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An attempt at Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6081 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 56 05 July 2009 at 11:03pm | IP Logged |
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PROGRESS:
Michel Thomas: Completed disc 3 of basic Rosetta Stone: Core Lesson 2, Unit 4, level 1 Pimsleur: Completed lesson 16 Remembering the Kana: Done. Pokemon caught in Japanese Pokemon: One! Assimil Japanese: Lesson 17 GOALS: No. I decided not to have goals. I am learning Japanese not because I have to, but because I want to. Original post follows: Japanese is said to be a very difficult language to learn, so I've put it on hold and tried other languages first, saving Japanese for later. What I realised is, a key point for me is motivation. I didn't have motivation enough for those other languages. I do have a lot of motivation for Japanese though, so I've decided to be a bit silly (perhaps) and go for Japanese right away. I recently (read: days ago) started learning Japanese as a friend of mine finally persuaded me into downloading my first anime series: Death Note. I always knew this, but watching the series reinforced the feeling: I LOVE the Japanese language. It's so cute, fun, different and entertaining to listen to. I acquired the MT Japanese courses, and I've just finished disc 2 on the foundation course. So far so good. ^^ It's getting heavier, but I keep up and I get the sentence right in nearly all cases. Mostly it'll come instantly, often instinctively. I also gave Pimsleur a try right now after I finished disc 2 of MT, but I didn't like it at all. Perhaps I'll try it after I've finished the MT courses, but right now it's just boring, seemingly slow-paced but in a way that I still find myself forgetting the words, and the introductory words they've chosen I also find often difficult to pronounce. Finished one lesson, may continue later. I created this log as a way of kicking myself in the arse and forcing myself to continue so as to keep the motivation up. I'll have a lot of time the next weeks as my family went on holidays to Croatia, but I'll also have quite a lot of time (just not the privacy) to study all the way to mid-sept when I move to England to study something completey different. I'll keep up the studying there as well obviously. Any comments, feedback, suggestions, encouragements and insults/flames are very appreciated. :) - Henrik Edited by mrhenrik on 14 August 2009 at 7:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6081 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 56 06 July 2009 at 3:12am | IP Logged |
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Today I've watched a few episodes of the Death Note anime, as well as continued on disc 3 of the Michel Thomas method Japanese Foundation. It's going quite well, but I am a bit confused, particularily with who/what/which. I'll just keep on going, I reckon I'll figure it out later. Everything else is going quite well. I also found the "want to do"-suffix quite complicated, but I'll get it with time.
I've been picking up a bit of vocabulary from Death Note also, but I'm not really familiar with Japanese spelling yet. The words are "ksa/kusa" - shit or something, and "so desu ne/sodesne" - that's right. The last one is how they subtitle it at least. I'm a bit confused when deciphering that one, seeing as "desne" seemingly translates to "it is not", perhaps "so" means "wrong" or something. I'll figure that out later. After reading through the AllJapaneseAllTheTime.com blog I realised I should get started on the written language quite fast. I tried the Guide to Japanese course at guidetojapanese.org, and began on the Hirigana, but then decided to stop making excuses for myself and realised I need to learn Kanji sooner or later. I ordered the seemingly highly praised book Remembering the Kanji, along with the Remembering the Kana book for the rest. They'll be here in a couple of weeks, and I can't wait to start studying those. ^^ Meanwhile I'll finish Michel Thomas's courses, and also probably give Rosetta Stone a try. Edited by mrhenrik on 06 July 2009 at 3:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6720 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 3 of 56 06 July 2009 at 5:05am | IP Logged |
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Hi mrehenrik! Good luck with the studies! I started on a difficult language too (Hungarian), but I haven't regretted it for a second!
By the way, I LOVE AllJapaneseAllTheTime.com and I have gotten a lot of ideas and motivation from there to help me with my studies. I'm glad that you have already checked it out!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6081 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 56 07 July 2009 at 12:32am | IP Logged |
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Thanks! ^^
I have a friend who's born in Norway, but with both parents from Hungary. He speaks fluent Hungarian. It's really fun to listen to, the pronounciation is almost exactly the same as Norwegian but he's just saying gibberish instead of real words (from a Norwegian point of view). Perhaps I'll visit that language later, it's a very interesting one! Onto my little log - I'm almost done with MT's foundation course. It is worrying me though, that there is a lot of focus on translating from English into Japanese. I am getting more and more into the AJATT way of learning Japanese, so needless to say I was intrigued when I discovered Rosetta Stone was exactly in this spirit! I just completed Lesson 1 of Rosetta Stone's Japanese level 1, with a 81% score. My knowledge from the MT courses helped a lot, and I can also see that I'm learning from this course already. I think I will finish the Foundation part of MT Japanese and continue with Rosetta Stone for now. I ordered the Remembering the Kanji/Kana books - on their way - and I hear that they are based on building assosiations to the letters. I'm a bit worried I'll get different assosiations than the ones presented in the book before I get it, so I try to stay away from written Japanese in Kanji so far. Rosetta Stone I use in Kana. I also downloaded a GBA Emulator. For those not so familiar with geeky computer stuff as me, it is a computer program which allows me to download Game Boy Advance games to my 10" laptop, which I bring with me everyone, and play them directly on the laptop. When I was a (younger) kid I played a lot of Pokemon on my Game Boy, so I downloaded the Japanese (original) version of a Pokemon game, ready for when I start learning the Kanji. ^^ Now I'll get to Rosetta Stone lesson 2, I really enjoyed lesson 1! Edit: this is so much fun! I'm getting really good at this. Most of it was not covered in MT, so I'm showing good progress here I reckon. Last lesson I got 99% on, this lesson was on grammar and I got a 95% score - 2 incorrect out of 41. :-D Edited by mrhenrik on 07 July 2009 at 12:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rshad Newbie Canada Joined 6047 days ago 2 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 56 07 July 2009 at 2:19am | IP Logged |
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Just so you know, no games in the Pokemon series use kanji. GBA games don't use as much kanji as you may see in other places due to the low resolution. So don't expect too many kanji in other games either. Good luck with your studies!
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| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6081 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 56 07 July 2009 at 2:36am | IP Logged |
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Oh, I see! I thought they looked un-kanji-ish, but I didn't think about it seeing as I've probably seen 100 or so kanji, and there's several thousand. Thanks a lot for the heads up! :)
Well then, I'll practice a lot of the other two alphabets (always forget what they're called, good start eh?) in Rosetta Stone for a while and then try my skills on the Pokemon Game. Hopefully I'll recognise some words! Edited by mrhenrik on 07 July 2009 at 2:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6081 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 56 07 July 2009 at 5:09am | IP Logged |
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Half-way through the introductory course in Rosetta Stone now, I'm coming to a halt and it's quite late (work tomorrow - and late anyhow), so I'm calling it the night now. I'm at part 4 I believe. It's about numbers, and their position is confusing me. I'll sleep on it and probably do it better tomorrow. I also finished nearly all the parts I didn't get perfect before, so I have learned a lot at least.
I like Rosetta Stone. Not only because I enjoy their method, but I really like the way it looks also. The design is user-friendly and understandable - there's never any explanation needed, and being a photography lover and future photography student I'm thrilled by the very high quality photographies they got there as well. ^^ So far so good! ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LtM Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5862 days ago 130 posts - 223 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 8 of 56 07 July 2009 at 6:07am | IP Logged |
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You're off to a good start, mrhenrik. You have some good materials to work with, and your enthusiasm is great! It will help you to make a lot of progress.
Enjoy your studies. I wish you much success. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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