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TAC 2008 - Romanian, Japanese, L-R, etc. | ||
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| Thuan Triglot Senior Member GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6922 days ago 133 posts - 156 votes  Speaks: Vietnamese, German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 13 06 February 2008 at 11:30am | IP Logged |
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TAC Day 1 - August 1st
Just decided to join the Total Annihilation Challenge this year. I've been a member here for a few years now and always admired polyglots like Ardaschir, who spends most of his days studying languages. I guess you've all read about his time in Korea where he would wake up at 2am to study languages before work. But so far, I've only studied Japanese. I've studied Japanese with intensively for the past two weeks (up to eight hours) and made a lot of progress. Three days ago I felt burnt out. A friend of mine recommended me to take a break. Instead I just took up French. I watched the "French in Action" series and began to L-R with Zola's "The Dream". This is what I had needed. I took a break from Japanese and felt my energy level rising. I haven't missed a day to study Japanese since April and I realized that it has become much easier for me to integrate new languages into my schedule than before. I attempted Chinese, Swedish, and other languages before, but they always interfered with my Japanese studies and everything just went down (lost all motivation to study anything). So I spontaneously decided to join the Total Annihilation Challenge kickstart my Polyglot career. This is also a good opportunity to try out L-R I haven't started a new thread, but decided to keep my Japanese thread. The first TAC entry is the third entry on the second page. Okay, here are my language goals for 2008: -Japanese: I want to read novels by the end of the year without the help of a dictionary. To be more specific, two books that I own: Kino's Travels and Norwegian Wood (by Murakami Haruki). This first one is a light novel, so it should be easier. The more challenging one should be the Murakami novel. I've been following the 10.000 sentences method so far, though I add a lot of single vocabulary items into Anki. The reason for that: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=9045&PN=1&TPN=2 As of today, the 1491 cards in my deck contain 1166 unique kanji. 31 of these are non-jouyou kanji. This doesn't mean that I know all the readings for these kanji, just that they are in my deck in some form. My Anki goal for Japanese would be to have every single jouyou-kanji as a mature card in Anki before end of the year. Since reading sheetz' thread I've always wanted to try L-R with Japanese. The original L-R thread mentioned 20-40 hours of new material. My selection so far: Kokoro (9 hours) and Harry Potter 1 (??? hours). I have a parallel text for the beginning of Kokoro. I should spend some time trying to understand the proper way to create parallel texts. -French: I had French for several years in school, but never really got it. Back then I thought that I just lack the talent for languages. Time to change that. My goal for French is mainly passive (listening and reading). My tools: French in Action and L-R. Watching FIA twice in a row is supposed to enable you to live in France. I'll see. So far I've done the first six lessons. I'm blindly shadowing along wherever possible. Who knows, if this would give me some speaking skills as a byproduct, I won't complain. I've also downloaded the parallel text of Zola's "The Dream" and audio. -Mandarin: Began my Mandarin studies two years ago. And stopped. I'm not clear about my Mandarin goals so far, just that I want to make it through Assimil. I'm on lesson 11. Other languages to study (the languages I'll definitly study): Cantonese, Korean, Swedish. The Maybe-list: Cambodian, Romanian, Polish, Russian. If anybody has audiobooks for either Korean or Romanian, please tell me. That would leave no doubt about my next language to study. Okay that's it for now. The original first entry of the "Japanese Literacy thread": 06 February 2008 at 6:30pm Goals: Japanese Literacy Definition: The ability to read a Japanese novel (by Natsume Soseki or Yoshimoto Banana) or newspaper without the help of a dictionary. I just made it through Heisig's REMEMBERING THE KANJI Vol.1 (if anybody's registered on the Reviewing the Kanji forums, my username on that forum is Watashimo). I've also finished both Assimil Japanese books last year (extensive shadowing). The next logical step would be to crack Japanese literature. Two methods that I've read about and like are the L-R method and the AJATT method. I will probably use both methods. I've learnt most of my Japanese through shadowing, so the L-R method does sound like a great way to read Japanese literature. I've done some Shawdowing with "Breaking into Japanese literature", but nothing extensive the way atamagii has suggested. I've already L-R "The little prince", which I kind of enjoyed. But the text was rather easy, so it's time to step up and try something more challenging. I'm working on a parallel version of Kokoro, but it just takes a lot of time. Need to practise more. Sheetz has made a parallel version of 銀河鉄道の夜 (Night on the galaxy railroad?), that I will listen-read to. I will also listen-read to the Akutagawa Ryunosuke stories in "Breaking into Japanese literature" (I've only read Rashomon so far). But the ultimate goal is to read a complete novel in Japanese, so I would like to find more novels in a parallel text version. If anybody else is trying to create a parallel text for a Japanese novel, maybe we could share the work. I've never really bothered with grammar books (skipped most of the grammar chapters in Assimil), but "Making sense of Japanese" is a book that I do like. Downside: No Kanjis. Nevertheless, this is going to be the first grammar book that I will really use to study. Another book that I have is "Reading real Japanese". A collection of Japanese essays (by writers like Yoshimoto Banana and Murakami Haruki) with vocabulary lists and explanations. I will use these two books to mine sentences for my SRS (Supermemo). All the people that are further ahead on the road may lend me a helping hand with tips on how to learn more efficiently, or where to get which books that I might need. Edited by Thuan on 18 August 2008 at 5:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Thuan Triglot Senior Member GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6922 days ago 133 posts - 156 votes Speaks: Vietnamese, German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 2 of 13 06 February 2008 at 2:02pm | IP Logged |
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I just spent 30 minutes copying part of the first essay from "Reading real Japanese" by hand. I thought that this could be a good practise to writing in Japanese. Felt great and will probably keep this up for at least a month to see where it leads. I did enjoy it and that's all I need to continue my Japanese studies.
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| rob Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6157 days ago 287 posts - 288 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 3 of 13 06 February 2008 at 2:25pm | IP Logged |
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I'd just like to make a quick point on your definition - reading someone like Natsume Soseki is a little different from reading a modern newspaper. My own definition of a good level of literacy in Japanese involves being at level 2 of the Kanji Kentei (not necessarily actually passing it, but having a good knowledge of these characters). These include the Joyo and Jinmeiyo kanji. Reading Natsume Soseki involves knowing more characters than this, unless reading a modernised version, as it will include some archaic language and will definitely include some kanji which don't exist any more, or those outside the Joyo and Jinmeiyo lists.
Unless of course it is your intention to know some 6000 characters, which is a perfectly admirable goal, but one which many native Japanese fail to achieve. I think the 2229 is a more than good enough base to consider yourself as literate as a university student. Nevertheless, reading novels both contemporary and classic is a great way to increase your knowledge of kanji and vocabulary, but personally I'm always careful of what I read in classic literature when it comes to saying it out loud. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Thuan Triglot Senior Member GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6922 days ago 133 posts - 156 votes Speaks: Vietnamese, German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 4 of 13 06 February 2008 at 4:36pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, I know that reading Natsume Soseki is a little different from reading a modern newspaper. But I have set myself no time limit for my Japanese studies, so I'm sure that I will reach that goal someday. The few Japanese classics that I've read in translated versions were impressive enough for me to set that goal. That's why I will continue my kanji studies with Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji Vol.3"
I have two novels by Yoshimoto Banana and her Japanese is rather easy to understand. I still lack the vocabulary, but I can still work myself through her writings without a dictionary and still get what's going on (tried that on the first 20 pages of NP, the description of characters and places are still too difficult for me but the other parts were rather easy to understood). Akutagawa Ryunosuke or Natsume Soseki? No chance. As you've said, there are a lot of uncommon kanjis and the language is rather archaic. Nevertheless, very fascinating. I'm going to listen-read the classics extensively. I would love to listen-read modern novels, but I haven't found any audiobooks yet. News are another matter, the problem is definitely vocabulary. I'm currently watching the news from www.fnn-news.com on a daily basis. Now that I've finished RTK1, I will have more time to read the news on that website, look up unknown words (which is a lot of work) and put them into supermemo. Actually, I have no clear plan for now. Learning Kanjis with Heisig was the easy part, now I have to plan my future path on my own. A lot more work, but surely a rewarding journey. I've been learning Japanese for over three years. Or four years. I don't know, I studied Japanese on my own on and off, slacked off quite often (a few months without doing any Japanese was not unusual), but still I never gave up. I've come a long way. Maybe slower than other people (a friend of mine has already reached the newspaper level), but still, I kept my studies up till today. I've started a lot of things in my life that I gave up later on (playing the guitar, Martial Arts, Chinese, among other things), with Japanese I've finally reached a milestone. At least, that's what I've felt throughout the day today. Kind of a personal triumph. There's still a long way to go, but still... Don't know what else write. Will spend more time tomorrow to do more planning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6453 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 5 of 13 07 February 2008 at 8:00am | IP Logged |
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I think if you get around to reading a Japanese novel it would help a lot. When I was studying Japanese, I gave my Japanese friend, a sentence from a Soseki novel that I found confusing, and she told me it was a very difficult sentence even for her and she needed to look up some kanji she didn't know. I think their are a lot of benifit to learning to read something like Soseki though, as long as you're able to tell which kanji are archaic and no longer used anymore.
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| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6542 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 6 of 13 07 February 2008 at 11:57pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Thuan,
I'm also reading Read Real Japanese. Or rather, I've been reading it off and on for almost a year. I've read it through many times, but am finally getting around to putting all the vocab into supermemo. I'm on the 7th story now (Yoshimoto Banana - I love that name!). For me, the easiest one to understand was the 3rd (Tawara Machi), but Yoshimoto-san wasn't much harder. I think if you want to get good at kanji, your should practice reading newspapers. Although it's mostly joyo, they kanjify a lot more words; newspapers are more kanji-intense. If you want to get really good at grammar, read novels. Long, meandering sentences. Yes, there are more rare kanji, but those are easily learned using the Heisig story method. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Thuan Triglot Senior Member GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6922 days ago 133 posts - 156 votes Speaks: Vietnamese, German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 7 of 13 27 February 2008 at 8:37am | IP Logged |
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New entry:
Having made it through RTK, it just felt natural to dive into RTK3. At the same time I began to implement the 10.000 sentence method with Anki. This is the second time that I'm using the sentence method. The first time I tried that method was about a year ago, and I got that idea from antimoon. I had around 250 sentences before I quit. I put sentences from Hiragana Times and random sentences from other sources into my SRS (Supermemo). The problem was that I had yet to finish RTK, so most of the sentences had unknown kanji. I just got frustrated and quit. So far I have 457 facts in Anki, which are mostly sentences. I guess that around 20-30 of these are names or movie titles. Where did I get my sentences from? The first few sentences were from the first essay from "Read Real Japanese". I usually added additional example sentences for most unknown words. This helps me understand them better. And it's more fun to do the reviews. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing one unknown word after another. I love "Read Real Japanese". So far I've read three and a half essays. Yoko Mori's, Tawara Machi's and the essay on the Tiannamen incident. Have yet to finish Banana Yoshimoto's essay. The essay's contain a lot of grammar explanations, which is helpful for me. I made it through Assimil with a minimum of grammar instructions. I plan to put all the vocabulary from these essays into Anki. Other sources for my sentences are two Japanese magazines that I own and internet articles in English. The 457 facts in Anki contain 718 unique kanjis (698 jouyou kanjis). Not bad, I'm able to skim through newspaer magazines now. And "read" an interview with Asano Tadanobu. When I've reached 1000 facts/sentences, I plan to write a short text in Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Thomas Newbie Japan rhinospike.com Joined 6251 days ago 38 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Swedish | Message 8 of 13 10 March 2008 at 8:26am | IP Logged |
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Wow, congrats on making it all the way through Heisig! I'm not using that book myself, just learning new kanjis as I learn new words. I'm also working through a book, but nothing as ambitious as Natsume Soseki! I'm reading the Japanese translation of a English-language children's book called "Lion Boy". Even though it's for 9-12 year olds, I still have to look up many many words per page.
I look forward to reading about your progress! Good luck on your quest for literacy! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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