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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 89 of 1702 16 August 2011 at 10:34am | IP Logged |
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Neat. I just got a little keyboard for my ipad. Unfortunatelty this thing is awfully small although its portable i
guess. And I keep pressing lock instead of delete which is a real pain. Anyway. I am liking the change of pace of using the jflash vocab app. I have it set for medium difficulty on spaced repetition which is working out well. I like playing music in the background while I study it makes it more fun. I listen to jpop mostly or trance. Pandora sneaks japanese classical music in there a little bit too. I'm looking forward to starting the japanese distance course this fall. I'm not a college student so its not for college credit just for fun. I can get bored and quit if i want but i hope to do well. I also grabbed the 2nd part of pimsleur on audible. I have a bunch of credits lying around so I figured why not. I've listened to part 1 of it already. I don't know if I'll finish. I have a couple other japanese courses with audio and I might like them better. I haven't really given them a chance. I've stuck to pimsleur and tts flashcards. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 90 of 1702 28 August 2011 at 8:33am | IP Logged |
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The Japanese elearning distance college course starts up this week I think. Pretty excited about that. In terms of what I'm studying I'm sticking to flashcards be it jflash, flashcards deluxe, or accela study. I'm back to neglecting kanji. Oh well. I am getting better at hiragana/katakana all the time though.
I am getting a little better at understanding spoken japanese. Watching the anime I definitely pick out more words. It's slow going but I am seeing progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 91 of 1702 30 August 2011 at 4:30pm | IP Logged |
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I finally got Adobe Acrobat X to work. I ordered this thing a month ago. I apparently had a typo in the email when i placed the order and it took a month of dealing with Adobe to get them to figure this out so I could download the product. I sent them bank statements and filed disputes with paypal and finally this morning someone at adobe noticed and I got the software. So that was frustrating.
Good news is that it's really looking like I can use this software along with jbrute (or maybe another dictionary I haven't settled on what will be best) to read ebooks in Japanese. I bought Japanese Harry Potter and scanned it into my computer (a month or two ago). I tried using Abbey Finereader 9.0 to OCR the text. It did its best but there were errors on every line even at 600 dpi. But I just did a test run with Adobe X and it looks like their OCR is better. To be fair my finereader version is older and Adobe X is their latest software (maybe an update is coming out soon though). I'm particularly impressed that it ignored the furigana perfectly. At least on my test run heh. So I have Harry Potter and I think I'm going to be able to read it just fine. It would be even cooler if I could use this to ocr manga stuff too. I'm gonna take my time with Potter though. Lots of reading here. From previous language experience, if I can actually fight my way through this thing my Japanese will show marked improvement. Getting through my 1st novel in German and Spanish was a big step forward helping all aspects of the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 92 of 1702 30 August 2011 at 10:58pm | IP Logged |
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Ok. I played around some with adobe before work today and it had some problems with katakana actually.
The text is all top to bottom I. Harry potter but for katakana it was thinking some of it was sideways. It's still better than the fine reader was as it's gotten all the kanji right I think. The language is pretty hard with there being no spaces so I think I am going to do the parallel text approach. I haven't really tried that before. I always just went with target language or got into the story but frustrated and switched to English. Never both. But I've read potter enough times I won't just be reading in English - it would be boring. I've been more diligent with the space repetition the past few days. I think it really works better when you study it when you're supposed to heh. Makes sense. It's also giving me more hope of progress. Japanese is so slow going and I need hope. Edited by kraemder on 30 August 2011 at 11:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 93 of 1702 01 September 2011 at 8:20am | IP Logged |
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The flashcards program is going well. I have a nicer studying area having cleaned my apartment and purchased some furniture.
I use Flashcards deluxe which has a nice spaces repetition feature along with the vocab list from japanesepod.com and I had let myself get behind on studying due cards. I basically was studying them on weekends only. They actually pop up as due every day and (big shocker) I am retaining them a lot better when I stick to doing the due list every day. Also I'm adding lots of cards for the 1st time in a while. I added 100 last night and another 100 tonight and will probably do another 100 to bring it to 1000 soon. 300 is a lot to add at once but I've been sitting at 700 for almost 2 months. So I plan on getting the 1st 1000 in there and then just doing due cards as they come up. This is no mean feat. They pop up as due really quick since I don't remember them right off between sessions and have to hit unknown the 1st couple times I study a lot of the cards for each session. But they're sticking a lot easier and I'm getting through the list etc within a reasonable time. It's taking less mental energy to get through the due cards whereas before it really felt overwhelming. I hope this keeps up - I might actually learn Japanese heh. I'm focusing on kana/english and kanji is there on side 2 as an afterthought. I'm going to make myself start learning kanji again in a bit but I really want to increase the raw vocabulary 1st. As I've said before I'm picking out more words as I watch anime and I want that to increase. Another thing I haven't done and know I should is to get lyrics for some of the Japanese songs I listen to so I can actually understand what they're saying. I've found a few artists I really like so I should take advantage. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 94 of 1702 09 September 2011 at 5:02am | IP Logged |
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Still plugging. Having written previously that I was ignoring Kanji made me want to go study it. So I grabbed A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese (Turtle Language Library) and sat down and started drawing Kanji. This book is basicaly 2000 kanji. They give info on the kanji like stroke order, the different pronunciations and some example words. I like this book more than some of the others because they use romaji for the pronunciations instead of hiragana/katakana. I am good with hiragana but there's a few katakana that have yet to sink in. Also, this book doesn't just have a picture of the final kanji with numbers next to the different parts, it actually shows you each stroke of the kanji in itself. It's easier to follow without any ambiguity.
So I sat down and drew 10 examples of maybe 50 kanji. It was actually kind of relaxing and reminded me of doodling in high school when I was bored in class. Some kids do that a lot and I didn't do it a whole lot but when I did, I ended up drawing stick figures since I can't draw and that's basically Kanji - weird stick figure guys. I've only practiced this a few occasions since. I think writing out the Kanji like this is a great way to study it. When you actually draw the kanji it makes it less intimidating and foreign and plus muscle memory is nice. When it comes to learning Kanji pronunciation, I'm pretty much going to ignore memorizing the different pronunciations. At least until I learn a word where it's used. So I'm learning to the "English" meaning of the kanji and how to draw it and then if I see that it's used in a word I've learned I'm remembering that pronunciation from that word that I already know. If I had a lot of Kanji under my belt it would make Japanese a lot easier. I almost want to stop learning grammar/vocab and just focus on Kanji. I wonder if anyone ever did that with Japanese successfully? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 95 of 1702 19 September 2011 at 6:59am | IP Logged |
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I have obtained an etext copy of Harry Potter in Japanese =D. I don't know if was professionally done or what but it appears to be error free and it's actual computer characters not a scanned image of the book (which I already owned). So I've copied chapter 1 into html so I can use rikaichan and furigana inserter (add on to put furigana above -all- kanji and spaces between words to firefox). This is really exciting for me heh. I also have an audio book copy of the Japanese version of book 1.
I think this will be a boon. With error free text and an interesting story I'm familiar with I should be able to get through it. As for my other stuff - I took a bit of a break from studying flashcards and even Japanese anime to play Final Fantasy 13 on XBOX. I was hoping they'd have an option for Japanese in the settings but they didn't. So that was like a week and a half off from Japanese (sort of, I did study a little). I'd been burning myself out trying to force stuff into my head and I think the break was a good thing. I also got another "JRPG" for XBOX - Lost Odyssey. This game -does- let me use Japanese voices. It even does English subtitles. Really cool. But I'm not going to plow through it - I am going to get some solid studying in this week as the priority. Starting with chapter 1 of Harry Potter. It's about 14 pages or so. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 96 of 1702 20 September 2011 at 9:15am | IP Logged |
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Well I started my elearning college course today. That is I talked to my tutor on skype for the 1st time. It was like a first day of class where you go over the subject in general and what to expect for the course. Due to my work schedule I unfortunately have very small windows of time that match the tutor sessions. Curse of having a full time job.
So the tutor is an American grad student studying Japanese. Not a native speaker but obviously way better than me at this stuff. At the beginner level there's definitely some pros to having someone who's been through what you have helping you. So starting next session I'm told we're going to be speaking all Japanese. I wonder if he'll sick to that. Thankfully I have been self studying for several months already so I have a fighting chance of communicating at the most basic of levels heh. I went ahead and did the Chapter one work and mailed it off. They don't do email unfortunately. It seems the guy monitoring the amount of printer ink that each department uses is far stricter than whoever handles the mail. So they want me to mail in assignments and they'll review and mail them back. Half of it was simply filling out charts of hiragana - IE writing out the letter on a grid over and over. The 2nd part was reading words in romaji and writing them out in hiragana. That was actually quite difficult for me. I haven't attempted writing Japanese by hand at all to date. I tried my best not to look at the charts. Since they're grading it maybe that wasn't the best of plans heh. It's one thing to have recognition memory of hiragana and another to be able to produce it (write it) on your own. I also did some grammar reading. I'm going through Japanese in MangaLand. I like the theme of studying it in the context of Manga instead of say in a class room or as a tourist or a businessman etc which is the usual approach for language textbooks. I'll definitely be using Japanese for anime/manga way before I use it for anything else. The rules and stuff are all the same but it somehow seems less dry and I sort of feel like I have something in common with the author since he/she likes anime/manga. Maybe silly but I like it. I'm gonna hit up Harry Potter some more now. I got through a few pages the other night. It's tough going but with furigana on every kanji (albeit not always always the correct pronunciation as it's a firefox addon) it helps tons. It's been a few years but I really struggled with my first book in Spanish, German, etc. They were painful too but it got better. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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