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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6328 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes  Speaks: Latin* | Message 9 of 21 06 September 2007 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
Why not use a Spaced Repetition Software such as Supermemo or iFlash or Anki (that is actually designed to work with Japanese) to take care of your categories and repetitions? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6710 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 10 of 21 06 September 2007 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, this is pretty crucial in Japanese. :) I can see why it's tricky for English speakers, because English only has a very few lexical transitive-intransitive pairs: sit/set, rise/raise, lie/lay. Contrasting examples help: とどく (a package) arrives とどける someone delivers (a package) （ドアが）あく a door opens （ドアを）あける someone opens a door The first examples are intransitive. We don't say who's delivering the package or opening the door. The second examples also provide an agent. It confuses the heck out of Japanese learning English too, but that's another story. :) Edited by Captain Haddock on 06 September 2007 at 8:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Georgi87 Triglot Groupie Israel Joined 6243 days ago 43 posts - 44 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: Japanese | Message 11 of 21 07 September 2007 at 3:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Furyou Gaijin: I'm going to check out iFlash today, to see if it's worth the 15$, but so far, I've been using Excel. I can basically get it to function as a worksheet which displays a word in one language, and, if I type its translation correctly in the other language, says YES/TRUE. It's quite easy to manage large amounts of words this way, but like I said, I will check out iFlash, since once I get to 500 words, I will probably stick to whatever software I've loaded all my data into.
Captain Haddock: I think I see what you mean, and Furyou Gaijin's example was also helpful, since Russian has a much clearer distinction between the two concepts. But, I wonder if the Japanese find it hard to learn English because they're just not taught it well enough?:) I've heard some bad things about language education in Japan, but then again, some of the exchange students we had from Waseda University had good English and seemed to be able to think in it. IMHO, English isn't hard to learn, it just requires considerable practice; I guess that might be a factor. Edited by Georgi87 on 07 September 2007 at 4:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Georgi87 Triglot Groupie Israel Joined 6243 days ago 43 posts - 44 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: Japanese | Message 12 of 21 07 September 2007 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Found a book I'd forgotten I had, "Japanese Particles". I've been wondering why verbs like 上る using を、and verbs like 会う use に and Japanese for Busy People is very weak when it comes to anything Verb-related. Hopefully, I'll be an enlightened man next time I log on :)
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| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6328 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 13 of 21 07 September 2007 at 7:50am | IP Logged | ||
Because a Japanese mind sees verbs of motion as performing an action on a direct object, the one upon which the subject walks. Hence you WALK THE SIDEWALK [を], CROSS THE BRIDGE [を], and CLIMB [noboru] THE MOUNTAIN [を] . I don't advocate extensive use of translations but it sometimes helps to find an equivalent in a well-known language that follows the same object-subject logic. As for [au], it can also be used with [to] in some cases which intuitively makes more sense. With regards to [ni] and to illustrate my above point for finding equivalents, it would help to turn to Russian again (as English is not quite as particular about the use of cases): if we take [ni] to be something like a Dative case indicator, we just have to find a rough equivalent to express the meaning of [somebody + ni +au], using the Dative case. For example, "попадаться ЕМУ на пути". It's a monstrous approximation but I have found this technique to be very instrumental for getting into the minds of the Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6328 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 14 of 21 07 September 2007 at 8:03am | IP Logged | ||
I swear by iFlash as I love all its extensive yet very simple features and I would say that it is worth $15. Even if there were no way to get around it in 5 minutes. (I know moderators will hate me for this last sentence... :-) ) And some other stuff (such as Anki, I believe) is freeware. Doing this in Excel is like cracking nuts with a laptop. And the most important feature of the SRS software is that your spaced repetitions are automatically scheduled for you. iFlash also allows you to add pictures and sounds. (Which I found very instrumental when learning Chinese characters for various types of ancient pottery... :-) ) And you can easily import / export your cards from and into Excel. Something else, to complement the above post: if you want to get a feeling for the Japanese grammar and as to WHY things work in a certain way and what goes on in the Japanese mind, there is no way around the two excellent books: Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar and Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar. And throw away your Japanese for Busy People, I am yet to see a busy person who has mastered the language with this book... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Georgi87 Triglot Groupie Israel Joined 6243 days ago 43 posts - 44 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: Japanese | Message 15 of 21 07 September 2007 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I tried iFlash earlier today, and it's the picture function that sealed the deal for me :) Otherwise, I found Excel to be perfectly suitable, but maybe that's because I've had to use it for far more complex tasks in the past. Thanks for drawing another comparison to Russian; since I'm using English learning materials, I guess I've never really considered comparing Japanese to Russian!
As for Japanese textbooks, my personal favorites are be Genki or Japanese for Everyone, (I've been wanting to study Japanese for over a year, so I have a whole stockpile of books) but what's really crucial to me is to get into Japanese 3 class in 3 weeks, so I have to first know everything that was taught in Japanese 1 and 2; unfortunately, our University uses the Japanese for Busy People series. Now, I do think that the textbooks are quite good, because they teach you loads of sentence patterns, and fast. However, I would never advise anyone to study Japanese exclusively using these books and workbooks, because a lot of questions remain unanswered. For example, te and nai verbs are introduced in book 1, but they only tell you in book 2 that you can derive the -te, -masu and dictionary forms from the -nai form! So the average student is just expected to memorise over 50 verbs in their various forms, just as they're expected to memorise verb-component combinations, and transitive-intransitive verbs. Obviously, I think that such memorisation is a complete waste of time, and try to find shortcuts wherever possible; to that end, your advise has been very helpful. I'm sure you'll agree that it's better to use Russian as a prop than memorise what doesn't need to be memorised. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6710 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 16 of 21 07 September 2007 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Even the transitive-intransitive pairs that most verbs have are very systematic, and there's usually no need to memorize which is which once you get a feel for the language.
Once Japanese verbs become familiar, they will seem very logical, and you'll hardly feel like you're memorizing stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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