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| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6789 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 33 of 102 02 December 2009 at 11:48pm | IP Logged |
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I have continued to not really do any Japanese studies. I did watch a movie (Battle Royale), although with subtitles; I'm probably going to watch it again soon without. It was pretty well done, I would say, the film.
In the mean while, I've been doing some reading in French. Based on a words per page estimate, somewhere over 50000 words. Not bad at all. I'm not having any particular difficulties, and reach for a dictionary no more often than once every 12 to 15 pages, and then seemingly only to confirm a meaning that I've already correctly guessed. I had forgotten about my desire to do this, but I may as well anyway, since I would shrivel up and die if I didn't garner enough attention to this log... IT'S TIME FOR DECEMBONANZA! For the month of December, it's time for the Decembonanza, where every day (except apparently December 1st), I will spend three or more hours on my Japanese studies. This time will include Heisig reviews (which have been taking fewer than 30 minutes and lately fewer than 20 minutes per day, even). This is a result of a lack of "motivation" to do anything in Japanese (which is moreso a hesitance to start any sort of program), which should be done away with. For at least one month. It's possible I'll end my study of Japanese at the end of the month, which is something I've been considering doing after one final push... well, this is potentially the final push. That, or it's a needed push that will do some sort of good. Potential materials will include Assimil's Le Japonais san peine, Tae Kim's grammar guide, and whatever video materials I come up with (which I will count just in case they are viewed without subtitles). If I'm feeling brazen by the end of the month (and I well might), I'll consider incorporating some form of native-level materials, perhaps a book or video game or something of that sort. So, the DECEMBONANZA, that thirty day long event bearing the most attrocious of portmanteaus, begins today! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6789 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 34 of 102 06 December 2009 at 6:21pm | IP Logged |
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DECEMBONANZA Report 1
(I hate having to write that word in all caps, but I don't have a choice.) I have had three successful days of three hours put in. I believe that this is, discounting review time for RTK, more time than spent in the entirety of November. That is sad, but something that can be and is being remedied. However, there was a day lost in the mix as I adjusted my sleep schedule so that I would be awake daylight hours. I like sunshine. Even if the winteriness limits the amount of sun available. I'm not holding this lost day against me, exactly, although I do intend/hope to make up the three lost hours (likewise, although with a lesser feeling of obligation,) for the first of the month that I missed out on. The breakdown--each day has been roughly the same, with 15 minutes for reviews, 70 minutes spent on Tae Kim, and 100 minutes spent on video. My course through Tae Kim has thus far been, that I have read through the Basic Grammar section and have written things down as I felt like it. I was initially going to take more notes, but decided that it might be good to read through the entirety to get an overview before going further in depth or trying too hard to remember things. So, today I'll either be starting a cursory glance over Essential Grammar, or going over Basic Grammar with a bit more detail, making sure I understand all the examples and then probably adding sentences into Anki. It's pretty neat to actually be able to read some (however small bit of) Japanese. It's been very helpful for my kana ability to actually try (I estimated as much), and I've already learned a few more kanji readings. I believe that all the listening/viewing of Japanese has been helpful, as there are things that I've heard a number of times which I have now seen in writing, which provides a level of familiarity , which breeds a certain amount of comfort. With more or less the entirety of Japanese staring you in the face, it's quite welcome to have some bastion of comfort to turn to. 魚 is さかな。 Of course I have to remember the word for fish! Although I find it very disappointing. It is my least favorite word for fish I've even come across. My favorite is Tibetan, which captures the very essence of fishitude, and since I don't care to figure out an input method for Tibetan, but it is "nya". The only way it could be better is if it were "nyam", or I think maybe "nya" with the "a" nasalized (I don't feel like getting an appropriate symbol). I feel like this paragraph could be helpful in diagnosing something wrong with me. I've also seen enough Japanese to want to curse it for its wickedness. But no one expected that to take long, did they? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6789 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 35 of 102 08 January 2010 at 2:48am | IP Logged |
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It has been quite a while since I last posted here, or indeed visited this forum. I believe this has to do with shame of my failing my DECEMBONANZA. I succeeded for about a week and then tapered off.
Why did I fail? Lack of time wasn't specifically an issue. However, the amount I required was still likely too high. It presented too high a cost, which I retreated from. I didn't think out the number in advance, in any case; it was merely thrown out as a value. Another factor in my failure may have been the lack of interest in Tae Kim. The basic grammar was quite simple, and I could keep it in my head. There was some vocabulary in there which I sort of picked up a little. But, in my haste to move on to essential grammar, I was attempting to build on a foundation of sand which caused difficulty and confusing, thus precipitating my evasion of this. One positive effort made was the addition of some kana cards to Anki, which has been at least somewhat helpful and not time consuming enough to be a bother. So, I have started again to work on Japanese some more. I have begun going over Tae Kim's basic grammar again, this time adding the sentences used into Anki (there was a deck for it already, which is all the more succulent). The vocabulary has been easy enough to learn thus far. Also, I had a "special moment" when I unthinkingly read a kanji as the proper pronunciation--a very minor thing, but significant. This was a "feeling" I was looking for in my Japanese studies, to know what it feels like to read this script. I must enjoy these trivialities as I go, as eventually all will be mundane and this special sense of joy will be lifted from me. It's as if one has moved to a beautiful new city; one looks upon all the buildings with a sense of wonder. But, as one grows accustomed to it, once one is at home and can find his way with ease, there is no wonder, no astonishment in his gaze, for the novelty has passed and necessity has favored a familiar environment to a strange and exotic one. The most interesting thing I've done lately in Japanese was yesterday (or the day before maybe) when I watched Kurosawa's Rashomon. Quite a fantastic film, and it definitely lived up to my expectations. It is of course a classic, but I can only recommend it. (I watched it with subs. I caught a few words, though, which is always neat. Better still, the kanji was what popped immediately to mind.) This month's goal, should I choose to keep one: one hour per day. If I fail...I can't fail. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6789 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 36 of 102 11 January 2010 at 7:12am | IP Logged |
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I haven't done any failing yet. Well, yesterday I fell ten minutes short (I was very tired) but I'll make up for it today. I've decided that while I won't demand strict adherance to the hour per day, I must be no more than 30 minutes behind the schedule at the end of a day. This should allow some flexibility while minimizing cheating. Maybe I could come up with some sort of locking in of time after every so many days to prevent squandering a good lead, but that's added complexity for an occurrence that has yet to come up.
My computer's been acting pretty sketchy. I'm afraid to turn it off, since its problems are mostly to do with starting up. But my sound card won't work anymore either (I think the problem ultimately lies with the motherboard), which is really, really bad. At least for my language learning. I'm trying to set something up to play my audio from a different computer. I can blame yesterday's shortcoming on this as well (aside from spending a bunch of time trying to fix things, it also meant I couldn't laze off by watching something). [Note: I managed to write about my computer while being on topic. The victory is bittersweet.] Particles are kind of annoying. There's a bunch of them, and I doubt that reading descriptions of what they do is going to help me all that much. Or at least caring too much about what the description says. I suspect that they are to be figured out by context. I'm somewhat impatient with going through grammar instructions, and am itching to try puzzling through some real content. Probably similar to what I did with French, but likely more time consuming. And with less understanding. But hopefully still entertainment. (French is so much easier than this. Why do the Japanese have to have a language anyway? They should just speak American or shut up.) May tomorrow bring many sounds. Sounds of joy and triumph. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6789 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 37 of 102 16 January 2010 at 2:52am | IP Logged |
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This forum seems to be booming with TAC things. I can't wait for people to lose their enthusiasm so I don't have to dig my thread up all the way off of page 3.
I've been successful in my aims, and have been averaging 64.75 minutes per day for the past 8 days. I only failed to meet my quota a single day, other days being above. However, I have been accomplishing much of my time through watching things. Is this problematic? I don't know. My kana reviews have waned to very low levels, and no new cards introduced, resulting in less time on them. I haven't done katakana yet, which I should probably get around to, but they just don't seem all that important. The past four days I've stopped adding in any Tae Kim cards (or looking at the site), which means those numbers are declining (I'll probably resume today though, since I think I've given myself enough time after the verbal particles section). I've replaced my Tae Kim time entirely these days with video. These combine to mean my Anki times at the least seem to be decreasing, despite factual evidence to the contrary. The fun of it is that it's not so much the grammar that slows me down in the guide, but rather the vocabulary. "Highway" is probably not a word I need to know at this point, although I'm mostly complaining because I can't remember it. It's likely sensical if you know the pieces, but I just don't. (The word is 高速道路（こうそくどうろ）, I did have to look that up just now, and I noted that it is made up of several words, none of which seem that interesting. Maybe I'll pick up 道路（どうろ）, since it seems useful enough.) To finish my pseudo-non-sequituur from last time, I was able to get sound playing over the network, but with some unfortunate defects, in particular regarding video playback where, while the audio plays fine, video stops and then goes fast intermittently to catch up. This seems to go away eventually once a video gets going, though, or perhaps somewhat randomly (what do I know). It hasn't been too much of a problem in my studies, though, and music works fine mostly. I believe I may try to decipher some native materials some time soon. Maybe once I've finished this second pass at Tae Kim's basic grammar. It may be nice to actually pick up some vocabulary that I want to learn, rather than vocabulary I have to learn in order to learn grammar. And while I'm saying things, I will express my concern over my reviewing the sentences in Anki. I'm not really at all certain how well I'm learning these things. Most of the time, I'm not consciously looking at kanji combinations, or at least not as far as using them to ascertain the meaning. This is actually a bit confusing. I would say the process is going kanji->pronunciation->meaning. Sometimes it does go kanji->meaning(->pronunciation) (this mostly happens when I forget the reading). I'm still not paying that great of attention to the individual kanji, recognizing the word from both general shape as well as the shape of the sentence, whose meanings I often remember even if I don't recall the kanji. I think my worry is actually more along the lines of active production, which would be harmed by my skimming of the kanji. I suppose that would suggest the use of an active production deck, or something of the sort. But these TK sentences aren't interesting enough to bother with, so that'll wait until I get something I actually want to do. Referring back to a few posts ago, with the discussion of 魚（さかな）fish, I found that I had used the word nām for fish in a conlang. This was probably influenced by the Tibetan word, although I don't know how responsible its existence is in making me fond of that particular word for fish. Perhaps I was born with this association. (That doesn't actually make sense.) To conclude, this is the final sentence of this post. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6789 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 38 of 102 21 January 2010 at 11:10pm | IP Logged |
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My numbers have been keeping up; over the past five days I've averaged roughly 66 minutes per day. I could probably be doing better, but I'm doing okay, and that's good enough at a minimum.
On the topic of record keeping: I'm not entirely fond of it. It adds some overhead and occasionally discourages me from doing some activities if it would be difficult to record the time used. Mostly this means doing things for short periods of time with frequent breaks. I definitely do this with Anki, since it's well capable of keeping track of the time spent so I don't have to worry. I could (and perhaps will) start utilizing extra timeboxing on some tasks--perhaps setting a timer for, say, five minutes and taking an X minute break. Coming up with material that is potentially reasonable for me is kind of tricky. Since I don't have very much to work with at all. Although it's fun seeing what things stick given the minimal effort I afford the process. On my struggles with 高速道路: I typed it there from memory. Knowing the second part, 道路（どうろ), seems to have broken it up enough that I've been able to memorize the first part. Of course, I don't doubt the extra attention it's been given here has been helpful. So, lesson learned: break apart compounds. (This is pretty obvious, but it's more instantly gratifying to just look at it as it is rather than trying to piece apart the inner workings, so it's something I need to consider at least somewhat consciously.) I have been noticing some words I've learned used in my video watching. It's always an exciting thing, in early stages, to recognize words used in the wild. And on statistics and video watching; I've been recording since the 9th of September the time I've spent watching unsubtitled Japanese TV and movies. I set this up in a manner that is very simple, so it takes very, very little effort (I wrote a little script that I run with the time as the argument, and it appends that value along with the date to a text file. Running with no arguments sums the times and displays the total). In that time, I've accumulated 37 hours and 40 minutes of time. It's rather interesting to see the gaps in the dates. From 9-28 to 10-24, there are few gaps, and none very long; then, there are only two entries in the entirety of November (44 minutes total); in December, I'm mostly on the wagon, until the 18th, after which the next comes January 12th. Overall, this is a lot of words to describe something that probably doesn't need to much describing. It would be interesting to constrast this with total time spent on Japanese, but I've only begun keeping daily records of it this month (and a bit last month, but I don't know where that went). 亀（かめ）is for "turtle". 龜 is the old form, which is pretty neat looking (looks likes it's got other readings, too). This is important, and may save your life one day. If it does, I'd really appreciate hearing what sort of contrived situation you were in. I would even entertain entertaining contrived contrivances, by which I mean, you could make something up if it were amusing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5467 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 39 of 102 21 January 2010 at 11:40pm | IP Logged |
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高速 simply means "high speed" so 高速道路 is a perfectly logical compound. In conversation, people usually just say 高速, as in 高速で行こうか ("Shall we go by highway?"). Although this could feasibly mean "Shall we go at high speed?",it's usually understood from the context of the conversation.
You'll find 高速 in lots of other compounds, mainly relating to technological gadgetry and the like, so it's worth remembering. 道路 is of course very common, as is 道 (michi). The difference in meaning is not clear-cut, and they may be interchangeable in some cases, but both are used with equal frequency in regular conversation. And you've really got to learn katakana! I can't imagine what is giving you the impression that they are not important. EDIT: I've just been out onto the balcony of my apartment here in Tokyo. There is a truck parked outside, and on the truck is written ワタナベ建材. 建材 means "building materials" and is another perfectly logical compound, 建 meaning "construction" and 材 meaning "materials". In the truck are boxes of these materials, and printed on the boxes is 防水シート. 防水 means "waterproof" (防: "prevent", 水: "water"). The point I'm making, in a very long-winded way, is that katakana are used everywhere, all the time, even when you might not normally expect to see them, e.g. for surnames such as 渡辺 (Watanabe) used as company names. Edited by TixhiiDon on 21 January 2010 at 11:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| NuclearGorilla Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6789 days ago 166 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, French | Message 40 of 102 24 January 2010 at 7:20am | IP Logged |
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Thanks, TixhiiDon, for all the helpful information (and for reading my log). I did look up the first part of the compound, I just underestimated its importance, I guess (I'll remember it now, though). As for katakana, they just seem unimportant relative to hiragana. I've actually done a pretty decent job of figuring them out through context and repeated exposure, so in a way they're learning themselves, which also causes me to put off formal study of them. (I recognized all katakana in your post except ワ.)
And now, it's time to take a look into the past...all the way, to the year 2000. (Well, close enough.) Japanese exerted a pull on me even in my high school days, and then as well I was uncertain as to exactly why. My strategy regarding languages then was ineffectual, but I didn't aim to achieve much, anyway. I'd check out language courses from the library and pick through them, but not use them as courses. I usually spent most of my time reading through what was usually the first section, pronunciation, and especially if it had a unique script I'd look at that, and usually copy it down a few times. Still, it was here I started my habit of picking up random facts about various languages (which on extremely rare occasion can be used to impress women. Yeah, Swahili has 14 noun classes...ladies.) They had a few courses for Japanese, which I dutifully borrowed and copied script from. But how to tackle the actual course? I hadn't a clue, even with these being fairly straightforward courses, and so I returned them without having gained much. I noted earlier this year that I had written quite a few kanji and kana out in notebooks which seem to date from about this period, something which I had entirely forgotten. But I really didn't learn anything, not even how to write kana (although I made a set of flashcards for it, that was apparently busywork). One course I borrowed from the library was Pimsleur. This was in some ways ideal for my young mind--the instructions were very straightforward and the marketing on the packaging very sensationalist; I could follow this and I could not fail. I may have made through the first ten; more likely, I got through the first four. And the interesting part--I returned to try this a few years later, and I still remembered the few phrases. I experimented, as well, and found that I could successfully completed the lesson at at least 1.2x speed, possibly faster. Some of these phrases are indelibly ingrained in my mind, and I doubt that I should forget them any time soon. In fact, it was noting the following sentence (and the related phenomenon) that prompted me on this tangent: "私はアメリカ人です。" (And look, I can write it now! Well, you can only see that I can type it...) And that was high school; I stopped with Japanese probably junior year. Senior year I remember a very sad attempt at learning Latin; I hadn't the foggiest idea what I was doing, and spent my time for the most part copying down tables and vocabulary with translations. I learned roughly nothing. (This method is indicative of how I attempted languages during these era. I tried something similar with French.) In college, I returned briefly to Japanese once more, sophomore year. This time, I was going to start with Heisig and learn the kanji. I had technical difficulties, and lacked either the resolve or know-how to fix them. I was trying to use Mnemosyne. I couldn't figure out how to input Japanese characters in to it. My solution? Front of card: key word. Back of card: number from the book. So when I was testing myself, if I wasn't sure I was right, I had to look up the kanji by number. This was neither fun nor efficient. I was aware of the RevTK site, I believe, but didn't want to use it in case I had to go somewhere without reliable internet access. I bowed out around 150, I think because I was doing these last thing before I went to bed and it wasn't enough fun to consistently give up sleep for. The next time I attempted Japanese is the one outlined in this log. Having Anki and a premade deck made a tremendous amount of difference, and I successfully completed Heisig. While I still often feel I don't know what I'm doing with regards to learning languages, I've got a better idea as to whether something is helpful or pointless, and I can gravitate towards the former. You know, Estonian has a three way length distinction...ladies. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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