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It Begins - Intensive Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6384 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes  Speaks: Latin* | Message 33 of 65 19 December 2007 at 11:57am | IP Logged | ||
What exactly are your issues with those sentences? In fact, Karashi's paraphrase is very good, even though his choice of the 'main clause' in the first sentence is somewhat peculiar - I always thought main clauses in Japanese have a verb in their core... :-) 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 34 of 65 19 December 2007 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks :). Actually I called it main clause because that's the main message the author wanted to tell the reader: you can start this book from wherever you want. It has its own verb by the way, 始められる. Actually I haven't done grammar for a few years so I can't comment on grammar, but you could really split the sentences in two, as they are connected by よう: 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ます。 そうできるように、＜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。 I'm not sure a native Japanese would not correct me at the beginning of the second sentence ;) By the way, unless you really want to make sense of a text (especially the foreword of a book ;)), it's ok to not bother with the most difficult sentences until you are ready for them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6384 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 35 of 65 19 December 2007 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | ||
Strictly speaking, 難易度に関係なくど れからでも始められるよう can be deleted from this sentence without any damage to its main grammatical structure. And the main clause verb is 拾 ってあります. Anyway, it doesn't really matter... (^_^) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magic9man2 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6627 days ago 149 posts - 153 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French, Cantonese, Russian, Korean, Taiwanese, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 36 of 65 25 December 2007 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Making good progress. Always nice to see how other people are learning. GL
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| ryuukohito Bilingual Diglot Groupie Malaysia Joined 6234 days ago 89 posts - 98 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Malay* Studies: French, Japanese | Message 37 of 65 05 January 2008 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't been online for quite a bit. But in brief, here's what has happened with regards to my Japanese language studies.
- I've been working very hard using a variety of resources. I shall elaborate: - I've discovered, through textbooks, that my production ability is still very, very weak. (For the record, I used Genki.) The thing is that I am able to understand perfectly the meaning of something written or spoken in Japanese, even when they are conjugated extendedly (and coupled with lots of extra colloquial emphasis thrown here and there), but if you ask me to say something similar to that at some other random time, I would be at a loss for words; I become a victim of that tip-of-the-tongue effect. - I've been shadowing extensively using the Sherlock Holmes series. I like that audiobook series, a lot. The storyteller has a very masculine voice, and his accent sounds very nice. (I've tried using the other stories with female voices, but, even though they are good in content and interesting to listen to, especially with the music playing in the background, shadowing a high-pitched voice puts me off a bit sometimes.) I'd like to say that my pronunciation, at this point, sounds... somewhat native; sadly, occasionally I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. (Honestly speaking, I can by now speak as fast as I can read the words/kanji written on-screen, but quite often I absolutely forget what meaning a word/sentence carries. It's quite funny, that way.) - I divide my studies into four categories, each of which I dedicate myself to completing a set quota of per day; they are kanji, sentences, shadowing, and grammar. -- Kanji for me means Heisig. I do at least 100 expired reviews per day, keeping strictly to that, and adding on new kanjis to review only if my mind is willing to absorb more. -- Sentences refer to sentence practice using Anki, and the requirement of filling in two full pages of Japanese writing daily. (It is very motivating to see a thick exercise book becoming thicker and thicker with Japanese text of your own doing.) -- As a side note, I'd like to mention that I used to maintain a flashcard of Japanese words - but though it helped beforehand, these days it feels like too much of a chore to maintain, especially since I discovered it to help little with providing contextual meaning, and so I have dropped that, choosing instead to use a combination of Rikaichan, Daijirin and Kenkyusha (and not to forget, Edict) exclusively these days. -- As for shadowing, I'd like to include a personal anecdote, which may be somewhat irrelevant, but here goes: I am a big fan of John Petrucci, a guitarist of the band Dream Theater. One tip I learned from him on playing guitar and learning new musical parts, is to break up everything into small chunks, then to repeat those small chunks until perfection is attained; only then, once you've arrived at perfection, do you piece them up together again. I applied this tip to my language studies. With Audacity, I select a sentence-phrase, bordered by pauses on both of its sides, and play it on loop. With the script in Firefox and RikaiChan turned on, I shadow it whilst reading. I discover that once I've done the same up to 10 or 20 times I am able to read it very well, sounding very similar to the speaker already. (I am grateful that I can imitate pitches and distinguish sounds quite well -- this is in part, I think, due to my musical background.) I then move on to another sentence-phrase, then another, and another; in the end, I take a huge chunk of sentence phrases, and try reading them all at once. I usually discover that I am able to read them very well already at native speed, with very few errors. (In comparison, before this I used to learn whilst shadowing huge sentence chunks; I find that even after several times of reading I still didn't sound 'nice' and certainly couldn't read very fast, at least as I can now either.) Perfection of vocal production, which probably comes after hundreds of times of repeating, is a lovely feeling -- it's like the language rolls of my mouth without needing effort at all. I've noticed that my ability to speak, at least using words that I know, has improved tremendously by now. I no longer pause at the wrong parts of sentences, or give stress-related emphases to words that don't deserve it. My vocabulary has also improved a fair bit through this. (Which is why, as I've said before, I dropped the flashcard of words.) My inner subvocalization of sentences also 'feels' somewhat different. -- And lastly, grammar. I study mostly using Tae Kim's guide, and Sue Kawashima's + Seiichi Makino's grammar dictionaries. They help a bit, but I am still often lost especially when it comes to idiomatic expressions that don't have entries in dictionaries. I do not know how to remedy this. I have to note that it is somewhat dissatisfying to see so little progress done to each 'segment' of my Japanese studies done per day (compared to pumping in energy into improving one segment in one-whole shot), but I can't do much about it since I must balance my university studies against them too. But I'm hoping that whatever little daily work I do would amount to something in the long run. Either way, it's the New Year already, and more than anything else I truly want to become fluent in this language at least by the end of this year. 頑張ります！ Edited by ryuukohito on 09 January 2008 at 9:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ryuukohito Bilingual Diglot Groupie Malaysia Joined 6234 days ago 89 posts - 98 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Malay* Studies: French, Japanese | Message 38 of 65 10 January 2008 at 8:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I went to Kinokuniya today to get a gift for a friend. I noticed that the store had a new and rather large Japanese-only section dedicated to it. (To be more precise, the Japanese-only Kinokuniya, which had originally been a separate store, had come to be merged with the main store.)
So I went in to take a look. If I must describe it (and I must!) in some way, then it would be this: this, in addition to the Japanese library I frequent, has to be the other lovely (Japanese) heaven in Malaysia that I would love to come to more often. There were so many books, all of a myriad of colours and themes. (Japanese books tend to be very colourful, don't they?) What excited me even further was the gigantic manga collections (at least gigantic to me, since I've never been to Japan yet), of which many manga were those I had never seen nor come to know of before. (Frankly speaking, I've quite some experience with reading scanlations and translated manga, and I know many of them. But up to now my only enjoyable manga-reading experience has been through scanlations. So looking at all those Japanese manga has made me burn with the desire to study Japanese harder, so that I may read and enjoy all these new manga(s) as soon as I can.) As I am currently perusing the Sherlock Holmes series, for shadowing and reading (vocabulary + grammar) purposes, I, out of sheer impulse and for no reason other than that, bought a book entitled "Sherlock Holmes - The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes". (シャーロック・ホームズの冒険). It is a collection of the Sherlock Holmes stories. True, I have a Japanese copy of the same in my computer, but the thought of having those stories in compiled and printed form that I could flip through and read as if I were actually fluent in the Japanese language (even though I could only barely scrape through even the first few pages at this point) is certainly an enticing thought. At least I can now lay claim to this being the first Japanese book I had ever bought for myself. Five years from now, when I've hopefully attained a respectable degree of fluency in Japanese, it'd be rather interesting to mention to others how I began with Sherlock Holmes -- which is by itself still an amazing mystery series in the original language, no less -- and how it guided me to fluency. ... I indulge in too many daydreams. I apologize. I wonder about one thing though: seeing as to the fact that the original Sherlock Holmes, in the English version, uses rather -- no, I wouldn't call it archaic, but it's -- old (no, not olde!) English, whose colloquial style if used these days would make one seem like an ostentatious, high-brow intelligentsia, would the Japanese version of Sherlock Holmes then be one similar in tenor? As in, if I were to adopt and learn so much of the Sherlock Holmes series that I begin to speak that way, would I sound funny and look like a show-off, or would I seem like an intelligent newscaster, etc? If anyone could answer this last question of mine, it would be much appreciated. Edited by ryuukohito on 10 January 2008 at 9:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marj Senior Member United States Joined 6564 days ago 257 posts - 283 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, French | Message 39 of 65 10 January 2008 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry I can't answer your question, but I have to say that I can relate to you enjoying Sherlock Holmes. The first book I ever bought (not counting comic books) was the entire collected stories of Sherlock Holmes when I was 12--it cost $5, which was quite a bit since I was only earning $.50 per week allowance. But well worth it, I still have it and reread it every year or two.
So congratulations on your purchase, and I hope you enjoy as much as I enjoyed mine over the last 40 plus years! Marj 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 40 of 65 12 January 2008 at 11:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Today I bought a book entitled Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar. It is beautiful in its design, and as far as I can discern of its content, detailed. Although by now I have quite a solid grammatical foundation of Japanese and I can read fast enough, I am not yet able to piece sentences together well in speech and writing. I sincerely hope this book will be able to remedy my current flaws.
Therefore, I intend to complete the book as soon as I can, and continue reviewing it over and over again. I must also note that this is the first 'textbook' I've bought as regards the Japanese language. I also borrowed Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (the Japanese version) and a book on Japanese arts, from the library today. With the original novel in hand I am able to comprehend the Japanese quite well, and it's really interesting to note how sentences really are constructed backwards and how similar words have different connotations in Japanese. Realistically speaking, I would not be able to complete Harry Potter, and I don't intend to. I borrowed it only for pleasure reading. I intend to complete the Sherlock Holmes series first, before all else. And, as regards the book on Japanese arts, it is full of pictures and cultural anecdotes, and is rather thick, but I think I can complete it given the borrowing period of 2 weeks. I think reading this book is quite necessary. Reading up on the Japanese arts should help me further understand the intricacies of Japanese culture, and any prevailing differences, especially with regards to worldview, would be further cleared up, which would make my job of learning (and understanding) Japanese, very much easier in the long run. The clicking sensation after reading aloud Here's another epiphanic moment I had today: the book 'Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar' encouraged its students to read aloud. To be frank, before this I was always reluctant to read aloud the sentences I am exposed to, my logic being that I would not want to harm my Japanese pronunciation skills by unconsciously introducing the sounds of my own native language into it. Nevertheless, I tried out the suggestion. So I took a sentence, one that I knew the gist of its meaning to, and I repeated it over and over again. Once, twice, thrice, and so on. And whilst doing so, I consciously forced myself to rid my thoughts of any English meaning, instead trying to 'feel' the sentence. I don't know what happened, but maybe after the 8th or 9th time of repeating the sentence, I felt something inside my head -- a 'clicking' sensation, if you will. Like something had just been 'slotted' there. The only way I can describe it is that if you were to say the same sentence to me anytime in the future, I would immediately be able to tell what it means, without having to resort to mental translations. (I really am unable to describe the sensation well, so I must apologize for this.) Suffice to say however that from now on, I will continue reading sentences aloud. (I guess I must depend even more on my shadowing exercises to 'counter' any side-effects of reading sentences aloud though.) Edited by ryuukohito on 12 January 2008 at 11:18am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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