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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 4966 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 481 of 1702 16 August 2012 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||
Heh but do you worry about what the magic number is? I'm weird I think. Well 7 hours isn't bad - I'm able to focus reasonably well no my breaks at work on Japanese whereas before I was getting 4-6 hours on weekdays and really couldn't focus at all on anything at lunch or break and only a bit after work either. Anyway regarding the transitive / intransitive feedback.. intransitive isn't really used per se where English will use the passive. Except by coincidence it seems. I'll just have to keep this in mind and pay attention when I start reading more Japanese. I'm still doing mostly vocab drilling and watching anime right now. It makes sense that if you can just drop the subject then you don't have a need to have a structure designed to accommodate sentences where the subject is unknown. Except Spanish does just that and they have a passive voice that matches up really well like ours. Go figure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4830 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese | Message 482 of 1702 16 August 2012 at 10:02am | IP Logged | ||
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5 hours sleep is the most efficient. After that, sleeping loses its benefit greatly.
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| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6402 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 483 of 1702 16 August 2012 at 10:27am | IP Logged | ||
I think both sentences really translate (literally) as "the door is open," but in Japanese there is more information in that phrase than in English. In the first situation, we know that the reason for the the door being open is that someone opened it, perhaps because we saw them or something. Or even because we know that it couldn't have opened itself and want to emphasize that fact. In the second sentence the door is merely open. Of course doors don't open themselves unless they are automatic doors so even in this situation we know that someone must actually have open it, but we perhaps know less about it, or don't really want to give the impression of knowing about it or just don't think it important. To express this difference in English, you have to make a bit more effort, perhaps by using the passive like g-bod did or by mentioning a subject. A similar case in English would be for example: Someone asks you to open the door and 1) you say "I already opened it." Or perhaps "Joe opened it a little while ago." Or if you don't know who did it, you could even say, "Someone already opened it." In other words you feel for some reason that the fact that someone opened it is important or needs emphasizing even if you don't know who did it. That is like the first case in the Japanese example where you know something about how the door came to be open or want to emphasize that it was actually opened by someone. Alternatively, you answer 2) "The door is already open." This corresponds to the second case in Japanese. You express it this way because you don't know how it came to be open. Or you don't think who opened the door is important. Or maybe even that you don't want to admit having opened the door because the dog ran out when you did it. It seems like these are areas where Japanese is less vague than English. Apparently it didn't seem generally necessary to our ancestors. So we only express it where we feel it is especially important. Of course, English gives more information than Japanese in other areas like definite/indefinite and singular/plural which can be expressed in Japanese to some extent, but usually aren't. (Though sometimes it is an advantage to be able to be a little vague.) Regarding the passive, I read once that Japanese has a "true passive" while English doesn't. This is why Japanese can use the passive in many ways that English can't. However, I haven't learned enough about this to feel comfortable discussing it. I wouldn't want to get something wrong. I think with any two languages, even closely related ones, there will always be things you can say in the one language that you can't say in the other, at least not as elegantly. It can be very frustrating sometimes. Monolinguals don't have this problem of course, since they don't know of any other way to say things. The best is when both people speak the same languages and can switch back and forth whenever something is easier to express in the one language over the other. My ex-husband and I do that. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4966 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 484 of 1702 16 August 2012 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | ||
lol. I don't know if I'll be able to make myself sleep more than 7 hours a night on a regular basis - I always want to stay up later and study more or read more or watch more anime. it's hard. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4966 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 485 of 1702 17 August 2012 at 5:53am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm resisting signing up for Chinese too this fall. I don't really want speak it but having studied SO much kanji
I'm a bit interested in the language. If I want to break into intermediate Japanese though I really need to spend all the time I can on it. /sigh I did some sample questions on the JLPT 4 test and got most right but only because it was muliple guess and thanks to Heisig. I didn't really know the vocabulary they were testing but I knew the meaning of the kanji I was looking at. It felt like cheating. And it also made me think I should get an n4 vocab list too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6402 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 486 of 1702 17 August 2012 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree that you should probably continue to resist Chinese for a little while longer. I think it would be difficult to add another such language right now. Partly because you seem a bit crunched for time already, but also because it is another difficult language and I'm not sure if learning all those Hanzi would help you in Japanese right now when you still have quite a few Kanji left to learn.
I am also planning to learn Chinese, but I'm thinking of putting Spanish in the middle between Japanese and Chinese to let the Japanese sink in a little better first. Now I'm sure 10 people will answer to tell you why you should start on Chinese right away :) I can't remember if it was you or someone else who was debating whether to start on RTK 3, but I suggest that if you don't feel like starting on that, that you at least do the supplement available on Heisig's website. That will give you all the new Jouyou kanji that aren't in RTK 1. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4966 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 487 of 1702 17 August 2012 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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oh I didn't know there were new Jouyou kanji to learn. I'll check it out. I hope there's not too many. I was
debating RTK 3 but quickly decided against it. Not sure if I even posted it here I made up my mind pretty quickly. What I am doing though is adding kanji from words that aren't in RTK1 to my deck. So far none of them have been too complex or had new primitives. In terms of passing the courses I'm sure I could make time for both but in terms of learning Japanese better obviously I'd be falling behind in that respect. I'm resisting heh. There's so much more Japanese to learn that won't be included in this course - lots and lots of vocabulary if nothing else. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4966 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 488 of 1702 17 August 2012 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not sure if the practice questions for the JLPT 4 on the JLPT site are really indicative of the test - I was
surprised that it pushed me so hard and I double checked - some of the words they're giving are in my new JLPT 3 book. I hear they don't give actual vocabulary lists to study anymore so that is perhaps why but even so I don't think my vocabulary is so bad I'd have struggled so much. (I really really relied on Heisig to get through it). Anyway. I'm doing my summer packet from my teacher this morning. I did about half of it back in June when another student said she was doing it. It was kind of a good remind then - it's far more of a good reminder now though. I'm rusty as heck. But it's coming back without my having to use my dictionary too much. Heh. The grammar is more like I'm remembering it as I read it. Still there but I wouldn't have been able to produce it. What's really funny though is how I can't write hiragana fluently... I can write all these kanji (I dusted off my RTK deck this morning and last night) but the hiragana.. wow. I'm sure it'll come back really fast but still. Would be pretty bad if I had that happen to me in class. Then again I'll probably not be the only one.. umm right? (gonna do some exercises so I don't have to rely on that) Use it or lose it I guess. Reading doesn't help you write the characters it seems. Edited by kraemder on 17 August 2012 at 7:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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