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It Begins - Intensive Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| karashi Tetraglot Groupie Japan Joined 6575 days ago 81 posts - 81 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Japanese, German Studies: Russian | Message 17 of 65 22 November 2007 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hello, I listened a bit to the first one (danceman1.mp3), and I think that it is good quality. The speakers have a standard Japanese accent. I heard really no mumbling and I think that the pronounciation is quite standard (I also just asked my wife who is Japanese and she agreed). If you are talking about the nasality sounds (especially が), it is ok and even considered good pronounciation, like that used by newscasters on TV, etc. So it is nice to learn from I think. Just keep in mind that the tone and intonations used are that of someone reading a story. If you read a story to your child in your mother language (english?), your intonations are not the same as normal speaking language. And also that the language is a little old (e.g. the idioms that Holmes uses: "だがね", etc.). But if you can speak like this it will be considered very high quality ! By the way, the "u" sounds are quite often skipped in Japanese. The most simple example is pronouncing "shimas" instead of "shimasu" for the japanese します. At the beginning it's a little difficult to know which are skipped and which are not, but it's ok not to skip them so you can ignore this until you understand the difference ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ryuukohito Bilingual Diglot Groupie Malaysia Joined 6234 days ago 89 posts - 98 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Malay* Studies: French, Japanese | Message 18 of 65 23 November 2007 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ahh! That is certainly disappointing. I have read the English version, and I think it to be a fascinating read. I would certainly love to see how the English atmosphere can be carried into the Japanese language. I certainly love the old writing style that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle uses; it is very beautiful. (I wish to be able to write like him someday. Just for my own personal amusement of course; I will not use it to write to others, because I think many people, other than those who indulge themselves in languages or literary delights, cannot appreciate such styles and would think it to be arrogant instead.)
I am aware that 'u' has a markedly silent pronunciation in Japanese; however, I am used to them being so only in phrases like です or します, not in words like くる. But either way, thank you for your advice! I appreciate it, and I will keep it in mind. (And since you say that the pronunciation of the storyteller is good and of high quality, I will try my best to emulate it :) ) ------------------- Yesterday I completed one whole story from Breaking into Japanese Literature, the first, which is Natsume Souseki's 'First Night' of his 'Ten Nights of Dreams'. It was a very good read; motivated as I am now, I intend to complete the whole book, at most, in two weeks time, and I hope to retain most of the vocabulary I've acquired by the end of it. (I am devoting myself to complete and understand at least 1 story per day; I read and practice the stories over and over again.) It is also interesting that I am able to understand, at least in terms of the images that the nouns and adjectives conjure, the original Japanese versions of the stories by now. What slows me down from time to time however are the kanji; I find that when I know the kanji, I am able to identify them immediately, which leads me to the sound and meaning (as when it is used in a compound); however, when I do not know the kanji I have to 'guess' at what it sounds like (using purely visual memory to retain the shape of the kanji and its position in a sentence context to know what it should sound like), so I do not know whether this is a good method and whether I should stop to review the kanji(s) first. (I have mastered at this point about 1500 kanji(s) or so; thence the kanji(s) that elude me are mostly those that are beyond the Jouyou Kanji as laid out in Heisig's book. Indeed, even the first few pages of the book uses some rare kanji, 睫 (eyelashes) and 鷺, for instance.) ---------- Anyway, on an unrelated note: I watched Bourne Identity today. (I know I'm late; I don't watch a lot of movies.) I found myself, when seeing the protagonist speak in the French and German tongue, craving to be able to do likewise. I am very attracted to French; I love its cadence and prosody. I think, once I am done with Japanese, and have learned and become fluent with its intricacies (although I admit, I would not have mastered it yet, although that is certainly a long-term goal), which I fairly believe is a possible feat after devoting another year and a half to its study, I will study French. Edited by ryuukohito on 23 November 2007 at 10:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ryuukohito Bilingual Diglot Groupie Malaysia Joined 6234 days ago 89 posts - 98 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Malay* Studies: French, Japanese | Message 19 of 65 28 November 2007 at 1:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's so frustrating when you're reading something and you know how to read and pronounce the kanji, but you don't know what the kanji itself means... sigh.
While it would be nice to be able to skip the kanji-checking process, that does not seem to be a viable way of going about Japanese. I notice that even if I know how a character is read out in a specific sentence, if I take out that character and put it in a different sentence I won't remember how to read it anymore, because I can't identify the kanji by itself. It is quite cumbersome to check and re-check every kanji. ADD: I have made the effort to list down all kanji I don't know in a separate spreadsheet, and list down their relevant meanings right next to the kanji form, and learn all that before I go back to shadowing and reading. It helps a fair bit; but the listing work is a bit menial and takes quite a few hours per story. Edited by ryuukohito on 28 November 2007 at 11:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ryuukohito Bilingual Diglot Groupie Malaysia Joined 6234 days ago 89 posts - 98 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Malay* Studies: French, Japanese | Message 20 of 65 28 November 2007 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I discovered a rather interesting page today: http://www.trussel.com/jap/jbooks01.htm
It lists down all books relevant to learning the Japanese language. I look forward to perusing this list as a 'catalogue' of sorts, to find the books I wish to complete in the Japanese library I had joined. Edited by ryuukohito on 28 November 2007 at 9:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| karashi Tetraglot Groupie Japan Joined 6575 days ago 81 posts - 81 votes Speaks: French*, English, Japanese, German Studies: Russian | Message 21 of 65 28 November 2007 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Nice ! If you like reviews by people who used the books, there is also this website which has lots of (and only) books on the Japanese language: http://books.sljfaq.org/books.cgi 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| karashi Tetraglot Groupie Japan Joined 6575 days ago 81 posts - 81 votes Speaks: French*, English, Japanese, German Studies: Russian | Message 22 of 65 28 November 2007 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know what to quote from your post so I'll quote all :). I think that this is a double-edged sword of the Japanese language. The kanji in themselves are incredibly interesting, and it is a nice feeling when you know that you made progress in your kanji study. But also, it can be quite demotivating to look up every kanji that you don't know. But you said that you already know 1500 kanjis? I think that's already quite a lot (depending on what you mean by "know" ;))! Maybe you are having problems with this text because it is classical and thus uses lots of kanjis that are only rarely used today? In this case, you could choose the strategy to look them when you feel like it, and enjoy the shadowing without knowing every single kanji. When you really know the text, you will know the vocabulary, so it will then be easier to associate each kanji compound to its word. (by the way, I don't know how you study the kanjis, but basically there are two methods: study them individually or study them in compounds, i.e. learn whole words not individual kanjis. I have been using the second method and I like it ;). Also, if you can't remember the kanji when they're out of context, I guess it's ok because it means the context helps you remember the kanjis. When you'll have seen and remembered them in two or three different (con)texts, you'll then know them, won't you? Here is the method I used just in case you're interested: first I learned from kanji books and usual study books, the kind with one text, some grammar with the text, vocabulary, etc. But now and then I tried to read some books, without much success at first. I remember the first novel that I read took me about 3 months. I then used to look the words that I don't know or the characters, but making no special effort to remember them. After reading a few novels like this, and reaching between ２級 and １級 level (the JLPT exams), when I was preparing the 1級 I started a new one, this time looking up every single word that I didn't know, and I made flashcards and tried to remember them (flashcards from Japanese kanjis to reading and french/english meaning). Since then I read more novels, there was a period when I read one a week, looking up words just once in a while. You know, there is always this word that you read many times, have some idea of the meaning but not sure. These are the words that I look up and remember. I'm not sure it looks like a method after reading this again, but anyways :). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ryuukohito Bilingual Diglot Groupie Malaysia Joined 6234 days ago 89 posts - 98 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Malay* Studies: French, Japanese | Message 23 of 65 28 November 2007 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What I mean by 'know' is that I can recognize and identify what the kanji itself means; however, production-wise I think I can safely do only about 800-1000 kanji. (I base these numbers upon statistics provided by a flashcard program I use.)
Indeed, my problem is that what I am currently reading (i.e. Breaking into Japanese Literature, and Sherlock Holmes) utilizes many non-jouyou kanji, such as those beyond the 2,000 minimum requirement (e.g. as set out in Heisig's RTK 3, many relating to plants or animals, I've observed) and especially those outside of Heisig's 3007 kanji(s) listing. But I also have problems with some of the latter kanji of even the jouyou kanji set itself; especially those around the range of 1700-2042 (in RTK 1), most of which seem to be cropping up quite frequently, to my surprise. The only time I review kanji individually is when I'm reviewing RTK. Otherwise, I will always review the kanji in compound forms, knowing that the readings of a kanji are volatile by nature and prone to change according to what other kanji accompanies it. I would like to only stop at not reviewing kanji and reading more extensively, but I am afraid that by the time I finish with one book I would forget the kanji form and have to re-learn it when I pick up the next book. Thank you for listing down your method, and sharing the website adress! I will certainly utilize them! Edited by ryuukohito on 28 November 2007 at 9:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ryuukohito Bilingual Diglot Groupie Malaysia Joined 6234 days ago 89 posts - 98 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Malay* Studies: French, Japanese | Message 24 of 65 01 December 2007 at 5:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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Today I visited the local Japanese library again. I returned the books I had borrowed during my last visit, and I borrowed two new ones. I can only remember the name of one the books ('Nihongo through Newspaper Articles'), as they are not with me currently, but suffice to say that both of them are related to newspaper-reading. The books provide extensive vocabulary lists, grammar explanations, tips on how to read newspapers (e.g. explanation on which words which are commonly chopped off so that articles can be more tightly packed) and even cultural insights. Best yet, since the entries are all extracts of newspaper articles, they are short in size (and therefore easy to digest)!
I am excited to begin studying Japanese again. I would also like to mention that I have begun repeating Japanese dramas over and over again in an attempt to become familiar with colloquial Japanese. My favourite drama currently is Tiger and Dragon. (I am particularly attracted to the yakuza slang and style of speech that the protagonist and his boss speaks with; in fact, I found myself unconsciously trilling all my 'r' characters, and even adding この野郎 to the end of every sentence, haha!) Unfortunately, lectures would begin for me soon, and I cannot study as intensely as I would like to and have been doing in the past few weeks. However, I will try my best to incorporate Japanese into my schedule. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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