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5 years of 日本語 TAC 13 桜/Schnitzel | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4646 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 97 of 436 25 February 2013 at 4:09am | IP Logged |
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Maybe Lesson 45 is really engaging?
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5781 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 98 of 436 25 February 2013 at 8:49pm | IP Logged |
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Hehe, I'm not sure engaging is the right word!
I think it's more of a case that although I tire of Japanese from time to time, I bounce back within 6 weeks. Which gets me up to around lesson 45 in German Assimil. Well, I'm going to try my best not to give up on Assimil this time. I just hate feeling torn between two languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6419 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 99 of 436 26 February 2013 at 2:20pm | IP Logged |
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Ha ha! I love tables and graphs too, as you might have guessed from my keeping track of everything to the last second. It's good to do an analysis once in a while to see where you are spending time and where you should perhaps do a little more. And also to figure out what is working for you.
I have the same trouble with the two language thing. I've almost completely ignored Spanish during the 6WC. It's partly because of signing up to do Japanese for the challenge and partly because I feel like I'm really getting somewhere in Japanese so I can at last do some fun stuff. Plus, Japanese is just such a seductive language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5781 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 100 of 436 26 February 2013 at 7:56pm | IP Logged |
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Japanese is a seductive language, but it is also a demanding mistress!
Actually, this time I have really noticed a degradation in my Japanese skills after taking a break. It was never so much of an issue when I had down time on occasion last year. My speaking always suffered a little, but this is no surprise given that my active skills are still in the shaky zone, however this time I've noticed a decline in my listening ability too. When I chatted to my language partner on Skype at the weekend, there were a number of times when I really struggled to keep up with what he was saying. On top of this, I'm starting to experience the kind of interference from German that scared me off French last year. Obviously it's going to be worse because I've been spending less time on Japanese, to the extend that there was a noticeable skill drop, but I wonder if this is compounding everything too. I think the root of it is that although I don't have too much trouble parsing stuff in Japanese any more, I still have some trouble putting my mind in Japanese-syntax-mode for production. This is then worsened when I've been messing around with a nice comfortable European language like French or German, because my brain then seems to think that whatever foreign language you are using, the most fundamental way to make all the most basic sentences you'll ever need is pronoun + be-verb + object. So once I go back from French or German to trying to work in Japanese, I waste a lot of unnecessary energy as my brain automatically tries to find pronouns in Japanese that don't really exist, before moving straight on to the verb, which doesn't make sense in Japanese of course, so it then tries to replace Japanese with more sensible structures like "ich bin" or "il est". Never mind the mind melt that happens when I try to do anything more complicated than that (oh yes, let's go modify some nouns with clauses...) And consider too, that when I say "break", this still means fitting in some kind of Japanese a few times a week, as my 6WC chart shows! I just don't know whether to keep pushing on with both (the thought of which, quite honestly, makes me feel so tired right now I feel like studying neither), or whether to just leave my Japanese be for now, or whether to put German to one side once again and somehow really push on with Japanese. I wonder whether my grammar-interference problems would be helped if I can really bolster my active skills in Japanese and generally feel more ownership over the language before putting energy back into a European language. On the flip side, I wonder if I could just tolerate the degradation in my Japanese skills, keep it on the side as a reading and TV language, and really do a proper job with German instead. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hasi Diglot Senior Member Austria Joined 5915 days ago 120 posts - 133 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 101 of 436 27 February 2013 at 10:49am | IP Logged |
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Have you thought about studying German with the help of Japanese? For example by working through a German
textbook for studying Japanese or the other way around? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5884 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 102 of 436 27 February 2013 at 6:58pm | IP Logged |
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I think that would work for languages that are not so radically different. If you look at Tai Kim's grammar guide for German speakers, ジムは明日？- Ist Jim morgen? That's not really very helpful for those looking to learn something about German. Still, it's really not a bad idea, Hasi, but I'd only recommend it for anyone with a good grasp of German.. g-bod, It might be fun to go to lang-8 and look under "New entries in the language you are learning (German)" and see what Japanese native speakers do with the German language. That would be a good indicator of what German textbooks in Japanese could look like (yikes).
@g-bod, I know the feeling of being stuck between two languages. I loose a little bit of German every time I devote myself completely to French. You know, those long weekends? (I'm really enjoying the metaphor, here). But it doesn't take much effort to get it back. It always comes back! ^^ 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5781 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 103 of 436 27 February 2013 at 8:17pm | IP Logged |
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You know, I'm actually really gutted that the Deutsche Welle radio courses haven't been translated into Japanese. If you wanted to do German through French, or Chinese, or numerous others, you would be good to go. I did have a good search of the Japanese iTunes podcast library for German courses, but it didn't come up with anything usable, just a few short tracks where you listen and repeat basic phrases. I could order some kind of German course from amazon.co.jp but this would be a huge risk. If the Japanese textbook market is anything like the English one, there are going to be a lot of duds out there and browsing opportunities via amazon are somewhat limited (which explains the duds I've already collected for learning Japanese). Plus I'm pretty happy with the German resources I already have and I don't really want to spend any more money on it at the moment.
I really don't know what to do right now though. I'm struggling to let Japanese go because I still feel like there's so much more I could possibly achieve with it, however I wonder if I will ever really be satisfied, no matter how long I study it for. On the other hand I'm struggling to let go of German because both the language and the country of Germany have really captured my interest since last year. Travel to Germany is much easier for me than travel to Japan and working in Germany is much more of a possibility (not that this is something I am really deeply considering at present). But the risk with German is that I'm still so much of a beginner, I have no idea how long it will take for me to develop some kind of usable ability in the language, or whether my interest will still remain strong if I do. I know that learning a language related to English is going to be quite a different experience to learning an exotic language, but as I've only ever properly studied an exotic one as an adult, on my own, I really don't know how much of a discount I can expect. I'm asking myself, if I seriously commit to German, say for 18 months or 2 years, how much German could I gain, and how much Japanese could I lose? Best case scenario, I could get comfortable enough with German to happily maintain through reading for pleasure, hassling my German speaking friends and taking the occasional trip, at which point I can then pick Japanese back up again properly, while somehow magically solving all my problems with grammar interference. Worst case scenario, my Japanese will end up like my French (some residual passive ability but a disaster on all other counts) and my German will be little better, thus writing off several years of language study. I'd hate to end up being the person who once passed JLPT N2, but can now no longer utter a simple sentence. Alternatively, if I seriously commit to Japanese, say for 18 months to 2 years, I think I could feasibly get my passive skills up to C1 level and pass the N1 exam (by actually being at that level, not by cramming and hacking the test). And I could do this by spending most of my time watching TV and reading books, which is no bad thing at all. I could also put in more effort to develop better writing skills and as long as I can continue doing a Skype language exchange I can at least improve my spoken language a little bit. But what I can't guarantee is being able to put myself in situations where I'm going to be surrounded by native speakers and can really work on my speaking skills. What I can guarantee is that if I take this approach, by the end of 2014 I'll still have no real ability in German, which still remains a rather disappointing prospect, now it's got its hooks into me! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5781 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 104 of 436 28 February 2013 at 9:36am | IP Logged |
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I wonder whether a way around this is to do my languages in chunks. So alternate, say, 6 weeks intensively on German, and 6 weeks intensively on Japanese. 6 weeks seems to be the watershed after which my Japanese starts to suffer, so there could be something in this.
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