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Early Impressions Japanese. 3 Days. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4246 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes  | Message 1 of 2 07 May 2013 at 2:57pm | IP Logged |
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First, apologies for the title. It sounds bombastic. I just meant that I've spent a few
days on Japanese and had the opportunity to speak it earlier and did ok and wanted to list some preliminary impressions. I. am. not. claiming. any. proficiency. whatsoever. Ok first the why? Well basically its completely unrelated to the languages I know and work with, with a reputation for difficulty. Normally I wouldn't be interested since pretty much almost every Japanese learner I've met has been obsessed with cartoons etc and I wasn't very aware of the literary tradition. The problem is there's no way to sample the language due to the necessity of learning the script so I had to sort of...smash my way into it. The idea was...learn as much as I can in a short period of time and see what I like. I'll have several more opportunities to speak it this week and after that I'll decide whether or not I wish to learn it. To be honest, I picked it out of pettiness since someone implied I couldn't. I had access, via libraries, siblings and friends, to quite a bit of material. Assimil, TYS, Colloquial and then some random stuff here and there. My brother learnt largely through handouts at school and then through native material so he was useless to me at this stage. I only had a few hours a day and only had limited audio from what I could borrow. method I did the first three lessons of TYS, without audio alas. Or rather, I skimmed them rapidly. It was mainly dialogue so I didn't get much out of it. Colloquial was a bit better. I had the audio and the breakdown was better but not by much so again I skimmed it. I could repeat like a robot but it wasn't helpful. Assimil in this sense was more helpful. I got to briefly look at the Ultimate Living Language series. This has been the best by far. Longer dialogues, explanations of the grammar, massive vocab lists and exercises. I was able to use this to learn enough grammar to go back to Assimil and Colloquial and get an idea of what was going on. So whereas before I could intimate the difference between stem+mas(u) vs +masen I had it explicitly as well as the relationship between structures better e.g des tends to take arimasen in the negative for “to be” whereas other verbs in “mas” just add “(s)en”. More importantly...I found a list of particles and post positions! It was fun. Then I was able to re-phrase and expand sentences I found in the beginner chapters. E.g Atsui des'ne (its hot, no?) lead me to find the word for weather (otenki) and then various adjectives like “good” (ii) and so on. I was able to feel, thanks to grammar, that I could form sentences and spent a three hour train ride going over frequency lists and forming, admittedly moronic, sentences with what little I know. The chance to converse over the last evening and this morning was...interesting. I dislike speaking so early in a language but I found it fun, that I could ask questions and comment in a basic way. The other thing was I had to be approximate, I had no real way to say I do Classical/Comparative Philology so literature had to do. This is probably why I won't speak much more, my acquaintance was lovely but I have no intention of boring him with my asinine babel at this stage. I did learn a few words via speaking though. Impressions: I'm not sure if I'm interested enough to learn properly yet. I just thought I'd share some brief thoughts on what I've done and felt so far. This was a very useful taster since this is a language that requires a massive time investment. I might post some more impressions later and if anyone has any questions or wants to give tips and advice, feel free. I just thought I'd put this out there. Edited by Lykeio on 07 May 2013 at 2:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5849 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 2 09 May 2013 at 9:57am | IP Logged |
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My advice: Here in the Log Subforum you can share your learning experiences with Japanese. Even, if it's only a short log you can get advice from other Japanese learners and maybe natives here. I wish you good luck!
Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful |
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