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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜

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Warp3
Senior Member
United States
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1419 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

 
 Message 1553 of 1702
31 December 2014 at 2:42am | IP Logged 
From what I've heard that is true about Chinese. Korean is similar as well in that aspect
that the vast majority of characters only have one reading. In Korean, unlike Japanese, only
the Sino-Korean roots are readings for Chinese characters, not the native Korean roots.
That said, Korean doesn't really utilize Chinese characters all that much nowadays anyway.
1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
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Poland
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Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 1554 of 1702
31 December 2014 at 2:57am | IP Logged 
My experience with Mandarin is fairly limited, but from what I've seen so far, most of the time a
character has just one really common reading. Although there are exceptions (like 的 in 目的, two
possible readings of 便 in 便宜...). It's definitely way more "stable" than in Japanese.
Edit: Ninja'd.

Edited by Ezy Ryder on 31 December 2014 at 2:58am

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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
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United Kingdom
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1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 1555 of 1702
31 December 2014 at 12:08pm | IP Logged 
kraemder wrote:
I'm looking forward to the TAC 2015. I think last year we had a lot more people interested in
participating (or so it seemed) than we do now.


The drop-off rate was quite high though wasn't it?

kraemder wrote:
One of my Japanese teachers keeps telling me that I should do Chinese because I would enjoy the fact that
there's just one sound for each kanji. I don't even know if that's true. It seems too good to be true.


I admit that this does sound good. There is a "but" however, in that you need over double the number of characters to read
a newspaper.

It'll be interesting to follow you in 2015. Good luck!

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Warp3
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Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

 
 Message 1556 of 1702
31 December 2014 at 12:48pm | IP Logged 
Plus not only would you need to greatly increase your character count, the grammar is vastly
different in Chinese. From what I've heard (I've not really studied it myself) the word order
is actually closer to English word order than it is to that of Japanese and Korean.
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kraemder
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1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 1557 of 1702
01 January 2015 at 7:44pm | IP Logged 
Happy New Year! And this is my first official 2015 TAC post. I did already post my goals for this year - it's
to focus on Japanese and make as much progress as I can. I don't want to get distracted by wanderlust if
I can help it. At least not so much that it interferes with Japanese. Last year I got burned out and took up
Korean instead for a while and no regrets - it was fun and interesting - but this year I want to be about
Japanese.

I'm also looking to learn how to use Anki more effectively and perhaps stop using Flashcards Deluxe. This
morning I finally got a deck going to my satisfaction. It's a grammar deck with 4 fields and includes
pictures and audio using the TTS plugin. I still haven't been able to get Anki to import my old decks from
FCD - or decks I make using a Spreadsheet program, but at least I can make good decks using the built in
editor on my mac. Now that I'm actually able to make decks, I'll probably figure out most of the other
tricks and whatnot to customizing decks as I go. やっと!

I'm still getting used to the mac. I think I can setup a dual boot with Windows on this but haven't gotten
that to work yet - when I boot to windows it just won't recognize my keyboard or mouse so it won't install
windows. Still working on that but not a big deal since I wouldn't use Windows except when I have to
anyway.

Not as related but I'm also working on getting into shape and losing a few lbs. Nothing too extreme - I'm
only about 10 lbs overweight. But losing those pounds is a lot of work! I'm trying to workout 3 days and
then do a day off. I'm running 6.5 miles (varies a little, sometimes up to 10) and trying to get a bit of
weights in too. It's hard to stay consistent with that when I have work and class but with just work it's not
too bad. I'm signed up for an easy Japanese class this spring but since it's just review I think I can keep
with the exercise and do the Japanese and anki etc. If I'm on top of my exercising I do feel like I focus
better on my reviews and I also drink less beer which clearly equals better studying.

My biggest goals right now are just staying on top of Anki. I have three decks - Core 6k, RTK 1 + 3, and
my custom Grammar production deck. In addition I watch anime daily. I alternate between watching with
and without subs and I don't keep track of this or consider it part of studying - it's just something I do to
relax. I'd like to read more too. I read in another log about how this lady had a goal to read 48 books in
English last year without using a dictionary and she achieved it. I do think using a dictionary is really
helpful but she did later say that she goes back later to learn some of the words but that she feels it's
important to immerse yourself in the language and that using a dictionary (well a bilingual one) hurts that. I
think that makes some sense. It definitely slows you down too I think. In other languages, I've often read
the first 1/4 or 1/2 of a book using a dictionary as much as possible and then just thrown my hands up in
the air wanting to finish it so I stopped looking up words just in order to finish the book. Which got me to
finish the book which I wouldn't have done otherwise. So I might try that with Japanese. I get so upset
that I can't 'hear' the words in my head due to the kanji that I've never been able to do this with Japanese.
I think I would have to do it with a relatively easy book. I might even do it with (bleh) Harry Potter. Just
because it's the only Japanese book I have access to that I've read in English so not looking up words in a
dictionary won't hurt me much at all. Manga would not be an issue either. Pictures give you the general
idea anyway. So I think I"ll get through the manga I bought a while back but haven't read and finish this
one Harry Potter book.. then try this with a real Japanese book whose story I haven't read in English.

I'm currently not making vocabulary decks from stuff I read. Just using Core 6k/10k. This is in part
because I don't know how to make good vocabulary decks using Rikai-sama and import the sound and
whatnot into Anki properly, although I think I have an idea now of how to do it. But since I'm thinking got
copying this idea of not using a dictionary, at least for the initial read, this isn't a bad thing.

Edited by kraemder on 03 January 2015 at 10:06pm

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kraemder
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Speaks: English*
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 Message 1558 of 1702
03 January 2015 at 2:59am | IP Logged 
Well I'm breaking down and downloading a nice Chinese deck for anki. It looks like a really sweet deck.
Here's a screen shot...

Screen Shot of the Deck details

Hope that works.. I think it's awesome that the cards can include both the traditional and simplified
versions of the kanji. It looks like really large deck similar to the core for Japanese. I'm starting off at 15
cards a day but I may reduce that if cards don't stick well. I'm not looking to cut into my Japanese review
time just to satisfy my curiosity. Right now I'm enjoying an anime called Night Raid 1931 and it includes a
lot of Chinese which is kind of motivating my interest. It also includes some German which is funny. It's
mostly understandable but if you have heard Japanese voice actors speak English, well, that's what it
sounds like. I suspect the Chinese isn't so good either but I can't criticize it with my knowledge. It sounds
kind of slow is all I can say. Good anime though.

Edited by kraemder on 03 January 2015 at 4:58am

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kraemder
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Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 1559 of 1702
03 January 2015 at 5:04am | IP Logged 
I altered the Chinese deck so it does production as well as recognition (which it already did). Something
that would have been easy in Flashcards Deluxe but I had no idea how to do in Anki until I did it. Anyway, I
think Anki automatically sees the new cards as 'siblings' so it won't test them the same day. My Japanese
deck tests both ways and Anki does this with siblings so it's weird but I get retested on the same cards the
next day just in a different direction. I like it but sometimes I wonder if I'm not just doing the exact same
reviews as yesterday. I think it'll be really helpful for Chinese where I'm a total noob so words are not going
to stick very well. It essentially is like halving your new cards for the next day. Since you're adding the
same words just testing in a different direction. As such, I've upped my Japanese deck to 75 new cards a
day to counter this. I'll leave the Chinese deck at 15 new cards however.

I'm kind of excited about really using Anki. I still want to figure out how to properly import cards (IE the my
Flashcards deluxe decks I've made - especially the Korean ones). I am going to cut way back on
Korean but I don't want to cut it out completely.
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kraemder
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1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 1560 of 1702
03 January 2015 at 10:17pm | IP Logged 
I put the new cards down to 50 on my Japanese Core deck. Even if the cards are the same vocab in a
different direction, they're still reviews. I'm also trying to make myself read/shadow the example sentence
out loud and this is slowing my reviews down a lot.

I also bought two Japanese audio books. Someone posted a link to the website febe.jp. This person was
looking for better sites for audio books but I was pretty impressed this one. There may well be better ones
out there. This one may go belly up soon for all I know. I got two books though. Both seem to be targeted
towards middle school age kind of. One's about a girl who wants to be the manager of the baseball club at
school and the other.. is about Pirates. Or something. Both narrators are quite good and easy to
understand. They seem to be a good level for me. I am getting the gist of everything so far but there's
unknown words mixed in too so I'll want to re-listen again to challenge myself to understand more. Audio
books really helped me with other languages so I hope these'll do the same. I'm actually not unhappy with
my Japanese level however. I am watching anime and for sure I don't understand it all but comparing it to
German and Spanish I think Japanese is doing nicely now.

There's a few reasons why I think audiobooks are awesome. One is that I can listen while I clean or do
other stuff. I have procrastinated cleaning so much that this in itself makes it worth the purchase. And I
think that because there are no visuals you can focus more on the words. Sure the visuals can give you a
context to help but they can also be a crutch too. You just start watching the show and picking up on all
that's going on not through language any other way possible. At least I've noticed that myself. You get the
effect of subtitles without their even being there.


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