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Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 385 of 479 24 August 2014 at 4:33pm | IP Logged |
한국어 (2014년 8월 17일 - 2014년 8월 23일):
TTMIK: 8단 제26회-제30회
Extensive Reading:
- 와라!편의점 (read daily)
- Twitter (a few visits each week)
Active Practice: Posts on Twitter
GOAL STATUS: Week 35
Grammar 1 (Extract grammar from SRS): DONE (65 cards)
Grammar 2 (Complete Let's Speak Korean 2부): 28/130
Grammar 3 (Complete Talk To Me In Korean): 235/265
Grammar 4 (Complete Survival Korean): Not Started
Grammar 5 (Complete SK: Basic Grammar): Not Started
Grammar 6 (Review Lonely Planet Phrasebook): Not Started
Grammar 7 (Review Using Korean): Not Started
Vocab 1 (SE read 24 songs): 15/24
Vocab 2 (INT read 1 TTMIK 이야기/month): 6/12
Production 1 (Memorize 1 song/month): 7/12
Production 2 (Write 2 posts/week): 26/52
Team Gumiho Challenges: 2/3
---
Japanese Update:
Well I seem to have found a pretty notable hook for Japanese. Earlier in the week I had
commented how much "AKBINGO!" I had already watched, and that continued (with
increased intensity) for the rest of the week, especially once I found more episodes than
just the first batch of 20, to the point that I watched very little Korean TV this week (and
most of what I did watch was on Sunday). In fact, several times I found myself doing the
"just one more episode" thing (after already having watched several in a row) because
they are so short (24 min) and entertaining. Two of my main hooks in Korean are music
and variety shows and this series combines both hooks into one show.
So I ran the numbers to confirm just what the gap was between the two languages this
week and...wow:
한국어: 07:15 (6 episodes of 5 shows)
日本語: 20:00 (50 episodes of 1 show)
If you include the 4 episodes I watched last Saturday (which aren't included in that total
and that was the first day I watched the show), I've watched nearly 22 hrs of a single
show in 8 days! (NOTE: I've only actually watched up to episode 34 as I watched the first
20 episodes twice since that was all I had of the show initially.) Of course the really
amazing bit is that I can't remember the last time I watched 27 hrs of TV in a single
week. I'm honestly baffled how I somehow found that much time this past week. No
wonder it seems like I didn't get anything accomplished this week, since I apparently
spent all my free time watching Japanese TV.
In other Japanese news, I'm still relearning the Kana at 5/day. Fortunately, "AKBINGO!"
is similar to Korean variety shows in that a lot of text is displayed on-screen, so I'm
getting a decent bit of reading practice already as well (at least for Kana-only terms and
select names).
I've also started to notice some things about Japanese pronunciation that I didn't catch
before and it is due to comparing loan words between the two languages. For example,
the loan word "hug" is 허그(heogeu) in Korean and ハグ(hagu) in Japanese. The Korean
"eu" vowel and the Japanese "u" vowel are quite similar sounding (especially in loan
words whether they both half disappear), but what caught my attention is that the first
vowel in ハグ(hagu) sounds different than it would in 하그(hageu). I had previously
considered the two "a" sounds to be near identical between those two languages but
they really aren't. In fact, to my ears the あ/ア(a) in Japanese is almost more like a
blend of the Korean 아(a) and 어(eo) vowels; it isn't as "open" sounding as the Korean 아
(a). (That's probably an odd way to describe it but it makes sense to me anyway.)
Edited by Warp3 on 31 August 2014 at 1:49am
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| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 386 of 479 26 August 2014 at 1:12pm | IP Logged |
A new segment appeared in the last few episodes of AKBINGO! that I watched (mid-2009
episodes) and almost immediately became my favorite segment. Even better, the
segment is language-related.
At the time of these episodes, AKB48 was making their debut in France. As such, they
opted to include a segment to "help them with their French". They accomplished this
task by setting up a scenario (restaurant, clothing shop, etc.) and instructing them to ask
the waiter, store clerk, etc. a certain question in French. They are then provided three
sentences in French. One sentence matches their goal meaning; the other two use
somewhat similar wording but mean something very different. After working through each
sentence to figure out which one they think is correct, they make their choice and the
water, store clerk etc. complies with their request.
As you may have already guessed the two "wrong" answers are intentionally worded so
that they provide a built-in penalty for the one who asked the question. For example the
first scenario they did was asking a waiter for water. The choices provided to them
meant: (a) May I please have a glass of water? (b) May I please have a disgusting glass
of water? (c) Please throw water in my face. In another one of these segments, the
scenario was asking a store clerk about handbags and one of the wrong answers instead
said something to the effect of: "Please reveal the contents of my handbag." which would
lead to them bringing out that member's bag from the dressing room and unloading the
contents onto the table.
Edited by Warp3 on 26 August 2014 at 1:15pm
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| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 387 of 479 31 August 2014 at 4:06pm | IP Logged |
한국어 (2014년 8월 24일 - 2014년 8월 30일):
TTMIK: 9단 제1회-제5회
Extensive Reading:
- 와라!편의점 (read daily)
- Twitter (a few visits each week)
Song Memorization:
- Girls Day - 기대해
Comments:
Like last week, I did fairly little TV watching in Korean, due to being so enamored by
AKBINGO! leading to me watching it almost exclusively. I did watch 3 Korean shows this
week (2 episodes of Gag Concert and one of Happy Together), but that's much lower than
normal for me, especially with no music shows in the mix, and even lower than last week
when I watched 7 shows (including 3 music shows).
I almost skipped adding a new song to the lyrics deck this month (but I still did so as you
can see above). The reason is that many of the songs I've added to Anki this year still
have large sections of them suspended as I haven't actually finished memorizing them
yet. (This is why my only requirement for this challenge was to add them as I know the
length of time until I'm done with a song varies greatly based on the song.) As such,
each month, I debate between adding another song (to try to complete my challenge goal
of 1/month) or suspend adding new ones until I've made a bigger dent in the ones that
are already there. Now, to clarify, some of the songs this year I've already memorized in
their entirety, it's just that for many others that isn't true yet. In fact the song I added in
January (AOA - Get Out) still isn't completely unsuspended yet (though granted it's only
the rap that I'm taking my time on with that one).
GOAL STATUS: Week 36
Grammar 1 (Extract grammar from SRS): DONE (65 cards)
Grammar 2 (Complete Let's Speak Korean 2부): 28/130
Grammar 3 (Complete Talk To Me In Korean): 240/265
Grammar 4 (Complete Survival Korean): Not Started
Grammar 5 (Complete SK: Basic Grammar): Not Started
Grammar 6 (Review Lonely Planet Phrasebook): Not Started
Grammar 7 (Review Using Korean): Not Started
Vocab 1 (SE read 24 songs): 15/24
Vocab 2 (INT read 1 TTMIK 이야기/month): 6/12
Production 1 (Memorize 1 song/month): 8/12
Production 2 (Write 2 posts/week): 26/52
Team Gumiho Challenges: 2/3
---
日本語 (2014年 8月 24日 - 2014年 8月 30日):
(Yes, Japanese has its own section again.)
All the basic gojuuon Kana are in rotation in my Kana deck now so I've unsuspended the
dakuten/handakuten cards now. After those I'll feed in the youon (combination Kana)
cards which is most of the remaining deck (leaving only the "obsolete" characters).
I'm still watching AKBINGO! obsessively (and now its previous iterations called AKB 1じ
59ふん and AKB 0じ59ふん). It's taking a bit of a toll on my Korean TV watching, but
I'm not horribly worried about that at the moment since I'm still getting exposure to
Korean from other sources right now. I do need to feed some Korean TV back into the
rotation to balance it out some, though.
I've started a new deck of Japanese names in an attempt to help me with learning to
pronounce common Kanji name patterns. While creating this deck, I quickly learned that
many of the romanizations of these names don't *quite* represent the Kana sounds
(usually by leaving out double vowels in the romanized version). For example, two of the
AKB48 members they've shown frequently on AKBINGO! have 大島 as the family name.
The subs romanize this as Oshima, but you have to type Ooshima (pronounced roughly
the same but you hold the "O" sound longer) to get the right Kanji to appear (which
makes sense as the long "o" sound is the "large" prefix in Japanese and that first Kanji
means "large" (pronounced "대" in Korean)). I understand why they do this (since it's
easy to misread "Ooshima" as "Ushima") but until I noticed this I hadn't actually
realized that the name was starting with a long vowel when being spoken. Due to the
simpler sound set in Japanese I was hoping I could be a bit less cautious about
romanized names (especially with only 5 vowels present), but I'll have to keep long
vowels in mind more now (and "ou" combos that sometimes collapse to just "o" when
romanized).
Edited by Warp3 on 31 August 2014 at 4:37pm
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| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 388 of 479 02 September 2014 at 4:53pm | IP Logged |
I was browsing Amazon last night (and bought "Remembering the Kanji 1" and "How to
Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately") and saw "Japanese for Busy People 1:
Kana Edition" which reminded me I had wanted to buy that last time I was studying
Japanese (and I've been pondering again which materials to use for the "beyond
Pimsleur" phase). Well I looked through my language materials this morning before work
and apparently I already have purchased that book, along with "Japanese for Everyone".
So I guess my materials for Japanese will be Pimsleur (own Level 1 already and intend to
buy the rest), Japanese for Busy People, Japanese for Everyone, 일본어 무작정 따라하기,
and RTK1. Most importantly it will be paralleled with heavy doses of Japanese media.
I'm planning to leverage Korean as much as possible during this process, both to keep
my Korean going strong and to take advantages of the similarities in the two languages.
This includes linking Japanese concepts to Korean rather than English wherever possible
(which will work better anyway for much of the grammar and vocabulary).
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| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 389 of 479 07 September 2014 at 6:27am | IP Logged |
한국어 (2014년 8월 31일 - 2014년 9월 6일):
TTMIK: 9단 제6회-제10회
Suspended Korean Cards: 24 (all cards from July 2013)
Extensive Reading:
- 와라!편의점 (read daily)
- Twitter (a few visits each week)
GOAL STATUS: Week 37
Grammar 1 (Extract grammar from SRS): DONE (65 cards)
Grammar 2 (Complete Let's Speak Korean 2부): 28/130
Grammar 3 (Complete Talk To Me In Korean): 245/265
Grammar 4 (Complete Survival Korean): Not Started
Grammar 5 (Complete SK: Basic Grammar): Not Started
Grammar 6 (Review Lonely Planet Phrasebook): Not Started
Grammar 7 (Review Using Korean): Not Started
Vocab 1 (SE read 24 songs): 15/24
Vocab 2 (INT read 1 TTMIK 이야기/month): 6/12
Production 1 (Memorize 1 song/month): 8/12
Production 2 (Write 2 posts/week): 26/52
Team Gumiho Challenges: 2/3
---
日本語 (2014年 8月 31日 - 2014年 9月 6日):
I've added back my old 日本語 deck to Anki, which is about 98% Pimsleur material with
the rest being items I added here and there that I wanted to learn (like かんこくご(韓国
語) = the Korean language). I also forgot until I did this that I had used Korean for the
first set of answers on these cards (followed by English and/or Spanish). Since I was
already planning to try laddering Japanese through Korean as much as possible, I'm
going through and removing non-Korean answers from these cards (I'm leaving some
English in the grammar notes and comments, but not for definitions).
I briefly tried to restart Pimsleur Japanese this week, but then decided against it.
Running both it and TTMIK in parallel takes up nearly all of my commute (both ways) and
I've made that mistake enough times before to know that it saps motivation doing that (it
works much better to leave one commute free for music). I've only got 4 weeks of TTMIK
Level 9 left (at my current rate of 5/week) so I'll either wait until those are done to
restart Pimsleur Japanese or shift one of them to a time outside the commute (probably
TTMIK since Pimsleur is more audio focused but TTMIK can benefit from reviewing the
PDF in tandem).
I'm noticing some interesting parallels between my restart of Japanese and my original
start of Korean that hopefully bodes well for Japanese:
1) When I was initially introduced to Korean it was almost entirely through a single girl
group (SNSD) then started to branch out from there; my reattachment to Japanese has
been through a single girl group (AKB48, which I wasn't particularly fond of before but
that was from 2 album downloads that were apparently a very poor sampling of their set
list) and has already started branching.
2) Very soon afterward I discovered a second girl group that caught my attention (Kara for
Korean; Idoling!!! for Japanese), but (at least initially) didn't pull me away from the first
one (Kara didn't really hook me until several months later when the "Revolution" album
came out). I discovered Idoling!!! when they appeared as guests on "AKBINGO!" (the
Japanese really love their exclamation points don't they).
3) A certain show caught my attention to the point where I watched it almost at the
exclusion of watching anything else (for Korean it was the SNSD + KARA episode of "놀러
와" (Come to Play); for Japanese it has been the series "AKBINGO!"). I watched that one
episode of 놀러와 so many times I quickly lost count. In fact for a while there, every new
lesson of Pimsleur I would finish would result in me rewatching the show to see if I
"caught anything new". AKBINGO! has me similarly hooked, but at least I'm hooked on a
series (with years of episodes), not just a single episode this time. Even so, I've
watched some of the episodes several times already.
The more I read up on Kanji studies (specifically RTK-style methods) the more I'm
realizing that the main issue with my Hanja recall was likely the fact that I was doing
them all passively. That seemed like a logical choice since I just wanted to be able to
recognize them, but now I'm starting to realize they would have stuck better as active
cards like RTK recommends. In fact, I'm actually starting in on RTK now (using the book to
learn and an RTK Anki deck to review) and drawing the characters actively already has me
remembering some early (and thus simple) characters better than I had learned them
with my passive deck (since I wasn't focusing on the details of the character, just
"recognizing" it). For example, several early characters use either 日 or 田 as a primitive
and I honestly couldn't tell you from memory which one some characters used, but now
I'm positive since I have to produce it myself or I fail the card. Another example are the
numbers 5, 7, and 9 (五, 七, and 九). Despite them looking different, I frequently
confused them in the past. Now that I'm generating them actively, though, I'm not sure I
*could* mix them up; they are simply too distinct in my head now.
Also since I'm already somewhat embedded in Japanese and starting to learn it in
parallel with RTK, I'm opting to do "RTK Lite" entries first, then the rest later. The "RTK
Lite" set is about 1/3 the size of the full RTK 1+3 set. It was formed by taking all the
JLPT 2 Kanji plus any Kanji that RTK uses as primitives for those Kanji (so you can still
build the Kanji from knowledge of existing parts which is the core of the point behind
RTK). After finishing those 1116 Kanji, I can then circle back and grab the remainder. The
reasoning behind RTK Lite is that these are the most useful of the Kanji in RTK and are
also the most likely to appear in study materials, so by doing those first you can start in
on studying the Japanese language itself (including Kanji-based textbooks) while
continuing the remaining RTK Kanji in parallel (rather than waiting until RTK1 is done like
Heisig originally recommended). Plus I'm assuming a huge chunk of those JLPT2 Kanji are
the ones I already know (at least somewhat) as Hanja anyway, so I'll really just be
"converting" them in my head rather than actually learning them fresh. Hopefully that
means I can make it through RTK Lite much faster than someone who is new to them
altogether.
Current RTK Lite Status:
Lessons Done = 3
Kanji Covered = 52
Active SRS Cards = 42
(To clarify why those numbers differ, I'm still going through all the characters when doing
the lessons in the RTK 1 book, however I'm only activating the "RTK Lite" characters in
the Anki deck for review for now. Thus 10 of those Kanji are still suspended in the SRS
deck.)
(NOTE: Those stats are actually from one day since I didn't start RTK until Saturday.)
---
Overall comments:
Well instead of showing signs of slowing down, my Japanese media addiction seems to
be intensifying. This past week I watched a grand total of *1* Korean TV show; the
previous week I only watched 3. Meanwhile, I've watched an absolutely *insane*
number of episodes of "AKB1じ59ふん/AKB0じ59ふん/AKBINGO!". Beyond that,
I've also found myself biasing Japanese songs lately on my MP3 player (especially after
loading up some more Japanese music recently). While it seems like it is causing some
level of Korean neglect at the moment, I'm going to let it run its course for now and see
what kind of progress I can make with it. The last thing I want to do is be overprotective
of Korean again which seems to do nothing but stomp out the flame of interest in the
other language. Korean has been around long enough in my life (5 straight years now)
that it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Besides which I'm already leveraging Korean
in my Japanese studies which should make a great language bridge. Plus now that I really
think about it: I'm still listening to plenty of Korean music, doing TTMIK lessons, doing
SRS reps of Korean material, have a large number of UIs set to Korean (cellphone,
tablet, Linux browsing VM, MP3 players, media player PC, GPS, etc.), so it isn't like I'm
not still being constantly exposed to it. I do need to get Korean TV fed back in before too
long, but I can definitely handle Japanese dominating my TV for a while longer (especially
if it keeps deepening those hooks that keep me going long term).
Also, I've removed "Spanish" and "Team Lobo" from the title of this log and placed
"Japanese" back up there. I'm leaving "Spanish" in my "studies" list for now (set to "on
and off"), but it has definitely stalled and it's not likely I'll be doing much with Spanish in
the near future.
Edited by Warp3 on 07 September 2014 at 6:33am
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| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 390 of 479 07 September 2014 at 4:40pm | IP Logged |
The handakuten/dakuten cards are all in rotation now, so I've unsuspended the 96
youon (combination Kana) cards. Once I've got those in play, the only remaining cards in
the deck are the 4 "obsolete" Kana.
I just compared my review speed between my new Kanji deck and my old Hanja deck and
the results were surprising. My Hanja deck has an average review rate (I can't check
today's review rate as I haven't done reviews for weeks now) of 4.2 cards/min; today's
review rate for my new Kanji deck (which I started yesterday and has 42 active cards)
was 8.4 cards/min! Yes most of the cards are simpler cards since they are from the first
three lessons, but: several of them are Kanji that are completely new to me, many
already have fairly sizable stroke counts (like 博 which uses the keyword of "Dr." (it is the
박 from 박사 (Dr.) in Korean) and was brand new to me), and I'm writing the characters
out before hitting the answer button. Despite the fact that I'm actively recreating these
characters (stroke by stroke) for each card, I'm still at double the review speed of my old
deck. I expected to be slower at first until I got the hang of producing them from
keywords, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Even if I count my average (i.e. including
yesterday's reviews, my average speed in the new deck is 5.7 cards/min which is *still*
faster than the old deck. When paired with the fact that I feel like I know these characters
more thoroughly now I can see why RTK works so well. In fact, I missed 1 Kanji card in my
reviews today and that was only because I got two similar keywords crossed (nightbreak
and morning). I fully knew the character, I just mismatched the pairings. Also, I can't
really describe why, but this new method seems more "fun" than the old one. Maybe
that's just because it is new so perhaps the novelty will wear off, but drawing out the
characters makes it more interesting. (For reference, I draw the characters with pen and
paper the first time I review a batch of characters then I switch to "finger on palm
drawing" for future reviews).
Edited by Warp3 on 07 September 2014 at 4:52pm
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| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 391 of 479 09 September 2014 at 1:23am | IP Logged |
I've decided to accelerate the pace on TTMIK, so I can finish level 9 and start using my
morning commute for Japanese instead. I'm doing 4 per day (vs. 2 per day earlier in the
year and 1 per day recently) which will have me completing TTMIK Level 9 by the end of this
week.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5533 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 392 of 479 14 September 2014 at 9:17am | IP Logged |
한국어 (2014년 9월 7일 - 2014년 9월 13일):
TTMIK: 9단 제11회-제30회
Extensive Reading:
- 와라!편의점 (read daily)
- Twitter (a few visits each week)
Comments:
I've finished TTMIK levels 1-9 (and level 10 is still "coming soon") so that TAC goal is
now complete!
GOAL STATUS: Week 38
Grammar 1 (Extract grammar from SRS): DONE (65 cards)
Grammar 2 (Complete Let's Speak Korean 2부): 28/130
Grammar 3 (Complete Talk To Me In Korean): DONE
Grammar 4 (Complete Survival Korean): Not Started
Grammar 5 (Complete SK: Basic Grammar): Not Started
Grammar 6 (Review Lonely Planet Phrasebook): Not Started
Grammar 7 (Review Using Korean): Not Started
Vocab 1 (SE read 24 songs): 15/24
Vocab 2 (INT read 1 TTMIK 이야기/month): 6/12
Production 1 (Memorize 1 song/month): 8/12
Production 2 (Write 2 posts/week): 26/52
Team Gumiho Challenges: 2/3
---
日本語 (2014年 9月 7日 - 2014年 9月 13日):
Current RTK Lite Status:
Lessons Done = 3 -> 8 (56)
Kanji Covered = 52 -> 172 (2042)
Active SRS Cards = 42 -> 133 (1116)
(The values before the arrow are last week's values. The values in parenthesis are the
totals for completing RTK1 / RTK Lite.)
Comments:
Now that I've completed my TTMIK goal for TAC (thus freeing up some audio time during
my commute), I'm going to start in on Pimsleur Japanese this coming week. I've done
Level 1 of this course before (a couple years ago when I tried learning Japanese
previously), but never went on into any of the higher levels (as my interest in Japanese
dropped before that happened). I may take the opportunity to dive into one or more of my
textbooks as well in parallel with Pimsleur since learning the same topic from multiple
angles has proved useful in both Korean and Spanish.
I'm going through the Kanji at a pretty decent pace considering that I'm only studying and
adding them to the SRS on weekends (and just reviewing Anki during the week). So far,
I'm also reviewing with much higher success rates than I was with my Hanja deck thus
leading to a faster rate of fall to the daily review times.
In fact, that only deck that is getting fairly high failure rates at the moment is the
"names" deck for Japanese. However, I already expected this (so I'm not really
discouraged by it) and I can tell this deck is paying off already as I'm starting to get
better at figuring out readings for the Kanji used in names (especially those in the family
names which seem to be more predictable).
This reminds me of something else I'm noticing with Japanese readings. I'm starting to
catch certain "conversion patterns" for converting Sino-Korean reading to Sino-Japanese
readings. For example, I noticed that one of the readings of 大 is だい(dai) as in 大好き. I
had also noticed that 愛 is あい(ai) as in 愛してる. If you've studied Korean Hanja you
may know that those are read as 대(dae) and 애(ae) in Korean. So Korean readings with
"ae" seem to convert to "ai" for their Japanese equivalents. But the interesting part
when you think about it more deeply is that the Korean 애(ae) vowel is technically a
diphthong originally derived from merging 아(a) and 이(i). Hmmm...
Edited by Warp3 on 14 September 2014 at 9:24am
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