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Kuji’s Krazy Log II | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 465 of 706 27 February 2014 at 1:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Japanese
Although I'm not really downloading any more right now, I have a ton of JapanesePod101.com podcasts saved on my Walkman, and I decided to listen to one of the advanced audio blogs. This one was about a Japanese writer named Shiba Ryotaro. I managed to get through two paragraphs of it before I quit. It wasn't that boring, but it wasn't interesting enough for me to look up all of the unknown words I encountered. And yes, I know that there is an English translation along with the Japanese transcript. But I've found that the text is rarely translated directly into English, and the structure and grammar are so different from English that, for me, it is not enough to just look at the English and "know" what the Japanese sentence means. I need to understand each word and why it is placed where. Take this example from that podcast. Japanese text - 近年、 日本では歴史上の人物を愛好し、 その人物にまつわる書籍を 読んだり縁の地を尋ねたりする女性が 増えています。 English text - In recent years in Japan, women who love historical figures and who do things such as read books related to them and visit places linked to them are on the increase. That's actually not so bad, but look at this one: Japanese text - 男性にも 根強い人気がある 歴史小説。 English text - Historical novels also enjoy a deep-seated popularity with men. If I were to translate it directly into English (hyper-translation? I can't recall the exact term), it would look like this: "To/for men too, there is deep-seated popularity, historical novels." Now I know that that Japanese sentence is written in a more "presentation" style, but if I look at the English translation, it is just going to confuse me, which is why I dislike reading Japanese with bilingual text. I get more out of it by just working with the Japanese alone and having a dictionary and grammar nearby. (The best way for me would be to have the Japanese text, and on the right side a gloss in English of all the unknown words in the text, rather than the full English translation.) Even though I didn't finish the audio blog, I did accomplish a goal. One of my adopted language-learning mantras is this: "You don't have to finish something, but always start something." (I don't take credit for this slogan, but I have no idea where I heard it.) So I'm grabbing whatever text might be useful (preferably with audio) and aiming to read the first two paragraphs. If it's interesting after that, keep going. If not, stop. If it is interesting at first but becomes boring later, it's okay to quit it. As long as I started it. I find that it takes a lot of the frustration out of language learning. Portuguese Similar to the Shiba Ryoutaro Japanese podcast mentioned above, I gave up on the Angola Highway Corruption article I was reading, but I did read 70% of it before it became boring. And using bilingual texts in Portuguese is so much easier for me than doing the same in Japanese, simply because the grammar is closer to my native English, and it is easy for me to look at the English, then the Portuguese, and figure out which Portuguese words and collocations mean what. Kindle I'm close to buying a Kindle. I need to do some more research before I spend the money on one, though, but I managed to convince my wife to allow me to buy one. (Perhaps because that will make my Android Walkman more available for her to play games.) These are the particular questions that I have about a Kindle - questions that I can't really find answers for online. 1) Does it only read .mobi files, or can it read .epub? What about PDFs? Converting big PDFs to epubs seems like a lot of work. 2) A big reason for me to get a Kindle would be the pop-up dictionary function. But does that work on all the formats Kindle supports? 3) Does the Kindle come with dictionaries, or do you need to buy them separately at Amazon.com? 4) Are you able to copy-and-paste from documents to something like a notepad application on the Kindle for later reference? 5) Can you take notes on a document? Or highlight sentences? 6) Is a Kindle only for reading? Can you, say, play audio or videos on it? If I can find satisfactory answers to these questions, I'm going to purchase one. Edited by kujichagulia on 27 February 2014 at 1:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5252 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 466 of 706 27 February 2014 at 3:06am | IP Logged | ||
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kuji, A kindle comes in many flavors. There's the "Fire" which is more like a tablet. Then there are the e-ink varieties. I prefer e-ink for reading, for many reasons- no eye strain/more natural reading, significantly longer battery life (I can go at least 3 weeks without a charge), lighter weight/easier portability. Both the fire and e-ink versions have the ability to do pop-up definitions in many languages and take notes as you read by highlighting words/phrases for later review.
I'd be lost without mine. I own(ed) a kindle 3G keyboard (e-ink). I've had one for nearly 5 years. I had it mounted in a protective cover. Recently, I went to Florida to visit my folks who drove down to escape the vicious winter this year. I flew up to Miami to see them and stayed for almost a week. I enjoyed reading in Portuguese on the plane and while waiting for the shuttle to the train station. That is, until I managed to get startled and it flew out of my hands, cover open, and slammed into the concrete. One third of the screen was damaged. I had my dad drive me to Best Buy where I got a next one (as we say here) the Kindle 4 on sale (with "special offers"- ads, but not while reading at all). This one is the successor to the kindle 3G keyboard. The differences I noted straight away were: the virtual keyboard- with support for accent marks; the crisper screen display and quicker refresh; 2GB of memory instead of 4GB with the older version; no support for audio and wifi instead of free 3G. That being said, I'm thrilled with the new one. The dictionaries are free. The books I bought were transferred upon registration. The ones I had converted were easily transferred from my laptop. All my notes were saved. I don't miss the lack of audio or the free 3G. The kindle keyboard 3G interfaces were clumsy. You couldn't easily pause the audio. You couldn't rewind it at all and if you didn't get through a chapter you had to start it over at the beginning. The audio on the older version would do in a pinch, but it wasn't designed with language-learners in mind. It was designed for readers to load, say a jazz album or classical music and listen whilst reading. The internet browser was also clunky. It did provide me with the ability to check my email when I was in Brazil without wi-fi a couple of years ago and enabled me to download some city guides from Amazon. Still the tradeoff is worth it. Kindle flavors- the keyboard 3G model is no longer sold by Amazon but you can get one on ebay for around $40 used. The e-ink 4 version (not touch screen) is on it's way out too. That's why I picked it up so cheap. That, and the "special offers"- ads on the screen saver (when off). Of course, I hacked the "special offers" rather quickly and made them go away, so no more Piers Morgan adverts! The hack was simple and took less than 5 minutes to do. I prefer the e-ink for the reasons cited plus it is much better for reading in ambient light- the brighter the light/sunlight the better! That's important when your outdoors or on an afternoon flight. The e-ink devices will handle pdf's unconverted but not nearly as well as a tablet does, though there's hacks available to improve the pdf viewing. The "Fire" is the glorified tablet version. It's good for reading, and with the Amazon film service you can watch movies, listen to music, surf the web, etc, anything a tablet will do- up to a point. The RAM is light and the memory is light as well. I believe that a real tablet is a smarter buy because you can download the kindle app (or another e-reader app) and have a much better tablet capable of storing maybe 32-64 gigs of data for about the same price. So, obviously I have a tablet too. To me that's the best solution. I can read for hours on the e-ink without any eyestrain, even outdoors- just like a real book. It's so much lighter than a tablet, but tablets have their uses as well. The various DLI/FSI/Peace Corps/PDF courses with audio work so much better on a tablet. I stored my DLI course on my dinosaur HP Touchpad ($99 new) and loved the ability to simultaneously listen and read as I went through the lessons. For me, the most important features of the tablet are pdf's and mp3's. So, for the price of a Kindle Fire Tablet you can have an e-ink device and a low-cost android tablet together. The other kindle e-ink device versions ar the touch and the paperwhite. Each has its benefits and disadvantages. To sum up, yes kuji, buy a kindle! When you do, reading will be soooo much easier and of course, I'm always ready to help you out. With the free calibre software you can make and convert your own ebooks, like I do. I recommend that all language-learners get an e-reader of some kind and free themselves from the computer. With e-ink, you can even get out of the house and spend some time outdoors in the fresh air and natural light reading in your TLs. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 467 of 706 27 February 2014 at 6:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Why specifically kindle though? There are various kinds of e-readers. Decide what features you want and see what fits your needs best.
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| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 468 of 706 28 February 2014 at 1:31am | IP Logged | ||
It doesn't have to specifically be a Kindle, but I really like the in-text dictionary lookup feature. On my Android Walkman, when reading a text I have to copy the unknown word and paste it into a separate dictionary application. Then I have to copy and paste all the information back onto the original document (if I can annotate it) or in a separate note-taking application, so that I don't have to look it up again. The process makes it tough to read sometimes, so I thought having a Kindle with its in-text lookup feature would make things easier. That said, after doing some research, I'm now leaning away from buying a Kindle. I was interested in the e-ink version, but it is good at only one thing: reading. I think I want to buy something that I can do a lot of language learning on. That means not just reading documents, but listening to audio, watching videos, accessing the Internet when I'm on a wi-fi network, etc. And I still want to be able to use non-language-learning apps like news apps, podcast apps, games, etc. The in-text lookup feature sounds really nice, but I don't know if it is worth giving up other functions. And I don't want to buy too many devices. I want as close to an "all-in-one" solution as I can get. The Kindle Fire seemed to be the best of both worlds, but it also seems limited. I'm used to the Google Play store; I would hate to give up a lot of apps that I currently use. So I'm looking at some other tablets that are available in Japan. There is an Asus tablet that seems to be affordable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4726 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 469 of 706 28 February 2014 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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On an android tablet, as long as you have unfettered access to Google Play, you can
download the kindle app and use monolingual dictionaries while reading. But if I recall correctly, you can't install the bilingual dictionaries for some reason. Of course, you'll still have the battery issue, but that doesn't seem to bother you now. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 470 of 706 03 March 2014 at 1:17am | IP Logged | ||
Ah yes, the battery issue. If I get a new tablet, I should get something with more battery life than my Walkman. It doesn't take long for it to run out when I'm using it a lot. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 471 of 706 03 March 2014 at 1:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Ugh... no language study the past three or four days, except for a few Anki cards here and there. I'm going on a four-night trip to Malaysia on Wednesday, and - as I do for all of my trips - I've been planning and drafting a detailed itinerary. It takes a lot of time, because I have to search transportation details, create, organize and print maps, etc.
But let me look at the positives here - I'm going to Malaysia! I can sacrifice a little language time to get ready for that. Besides, I can use airplane time to catch up on my language learning. It takes about seven hours one way, so that's plenty. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4837 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 472 of 706 10 March 2014 at 1:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Back from Malaysia and really tired right now, even though I arrived last night. The trip was amazing, and I found Malaysia to be a very beautiful place.
The only problem was the fact that the morning before we were to leave Malaysia, an airplane that left from the same airport went missing after takeoff (and is still missing). My wife and I were obviously worried about the situation and, unable to sleep the night before leaving, we stayed up very late watching news on the TV at the hotel. Fortunately, our airplane made it to Japan with no problems. We are alright, but my heart goes out to the families affected by that incident with the other plane. Language-wise, we found it very easy to get by with nothing but English in Malaysia, although sometimes there were people that spoke little or no English. And I became sort of interested in Bahasa Malaysia! I think if I ever decide to learn a language from Southeast Asia, Bahasa Malaysia would be at the top of my list. We really like the trip and we are thinking of making a return trip sometime, so the language could be useful. As for language study, I couldn't really do anything on the trip other than the occasional Anki review. I fell asleep on the airplane ride both to and from Malaysia. And when we travel, we travel hard, meaning that we pack our schedule with stuff to do from morning to night. There's really no "down time", so no time to study. It was just Malaysia, Malaysia, Malaysia the whole time. It takes me a while to "recover" from traveling before resuming my normal studies, so I hope I have enough energy - either today or tomorrow - to do so. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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