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日本語 and me the next round TAC 2012 Team い | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 57 of 333 28 February 2012 at 10:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think there really needs to be some kind of self help programme to support Anki abusers. I’ve really hit the textbooks again over the past few days which has been great, but I’ve generated more new cards in Anki than I could ever hope to keep up with. After giving in to the little voice at the back of my head saying “LEARN ALL THE THINGS!!”, last night I somehow decided it might be a good idea to try and catch up by studying 100 new cards, on top of the 120 reviews due. Obviously that didn’t work out… So from now on I’m going to try my best to ignore that voice and stick to a maximum of 20 new cards a day. But I don’t want to hold back on progressing through the textbooks while I am so motivated either so I will just have to try and let the new cards pile up without worrying about them too much.
I hate Anki. If it wasn’t such a useful tool I would be happy to write it off as yet another language learning thing that doesn’t work for me. However its sheer efficiency and usefulness just mocks me at moments like this! So I have mainly been studying with Japanese for Busy People and Basic Kanji Book. I would really like to get them both finished by the end of April and I think at my current rate of progress this is definitely possible. I started off by going back to the beginning of Basic Kanji Book 2, considering I had quite a hiatus from studying with this method. But I quickly became frustrated and demotivated as I just felt like I was going over old ground the whole time. Although I didn’t know the contents of the early chapters perfectly well, I still wasn’t really learning anything new. So I decided to take the plunge and pick up from where I left off the last time. My bookmark was still there at the correct page, at the start of Chapter 34. I’m really glad I did this. I learned for the first time how to write the kanji in words like 雑誌 and 楽器 and so I feel, once again, like I am moving forward. Chapter 34 finished by asking you to write a bit about who pays for what when it comes to arranging weddings in your own country, so I thought I would upload the results to lang-8 for feedback. I am up to Chapter 12 in Japanese for Busy People II. It all feels a bit confusing because the Japanese class I attend is using volume III (and is up to around Chapter 8), however we don’t use much from the textbook in class, although it follows roughly the same order of grammar points covered. Anyway, in terms of the grammar patterns JfBP expects you to learn and use, it is pretty much all revision for me, but much needed revision! On top of that I am still picking up a lot of new and useful vocabulary. One thing that does annoy me about JfBP is it is quite kanji-phobic. Apart from a few common names for people and places (e.g. 鈴木さん, 富士山) it will only use kanji in the text after it has been covered in the little kanji section at the back of each chapter, and even then everything gets given a furigana gloss. I don’t understand why they couldn’t present the whole lot with correct kanji plus furigana, especially as it’s getting to the point where you are learning enough vocabulary for homophones to start to be an issue. However, I am using it to my advantage now as when I am doing the grammar exercises (which are generally fill-in-the-blanks variations) I make myself write out the answers with the correct kanji from memory if it is not given in the book. On top of the textbook study, on days when I don’t have class or any language exchange sessions arranged I am trying to improve my listening by watching one episode of a TV drama without any subtitles. I make sure that I pick a show where I can understand enough of the dialogue to actually learn from it but so far I think it might be helping. I love getting those occasional moments of “wow, I understood all of what they just said!” 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6077 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 58 of 333 29 February 2012 at 3:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ugh, it's frustrating, isn't it? That was my major criticism about book II!
what I did was type snippets of the drills in Word and then print them out. I was able to at least see Japanese the way it's supposed to look. I don't think I could write from memory to save my life, but I'm workin on it! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6612 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 59 of 333 29 February 2012 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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About your Anki-situation, I don't think I would bother putting any of the vocabulary from the textbook in. The textbook always gives a definition, so you can go back and look if you forget it. Also, textbooks tend to reuse the same vocabulary so that you get to learn it. It's sort of like an Anki review built right into the textbook. Use Anki for interesting things that you want to remember and probably won't see that often, and forget about putting textbook stuff in there.
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 60 of 333 03 March 2012 at 12:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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@Sunja I realised recently that being able to handwrite in Japanese was actually rather important to me after all, so I'm happy to be spending some time working on it again!
@Brun_Ugle I think I see what you are getting at. But to be honest, I'm not so worried about the interesting unusual things, as if they are interesting enough I will remember them anyway. That's why words like 錬金術 and 赤外線 have entered my vocabulary without going anywhere near any of my Anki decks. The really common words I'm also not too worried about either, as any kind of exposure or need to use the language will make sure I deal with these. The problem is all the other words, like words for mundane household items, that don't come up regularly but I'm pretty sure I'll need to get to know one way or another. I guess if my decks are that boring, no wonder I hate Anki! Well I think I've just done something marginally crazy and entered myself for the JLPT N3 this summer. I was dithering about whether or not to do it, but then I found out one of my friends was planning to enter at the same level and that really persuaded me. Nothing like a bit of friendly competition to get myself motivated. I've ordered a couple of books to help me focus on the listening and reading sections and I already have enough stuff here already to deal with the vocab/kanji/grammar bits so I'm getting stuck back into those. Actually, one grammar question that is really bugging me at the moment is the difference between みたい and らしい. What is the difference between 春みたい and 春らしい? I really don't get it... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6077 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 61 of 333 03 March 2012 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good question! It really started me thinking. I always have trouble with these rules. Tae Kim's explanation is not bad.... BUT after I read it it was still a bit unclear so I tried google: 春みたい!! -- it looks like spring! (seems like it, even though it's early) 春らしい着物 -- spring-appropriate kimono 春らしい曲 -- spring-appropriate music It looks like ~らしい is used a lot as an adjective meaning "appropriate to" or "fit for" for nouns... edit: I added the picture of the kimono (lol) sometimes pictures help me to remember Edited by Sunja on 03 March 2012 at 2:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kappa Groupie Japan Joined 5512 days ago 99 posts - 172 votes | Message 62 of 333 03 March 2012 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Howdy!
It appears things have been already explained elsewhere so I'm only going to take up on one thing, one use. I'll use those words in the same condition for comparison. Please excuse my English. どうやら、日本はもう春らしい。 Apparently it's already spring in Japan (My friend in Japan told me it's getting warmer there.) どうやら、日本はもう春みたいだ。 Apparently it's already spring in Japan (I saw Sakura blooming in Japan on TV.) In the latter, the speaker heard so from somebody ("I heard that...."). In the former, the speaker is guessing based on what s/he feels/experienced, her/his own opinion, rather than using someone else's information ("It seems to me that...., I feel that..."). In Japanese, the former case is called 伝聞（でんぶん）, and the latter 推量（すいりょう）. Both cases express some uncertainty. I'll put aother set of example sentences to show different usage of the words, but I can't explain it. There should be well and thorough explanations some place else so I recommend you search for them (and Tae Kim is always great source). 今日は暖かくて、春みたいですね。 It's warm like spring today, isn't it. (It's not spring.) 今日は暖かくて、春らしい日ですね。 It's warm and very spring-y today. (It is spring.) c.f. http://www.guidetojapanese.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4929 Hope this helps, Kappa 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5820 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 63 of 333 03 March 2012 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That's a great explanation, Kappa! This is something my teacher has been trying to get the students in my class to
understand lately, albeit without much success, I'm afraid.... So I'm glad you provided an explanation here for everyone! It's interesting to me how much Japanese keeps track of whether you are expressing something you know or guess to be true, and whether you are reporting something you heard from someone else. It's been hard to wrap my head around those differences because it's not something we do much in English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5974 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 64 of 333 03 March 2012 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Kappa thanks very much for your explanation, it was both succinct and very helpful.
I think part of my problem with ～らしい is there appear to be two different uses for it. The first being "it seems like (according to what I heard)" and the second being "it is a typical example of". Please correct me if I'm wrong. In terms of the first usage, as in your example 「どうやら、日本はもう春らしい。」, I guess my next annoying question would be, how does this differ from using 「日本はもう春だそうだ」? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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