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TAC 2009: Japanese and Korean | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| konayuki Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5828 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French | Message 1 of 9 23 December 2008 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I hadn't been actively studying Japanese since about early October. School is over
(that place always seems to drain me of any energy and purpose) and I'm going back to studying it as my hobby... Japanese To finally complete Heisig's method and never forget a kanji again. I'm currently reviewing my failed stack at RevTK (http://kanji.koohii.com/), was at 800, now at 487 and my last stack of flashcards are almost evening out. After I clear all my failed piles I'll start to learning new Kanji with his method. To read a novel straight through, only needing, perhaps, to look up some obscure ancient word. I would love to read the novel Out in its original Japanese form as I read the English translation some time ago... To produce some mildly entertaining creative written work. As a writer, this is very important to me. Once for class I was able to make my written biography of a Japanese exchange student I interviewed into some strange fairy tale that had my TA giggle, but it's not particularly deep or moving, just some funny and it lost its charm by the end. To create a piece of art, now that's something different all together! I'll get to what I currently do and what I'm going to do later on. This is just for my goals...(said to self *has the tendency to write too much*) Korean To be able to read hangeul 100%. I already know how to read and write the letters, but I know there are times when there are 2 consonants in the bottom and I have no idea how it's read. I don't think it'll be too much of a task though. I would basically like to get intermediate fluency. I think it'll be good to start AJATT's 10,000 sentence method with Korean, I'll probably include audio for them onto Anki as well. Of course this is after basic grammar and such is mastered. (I'm, for the most part, a "go with the flow" person when it comes to these things...so there really isn't any set plan, but:) I'm currently doing Pimsleur Korean, but after this I want to abandon English-Korean in favor of Japanese-Korean. I don't think it'll be a problem for me and I think it'll help in my goal for Japanese. I just hope the sudden switch won't be too much of a problem. I don't think it will though. I'll get to how I'm going to do this later... I took one semester of Korean. In the beginning I was enthusiastic. I would do all my homework, listen to all the audio, read the textbook, participate in class. But the teacher's method was...not my style. The class was full of Korean-Americans who just took it for an easy A. It became a chore to go, and I never took another semester. I was a Linguistics major at the time, and it was to be my second language (Japanese my first). Now all I need to take in school is Japanese and my last semester is in the spring (yay!). I am tempted to try on French (the third language on my list), too, being the impatient person that I am. But, knowing me, it wouldn't fare out too well. Maybe if my Korean goes better than expected I'll dabble a bit, but it's doubtful. ...So that's it. Hopefully I can update my log frequently to keep myself on track, I think once a week will be fine. It'll especially come in handy when school starts again. Edit: removed list tag Edited by konayuki on 23 December 2008 at 11:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| konayuki Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5828 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French | Message 2 of 9 30 December 2008 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not gonna lie...I completely abandoned Pimsleur Korean, I got up to Lesson 10.
And I took Dec 24-26 off in language studies, too busy celebrating and playing with new toys. :P What -did- I do? Japanese Well I've been dissecting the Japanese story "Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" (Taketori monogatari), one of the first sci-fi novels. It's basically about a princess from the moon who was found by the Bamboo cutter when she was only 3 inches tall. He and his wife raise her, she becomes the most beautiful woman ever, many suitors ask for her hand, even the emperor wants her, she doesn't like them and is eventually taken back to the moon. That's the non-poetic gist anyway. I can't find any audio for it though, and I'm getting bored with it. I've done Chapter One, though. I've been listening to a lot of music lately, so I dissected two songs to fend off boredom. I got the lyrics from uta-net.com, and I feel that I'm going to go back there a lot. Curse short attention spans! As for RevTK, I think I made good progress. Currently I have 272 expired cards -- 140 of them in the last stack. I also have 140 failed cards, but I'm not letting that get to me, it's been a while, after all. I have 384 passed cards in my last stack. I should be done by this week. After a study all my failed cards and pass most of them, I'll continue on with RTK. Just the thought is getting me revved up! Vroom! I've been watching random variety shows, as well as continuing with my Yomiuri podcast and looking at their online video streams. I've been doing a modified L-R to "Massirona uso" to improve my diction. It's from a book I bought and it includes a CD. I just ignore the English in the book, even though it's not translated word-for-word (I actually re-wrote the essay so that I don't have to look at the book). It's pretty easy to get down, but I'll probably continue until I'm 100% perfect. I'm the type. Now, for Korean I watched a TV show with my sister. 2 TV shows so about 2 hrs total. I also watched a movie, so about 3 and a half hours total. Trying to get a feel for the language. Also started listening to podcasts. I want to get comfortable with the rhythm and the sounds of the language. Been brushing up on the Hangeul, and doing some random reading online. I might start up Pimsleur again because I think it's good for pronunciation. I'm basically waiting for my materials to arrive so I can dive in. *beams at the thought of more new stuff*. Yay! -------------- What really sucks is that I can't type in Asian languages on this computer because it's old and I've lost the Windows CD, and apparently they can't be installed without the CD. I -do- have a Mac but it's dead and while I bought a new hard drive, I lost -that- CD and can't install the OS. (I might have also lost the HD...) I've been in withdrawal, like a baby without his bottle. And I'm too nervous to "buy"*cough*download*cough* it because I don't want a corrupted file or something. *sigh* 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| konayuki Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5828 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French | Message 3 of 9 06 January 2009 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Alrighty, I think I did pretty good this week.
Japanese I have no more expired cards! I'm sooo happy. BUT I have 239 FAILED cards. 514 passed cards in the last stack. By the end of this week, I want that failed stack GONE! After the failed stack disappears and it passes on to the second pile, I will continue with the book. If more than...50 go back into the failed cards I'll concentrate on them for awhile before continuing with the book. I've been waking up with nothing but Japanese in my head. My head is constantly reviewing Japanese, no doubt because of all the shadowing I've been doing. It's quite annoying because I can't put my head's review in the background, I hear it clearly! I've been dissecting a magazine article. It's pretty long (about 5 Japanese magazine pages), so I won't be done for awhile. But it's interesting, to me anyway. I haven't gone beyond Ch 1 of taketori monogatari. It seems every video or audio on that story is very dumbed down and kiddy, nothing like the book at all. Ugh. At one point during shadowing for the millionth time, I started second guessing myself. I started to think "Is this Japanese? What did I say? This sounds like Chinese to me!". Kind of the same feeling as when you second guess the spelling of a very simple word (is this really how you spell house? no, wait, let me rewrite it again - sort of feeling). I'm done with listening to things about balance scales, earthquakes, and lies. I'm moving on! I used to do this while driving from school to kill the time, but I've been having conversations with myself in Japanese that includes any new vocab, especially political. It felt quite weird at first, but now it's like "whatever". I just pretend I'm talking to...someone...imaginary? lol I've been listening to Japanese basically 24/7 in the background just to block out English influences. Obviously not when I'm doing Korean, but since my main goal is to increase my passive vocab in Japanese (I now know several ways to say "to shoot" something and a few more involving "escape" of some kind...very useful), it is my priority! My densi jisyo is my best friend right now! :) Korean I've started to input Korean-Japanese sentences on to Anki, and I found a pretty good grammar site in Japanese to hold me over until my books come. The great thing about the site is that there's no kana phonetic representation. Awesome. What I've been doing in Anki is color-matching each respective vocabulary word. I've listened to Korean news for about half an hour. Not the best experience of the week. I also found Korea cooking shows! Yum. I also watched a movie...well half a movie. Korea has remade a popular Japanese drama, so I watched the raws of that, especially since I know the gist of the story already. Each episode is about 70 minutes each...so 140 minutes (about 2 hours) total. It's very interesting to see the different cultural approaches to the story. It seems that the main character is weaker in Korea, and a lot of people talk with their mouths full! lol It makes understanding words when you don't understand anything to begin with worse. haha. There are a lot of random English phrases said that take me by surprise when I'm in "Korean listening mode", and I'm surprised that I know some 10 words or so! Mostly the Sino-Korean words. Some words I guessed from context (what? why? yeah, etc), some were English loan-words. And part-time job is the same in Korean and Japanese!? Very nice...even though I don't think that word comes from Chinese...So a bit over 4 hours of total Korea TV, not including random YouTube Korean commercials I've been watching when procrastination strikes. Of course I'll be rewatching the episodes this week. And I found the original Japanese version with both Japanese and Korean subs shown at the same time. Gold mine! I can mine sentences from that. Except I have no idea how to type in Korean keyboard. I've just been doing a copy-paste thing, but for subtitles that's harder, isn't it? I see that there are stickers that can be pasted on to the keys to make it easier to type in Korean, but I see no reason why I can't do that myself. I'm just kind of bummed I have to learn a new keyboard. Oh well, it shouldn't be too difficult. How I wish I had a Japanese-Korean dictionary! I forgot to look for one, but I rather use an online one. Got to find one. I forgot to mention that the title of that Korean drama has Hanja! It made it easier for me to understand that word in Korean. I'm almost wishing that Korean utilized Hanja like the Japanese do Kanji just to make it a bit easier, but that's a bit too selfish, isn't it? ************ Well, on to another week, my final one before school starts again *sigh*. I have classes straight until pretty late, but because I have none on Tuesdays and Thursdays (and of course the weekends!) I'll try to get in as much study as I can. Because of this, I think I'll have to concentrate on Korean a little better, especially in regards to listening. I have one Korean artist on my iPod (I have to find that before school starts...). I've liked him for years, but I saw how he looked like only recently via a Live that was on YouTube. I think I'll have to start searching for more artists, although I'm not as fond of the R&B and Pop styles that seem to be extremely popular over there. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6263 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 4 of 9 07 January 2009 at 12:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Which site is that? I know this grammar site already -> http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~ragna/gottani/basic/basic07.htm If that's the one, I just have to warn you there's some typos in the Korean examples.
And what drama is that?? My Japanese is much better than my Korean, so I'm looking for J>K resources too. I had the brilliant idea to play the Korean and Japanese versions of Pokemon side by side, but I can't get it to work on the computer... I found a K>J J>K dictionary here. I don't know how good it is. http://kr.dic.yahoo.com/ This isn't a dictionary, but it might still help http://www.excite.co.jp/world/korean/ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| konayuki Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5828 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French | Message 5 of 9 07 January 2009 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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^ Hi, thanks for the info. It's just to hold me over, I'll just cross reference the
spellings :) Thanks for the links to the dictionaries. :) The drama is "Hana Yori Dango": http://www.viikii.net/videos/watch/4359/0/hana-yori- dango-season-1-episode-1.html The subs aren't complete. It's about 85% done for Korean and 90% done for Japanese. Just switch from English to Korean and the Japanese and Korean subs will be shown on top of each other. I'm also patiently awaiting Japanese subs for the Korean remake. Re: watching movies side by side, can't you use two different media players and just play them at the same time? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6263 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 6 of 9 08 January 2009 at 11:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh, I meant the Pokemon games, not the show ^_^ Nintendo DS games don't work so well on the computer.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| konayuki Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5828 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French | Message 7 of 9 14 January 2009 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A day late...
I am so tired Japanese I couldn't put all my efforts into kanji like I would have liked. I'm disappointed, but hopefully this weekend will be the one! Again, my goal is to learn most of my previously failed Kanji, and I won't continue on with the book unless less than 50 cards are still in the failed stack. BTW, I have East Asian language support now since my sister found the OS disc for me (actually a burned backup). Advantage of being in school: Talking to professors in Japanese Asking professors questions in Japanese Thanks to one of them, I know the (slight) difference between 会う and 逢う that my dictionary fails to explain. Yup, just asked what different -kanji- the different - kanji- have. Lame joke I know. But I'm still laughing. I dissected a couple more songs because, well, that was really all I could handle this past week. I did a -tiny- bit more of the magazine article, though. As in, 2 paragraphs. Shadowed what I could from some variety show (forgot the name...). I saw it on KeyNote TV. Basically the guests have to guess from 4 anecdotes which is true and which is false -----(for example, for one round, they had to choose from: firefighters sliding down poles, judges banging the gavel, police giving a criminal a cigarette to make him feel at ease, and [forgot]. this was actually the last one (I think) and I didn't get to watch the very end, but Judges in Japan don't even have gavels, and of course the police thing is a movie ploy).----- Does anyone know what show this is? I actually really enjoyed it. Korean I did a bit more in Korean. First: http://www.naver.com/ Best website. Ever. For Korean, anyway. It is a sentence gold mine. The Korean- Japanese dictionary is full of example sentences. This leads onto -- Secondly: I added a lot more sentences to Anki thanks to Naver. Not as much as I could have, but more than I would have if I didn't have Naver. Thirdly: Rewatched one episode of the drama, have yet to see the new episodes. Watch about 15 minutes of some random Korean morning news show. Still understand 99.9% of nothing. Making good progress. :) Lastly: Found a decent Japanese-Korean podcast from Oosaka Prefecture University. They have 3, but I just looked at 2. One is just about phrases. As in, the podcast is about 3 minutes long with the Korean phrase (ie "My name is ~Mr.X~") repeated several times and the Japanese several times. The other one is a bit more useful. It comes with transcripts in Japanese and Korean of what was said, and it's more than just phrases (for example, a complete self-introduction). It's in the Japanese iTunes Store. :) ----------- I am definitely taking advantage of a shorter school day on Friday as well as no classes on Monday to concentrate on everything. I dedicate most of my moments to study. I get insomnia if there is something I don't completely understand, so I stay up until I do. I won't be able to do that so much since I have early and evening classes, and sleeping late without the luxury of sleeping in is beginning to take its toll. It seems I'll have to write some sort of (loose) schedule. Loose because I'm not the scheduling type, but what must be done must be done and in order for this to succeed I'm going to have to systematically divide my time in a better way to fit everything I need to get accomplished. I'll update on that next week. konayuki 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| konayuki Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5828 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French | Message 8 of 9 10 February 2009 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Woo, okay. I think I'm trying to do a lot of things at once, but I'm getting there. It's especially difficult because
I'm taking some hard major classes and I'm self-learning other things, but I shall prevail. It's not very detailed, but here's an update: Japanese I'm dissecting the stories from my Modern Lit class, such as Gan and Botchan. Continuing with RevTk and Rtk, Frame 1586. Almost there... Lang-8 is my friend Korean I have 221 "facts" on Anki: ie sentences from Japanese--> Korean Still watching some raw Korean when I have the time. I've been catching up on the drama. Apparently Japanese subs will be released next month so as soon as I'm done with the raw I want to watch it again once through, and then continue on with the Japanese sub and transfer those sentences into Anki. If my computer was working it would be so much easier because then I'd be able to transfer everything into my iPod and watch it/listen to it on my way to class, but I'm stuck on this PC (my iPod is Mac formatted.) I'm thinking that after 800 or so sentences I can start writing simple entries on Lang-8 (after I figure out that keyboard...) ------------------ I have a paper to write, but hopefully soon I'll give a detailed report on what I'm doing and my progress through the wonderful world of Japanese and Korean. konayuki 1 person has voted this message useful |
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