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 1041 of 1702 24 August 2013 at 4:16am | IP Logged |
Found a decent radio station to listen to on tunein radio on my smartphone. FMJaga 77.8. It's got a lot of talk and a little music (which is hohum but it's japanese). Lots of talk though. Seems good for listening while doing chores etc.
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Axystos Pentaglot Newbie Antarctica Joined 6828 days ago 20 posts - 43 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French, Russian Studies: Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Japanese, Czech, Polish
| Message 1042 of 1702 24 August 2013 at 9:35am | IP Logged |
I've found that most Japanese radio stations are like that, a lot of talk and little music. So far I have actually not been able to find a station that plays contemporary music for at least 50% of the time.
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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 1043 of 1702 25 August 2013 at 2:43pm | IP Logged |
I like more talk than music personally. For practicing anyway. Then again, all of the stations that I've found
have been all music only without any DJs. But then I always looked for news stations. I don't get why they
don't broadcast outside Japan in Japanese. You'd think that Japanese emigrants would appreciate it as we'll
as us language learners. Anyway.
I read more potter. I can't believe how long it takes me to read it. I'm about halfway through. Be given up on
adding new vocabulary to my SRS from it but I've to a lot from before. Maybe I'll step up my pace. I'd like to
finish this thing before Christmas. In case you're wondering I do look up both every word I don't know the
meaning of or the pronunciation. So that slows me down of course.
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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 1044 of 1702 25 August 2013 at 11:53pm | IP Logged |
Is it me or does Japanese have a bigger than normal vocabulary? Sure seems that way as I try to read this
stupid book...
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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 1045 of 1702 26 August 2013 at 7:28am | IP Logged |
Well I've sort of reached a goal I was hoping to reach when I started this whole Japanese thing - being able to intelligently read an ebook with the help of an electronic dictionary. Yeah, it doesn't seem like much but I had to study a lot of grammar to be able to get to this point. As I read through Harry Potter I can't help but be impressed with the vocabulary they use. It's huge. And a lot of the words don't necessarily repeat, which kind of frustrates me but obviously the author tries to not reuse words too much to keep variety going. Sure a lot of words do repeat. I think I have 箒 burned into my retinas if not my brain after reading this chapter where they learn to fly a broomstick. It's kind of slow reading. In part, as I've read, because I'm looking up stuff (with rikaisama) every step of the way instead of just reading it through and stopping when I get confused. I want to hear the language in my head and understand it at the same time or I don't think I'll be learning as much. I'm thinking I might try turning on the auto-furigana feature in Firefox. It'll speed up the reading for sure since a big part of why I stop reading is to figure out the pronunciation of a word (darn kanji). But in a sense it will hurt me too since I won't be pushing myself to learn the reading of a kanji. grrr. I've read several chapters without furigana so I'm gonna turn it on and try it.
The size of the vocabulary has really got me down I will say. I've been looking online but haven't found an answer. Does written Japanese have a bigger than average vocabulary than western languages? All that kanji etc. It wouldn't surprise me. Oh how I hate kanji.
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rewire Groupie United States learninglane.tumblr.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4542 days ago 82 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin
| Message 1046 of 1702 26 August 2013 at 8:15am | IP Logged |
In general, I don't think the vocabulary is actually more than Western languages,
though HP is a fantasy novel, and fantasy genre has a lot of its own terminology/way of
writing that's not commonly used in other genres or non-fiction, so that's probably a
contributing factor. I definitely couldn't read and understand HP without looking up a
lot of words right now, but I'm too lazy to look up words while reading anyway, so I
mostly just don't read things that I would need a dictionary to understand.
Though I was thinking about just going through HP and reading aloud for the speaking
practice, but I have other things I can read that are more my level (particularly, I
picked up a kids' book called 雨降る本屋 that I think I can actually get the gist of
now), so I might not do that unless I run out of everything else first. But I do like
doing that kind of thing sometimes. Even if I don't understand what I'm saying I've
found it helps me get down a reading rhythm and practice intonation (though...
depending on your innate sense of intonation that may or may not be useful to you if
you don't have an audiobook to mimic, I suppose), and sometimes I end up realizing I've
understood more than I thought just because I'm reading faster and picking up more
context.
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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 1047 of 1702 26 August 2013 at 8:36am | IP Logged |
I'd need a lot of furigana if I were reading a book for the rhythm without reaching for a dictionary.. I am getting a little better at the rhythm of Japanese but only a bit. I need to work on it. I think I feel better about letting words go by in western languages without looking them up because at least I'm saying the stupid things correctly to myself in my head but in Japanese, if I'm not even hearing it, then I'm not getting anything out of it. Pretty annoying. But I could use Furigana insert and then that would fix that.. gonna try that.
I'll probably still want to look stuff up. I think there's simply too many words I don't know right now to just skip stuff. Harry Potter is harder than other Japanese stuff. I've found some other reading online that's easier but I like Potter because it's an actual book I guess.
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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 1048 of 1702 26 August 2013 at 8:39am | IP Logged |
I just signed up for an intermediate German course at Pima (local community college). It'll be in the morning before work. Which means if I adjust my schedule then it'll actually work out because waking up at 11:30 am every morning is kind of late in the day but if I don't have a good reason to get out of bed I never do.
I was thinking I'm just sick of Japanese and need variety. Not necessarily another language but I really like German a lot. So I think this will be fun. I'm kind of concerned I'll enjoy it so much I'll skip out on studying for the N3. But I think I've got enough progress made already that I can afford a bit of distraction.
*edit*
Part of why I'm interested in German at the moment, aside from wanting to pick a class to take, is that I'm watching Grimm. This series on Amazon Prime that takes place in Portland, Oregon (where my sister lives coincidentally). Anyway, the series, (duh) has to do with the Grimm Fairy tales which came from Germany and somehow the authors of the show like to reference German a lot. And a bit of French too... probably because one of the lead characters seems to speak it with a really nice accent. So all these German references kind of whet my appetite. The references are so easy to understand it's kind of silly but I still like it.
Edited by kraemder on 26 August 2013 at 8:43am
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