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Kuji’s Krazy Log II

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Serpent
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 Message 89 of 706
15 February 2013 at 1:12am | IP Logged 
kujichagulia wrote:
I often worry about learning a language through sports, because sports has such specialized vocabulary. But hey, I'm likely to talk sports with other people, so it could be useful.
Don't worry about that :) Sports teach you a surprising amount of "usual" words!
Tbh, I could only consciously think: too much sports, need to learn about something else... if I already understood the broadcasts perfectly.
as for fun stuff, how about:
-J-rock
-anime/manga
-excursions/weekend trips to places within a 1-4 hours' drive from you
-GLOSS (many great Portuguese lessons too)

I mean, I'm no expert but doesn't Japan have a pretty big music industry? there's definitely more than a learner of a minority language (including Esperanto) can find. You can ask your Japanese friends for recs, then some songs might even become special just because of your friendship. Just don't give up! I used to think the Romance languages are too cheerful for good music but over the years I've found some songs I love insanely.

Edited by Serpent on 15 February 2013 at 1:13am

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kujichagulia
Senior Member
Japan
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 Message 90 of 706
15 February 2013 at 2:24am | IP Logged 
Brun Ugle wrote:
Where do you get the DLI courses? Are they free?

I get them from here:

http://jlu.wbtrain.com/sumtotal/language/DLI%20basic%20cours es/

If you can't find something suitable for you at fsi-language-courses.org, there might be something here.
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kujichagulia
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Japan
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Studies: Japanese, Portuguese

 
 Message 91 of 706
15 February 2013 at 2:29am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
I mean, I'm no expert but doesn't Japan have a pretty big music industry?

You are right; Japan does have a big music industry. Japan has anything you want: reggae, rock, rap, electric, dance, classical. However, you need to dig really deep, because J-pop dominates here. That is all they talk about on TV, and that is what you get on music channels like MTV. And they certainly do not play anything other than pop and enka on the radio. I guess I just don't like to dig deep. And all of my Japanese friends either like J-pop, or they like American music (go figure). I think I need new friends. :)

Thank you for the GLOSS link, by the way. I really need to think about how to incorporate that into my studies. If only I had more computer time...
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kujichagulia
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Japan
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 Message 92 of 706
18 February 2013 at 2:30am | IP Logged 
KUJI'S WEEK IN REVIEW: 11 February - 17 February 2013

日本語 - JAPANESE
I decided to "mine" sentences with all the new words and grammar in an IAIJ chapter and put them into Anki before starting the activities in a chapter. I used to just sort of do it simultaneously; I'd add new Anki cards when I have computer time, and when I didn't, I would just start doing the activities. But I found that if I put all the new stuff into Anki beforehand, Anki takes care of the vocabulary learning process, and when I do the textbook activities I can just concentrate on using the grammar, reading, and/or writing, without having to stop and look up things.

Of course, that begs the question of what to do in my non-computer time, if I haven't finished "mining" a chapter yet. My answer is just to mine new words/grammar using a paper and pen, and write it out as I would like it formatted in Anki.   Then, when I am in front of a computer, I just type and add, type and add. With that, I can just refer to my notebook, without having to fish through my textbook to see what I need to add.

So far, that seems to be working.

With that in mind, I finished putting all the new stuff from Chapter 7 into Anki, and this week I will concentrate on doing the activities. If I can keep this up ("mine" sentences one week, do the activities the next week), with eight chapters left, I should be able to finish IAIJ by July or August. Of course, life sometimes gets in the way, so I'm aiming for October. Then I can use that time to (hopefully) get to the "gushy" stuff; stories, novels, comics, and whatever else my wife will allow me to buy.

On a side note, I was doing some Internet research, and sites like AJATT and Japanese Level Up suggest just using textbooks as a source for "mining" sentences/vocab/grammar for Anki, and not even bother with the writing activities, drills and the like. It is soooooo tempting to just do that with IAIJ, but when I bought the set some odd years ago I promised my wife that I would complete it, so I will.

I also resumed tracking my Japanese activities for my Half Super Challenge. But for now, that means tracking my "film" activities - logging how long I watch TV and how long I listen to audio. The Half Super Challenge webpage says I need to do 3 films per month to reach my goal by the deadline (a film = 90 minutes). That seems doable. But honestly, I do not think I will even come close to finishing my 50 books requirement (I have to read 1 book a week, or 100 pages a week, from this point). I tried reading a children's book in the summer, and it burned me out because I had to look up something like 20 words per page. I really need to increase my vocabulary before attempting books again. I think I will be at that point when I finish IAIJ in October. But then that leaves me only two months to read 50 books. Not gonna happen. In the meantime, I'll just log any news stories I read online, and just be content with trying to complete half of the Half Super Challenge (Quarter Super Challenge?).

PORTUGUÊS - PORTUGUESE
I'm doing the same thing with DLI that I am doing with IAIJ - putting new stuff into Anki before starting the lesson. I finished mining Lesson 11, and this week I will start the activities.

On a side note, I didn't like it at first, but I'm starting to get into Brazilian pop music (MPB, I think it's called?). I think most of the online radio stations from Brazil are MPB stations, and most the rest are sertanejo stations (I'm still not sure what the difference is). But I kind of like the rhythms of it, although it seems that most of the songs I hear on the radio sound like they were recorded at a concert; you can hear the audience singing along in the background. Brazil is very interesting.
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Brun Ugle
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Norway
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 Message 93 of 706
18 February 2013 at 7:44am | IP Logged 
kujichagulia wrote:

On a side note, I was doing some Internet research, and sites like AJATT and Japanese Level Up suggest just using textbooks as a source for "mining" sentences/vocab/grammar for Anki, and not even bother with the writing activities, drills and the like. It is soooooo tempting to just do that with IAIJ, but when I bought the set some odd years ago I promised my wife that I would complete it, so I will.



Personally, I find the drills and written activities very helpful when learning a language, so I don't think I would give that up.
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kujichagulia
Senior Member
Japan
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Studies: Japanese, Portuguese

 
 Message 94 of 706
18 February 2013 at 2:37pm | IP Logged 
@Brun Ugle - Yeah, the drills are helpful for me too, especially with Japanese grammar. It helps me get used to a different word order than what we have in English, and particles and the like. I'm not going to give it up, but it sounds so good, doesn't it? Just put some sentences into an SRS software, and VOILA!

Sounds too good to be true.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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 Message 95 of 706
18 February 2013 at 3:25pm | IP Logged 
Not "some sentences". 10000. less if you do cloze deletion. not necessarily too good to be true :P
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Expugnator
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 Message 96 of 706
18 February 2013 at 5:51pm | IP Logged 
kujichagulia wrote:
PORTUGUÊS - PORTUGUESE
I'm doing the same thing with DLI that I am doing with IAIJ - putting new stuff into Anki before starting the lesson. I finished mining Lesson 11, and this week I will start the activities.

On a side note, I didn't like it at first, but I'm starting to get into Brazilian pop music (MPB, I think it's called?). I think most of the online radio stations from Brazil are MPB stations, and most the rest are sertanejo stations (I'm still not sure what the difference is). But I kind of like the rhythms of it, although it seems that most of the songs I hear on the radio sound like they were recorded at a concert; you can hear the audience singing along in the background. Brazil is very interesting.


It's a bit more complicated than that.

"MPB" does stand for Música Popular Brasileira, but it's not "pop music" the way we refer to in English. It's popular just in the sense that it's opposed to classical, but it's actually a slightest more elitist type of music. Bossa-nova, Tropícália movement they're part of the MPB metagenre. Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Vanessa da Matta, Marisa Monte are considered MPB artists even though their songs rather often go mainstream and are well-known; they just are not ordinarily "party music".

Sertanejo is also a metagenre originally related to caipira (or "hillbilly") music, that is, the music of simple people from the countryside in the southeast/center-west region (Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Goiás and surroundings). Then it went commercial, absorbed American country (or even American pop/pop-rock) and nowadays it has absorbed other popular genres like forró from the northeast and axé and arrocha from the state of Bahia. That is to say, they make songs that are essentially in the countryside's caipira rythm but they also make music in pop-rock, forró, axé and arrocha rythm. What makes this all "sertanejo" is more external than inherent to the music: it's the way singers dress, the slang/regionalisms they use; the use of "caipira" sound effects, turnouts instruments but all essentially according to pop music style. This is how and why Sertanejo corresponds to virtually every new song you'll hear in Brazil nowadays. It's both a trend and a fashion when it comes to music. Pity that it's been killing diversity; we'll just see how it will evolve.

Then we have samba that came up to be a reputed rythm. It usually has elaborate lyrics, like MPB music. It is composed and played in a distinguishable way, it's rythm, tempos. But then you can always make simplified samba music with more popularly appealing lyrics and call this "pagode" which is also one rythm you may hear a lot at the commercial radios with the highest audience rate.

Of course the picture is more complex and the boundaries aren't that strict, but overall that's how Brazilian music has been evolving lately.


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