Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4797 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian
| Message 33 of 314 25 December 2014 at 4:56pm | IP Logged |
Welcome to the team, druckfehler! Glad you joined us. I'll second Warp3's reminder :)
Will add your link.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5184 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 34 of 314 25 December 2014 at 7:41pm | IP Logged |
TimmyTurner93 wrote:
Hey guys, I guess I'm the newbie this year as I'm starting from almost scratch in
Japanese. I'm thinking whether or not to set some goals for the year to give myself
something to aim for but don't really know what is achievable realistically. I've set my
eyes on JLPT N5 (but may not take it) as a sort of distant deadline. Anyone got some
advice for a padawan?
EDIT: I'll add what resources I have bookmarked ASAP (probably on the 26th) |
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Good luck with it. This was mentioned but I'd recommend learning Hiragana right away. Katakana would
be nice but isn't as important. I don't think I was really comfortable with it until after two years. I mean, I
studied it along with hiragana but only really comfortable with about half of the letters. Since it's used for
English borrowings, I would just sort of fill in the blanks based off of the letters I did know.
I used a flashcard app that had audio. It auto-played the audio and showed me the hiragana so I would
read along. This isn't the fastest way to learn - it took me several months this way but I didn't care. If you
want to learn as fast as possible then doing workbook exercises where you write out answers in hiragana is
probably the fastest.
I was lucky to be able to take a Japanese class at my community college after work. And that helped me a
lot in terms of staying motivated and having to write out homework in hiragana etc. Unfortunately it didn't
help my speaking since the class was mostly in English.
Speaking Japanese wasn't really a goal for me except that everyone around me wanted me to speak it
when I told them I was studying Japanese (I hate people for that!). But I found that having conversations in
Japanese was what finally got my listening skills up to where I could start understanding anime (at least as
long as they were using grammar and vocabulary that wasn't too over my head - when they use too many
words you don't know, there's really nothing for it but to turn on the subs). I get my conversation practice
using JOI - http://www.japonin.com. They only speak Japanese but
they give English explanations for everything (in the lesson notes or copying and pasting to the chat
window). I never took true beginner lessons there however so I don't know what happens in a true beginner
lesson. I'm sure you can find other people to chat with online also. I have tried a tutor via italki and her
lessons are really cheap but she cancels them a lot I think whenever she's tired from her day job (she
claims she's sick but I think she's just tired) so JOI is a lot better I think. Also, I find the teachers on JOI are
better at grading language than less experienced teachers.
Anyway. Be patient. Nothing seemed to stick for me the first year and it was really really frustrating.
However, some people do really well from the beginning. I've talked to a few people who sit the N2 after
only a year and a half or so of studying.
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rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5236 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 35 of 314 26 December 2014 at 12:42pm | IP Logged |
Hi everyone,
I'm not going to participate in the TAC but I wanted to wish you all luck and I look forward to reading some of your logs. I'm learning Mandarin (or trying anyway)
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Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4844 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian
| Message 36 of 314 26 December 2014 at 12:54pm | IP Logged |
Just a short こんにちは from me!
I have been studying Japanese for one and a half year now, but I'm still on a pretty basic level. I have finished most of Genki 1 and 2, but there are still huge gaps in my vocabulary and kanji knowledge. Generally speaking, my active skills could be much better.
I'd like to work on this with all of you in 2015. I'm glad to be on this team! You'll here more from me in the future (maybe we could do little self-introductions in our TLs in January), but at the moment I'm pretty busy organizing the TAC.
@druckfehler: I've added you to the roster in the Sign-Up Thread of the TAC 2015. Please contact me if anything needs to be changed.
EDIT: By the way, here is the link to my log.
Edited by Josquin on 26 December 2014 at 12:57pm
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Anya Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 5793 days ago 636 posts - 708 votes Speaks: Russian*, FrenchC1, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: German, Japanese, Hungarian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin Studies: Ancient Greek, Hindi
| Message 37 of 314 26 December 2014 at 1:33pm | IP Logged |
It's a good idea to do self-introductions in TL. I will work on it then I come back from holidays.
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Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4797 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian
| Message 38 of 314 26 December 2014 at 9:08pm | IP Logged |
Hello, rdearman! Thank you so much for stopping by, and your wonderful wishes! We'd be
glad if you keep visiting, and find the thread and the individual logs useful for your
needs.
Glad to see you finally pop in, Josquin :) I do understand how busy you are with
organizing the TAC, so thank you for that. As you you and Anya stated, hopefully we
can all start posting introductions here on the thread in our respective target
languages. I think also posting a translation would be good for those of us still
starting out. Beginners can write in English, and if you can manage a sentence, or a
word or two, all the better!
Also, I'm thinking it'll be nice to decide on a team name. It's a bit tricky given the
different languages, but I'm sure some of you have ideas. 東亜 "East Asia" has been
used as a thread title place holder by a couple of us, and it's also good on saving
space, due to the character limit.
Any other thoughts?
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5982 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 39 of 314 27 December 2014 at 2:46pm | IP Logged |
Hello teammates! I've set up my log for 2015 here.
It would be nice if we could get a team name which is short and makes sense across all the languages that will be represented by this team. Does 東亜 work in Korean, Mandarin etc?
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stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4873 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish
| Message 40 of 314 27 December 2014 at 3:22pm | IP Logged |
Hi everyone!
I've been learning japanese on and off since June 2012. Mostly off, sadly, and that's
why I'm here. I'm planning to get back into Japanese this year, and finally get it up
to a strong B1 or B2 level. I might not be as active as I should, due to having to
write my BEng thesis this semester.
I second 東亜 for team name!
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