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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4972 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 73 of 1702 19 July 2011 at 8:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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Quick update. I'm still plugging along. I have broken out the college textbook I bought Elementary Japanese Volume 1 again. I'm going to stick with this. I think it's my best bet for learning. I definitely need the structure and this course is very aggressive about using japanese script. I respect that and at the same time it made it scary for me. And it doesn't use spaces between words which is terribly annoying. What I'm doing is reading through all the text and just putting vertical lines between the words. Right now it's all hiragana and katakana but I think next chapter they introduce Kanji. The book uses a ton of katakana. All the characters have English names and live in America so that's a lot of katakana right there. Plus they feel a need to teach me all the English loanwords so we're looking at loads of katakana text. Benefit is that it's sticking better than it did previously.
I am watching a lot of anime still. I love that stuff. I really wish I had discovered it sooner (and learned this language sooner!). Oh well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5770 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 74 of 1702 19 July 2011 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
As far as I am aware, the only requirements are that you keep a log, follow your team mates and chip in with support when you can! It helps if you put TAC Team あ in the title to your log so we can find you, I think this may be why I overlooked your log in the first place. I'm not sure which textbook you are using but when I started out I used Genki. It has its flaws but the one very strong point (in my opinion) is that for the first two chapters it uses both Japanese and romanised script for everything, which gives you just enough time to get used to the script before it takes the romaji away and lets you get on with it. Although I was able to cram hiragana in a couple of weeks it took me a good few months to really get used to it. I remember trying to read some manga a couple of months in and I would feel mentally tired very, very quickly, I think because of the effort it takes your brain to just mentally decode everything until you get used to it. But if you stick at it, it will definitely get easier. Three years in and I'm not too bothered about the script (although I have a fair few kanji left to learn, it's just another dimension to my vocab studies rather than a separate challenge), it's the grammar that's giving me grief now! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4972 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 75 of 1702 26 July 2011 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Still looking for new resources to help me learn. I guess I'm not completely happy with my textbook if I'm still looking. Or maybe I'll just be keeping an eye out until I finally make it to intermediate level and don't feel i need this stuff. Anyway I ran across a couple things online: TextFugu. It's rather expensive and I was curious but I think unfortunately they don't get very much past the early basics. Of course I can't see -all- the lessons without paying for it but you get a pretty good taste and idea by looking at the first couple lessons for each chapter or "season." It's a work in progress and they're coming out with new lessons so it's getting better but I am a little surprised that for the price they already charge you don't get deeper into the language.
For vocabulary I'm still using the vocab lists I copied from japanesepod. I have quite a few words in my head in terms of how they sound but am at a complete loss regarding how to read them with kanji. I'm currently trying to catch that up. My vocab lists had the kanji so it's pretty easy to tweak my flashcard app to show the kanji, then I give my self a pass if I know both the japanese and the English meaning by looking at the kanji. Going through vocabulary I'm already familiar with is pretty easy. But when the deck tosses in new words they really take a bit of time to sink in - recalling the Japanese based on the meaning is harder than the app reading the Japanese to me and me remembering the English. I am not sure if I want to leapfrog that step where I was learning to recognize the Japanese by the sound 1st. I'm going to try skipping it and see how it goes. The amount of anime to watch online is endless =). So I get a lot of anime "practice" when I'm lazy. This is why I started learning and I think it's also going to keep me from ever getting too distracted and quitting. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4972 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 76 of 1702 26 July 2011 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Top 10 reasons a Japanese girlfriend is a bad idea...
http://www.tofugu.com/2010/06/18/top-10-reasons-a-japanese-g irlfriend-wont-help-your-japanese/ Kind of funny. I think you could argue that having any kind of a social life whatsoever detracts from studying Japanese. I'd definitely jump at the opportunity for a Japanese girlfriend though heh. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4972 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 77 of 1702 29 July 2011 at 7:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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I signed up for an online Japanese College course. I'm very curious about it. It doesn't really get going until the Fall when the semester starts but technically I can start now if I want. However, they have actual tutors available in the Fall which will be cool. Looking over the course syllabus they expect you to learn to draw the japanese phonetic alphabets and 30 kanji in this course. I haven't even attempted to do that at all as of yet. I suppose learning to draw hiragana/katakana is potentially useful if I ever go to Japan. Kanji on the other hand I think is a waste of my time. I know I'll never get good at the complex kanji and really - when will I ever possibly use it? I never write stuff down on paper in English these days. Everything is done on the computer anyway. Japanese being the most difficult language in the world - I'm even less motivated to write stuff down in it heh.
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| Lasciel Groupie United States Joined 5161 days ago 55 posts - 81 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 78 of 1702 29 July 2011 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
You'd be surprised-a lot of those kanji that seem very complex are really just a bunch of simple kanji smooshed together. If you know the basic ones a lot of the complex ones are a snap. Wish my college offered online language courses -_- 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5770 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 79 of 1702 29 July 2011 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would definitely recommend you learn to draw at least a couple of hundred kanji and get the basic principles of stroke order and direction under your belt. Along with some basic knowledge of how complex characters are made up of other less complex components. It will help you in two ways, firstly as a memory aid and secondly it means you can use IME pad and suchlike to draw in characters when you can't remember/don't know how to pronounce them. Very useful.
Japanese can't be the most difficult language in the world. It has plenty of quick wins for the beginner, such as the regular and logical grammar, the lack of conjugations, the lack of gender, the phonetic writing system (well, if you ignore kanji), the simple phonology... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4972 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 80 of 1702 30 July 2011 at 5:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well I guess it's not the -the- most difficult language in the world for English speakers. But I believe it's very very high up there on the list. This would be due to the writing system. The rest of the language is much more forgiving but as an adult learner, reading is the best way for me to learn unfortunately and it's quite difficult.
For the time being, I think I'm going to learn to write Japanese by hand only so far as this course forces me to do it (and any future courses I take). So it could be good that I'm taking these courses from a different point of view heh. But I truly think writing by hand is more or less obsolete and even more so for someone like me who doesn't live in Japan.
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