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It Begins - Intensive Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ryuukohito Bilingual Diglot Groupie Malaysia Joined 6234 days ago 89 posts - 98 votes  Speaks: EnglishC2*, Malay* Studies: French, Japanese | Message 25 of 65 06 December 2007 at 9:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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It is amazing that no matter how much you think you already know a language, you will always be blown away in the next study session by some other study material (e.g. a new piece of text) that humbles you by revealing just how little you actually do know of the language.
For example, today I was going through the preface/introduction portion of 'Nihongo through Newspaper Articles', and it struck me how I did not know some of the words and how they were being employed, even though they were simple ones that I thought I had encountered before. I also found it curious that I couldn't identify certain verb forms. (e.g. であり, whose function I didn't quite understand at first, although a simple Google search turned up a solution, as usual, on Tae Kim's Japanese forums.) ------- I've been using 'News Nihongo' for the past few days; although, true to its cover tagline, 'For intermediate to advanced students of Japanese', it is far too difficult for me at this point. (E.g. some of the words are used are by themselves difficult words in the English language, like, 'embroil', 'inflexibility', 'indictment', and so on and so forth. I perfectly understand the connotations of the English words, but the Japanese versions are quite a bit for me to handle and remember, since many of them seem to utilize at least 3-4 kanji, like 世論調査 (public survey), for instance.) ---- My plan: It is my greatest desire to be able to read Japanese newspapers with fluency and great ease sometime in the near future, so I am making it one of my goals this year to complete these two books by the end of 2008. Going by the fact that there are 25 topics in News Nihongo, and 60 (very much shorter) topics in Nihongo through Newspaper articles, I am aiming to complete at least 2 topics from the first book and 3-5 topics from the second every month of the year. Realistically speaking, the more kanji and vocabulary I accumulate, the faster I will be able to proceed, so perhaps by the middle of next year I may have actually gone beyond the moderate pace I had set above. At least, I hope for that. 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 26 of 65 06 December 2007 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It looks like a great plan !
After you have read and assimilated a few articles from your books, in parallel you could also spend some of your time - very little actually - casually reading current news on the internet, with the help of the Rikaichan Firefox extension (you move your mouse over the word and it gives you the reading and english meaning; I can't stress how useful it is for me ^_^). 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 27 of 65 15 December 2007 at 10:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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For the week past I have not been on the Internet, so I wish to record what I've been up to, language learning-wise, since then.
Every day, I would wake up in the mornings and treat myself to reviewing all expired flashcards. As such reviews, even if they are large in number (e.g. 200 flashcards of words), usually take very little time to complete, I manage to clear everything up before I head for lectures. In between classes, whenever I have free time, I peruse the Heisig kanji list that I carry along with me in my PDA. As soon as I return from classes, I will set out to clearing the expired kanji of the day (or days) before, and I will review at least 30-50 new kanji that will go into the deck to be reviewed the next day. (Also, I am quite particular about my stroke orders this time around.) During the afternoons I will set myself to reading Japanese grammar, and put myself through at least half an hour of it, of whatever chapter I fancy at the moment that I think I have still a weak grasp of. As soon as I tire of this, I will switch to some, any, form of entertainment; usually, a Japanese show of some sort. I had downloaded some drama scripts from Dorama Note previously, and so I now watch the shows I like (currently, My Boss My Hero) along with their respective scripts and the ever-helpful RikaiChan. This has helped me immensely with my listening skills, and also vocabulary, especially when I do 1 or 2 hours straight of listening and reading and practicing. I also notice that I am suddenly able to 'speak' the language rather fluently whenever I want to, even though whilst I am listening to the show and repeating it over and over again, I am not shadowing it at all. This is a situation, I think, where immense passive input has been converted into active vocabulary. (It is surprising for me when I am walking around doing something, and for no reason I say or think something (simple) in Japanese before realizing, "Hey, how did I know that sentence?") I try my best to work on sentences in the afternoon, but as usual, though most of it is manageable many are still beyond me. For example, these are two sentences that I am unable to parse completely: (I hope that members of the forum who are experienced in Japanese could lend me a hand; it would be much appreciated.) ------------
------------ And on to today. I visited the Japanese library again. I returned what I had previously borrowed. I then sat around and looked for something to read. It is unfortunate that I cannot remember the name of the book I had, but I do know it was related to the use of prefixes and suffixes, such as 反, 大, 各, 的 and so on and so forth. I sat down and finished it in in one go, which took me about 2 hours. (It wasn't a feat: the book was a small monograph of only 100 pages.) I then looked around, and discovered two books: 'Living Japanese Through Comics' and 'Japanese Core Words and Phrases', both of which I chose to borrow. The first book is simple, but very entertaining, and extremely informative. I've managed to go through at least 15 chapters of the 50 chapters available, and I feel that I've learned (and refreshed) so much already. I am going to do at least 10 chapters of that book per day from now on. I also borrowed Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese, Part II. It seems like a good book. Granted, I know most of the grammar being used, but I've never used a textbook to approach the Japanese language before, so perhaps this will help me out in structuring my study of Japanese a bit. I hope I'll become better in Japanese soon. 頑張ります！ ---- (An interesting note: The other day, I was reading a Japanese book in-between class sessions. A female friend happened to notice (note: I was not making myself obvious at the time), and asked me to say something to her in Japanese. Of course, being the vulgar person that I am, I laughingly uttered a rather profane sentence in Japanese (complete with the trilled yakuza-like 'rrrrs') -- but the girl said I sounded romantic. Now that was really funny. I had to refrain myself from laughing.) Edited by ryuukohito on 15 December 2007 at 10:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6384 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 28 of 65 15 December 2007 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
------------ [/QUOTE] It would help to get rid of the English translation as it completely changes the syntax of the sentences and analyse them as if you're seeing them for the first time. 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 29 of 65 15 December 2007 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The English translations are not my own: they are provided in the book, and I am including them as as they are. If you wouldn't mind, could you teach me how to parse the sentences? They are quite complex for me at this stage, but I would definitely like to try and understand them. Edited by ryuukohito on 15 December 2007 at 12:51pm 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 30 of 65 15 December 2007 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
なお、各新聞記事例は、難易度に関係なくど れからでも始められるよう、 -> that is the main clause, and the rests (below) explains what is done so that you can start from any article in the book ＜単語リスト＞ には各課とも、本文にあるものをもれなく拾 ってあります。 You could rephrase this one in the following way (I assume that there is one vocabulary list for each lesson as it seems to imply, but you should know from looking at the book...): それぞれの課の＜単語リスト＞には、その課 の本文にあるもの（=単語）をもれなく（=ひ つも忘れずに）拾ってあります。 -> 本文から単語を拾って、単語リストに入れま した
I'll put parenthesis, probably it will make sense then :) (((本文の新聞記事例)と関連の深い)(ナマの新 聞記事))を＜応用記事＞としてのせました。 hope this helps, Evan 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 31 of 65 19 December 2007 at 8:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you, Karashi! It helps a bit, but I am still confused -- I am still very weak with advanced grammar, and the sentence might be a bit too long for me to cope with nicely at this stage, so I am going to 'dumb down' my sentence levels and continue with simpler sentences for a bit. (I have suspended all difficult multi-sentence cards in my Anki collection; I will try getting back to them in 2 months' time, and hopefully they will feel much simpler by then.)
It is interesting to note that you used multiple parentheses though -- it makes Japanese feel like a 'stacking' language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kewms Senior Member United States Joined 6185 days ago 160 posts - 159 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 32 of 65 19 December 2007 at 11:15am | IP Logged | |||||
Based on my limited understanding, that's more or less exactly right. Since all modifiers--even the ones that English speakers would call "relative clauses"-- go before the thing being modified, you can build up extremely complex structures where each piece is pushed onto the "stack" before being popped off by an "operator" such as a particle. Katherine 1 person has voted this message useful |
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