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Destination 日本語 (TAC 2012 Team 龍) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sundance Newbie United States Joined 4717 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 16 01 January 2012 at 5:04pm | IP Logged |
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As the last sparkles from the New Year's celebration fade and the sober light of the day shines down, it is time for me to stop procrastinating and properly introduce my 2012 goals.
Japanese Interest I can exactly pinpoint the day I began my love affair with all things Japanese… March 11, 2011. It sounds a bit morbid, but the day of the earthquake and tsunami, I continuously watched news reports out of Japan on my computer at work. Something within me felt moved and connected to Japan, even though I don't know any Japanese people. (I know that sounds weird, with all the natural disasters around the world being reported all the time. I often feel sympathy, but this time I was, as silly as it sounds, deeply moved.) Previously, I had felt neutral about Japanese language and culture. Afterwards, I couldn't read enough about Japan and I watched NHK a lot. I started reading an east asian history book. I watched Spirited Away in Japanese with English subtitles. I visited the manga section of the bookstore! I couldn't believe that this amazing culture had been there all along and I had never known it. Finally, I realized that one day I would have to visit Japan, so I would need to learn Japanese. Level Zero! I have Japanese for Busy People I, 3rd edition (JBP) and Living Language Complete Japanese (LLCJ). I am on lesson 4 of JBP and lesson 7 of LLCJ. I can count to 100, say the months of the year, introduce myself and someone else, and I have begun to learn family member terms. Since I started in August, I could be much further along in my studies, but I took too many breaks. Also, at the beginning, hardly anything would stick in my brain. The vocabulary is so different, plus a brain exhausted from a (stressful) full-time job is not a receptive brain. I also have a loving family I like to spend time with! Goal I am aiming for solid N5. I, like several other members of this forum, am dyslexic, so to be able to master the N5 material written in kana with some basic kanji is going to be a real challenge. I love reading about people who learn the kana in a weekend. It won't be me, however. Vietnamese Interest My first exposure to Vietnamese was in high school, where I met some Vietnamese people and I loved the way their Vietnamese-accented English sounded. Then I discovered I liked the sound of Vietnamese as well. Another memory: on the last day of a French class, when we could bring in party food, a girl brought a Vietnamese dessert and it had fruit that I had never heard of before. I think including lychee. I had some and this began my devotion to Vietnamese cuisine. For decades, I have been interested in the food and culture of Vietnam, but only recently did I think about learning the language. Level Below zero. Besides common food terms, I don’t know any Vietnamese. And I don’t think I pronounce the food terms correctly! Goal I will only dabble in Vietnamese this year. I would like to be able to hear and differentiate the tones. I would like to know basic greetings and possibly work through the first four lessons of the FSI Vietnamese course. But this is only if my Japanese studies are going along and dabbling in Vietnamese will not interfere with Japanese progress. Huge apologies for the long post and getting a bit personal! I'll keep it shorter in the future. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6623 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 2 of 16 01 January 2012 at 5:56pm | IP Logged |
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I'm studying Japanese this year too, though I have a bit more experience with it. I love it for its grammar and creative use of kanji. Do check out the various logs of the members of Team い. We are all studying Japanese at different levels, so you might find some tips.
I also like the sound of Vietnamese (and the food), but I'm sticking to one language at a time right now, so it will have to remain a distant dream. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sundance Newbie United States Joined 4717 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 16 02 January 2012 at 4:21pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks, Brun Ugle! I will check out the Team い logs. I can use advice about learning the kana and kanji in particular. I'm not sure I have the patience for Anki.
A funny language incident happened to me yesterday (this may sound like one of those old jokes: a rabbi, a priest, and a minister walk into a bar, but there were no religious personnel, it was a Starbucks, and there's really no punch line). So, I walk into a Starbucks yesterday with some friends, only to hear the poetic language of Vietnamese! This is a Starbucks I regularly visit and though I have heard Spanish and Amharic there previously, I never heard Vietnamese. In fact, I haven't met any Vietnamese speakers in awhile. There was a whole extended family there drinking various coffee drinks and celebrating the new year, and all I could think was Vietnamese sounds so cool! Must study now! Hahaha! Is the universe taunting me? Is it telling me that I should move ahead with Vietnamese? Nah, it's just a weird coincidence! I dutifully went home and practiced pronouncing Japanese with Barron's Mastering Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6623 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 4 of 16 02 January 2012 at 5:17pm | IP Logged |
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Learning the kana was pretty easy for me. I just wrote them out a few times and after that, started using them. Writing the exercises from my textbook probably helped a lot. For kanji, I used the Heisig book, Remembering the Kanji, and the Reviewing the Kanji website. It gives great tips for stories (the Heisig method is based on making up stories to remember all the elements in the kanji) and has a simple SRS so you don't have to make your own cards or anything.
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| sundance Newbie United States Joined 4717 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 16 03 January 2012 at 4:48pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the resources, Brun Ugle. I will check out RtK. It's also encouraging to hear that kana is not as scary to remember as it sometimes looks! I like the idea of writing everything out multiple times.
Maybe because of my dyslexia, listening comprehension has usually been my strongest skill in learning a language, so I have been concentrating on listening to and repeating the sounds of Japanese. The lesson on pronunciation in Barron's Mastering Japanese has been good for that --- especially if I don't spend too much time looking at the romaji! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ErwinHiggs Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4716 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 16 05 January 2012 at 6:00am | IP Logged |
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Best of luck for your objective to pass the N5 level! Luckily, the test is only in
December, so you have a full year ahead of you to prepare and hopefully succeed. Like Brun said, Remembering the Kanji 1, by James Heisig, is a wonderful tool to learn the whooping 2000-something jouyou kanji. Honnestly, the website of Reviewing the Kanji could be enough, as the different stories often have a more significant impact (There is also the fact that the stories are less of ''academic'' style, and don't need to be politically correct) and because Heisig's provide only 400 or so. However, Heisig's stories can help get a second hook to the keyword. But beyond that, and the most important of all, it teaches clearly the stroke order and lists the kanji in a way that it is easy to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sundance Newbie United States Joined 4717 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 16 08 January 2012 at 4:16pm | IP Logged |
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The first week of the new year has ended and what is my result for Japanese language study? Well, I am disappointed in my performance.
I studied at least 20 minutes of Japanese Monday through Thursday, and then nothing on Friday and Saturday. In some ways I was happy that I got at least 20 minutes in during the weekdays. I went back to my stressful job this week, and my studying occurred after I got home from work. Usually I feel so burned out after work (and the commute) that I flop down in front of the TV. For most of the days this past week, though, Japanese was a welcome peaceful retreat and studying it made me feel like my true self again. Why didn't I do anything on Friday and Saturday? Friday was weird and I ended up with a lot of other commitments, and Saturday I was running household errands. I wish on Saturday that I had studied early in the morning. What was my actual result? I completed a total review of lesson 7 of LLCJ and I worked through the first 32 pages of Barron's Mastering Japanese (pronunciation section). Wow, writing it out I feel like I did accomplish something, but strangely I don't feel like I progressed in my knowledge. My analysis: I need to find a way to improve my concentration so I can study for more than 20 minutes after work. I also would like to find a way to use my lunch break (30 minutes) to study, if I can find somewhere quiet! Sorry for the negative beginning to the post… I'm going to leave it as is because that is how I felt, but now I see that I did establish a study pattern that can be built upon and I see a way to do it. Erwin, I have added RtK to my virtual shopping cart. I have to wait until some holiday bills are paid off, but your and Brun’s assessment of it has convinced me to give it a go and not be intimidated by kanji! On another note… Thank you to whoever put tags on my log. I didn’t know how to do it and it looks better now! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5051 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 8 of 16 11 January 2012 at 9:45pm | IP Logged |
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You might want to consider learning early in the morning before work. This way the time spent watching TV would be reduced and sleeping time would be shifted to a little bit earlier time, making sure you have time in the morning indeed. Am I right?
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