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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜

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kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4943 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 161 of 1702
05 December 2011 at 12:33pm | IP Logged 
It's going to have to be a detour. I'm still doing Japanese almost daily though. If I were to stop and read a book in English would that be different than if I did the same thing in German?

I think I'm a little burned out on Japanese at the moment. Not so much that I'm stopping (I'm about to go do some flash cards before work) but studying Japanese isn't relaxing. It's hard because I have so much to learn while with German/Spanish I have enough under my belt to sit down and enjoy myself if I'm too tired to really study.

For example yesterday I had to work on 3 hours sleep (because I'm a slacker about going to bed on time). After work just the thought of focusing on Japanese made me want to go straight to bed but doing German was doable.


Sandman wrote:
German is not a detour from Japanese.

German is the end of Japanese.

IF you want to learn Japanese, drop German. If not, then continue.

1 person has voted this message useful



Luai_lashire
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
luai-lashire.deviant
Joined 5587 days ago

384 posts - 560 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto
Studies: Japanese, French

 
 Message 162 of 1702
05 December 2011 at 3:42pm | IP Logged 
I think it's a good thing, Kraemder. Taking a break from Japanese to do the French 6WC was really inspiring and
enthusiasm-restoring for me. It really opened my eyes to how little I'd been doing for Japanese and how frustrated
and bored I had been with it. It gave me an opportunity to come back to it with fresh eyes and new anticipation.
And I don't think you're in danger of quitting- those of us who love the language will always find ourselves sucked
back into it. ;)
1 person has voted this message useful



kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4943 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 163 of 1702
05 December 2011 at 6:53pm | IP Logged 
Yeah, I'm not worried about either. I think about Japanese every day. With Spanish I have stopped studying
for long periods of time but because I have already put enough time into it, it's in long term memory and it's
not going to disappear. Even French which I haven't studied in years I can still read or listen at about the
same level. And I'm not stopping my Japanese altogether right now like I have for other languages either.

Now i did start on Russian way back at a time when I had a lot of Russian coworkers. I did it for a few weeks
maybe. It's all gone. But I've studied too much Japanese for it to just go away if I get distracted.

I've done a couple Spanish and German tutor sessions on Rosetta stone. Am I the only one that doesn't
remember different kinds of foods well? I get the basics like bread, milk, eggs, chocolate, sandwich. The
lesson includes say a list of 8 fruit and or vegetables. I'm at a total loss except for a handful of words.
Cucumber, lettuce, onions, some black things I don't even know in English and tomatoes. I knew the
tomatoes. The rest I hadn't a clue but I think I would recognize onion if it were said to me.

Sometimes a particular lesson focuses on specific vocabulary so even someone more advanced wont know it
unless they sit down and study but I really think language learners as a whole are much more interested in
eating than I am. It's a little embarrassing because often with these lessons it's all they talk about. I eat
burritos. I think that's the same in every language.

Oh and I remember the German for lettuce now. It's salat if I remember right. Which is easy and hard at the
same time. False cognates can be a pain. Do you want salad on your burger? Even if you misunderstand
you still can answer the question correctly probably... Unless you ask for it in a bowl maybe you'll sound
funny.
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kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4943 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 164 of 1702
11 December 2011 at 6:19am | IP Logged 
Well this week turned out to be good for Japanese. A little German and Spanish reading before bed but the
whole weekend was Japanese. I did a Rosetta stone session. It went ok. I did a cram session before it on
the material and I knew enough not to embarrass myself. The next chapter is a bit harder though so I'm
taking it seriously. I'm doing the lessons and making flashcards as I go. The vocab is kanji and kana but I'm
also memorizing sentences which I'm using romaji for since I can't cut and paste them. Romaji is great since
it has spaces which I love.

Memorizing the sentences is good. It's getting me to speak Japanese and think in Japanese. I've also
picked Heisig's kanji book backup. I'm having to read it all over again but I'm almost caught up I think. I
guess I've learned 130 or so kanji the Heisig's way. There's more from what I already knew but I can easily
tell that this method is the only way I'll ever really learn this. The other method I guess is to just write them
over and over. I could do that too but thus makes more sense.

I had actually gotten bored of anime but I'm back into it again. I find the fantasy ones are harder to
understand but the romance ones are easier. I like both.
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kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4943 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 165 of 1702
12 December 2011 at 6:51am | IP Logged 
Alright. New plan. I am going to focus all of my new learning on Kanji using Heisig for the next month. Some minimal vocab review of stuff I already know but nothing new. Kanji is totally the focus for the next month. I might do a little German/Spanish reading on the side but I am not going to study them. I really want to put a big dent in Kanji. It's been hanging over me since I started this language and I want to see what I can do to get over that.

I'm working with a PDF of the book I got online and flashcards made by someone and available for free on flashcardexchange. I just downloaded and went through the 1st 100 kanji tonight. I'll be up a little longer and will probably add maybe 20ish more. It's pretty easy adding new kanji. Of course reviewing it - we'll see how it goes. I haven't truly made kanji my focus before it's just been something I picked up once in a while. I always wondered if that was a mistake if I had sat down and learned how to write and the meaning behind each kanji if that would make everything easier. Well I am going to find out.
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kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4943 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 166 of 1702
12 December 2011 at 11:46pm | IP Logged 
I bought a huge poster of all the kanji I'll probably ever want to learn from White Rabbit Press. I'm pretty excited about it. Getting a frame was expensive though. I am sure there's a cheaper way to hang a poster and still protect it but oh well. 30 bucks just for the shipping. I've got some other posters of Japan sitting unopened because well I might want to get a frame for them too afterall but so expensive. I dunno. I really really wanted this kanji poster to go up on the wall and not sit on a shelf so I just hit the buy button for the poster.

I've got 162 "known" kanji cards in my deck now (heisig). I am pretty sure I'm going to add too many too fast and have to stop altogether when the due ones come up but we'll see. They seem easy atm. The way I'm testing myself with the flashcards is to see the English definition, then draw it on my hand (with my finger) and then flip the card and see if it's right. I'd really like to know the English definition of all the 2000 or so regular kanji before moving on with Japanese if this turns out to be feasible. A month might not be enough but I'm going to do my best.

I really get a kick out of recognizing kanji in Japanese text (credits etc) on shows I watch. I'm hoping if I know the English and can draw the kanji then learning to spell words with kanji will be pretty easy.
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g-bod
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1485 posts - 2002 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 167 of 1702
13 December 2011 at 12:09am | IP Logged 
I remember reading once on the Anki help pages that if you consistently add 20 new cards a day, it will build up to a general workload of 100 reviews per day. I'm not sure if that will help you decide whether you are adding things sustainably or not. Glad to see you've got a bit more motivation for Japanese again though!
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kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4943 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 168 of 1702
13 December 2011 at 6:24am | IP Logged 
Yeah, I'm much more into it. I'm kind of hoping the kanji will be easy enough using the heisig method that I can go through a review of a few hundred and be ok. I just did a review of about 70 tonight that popped in my deck and it took about an hour or so. It wasn't too bad but obviously an hour is a decent amount of time.
We'll see. I'll try to do the reviews before adding new cards. That will probably keep me in check some although to start I am adding as much as I can.

I came back on to do a short post about the amazon kindle fire. I pre-ordered one and got it right away but unfortunately I only used it for 20 minutes before packing it up again and sending it back to amazon. I wasn't a disaster but it's clearly a step down from the iPad. What I tested we just web browsing. I miss flash on the iPad and wanted to see how the kindle did. It's slower than the iPad period end. It doesn't matter if the site has flash or not. Scrolling up and down the page felt sluggish although the pages loaded fast enough. Amazon touted how fast its silk browser would be since the server would format it to fit the kindle before it downloaded but again the kindle is just slow at scrolling around the page.

So I didn't check out apps or other things for language learning on the kindle at all. It was clear it wasn't for me so back it went. I am looking forward to the 2nd generation amazon tablet though. And I got an eink kindle touch which I'm loving for German and Spanish. Particularly German, you have access to SO many
ebooks at a reasonable price it's amazing compared to buying imported books at a specialty store. The pop up dictionaries that you have to buy aren't quite as nice as what came free with my Sony e-reader but you can't get but literally 8 German books at the Sony store. So kindle wins easily there.

Anyway, back to kanji. 1 month all out on this. I have my fingers crossed :).

Edited by kraemder on 14 December 2011 at 1:10am



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