g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 929 of 1702 09 May 2013 at 9:23pm | IP Logged |
I think you're really brave for sharing the video of your speech. I'm happy to chat to people in Japanese, but I don't think I'd be brave enough to share my speaking with the whole internet!
Your comments about the accents in your class are interesting. I wonder if your professor is just more used to dealing with American accents than Chinese ones? Anyway, I think the one benefit of not being in a class any more is that the other bad accents won't rub off on you!
Anyway, I would say that I have heard a lot worse than you in terms of pronunciation, and I'm pretty sure the flow of your speaking was not helped by the artifical environment of a speech contest (seriously, it took some guts doing that). But maybe taking on a little side project to work on your pronunciation might not be a bad idea. One day I'll try and fix mine too!
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 930 of 1702 09 May 2013 at 9:52pm | IP Logged |
I think it's going to get better
on it's own as I get more
fluent. I agree it wouldn't be
a bad idea to work on but I
want to get reading right
now.. I might try to work in
like 5 min a day sort of thing
maybe. I don't really mind
showing my speech to
strangers. With everyone in
this forum taking the time to
read my posts and even
comment sometimes I feel
somewhat obligated even.
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g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German
| Message 931 of 1702 09 May 2013 at 10:20pm | IP Logged |
I find small amounts of shadowing and lots of listening to be quite helpful for pronunciation. Basically it's just another good excuse to watch TV.
Having said that my pronunciation is feeling quite ropey at the moment. Maybe I should take my own advice!
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 932 of 1702 10 May 2013 at 9:03pm | IP Logged |
Some of my posts have really narrow columns. It's due to my phone. I think if I post using landscape mode it'll be wider.. up above it was in portrait and I was zoomed in because I liked the bigger fonts etc., but the site posts the phone text wrapping as is. Darn.
Shocking this but I am rethinking how to do my flashcards. I had it play audio in Japanese and then I was writing the kanji out and thinking of the meaning.. but as I do this for more new vocab.. it's getting to be a bit much. It's great for reviewing older vocab particularly if I never bothered to learn to write the word out properly just to recognize it. So I'm thinking I'll have a couple of decks.. One for listening comprehension and the other to write the word in Japanese. I'm thinking when the SRS interval gets up to a week then I can copy it over to the kanji writing deck. That's my plan for now.
I scanned とびら (I looked up the title it is 扉 or door/entrance/gate etc.) Always good to know what the title of the book you're studying means. I scanned it last night 600 dpi. I was obviously very tired afterwards. I compared the 300 dpi to the 600 dpi as it was taking forever and they're both legible but the 600 just looked a bit sharper. I had started with 600 dpi so I finished it (gasp!). And FineReader has an option to scale down the image when you save it. I forgot to use that. I think I'd like to have a 300 dpi version for my phone which really can't benefit from the higher resolution anyway and to save space. Darn. I don't know if I'll do it again heh. Probably just use the 600 dpi. I'm now scanning the kanji workbook that goes with it at 300 dpi.. I decided the heck with it. About twice as fast. A couple years back I bought an multi-sheet scanner where I would chop off the bindings of the book and just put stacks of paper in to be scanned and that is so much easier.. but this book belongs to someone so and although I didn't clarify if it were ok for me to just chop it up I didn't really want to chop up someone else's book anyway. So this will be done soon. I started reading Chapter 1 last night in my severe sleep deprived state of mind and it was pretty easy reading. I know most of the kanji/vocab already and they're giving furigana for stuff I already know too. The reading was about Japanese geography. I have been procrastinating that for ages. I knew 北海道 and 本州 and that was it. In class our teacher checked us for how ignorant we were and I actually beat our best student (well in regard to speaking/grammar and grades) in that she didn't even know what 本州 was. My western geography is better thankfully but also very rusty. Anyway, I am going to correct this glaring fault in my Japanese knowledge asap. (that student btw I think she knows all the islands now at least, and a bit more on top of that.)
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 933 of 1702 10 May 2013 at 9:34pm | IP Logged |
kraemder wrote:
I knew 北海道 and 本州 and that was it. |
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At least I knew the first one of those :-)
Actually "names" (people and geographical) is one area where I could do with a lot of
work. Apart from 東京, 神戸, 大阪 and 北海道 (and now 本州 - thanks!) I don't think I now
any other places. Time to study that map in the back of Minna No Nihongo ...
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 934 of 1702 11 May 2013 at 10:04am | IP Logged |
I knew the kanji for several cities too including those you mentioned.. But that's different because he's
drilled them into us with kanji exercises.
Seems silly that I'm just learning how to say vocabulary list.. 単語表.. たんごひょう。At least I knew 単語
already. I'm just peaking at tobira. I'll probably start for real tomorrow. I had to scan one of the books
twice because I made the stupid mistake of deleting the temp file for finereader. I name a lot of my stuff
temp too.. And had no idea. Man I wasn't happy. I also scanned my penguin dual reader book. I might get
one of my classmates to keep studying with me over the summer. I'm thinking they'll probably get
distracted but they seem interested for now anyway.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 935 of 1702 12 May 2013 at 3:44am | IP Logged |
I did a couple of readings of とびら and made a vocabulary list. I'm doing the writing the kanji method. It's slower. As you might think I'm questioning myself a lot as I do it since it's painful. I'm thinking it's the most effective way to learn the sounds of the kanji for real though. I would think if I can write out the word then I shouldn't have any problems at all reading it later. It should be more solid in my mind. I think.
Since I'm writing out the kanji for the words, it also eliminates my need to review RTK. I just look up the stories/primitives if I can't remember for any individual kanji I'm testing myself on. It doesn't happen to much. Looking at both the kanji and its meaning usually brings back the story or I just think of a new one. Some kanji aren't in the 1st book so I'm just making up stories for those. I am playing with the idea of RTK 3. But just a little. I might just skim it to learn new primitives.
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kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5185 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 936 of 1702 14 May 2013 at 7:20am | IP Logged |
Well I scrapped the kanji writing deck I started. I figured it was bound to happen. So I'm still not happy with
the best flashcard system yet. I. Trying an srs deck that randomly alternates cards with showing kanji on
side 1 and no visual, just audio on side 1. There's an option to have it alternate but I don't know the
formula or if it's buggy at all. I was using it some and it seemed like it wasn't working as I would expect so
I'm doing random. Random is kinda good in that it's more interesting for me. I kinda wonder what I'll get
next. It's easy for it to get monotonous so that you're not so focused so maybe this will be good.
I made more progress in potter. I am getting a lot of vocab out of it. I probably am over killing it saving so
many words for studying but it's hard not to. They're starting to have more dialogue than narration in the
story and that is a lot easier.
Didn't do anything from my textbook today except for some vocab review in my srs. I have a ton of cards
from my srs that are way behind but I've taken then out completely and will be re adding the older cards
gradually. I prefer to focus on new stuff and don't want a ton of due cards depressing me.
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