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5 years of 日本語 TAC 13 桜/Schnitzel | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 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 169 of 436 16 April 2013 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Woohoo! I finished Kapitel 2 in Begegnungen! I'm aiming now to get through Kapitel 3 in a week or so.
@dampingwire Japanese really has a habit of taking over, doesn't it? I just remember how much effort I had to put in every day to feel like I was making progress. 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 170 of 436 21 April 2013 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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This week I have given myself a much needed talking to regarding the state of my Japanese. As I’d drifted further away from Japanese, barely touching it for the last month or two, some time over the last couple of weeks a certain feeling of despondency set in.
I was reminded of how, as a teenager, I spent many hours (around 2 hours a day, every day, for a period of several months) practicing at home in an attempt to get good at the flute. My ability improved quite dramatically over a relatively short space of time and I at least got good enough to enjoy playing some interesting pieces from the repertoire for my own enjoyment (but not good enough to play them for anyone else’s!) This all led to me taking some pretty stupid decisions about what to study at university, but that’s another story. Anyway, over time my progress plateaued as I became less interested in practicing every day, which turned into a vicious cycle of no progress leading to no motivation leading to no progress. Eventually my flute got packed away pretty much for good. I guess recently I started panicking that my Japanese would also end up packed away pretty much for good, rendering all my efforts over the last 5 years essentially worthless. That’s a rather heavy feeling. So I had to remind myself, first of all that a language is not like a musical instrument, in that you can get a lot more out of a language with a much lower ability than you can with a musical instrument. A language is also much more forgiving than the flute at times when one gets slack about practicing. I can still warm up my Japanese again in a matter of hours. After a couple of months of neglect, the flute would need days, if not weeks to warm up. And then I had to ask myself quite seriously, what was the point of studying Japanese? I am happy to admit now that I was lured in initially by the chic factor and exoticism of it. But that would not have kept me going for 5 years. The thing that kept my interest was watching trashy Japanese TV, reading manga (and more – it was only a few months ago I was enjoying reading Murakami, after all), and talking to Japanese friends. All of these are activities which I enjoy doing, but have totally neglected in my rush to learn German. So this week, I have started reading some children’s stories in Japanese. I have dipped into a couple of anime series that were recommended by a friend I actually talked to. And by doing so I reminded myself why my 5 years of Japanese have been so worthwhile, and why I couldn’t possibly pack it away for good. (And don't tell anyone, but I've also started catching up on my Kanji in Context Anki deck. 50 cards at a time.) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4983 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 171 of 436 21 April 2013 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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What's this kanji in context anki deck? I'm curious... I have decided
to study kanji individually again instead of just as part of words. Right now I see a kanji word and then recognize the word as a whole and recall the meaning (English basically) and then try to recall the Japanese. It's not terrible but know sounds for more kanji would be helpful I think. And I've mentioned this before.. I've ignored languages for years and years and getting back into it is always easier than I feared. 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 172 of 436 21 April 2013 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Kanji in Context Anki deck is one I've made myself as I work through the Kanji in Context textbooks. Admittedly, I haven't really worked through the textbooks for a while, but I did add quite a lot towards the end of last year.
I would recommend for kanji to study them both individually and as part of words. The more words you can remember the kanji for, the easier it gets to remember the pronunciation for those kanji anyway. 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 173 of 436 22 April 2013 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is it just me, or does Anki 2 just suck? I'm trying to add some cards to my kanji deck, first time doing Japanese on it since upgrading, and it's not going smoothly. As soon as I convert what I've typed into kanji with Windows IME, the cursor just disappears, which is really fiddly because I then have to use the mouse to highlight things to change the formatting. And then when I've added the card, rather than the cursor reappearing in the top box for me to add the next one, it disappears and I have to tab three or four times before typing all over again. And it no longer remembers which language you were using for each field, so I have to keep switching between English/Japanese (which was an annoyance for adding German cards too). Never mind the fact that the text boxes in the data input window are so small, and I can't seem to change them or the font size of what goes in them.
The only reason I upgraded was because I figured I might struggle to get an older version when I inevitably have to replace my mobile, so I figured I might as well get used to it now when I am not under pressure trying to study for exams or anything. But I wish already that I hadn't bothered. It's made the data entry so much harder, I feel like giving up with the thing for good. Being hunched over a computer typing all the stuff in in the first place was always the most offputting thing about using Anki. Why the hell has he made it twice as hard to do this? Am I just missing some kind of magic button that would make it all work properly? 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 174 of 436 23 April 2013 at 12:05am | IP Logged | ||
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In a moment of despair I thought "I know, maybe I'll downgrade back to 1.2.8". So I've done just that, to discover (well, I should have known to be honest) that what I've done in Anki 2 is not backwards compatible.
Argh. I give up. I'm going to bed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4464 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 175 of 436 23 April 2013 at 12:51am | IP Logged | ||
I don't think that it sucks any more than Anki 1 - in fact I quite like it. But then I may not know how efficient it could be. I'm not using any of the "clever" do-kana-by-magic stuff, I just enter stuff. I'm running on Linux Mint now but it was pretty much the same under Windows XP. I'll typically have something (usually Firefox open on the tangorin.com page) and I type in whatever word I'm adding and look it up. Then I copy + paste the kanji word (from the results, not from my typing ... more reliable this way!) into the relevant Anki field and do the same for the kana rendition into another field. I found this to be faster than trying to switch IME from JP<->EN within Anki. If it could remember different IME settings in different fields in v1 then that completely passed me by. I've yet to try a bulk import, but then I don't have any bulk data anyway (I will do once I get around to other languages but not for now). 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 176 of 436 23 April 2013 at 1:31am | IP Logged | ||
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I think it sucks more, because basically I'd developed a style and routine which worked with one specific textbook and now it doesn't work unless I want to spend twice as long on data entry and give myself an RSI in the process too. I wouldn't mind but since everyone else things Anki 2 is better, Anki 1 is no longer supported. So I just give up. What's the point in making software which works and then pulling the rug out from under it?
Bulk import is fine. Copy paste is fine. But doing things the way I'd figured out which worked well for me is no longer fine. And it's buggy as anything doing direct data input with windows IME. To the point that I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong. Why is the cursor disappearing for goodness sake? Why can't I see the dotted lines under what I've typed to know which characters will change when I hit the space bar? It's a mess! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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