vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6479 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese
| Message 129 of 197 11 February 2008 at 8:53am | IP Logged |
Hey sheetz, I was wondering with your Japanese studies. What exactly is your reading level now? Would you be able to read Yukio Mishima without having to look up many kanji and understand the story?
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sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6395 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 130 of 197 12 February 2008 at 10:11pm | IP Logged |
vanityx3 wrote:
Hey sheetz, I was wondering with your Japanese studies. What exactly is your reading level now? Would you be able to read Yukio Mishima without having to look up many kanji and understand the story? |
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No way. Even Harry Potter is slow going. Right now the problem seems to be vocabulary--there's just so much to know! And I'm going at a much more leisurely pace than I was over the summer, when I blitzed through masses of material. I could probably pass JLPT3 without too much trouble, but I'm far from passing JLPT2.
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leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6568 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog
| Message 131 of 197 22 February 2008 at 3:21pm | IP Logged |
Hey Sheets, I want to read a Yoshimoto Banana novel. But I'm not ready to do it without some sort of parallel text, or at least a translation. Any suggestions?
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sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6395 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 132 of 197 24 February 2008 at 12:50am | IP Logged |
leosmith wrote:
Hey Sheets, I want to read a Yoshimoto Banana novel. But I'm not ready to do it without some sort of parallel text, or at least a translation. Any suggestions? |
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All I can say is that if you really want to read something, just jump in and do it! Get a copy of the original and start reading, keeping a copy of the translation nearby for you to consult. At first, don't try to look up every word you don't know, but instead try to guess their meanings from the translation. It may be painfully slow at the beginning, but it gets better over time, and if you are truly interested in the text you won't mind. After you finish with one book, rather than rereading it try going through a second one by the same author. Then another one. After you've gone through several books by that author, then consider going back to reread the first one. I bet you'll be surprised how much better your reading comprehension will be by that time.
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leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6568 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog
| Message 133 of 197 24 February 2008 at 2:09am | IP Logged |
Sounds good. Have you come across any parallel texts, etc, for her?
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Thuan Triglot Senior Member GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6948 days ago 133 posts - 156 votes Speaks: Vietnamese, German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, Mandarin
| Message 135 of 197 24 February 2008 at 6:56am | IP Logged |
I think that Yoshimoto Banana novels are rather easy to read. Gonna tackle her SLEEPLESS soon. I once skipped through the first 30 pages of NP one evening. I got the gist of what was going one, most difficult were the parts where she's describing a character. Now that I've finished Heisig it should be much easier to read.
I think that your Japanese is better than mine, so it should't be too difficult for you. Especially if you're familiar with the topic (I suppose you're a fan of her work?).
I've tried to read news in Japanese several times, and it was tiresome to encounter so many unknown words. Yesterday I found an interview in a Japanese magazine with Asano Tadanobu. Now that's a guy whose career I've followed for many years. And even though I can't really read Japanese names yet, I do recognize the names of my favourite directors. To my own amazement, I could easily read the interview without the help of a dictionary (it was a printed dictionary, so for once rikai-chan proved to be useless). The unknown words didn't matter, because I could guess the meaning from the context and my knowledge about his work and Japanese films in general. I became so enthusiastic, that I picked the Japanese version of VERONICA DECIDES TO DIE from my shelf and read the beginning. I would estimate that around 50% of the words were unknown to me (excluding pronouns and prepositions), yet I was able to "read" the text. Today I read an article about a scandal in Germany and again realized that I could understand the article and guess the meaning of most words from context. Why? Because I'm familiar with the story. I learnt a lot of new words (immigrant or immigration for example), but I can't read any of these. That's where an audiobook would be helpful.
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sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6395 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin
| Message 136 of 197 26 February 2008 at 1:00am | IP Logged |
leosmith, I can't say that I have seen any parallel texts of any YB works, but I will keep an eye out for any.
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