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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5346 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 9 of 16 05 January 2014 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome back! I’m glad to see you here on the forum again.
Good luck with your languages and everything else. I wish you all the best for 2014! PS. If you need any help with Italian, just ask! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5765 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 10 of 16 05 January 2014 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your comments, welcomes back and encouragement, everyone! Over the last few days I've mainly been focusing on building a very basic vocabulary in Japanese. I'm not following any kind of book at all, however I might look into doing so in the not-too-distant future once I start losing my way with regards to what to study exactly. I wouldn't be looking for a really heavy course or anything like that, I might just see if I can find the textbook my old school used for GCSE Japanese. That would probably suffice for a while. I'll keep you all posted on that bit.
I'm finding that I remember a lot of kanji forms from the Chinese I learnt while I was in Shanghai, but of course the pronunciations are all completely different. Below is my very first attempt at writing something. I am pretty confident it's at least intelligible but I assume there's a fair bit wrong with it. こんにちは、私の名前はジャックです、と二 十三歳です。小さい村に南西のイングランド に住んであります。私たちは大きい家田舎に 持ってがあります。私は外国語を学ぶのが大 好きです、だからぼかの国を気づくの好きで す。私の好きな学校の科目はドイツ語でした 、でも数学が下手でした。ドイツ語，フラン ス語、ロシア語と日本語を少し話します。週 末に物語を読むの好きです。炉辺で座ります 、だから家に寒いです。 Hello, my name is Jack and I am 23 years old. I live in a little village in the south-west of England. We have a big house in the countryside. I like learning foreign languages because I like to get to know other cultures. At school my favourite subject was German but I was really bad at maths. I speak German, French, Russian and a little Japanese. At the weekend I like to read stories. I sit by the fire because it's cold in the house. So to summarise what I've learnt so far - 1. I've got hiragana half-way under my belt now. I can read and write all the syllables but it still takes me a few seconds to remember a few of them. I don't have a clue how legible they would be to a native or advanced speaker but I can read my writing, so that's good enough for me for now. 2. I'm starting to get katakana under my belt. For some reason this one is taking a little longer, even though I've read that many find it easier than hiragana. 3. I've started learning vocab so I can start talking about myself, which isn't massively useful in a wider context but it's a start. I've learnt: -Numbers 1-1000. The pattern for how larger numbers are said seems to be basically the same as in Mandarin, so this part was dead easy for me. They're also really easy to write. -The days of the week. It's quite cool that the kanji for the days of the week are quite simple, so I can write those as well. -I've learnt some of the simpler school subjects. I still don't know the words for some of the more complicated ones you do later in school but I'll get there. -The compass points. -Some simple adjectives and some of the more common counting words, as well as colours. I'm not sure what the technical term for "counting words" is. For example in the phrase 一本の木, 本 isn't translated into English and I have no idea what the term for these words is. -I have also learnt the names for a few countries and languages. -Stationery and places in town, different kinds of transport. In terms of grammar, because I love grammar, I've learnt: -Non-past polite and informal forms both positive and negative, and obviously questions are dead easy. -Some past forms. -How to say what you like and what you like doing. -How to say what you want 新しい車がほしいです。 I haven't learnt how to say what you want to do yet. -I've also learnt a couple of particles. Particles are lots of fun! -I know a few conjunctions (although Japanese grammar doesn't seem to call them that which I find unusual) and prepositions, which seem to all be covered by these particle things. As well as the above, I have also reached a hell of milestone already, or at least I think I have. Yesterday evening I created a Japanese Playstation Network account and managed to download and install the Japanese version of a new game I have been wanting to play ever since its development was announced a few years ago. It's not available in the US or UK until mid-March and I thought it'd be useful for listening to Japanese speech and practising reading (it has Japanese subtitles by default) so it's a win-win for me! It is a remaster of an old game I played when I was kid, which I know inside out, so I can guess (and then look up) many words that I catch because of my previous knowledge of the game. It's been fun so far! The account creation took absolutely ages for me, as I was wracking my brains trying to navigate the menus (which were entirely in Japanese) through reading the hiragana and katakana that I could manage, and some of the kanji, though I often couldn't pronounce them at all. Anyway, it worked, and the game seems to be helping my Japanese already. I haven't done any Italian this weekend, however the most helpful of my Italian co-workers is coming home from her holiday tomorrow, so I will try to chat with her sometimes. I would also have written something in Italian here now but this has been such a long post that I am going to leave it for later. By the way, thank you very much, Emme, for your offer of help with Italian, I am sure I'll take you up on it numerous times as I'm quite insecure about it :) Thanks for reading, and well done to anyone that actually read the whole thing! Jack Edited by LanguageSponge on 05 January 2014 at 7:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4348 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 11 of 16 05 January 2014 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Congratulations on managing to make that account, that sounds hard to do.
I'm still not very good at Japanese, so these may be completely worthless and wrong; but a few things I've noticed: I think に is used only with certain verbs, and usually it's just で. Also, it's usually REASON だから RESULT. So 家で寒いですから炉辺で座ります. And I think math is 数学. Edited by Ezy Ryder on 05 January 2014 at 7:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5765 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 12 of 16 05 January 2014 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi Ezy Ryder, Thanks for your comments. Don't worry about it possibly being wrong - when someone raises a possible issue that they're not sure about, I usually research it afterwards, so thanks for pointing out the issue with に and で, I have been known to get this wrong in the past but I've never been given an even half-plausible explanation for it, so thanks :) As for the clause order with だから, thanks, it's the same thing I believe with 因为 (yīnwèi) in Chinese so I should've at least suspected that. Thanks for pointing out 数学, I just typed it wrong :) Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 13 of 16 05 January 2014 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I could also add some input, is that welcome?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5765 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 14 of 16 05 January 2014 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Bao :) Of course, any help or feedback or anything constructive at all is welcome at any point! ありがと
う！ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5765 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 15 of 16 19 January 2014 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, it's been a little while since I posted anything, but that doesn't mean I've not
been working on things! Over the past few weeks, most of my Japanese has been passive. I've been doing the passive phase of Assimil's Japanese with Ease and have also been watching Dragon Ball Z in Japanese - that was one of my favourite animes as a kid. I'm currently looking into getting some more anime box sets and stuff, but other than the typical anime we get in the West I don't really know very much - so I'll have fun looking into that as well. I can think of loads of titles, but I know nothing about any of them. In terms of actually producing Japanese, I don't do a whole lot of speaking, but it's not for my usual reasoning of being nervous. It's mostly because at work, where I spend most of my time, I only have one other person to speak to in Japanese, and he's at the same sort of level as I am at the moment. I am getting a lot better at reading Katakana now, as I have started playing the Japanese version of Final Fantasy X HD which is only in Japanese at the moment. I can read the names of the characters, towns, magic spells and items pretty well now - and 95% of that is all in Katakana. I am making good progress with Kanji too. I am pretty sure I have all of the Grade 1 Kanji in my head now, and am very familiar with a lot of the Grade 2 and 3 Kanji as well.I won't be moving onto Grade 4 until I am able to read and write all of the two previous Grades fairly well though. I saw a lot of them while I was living in China and consequently I sometimes pronounce a few of them automatically in Mandarin, but I'm sure that'll change soon. Personally I do not see what all of the fuss is about with Kanji and all the readings. I wonder if this'll change later? I'm spending the evening going over Katakana and the Grade 3 Kanji. So far this isn't difficult, it's just a challenge to find enough time for it. Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5134 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 16 of 16 21 September 2016 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | ||
"Kazogaku"? Or is there another reading? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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