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日本語 and me the next round TAC 2012 Team い | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5896 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 49 of 333 29 January 2012 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||
please don't get me started on the stammering idiot days. I get nervous when speaking to certain people and I draw a complete blank! Sometimes it makes me feel better to know that I have my idiot days in my own language -- so at least I'm keeping a nice balance ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4608 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 50 of 333 01 February 2012 at 7:59am | IP Logged | ||
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The stammering idiot days are there in my own native languages! I guess it's probably
psychology, or that certain people do makes us nervous. Just do as you usually do when you're self-talking-- pretend they're not there, lol :) But don't worry, you'll do great eventually :) In response to what songs I like in Japanese, I can't remember a lot off the top of my head right now, but there's one I absolutely love called Hana no Kusari. it's the closing credits of St. Seiya The Lost Canvas anime. Look it up on Youtube. it's hauntingly beautiful... I'll post others as soon as I remember them. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5793 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 51 of 333 04 February 2012 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks guys, it’s pretty reassuring to know I’m not the only one who experiences these stammering idiot days!
@Woodsei thanks for the song recommendation, I think it’s pretty good and sounds quite different musically to a lot of Japanese pop I’ve listened to. I don’t watch very much anime any more so I guess I’m not likely to discover this kind of music on my own, so I really appreciate the recommendation. I went back to Japanese class this week after the winter break, where I discovered that I still have trouble talking about giving and receiving. I understand the principles well enough however when I am using the structures on the fly I seem to get all my verbs and particles muddled up and I’m really not sure how to fix this. It seems that there are two ways in which Japanese is particularly context dependent, one is the relationship between the speakers and the other is the issue of viewpoint (where I find myself wondering “who did what to who and with what?”). I’m really not sure how one can get adequate practice of these aspects of the language without developing a range of different relationships with different native speakers. But considering that I am unlikely to go and live and work in Japan for an extended period of time, for now I have to stick with the resources available to me. Obviously I am grateful for the support of the language partners I have as they have really helped me get my speaking skills off the ground and I do enjoy speaking to them and learning from them! The only other thing I can think of to do is try and increase my listening exposure and really try to pay attention to both relationships and viewpoint and how this is reflected in the language used. This is a step beyond what I do currently, where as long as I experience some degree of comprehension I am happy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6431 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 52 of 333 04 February 2012 at 9:17am | IP Logged | ||
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If you have Japanese language partners, maybe you could convince them to do a bit of role-playing. For example, they could pretend to be your boss, or your best friend, or your friend's mother, or anyone you want. Then you could practice different politeness levels and suchlike.
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5793 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 53 of 333 05 February 2012 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think I would need to convince myself to do the role playing first, as it's something I don't feel very comfortable doing even in my native language, let alone another one. Although I guess once we get on to covering humble/honorific language in class, that is probably exactly what we will end up doing. Maye I should get used to it!
I have managed to get in some practice on giving and receiving verbs and it's reaching the point where it's no longer the complete disaster it was in class, however it's still a long way off making quick and natural responses. I think it's something I need to be aware of, and maybe I should just try and find as much opportunity to talk about giving and receiving as possible. I was half tempted to write myself a random drill generator - it would probably be quite simple to set up a bank of words to fill out patterns at random like "X gave Y to Z" or "X received Y from Z" or "X did Y for Z". But my coding skills are pretty rusty now so maybe it's better if I stick to Japanese... I've just finished watching episode 5 of Taiyou no Uta, still without subs. Mixed feelings about the experience as I am balancing the sense of "yay, I can understand roughly what they are talking about" with "I don't like the way this storyline is developing". I'll continue watching it but I expect it will probably get more depressing. I always tried to avoid the "serious incurable disease" dramas until someone convinced me to watch Kisarazu Cats Eye, but I guess that one (which I do really recommend) was the exception! On the plus side I managed at least to pick up plenty of ～てあげる/～てくれる etc in my watching. I have started working with some of the kanji worksheets available here. They are aimed at elementary school children to get extra practice at home. I can't believe so much is available for free. I like the fact that each worksheet comes in 3 or 4 formats - one gives you the kanji and reading so you can trace it out, the next gives the kanji only so you test your reading, the next one gives a box for you to draw in the correct kanji, and some of them also have it in a format where you are expected to write the kanji and the correct okurigana. I've been looking at the Grade 1 worksheets and have found that although the kanji and kanji-based vocab I generally know already, I am still picking up quite a bit of new vocabulary from the example phrases on the worksheets. I've also been reading this book. Again, it's aimed at first graders so I really feel like I'm going back to school now... It's great though, it has answers to all these different silly science-based questions that I guess most 6 year olds might ask, like "why do we yawn?", "why are cat's tongues rough" or "why do farts smell?". The level seems just right for me to be able to pick up a few bits of vocab just from the context and so I think I'm comfortable extensive reading it, although I still feel a tinge of guilt for not going mad and loading all the new stuff into Anki. I finished off vol. 8 of Yotsubato! and as I only have 3 volumes left to go I feel like I should be rationing them out. I will be sad when I finish it all, and I think I will always have a soft spot for the series as it was the first time I had the experience of realising I was reading and understanding something in real Japanese. Of course with all this fun I've been having, I've kind of been neglecting the textbooks. It's not a problem for a few days but I think I make the most satisfying progress when I can balance book work with native materials and access to native speakers. But the balance never seems to remain for long. Maybe if we could extend the day by a couple of hours, it would fix everything! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5793 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 54 of 333 14 February 2012 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||
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I’ve had plenty of opportunity to practice my Japanese this past week. Since my last update here I have been to Japanese class, I have had two Skype exchanges, and I have had two face to face exchanges (one of which probably involved staying up too late and drinking too much beer, and on a week night as well…) I also had my first experience of trying to use Japanese on the telephone which was really tough. I think because the sound quality is not as good as Skype it definitely makes it harder to understand (and actually now I am used to Skype I sometimes even struggle to understand my mumbling English husband on the mobile). It also didn’t help that I was in my office sat in front of my boss at the time; I felt pretty embarrassed as a result.
Anyway, all this Japanese interaction I am having is very exciting but I’m also feeling a little bit overwhelmed by it. I feel like I need a little bit of time to just reflect on what I’ve been doing and some of the things I’ve learned. But I have met some good people, both online and in real life, so if they want to meet up to talk to me and I have free time, I am not going to say “no, sorry, I’d rather read a textbook, make some notes and spend some time thinking about learning languages”. Perhaps this desire for a break of sorts has more to do with the fact that speaking to somebody one to one for a long period of time in a language I am still not comfortable with is pretty exhausting. Slowly my speaking and listening is getting better but when I am listening I have to concentrate hard not to lose the thread of the conversation. Unless I am on “safe” territory with phrases and vocabulary that I have already internalised reasonably well, I often struggle to find my words and form coherent sentences. I think this is probably all part of the learning process so I don’t mind it in that respect, however if I am genuinely enjoying the topic of conversation and the company of the person I am talking to, it is incredibly frustrating to stumble around and try to avoid the temptation of quickly reverting to English. However, I must say that I feel like I am falling in love with Japanese all over again. As I have shifted from passive interaction with books and TV shows to active interaction with real people I am starting to get more of a feel for the language as a real, living language I guess. Obviously to me, an English speaker, it is pretty exotic and always has been. But the more contact I have with the language, the more I feel that it is just so beautiful, so rich and expressive and I wish I could do it justice with my own feeble attempts to speak and write. Speaking of writing, I was absolutely captivated watching my friend write some notes in Japanese for me. Japanese script is just so beautiful and my friend’s handwriting just looked so polished and adult compared to my own childlike hand! Reading through this, I guess I might sound like I am just having a moan and being negative about my own ability but I don’t mean it in this way at all. I think perhaps the standards I aspire to have perhaps been raised a little higher, but at the same time I feel really motivated to face the challenge! Edited by g-bod on 14 February 2012 at 12:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6431 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 55 of 333 14 February 2012 at 8:33am | IP Logged | ||
I found out in my studies both of Norwegian and Japanese, that you learn much much more if you just read, than if you try to look up every word. Plus it's much less frustrating, so it's easier to stick to. I started out trying to look up every word I didn't know and didn't really learn anything from that technique, so after a while I just read. In the beginning, I felt a little guilty not looking up words as I felt I wouldn't learn without looking them up, but actually the opposite is true. So just enjoy your reading and forget about putting the words in Anki. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5793 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 56 of 333 20 February 2012 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had guests staying with me over the weekend which provided the opportunity for an enforced break from Japanese which I hate to admit has probably done me some good. I am quite intrigued by the way a short break can often let my mind get on with digesting bits of a language without me having to worry about it.
I've gone back to Japanese for Busy People with renewed enthusiasm and shall be doing a bit of handwriting practice later with Basic Kanji Book. My pronunciation is doing my head in at the moment though. And if I try shadowing or doing drills it seems to get even worse, I think I get all fixated and tense and it just doesn't seem to work. I think I will go with some more self talk this week to see if that helps. I don't have to talk in Japanese again until class on Thursday so I've got plenty of time to relax and practice. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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