not quite as suited to me as I expected but still really neat. There's furigana for all the kanji used in the definitions and the definitions are pretty simple. You look up the words using hiragana and they're nice enough to put the hiragana on the outside of the page so you can find what you're looking for pretty easily. You don't need tons of kanji radical knowledge or anything. And it has a lot of example sentences.
I'm thinking of making some flashcards using it. I have my combination deck setup pretty well so I can mix in other decks to it so I think it shouldn't be a problem. I don't have to stop studying the old way or anything. I can understand some of the definitions ok without any more research. I think using a monolingual dictionary to learn is a great way to reinforce words you have already studied. But it's going to be slower making the cards and I wouldn't be surprised if learning the new vocab is a little slower. I was thinking of doing this before with online monolingual dictionaries but gave it up (might do that again). But these definitions are simpler. Anyway, someone suggested I just add English definitions to the flashcards as well. I think I will. I'll make them side 3 or something so I don't have to even see them if I don't want to.
I got a nice plastic stand a week ago to hold books upright and open for easy studying and copying flashcards on the computer. I got it for the Japanese Grammar books I have which were collecting dust.. I tried to make one stay open so I could type and read it and ended up just damaging the binding =(. Makes me sad. And I chop up and scan so many books. Weird right. This dictionary is called 小学国語学習辞典.
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