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rewire’s 日本語 (& miscellany) adventures | ||
Tags: Intermediate | Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| rewire Groupie United States learninglane.tumblr.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4336 days ago 82 posts - 90 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 25 of 81 19 August 2012 at 11:19pm | IP Logged |
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I picked up a Tenso address years ago, and never really tried it, but I just ordered a bunch of books from Book Off
Online today and so we'll see how well this works? I was trying to find Ender's Game (I always feel awkward mentioning it these days, because I am so disappointed in OSC as a person/IRL/with his recent writing, but I still really love EG as a book) in Japanese, actually, as it's a book I've read so many times in English I know exactly what everything would be talking about, and I actually enjoy the story, unlike Harry Potter, which I've always been a little unimpressed with. But EG's not as easy to find, it seems. So what I did order was... Harry Potter, ahah. It was pretty cheap to get what I think was the whole set-- around 2500 yen for the whole order, and including Songmaster by OSC as well. I don't know Songmaster quite as well as I do EG, but it will be interesting to see how it translates in Japanese. And whether or not I can even read it. OSC's writing's not very flowery or anything, but he does tend to write on kind of complex/abstract topics so I probably won't recognize a lot of the words. But anyway, I suppose I will update when Tenso ships my package, and I actually receive them. I'd like to find Earthsea in Japanese, too, if possible, but I guess I will try to get through HP first (and then treat myself with books I like, once I find them). I'm on the end of CCS 6 going on 7, which means I am nearly caught up to where the @langchallenge bot thinks I am on the reading portion, and more than halfway through the set. Not really sure what I'm going to start on after that, though. Possibly just finish the graded reader set I started also. I'm like partway through a (biographical) story on a doctor in Nagasaki during WWII. Or the two bilingual books I have. Edit to add a note for myself: Earthsea appears to be listed under ゲド戦記. Edited by rewire on 19 August 2012 at 11:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6409 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 26 of 81 20 August 2012 at 8:59am | IP Logged |
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Oy. Good luck with the Harry Potter. I'm a big HP fan, but even I get sick of it at times when I'm forced to read it so extremely slowly. The inconsistencies come through so much more clearly. When I read it in English, even though I am aware that there are inconsistencies, I am able to ignore them for the most part and they don't bother me, but at 5 minutes per page, they become very obvious.
You might try some books that were originally in Japanese too. Young adult novels could be a good place to start. I'm currently halfway through HP 6, but when I finish, I'm thinking of trying some real Japanese stuff for a while before number 7. If I can't understand the Japanese books, I guess I can go back to HP and other translated works for a while. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| rewire Groupie United States learninglane.tumblr.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4336 days ago 82 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 27 of 81 20 August 2012 at 9:53am | IP Logged |
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Ahah, yeah it's probably not going to be something I pick up real soon, honestly, until my reading speed is a
little faster. Being stuck at an elementary-level again is kind of maddening sometimes with how slow it is, when you can read much faster in your native language, isn't it? But I have quite a few manga, a set of the Level 4 Japanese Graded Readers, Read Real Japanese: Essays, and the New Penguin Parallel Text: Short Stories in Japanese to get through also, as well as one Japanese kids book I picked up the last time I was there (雨降る本屋), so hopefully after I go through more of that I'll feel up to reading HP. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rewire Groupie United States learninglane.tumblr.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4336 days ago 82 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 28 of 81 23 August 2012 at 8:44pm | IP Logged |
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Sort of forgot that hardbound novels weigh more than manga, so the shipping from tenso is ... fairly expensive. I
mean it still works out to be significantly cheaper than if I'd tried to buy HP alone from Amazon, so it's not that it's a total waste or anything, but it went way over my planned budget for this month because I was a dunce who didn't think to check the weight on the books first. Thus I'm going to take advantage of the 90 day storage limit on tenso and ship it next month instead of this month, ahah. I wasn't in a rush to get them anyway so that's fine. So I was looking at my stats on iKnow... I've been using it off-and-on for a while, but I realized it had taken me nearly a year to complete the first two steps I'd done (3 and 4, I skipped 1 & 2 because they were just far too boring to even be used for sentence-practice) because I really hadn't been using it like I meant to. Now I'm doing better with 5, 6, and 7, though. Looks like I started 5 in June and I'm nearly through it, and started 6 a week ago and am at 74%. Managed about 4 hours of study last week, and I'm kind of aiming for around that this week. The awkward thing is that is like the max limit of my studying, at the moment. Usually I get a bit more in during my commute to/from work, but I haven't really been doing Pimsleur in the car since I've been finishing up an audiobook. Should be done with that by the end of the week, so I can go back to Japanese in the car, which will be good. Lately I've been feeling my output struggling compared to my input again, which I know Pimlseur helps with to some extent as do my sessions with my tutor, though I think I also need to start doing regular journal entries on Lang-8 or at least a sentence a day on Twitter or something, if I can manage to write regularly (I don't usually do well at doing anything regularly). I'm going to need to find some sort of replacement for Pimsleur for the drive soon, too, since I'm starting on III-- I've tried using Japanesepod101.com before, but it's never been as easy or pleasant to set up some sort of long-term routine with for some reason. I almost think I'd rather find some purely-Japanese podcasts if I can, but we'll see. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rewire Groupie United States learninglane.tumblr.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4336 days ago 82 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 29 of 81 25 August 2012 at 6:04am | IP Logged |
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iKnow logged me as 5 hours of study this week so far, though I think it's probably closer to 4, since it seemed
longer because I kept getting distracted and letting the lesson time out. Step 7 has quite a few words either I've never seen or at least don't recall having seen, so that's slowed me down a little too, as well as just being too tired. My number one priority really needs to be getting proper sleep, since that's always what ends up hindering me in everything I attempt to do (I've been really sluggish at work, too). Just have to remember that, because I tend to want to say "just one more ____" even though probably getting a good night's sleep would be more beneficial than another twenty words I can hardly recall since I'm too tired. Anyway, I'm both glad and somewhat upset that I seem to have already hit the wall in my vocabulary. I knew vocabulary was my biggest weakness, though, so it's kind of confirmation on that score. Which in a way is good since it means I'm starting to add to it now and the more I build the easier I will find it to hold conversations and read and listen, but it's still disappointing because I'm not even through the Core 1000, which seems a little pathetic for someone who is sort of intermediate-level otherwise and has been studying the language for years. Edited by rewire on 25 August 2012 at 6:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rewire Groupie United States learninglane.tumblr.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4336 days ago 82 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 30 of 81 29 August 2012 at 6:36pm | IP Logged |
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I need to do more output practice. But I'm struggling to figure out how to make myself do it? Kind of ahh... acquired Assimil to see if maybe just skipping ahead and/or only doing the Second Wave on it would be helpful, but I'm still kind of undecided. Several times I've thought about making myself do some sort of X posts to Twitter or Lang-8 per week thing, though I kind of suck at coming up with anything to say. It's the worst part of my JOI sessions too, having to make up example sentences, because nothing ever comes to mind to talk about, or if it does, I can't think of how to say it because I don't seem to have the vocabulary.
Oh, y'know, I realized I had my inaugural dream of speaking Japanese the other day. I sort of thought it was noteworthy to myself, but kind of just realized it was because I hadn't ever had a dream where I know I was actually speaking Japanese and not just kind of a universal translator version of my English turned into another language/vice versa. It wasn't a lot, and it was actually sort of weird as I was speaking Japanese to a friend who really doesn't actually know Japanese, but in the dream he did, at least on a basic level, so I said a couple things to him. Not that I remember what exactly, but I rarely remember specifics from dreams, so that's unsurprising. Started trying to describe/translate my thoughts to Japanese when I remember. It is mostly translation now since I default to English all the time, but I think the more I do consciously the more comes up naturally, too. It's just that I can't do it at work much since I'd need to know more tech/programming terms than メール and like. プログラム or コンピューター It probably doesn't help that tech is generally English-dominated anyway, from what I know. Tangentially, I notice I actually have the most trouble pronouncing English loan words, because I get caught in this halfway between trying to say it as I would in English and how it should be in Japanese. Has anyone else found that to be a problem? Anyone have a good way to reset your brain to not do that? I think maybe some of it is that I'm used to being around multilingual speakers, who will just use the word they're more comfortable with in whatever language inserted into other languages, and so I catch myself half-thinking that's what I should do (especially if I'm talking to someone who knows enough English I know they'll understand me) rather than Japanese-ify it. But partly it's also that I get annoyed at how much longer it takes to say コンピューターのプログラマー than it would be to say "computer programmer" which is like, milliseconds in reality, and it ends up taking longer if I pause and say it wrongish and have to fix it. It's awkward since generally my accent is one of the things I feel most confident about-- my pronunciation and intonation are good enough I often get comments about how much like a native-speaker I sound, but then I end up tripping over loan words, which to most English-speakers seemed to be easier. Started on Step 8 in iKnow and amusingly have found that there are a significant amount of words I know in this step again so I guess it's sort of hit-or-miss still at this point, and I haven't really hit the wall. Ahah, I keep thinking I need to make shorter posts because it seems like shorter ones are better for people to read, but unfortunately I've always leaned wordy, and they come out monsters. Sorry to anyone who actually tries to read my log? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5771 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 31 of 81 29 August 2012 at 7:19pm | IP Logged |
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If you have not already done so, have a good read of Arekkusu's post on his log which sets out the steps of his self talk exercise. It really helped me to activate the passive knowledge I'd already accumulated. It's not so contrived as trying to invent sentences to fit a grammar point, and you have the time and space to look up any vocab that you need (which is also a good way of finding out what vocab is relevant for you anyway).
Oh, and keep the monsters coming. I seem to have unleashed a few real beasts on my log lately. I think it's because nobody I know IRL would ever be interested in hearing my thoughts on language learning! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| rewire Groupie United States learninglane.tumblr.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4336 days ago 82 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 32 of 81 29 August 2012 at 7:39pm | IP Logged |
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Oh excellent, that does sound like a good exercise, thank you.
I ended up joining here half just to have someplace to put all my thoughts and progress on language learning because I was suspecting I was starting to bore people with updates, ahah. I've really enjoyed reading your posts, though, they're always interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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