At least I can't be told I never listen.

That's all I've been doing lately.

Listening. That's it.　それだけです。辞書に読みます。少し。

I need to get back on my 漢字の馬。ちょおと変なイメイジですね？ま。

I feel like I should start focusing a bit more on grammar. 私の文法はすごく悪い。そ思います。きにしないで下さい。すみませんでした。

All I have to do it click on an icon for kanji, and away I go. Why is that so hard? なぜそなに難しの？

Everything is a little slow lately.

少しずつ少しずつ。

Aiming to Learn.

こんにちは皆さん、Just thought I'd offer a few links, and a few suggestions for any 自習の人. I self-study myself, and have encountered a few hurdles which made the process a bit discouraging. 

You will need an input method editor. Either the one Windows built in (don't know how it works), or one supplied by Google. Which is the one I use.

The first and most important thing is learning the script. Whether that be the semi-tedious task of かな or the nearly insurmountable mountain of 漢字, this aspect represents the large portion of difficulty. Outside of writing, Japanese is much just like any other language.

I highly recommend using James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji - Volume 1 for tackling 漢字.

It goes through all 常用漢字。Which is about 2136.

                        

 Anki is a spaced repetition flash card program which has user-made flash card decks for a lot of things, Japanese is commonly seen. While I suggest caring for and tailoring your flash card deck, it can be very tedious to do. (Often so tedious, I don't want to do it.)

You can make lots of different cards in different formats.
 I'd say figuring out formatting would be the hardest part.

You are going to need a way to find kanji digitally to make cards if you plan on making your own Heisig deck. Heisig uses some abstract, lesser known meanings, and some nonexistent ones, for keywords. While it's important to keep the keyword system as true as possible to the book, there is a small bit of room for improvising. For this end you'll need an online dictionary.

Note the Radical Filter Button. This is important.

That is a powerful dictionary that takes a bit of time to learn how to use properly. I struggled with counting strokes, trying to find odd keywords, but there's a better way. Search by primitives, one or all of them, coupled with stroke count. Also known as the Radical Filter. When the keyword/stroke count yields nothing, Radical Filter will save the day.

It is also important, if you are a beginner, to grab an English-Japanese dictionary. A fair amount of people will say, with the internet at our fingertips, a dictionary is rather draconian. This is true to a point. What a dictionary, especially one that is small, allows you to do is read on the fly. On a whim. Don't even need to use it for vocabulary, though you can. Don't need to be methodical or write anything. Just read. That's it.

And read out of the ENGLISH side. This is very important. Why? Because, if you read out of the Japanese side what you'll see, say for か is..

か
か
か
かい
かい
かい
かい
かい

All with different definitions affixed to them. Different 漢字, different contexts, different everything, yet the pronunciations are the same, and you can't tell how they differ without their respective contexts. Save the Japanese side for looking up specific words you need.

Switch over to English, and you'll get a word, say 'each', and get different things you can use to use 'each' with contexts explained. Sample:

each
1. determiner
    each time = いつも
2. pronoun
    each of the students = それぞれのがくせい・それぞれの学生。
　each of them has a car = かれらはそれぞれ、くるまをもっています。・　彼はそれぞれ、車を持っています。

This difference does a few things, one it allows for varied reading practice, also supplies 漢字 in the second half so you can learn some readings, gives context to how different words are used where, and allows you to translate through elimination.

 If you didn't know what それぞれ meant, as in ex. 1 of pronouns, but you knew it wasn't student, then you'd be able to take that and conclude it means 'each' in that context.

Use a dictionary casually, without focus, but daily. If you can keep up a daily regime that has more depth, more power to you, but in the beginning you want to make sure you practice every day. Even if it's just a little. I leave it by my bedside to read a bit each night before sleep, incidentally one of the best times you can read something to retain it in memory.

For on-the-fly translations, and you use Chrome or Foxfire, the app "rikai-kun/-chan" (Chrome users) (Firefox users) will speed along the process of plugging things you find on the web into a dictionary, though I can't testify to it's completeness or accuracy.
 

This is a example shot of me hovering over  the katakana 'ア'

A few more important things.

Listen to your target language daily! Constantly! As much as possible!  I can't really stress the daily factor in practice enough, but listening is a whole other beast entirely. The closer the listening media to actual everyday spoken samples, the better off you'll be in the long run. Even if it feels like you are dropped in an ocean, without first learning how to swim.

Do NOT speak. Wait, as long as you can, to speak. You will need to speak to progress, eventually, this isn't to say don't ever practice pronunciations, but listening will give you that baseline. The only thing speaking will do is ingrain bad speech habits as far as how something is pronounced, until you can hear when you are doing it wrong just due to the fact you've spent so much time listening to other people speak it.

There are a few more things I could provide, but this is a good place to start. Above all.

Have Fun.

 

Nearly A Year Later

I moved out of my mother's house. Finally. I was experiencing* a difficult time maintaining* my composure, and that pressure cooker was bound to go off eventually.

My kanji reps have gone down the drain, but I still do my daily listening and reading. All it will take is for me to make the effort to do my 50 cards and it'll get the ball rolling.

If only a little bit.* Inertia* seems to affect more than just tangible things.

In other news, I am noticing a slight deterioration in my typing skills, and I'm trying to pinpoint whether or not it's just me being too* cocky trying to type without looking. Some* of* the typos I've been making have been pretty rediculous.

I'm tired. YouTube a bit, then bed. 寝ると言っています。

This time * denotes typos* I had* to fix.

A Random Sentence

でも、朝飯は何を食べましたか!

I was reading a japanese learning blog, and I stumbled upon the sentence half made up of kanji I've probably only seen once, and half of them I was familiar with. I believe I read it correctly.

I did it awhile back with a sentence involving the weather. I wonder if I can remember it. I know I can remember some of the words


今日は天気が素晴らしいです。

I know I'm missing something from this sentence, but I had a loose translation to go off of, with "weather" and "good" being the main keywords that I knew to look for.

Running in Circles

おはようございます！

I need to start adding simple vocabulary words to my anki decks. I had trouble coming up with the correct spelling for that common greeting. Looking through my IME I saw it written a few other ways お早う御座います being one of them,  but that involves two kanji I haven't learned yet, so I stuck with hiragana.

Fairly sure that kanji is completely wrong for that.

とにかく。。。

I am caught in a rather frustrating kanji loop, where after all my repetitions I haven't the energy or inclination to add more to my deck. This has the unfortunate side effect of making me hesitant to start sentences.

How do I tackle a sentence if it's comprised of half a dozen kanji I've never seen before, let alone the parts that make it up. Stroke order is a mystery, meaning is a mystery. If I can't accurately reproduce these on paper with my horrible handwriting, then I don't think I can learn anything in the long run.

So, I have to wait until I atleast get all my general use kanji to the point where I don't hesitate on stroke order. Meaning, reading, and everything else can wait. I just want to be able to reproduce it.

Notable words I cemented down through listening are the fairly similar

時間と事件 and when to use 時間 and 「何」時 in reference to time, o'clock, and hours as a count.

As a result of my last post and looking up past tense of 行く and reading at the same time that 言う takes the same form, I've been hearing these alot, just learning it that one time to write 「昨日はわたしが釣り行った。」I hear that conjugation everywhere, so I've been doing alot more heavy reading in the middle section of my dictionary as opposed to vocabulary and reading practice 「れんしゅ?」


I'm not entirely sure if I have the kanji right for じけん so I'll have to look that up later.

Let's see if I can't make this circle a bit more elliptical.

それじゃ～

Repetitions and a Big Fish Story.

昨日は私が釣り行った!* For the first time in many a year. I caught two* 魚. Almost three. One jumped the hook at the very last instant.

Bit of a sunburn. I was in the sun for about 四 hours*.


漢字 review is going a bit 遅い(?), and I had skipped my repetitions for a bit but I jumped back on the saddle. My biggest issue is making the cards. I go through the 漢字の本, search the keyword on my dictionaries, copy and paste the 漢字. If that doesn't work I draw it through my IME until I can find it. The entire process of making the cards burns me out for quite awhile. I have a completed deck complete with both 英語と日本語 keywords and about 二千漢字 but I just don't feel I've earned the right to use it until I complete my own card deck first.

Trying to feel more confident with using as much japanese as possible, but I still have to mark everything I am unsure of.


 This post is brought to you by "*", the handy tool to denote things I need to look up, confirm, or learn later.

Step Forward

2012年8月31日

This isn't really going to be a blog per se, more of a tangible archive tracking my progress as I attempt to very slowly, and hopefully steadily, learn Japanese(日本語). Pretty much up until this point all I've done is practice writing kanji, and practice reading hiragana in my japanese-english dictionary which is where most of my deeper knowledge originates.

Hopefully, once I learn all of the general use 漢字 I'll be able to dive into everything else with more gusto, but 今(?) it's more of a tip toe-ing forward. While I find the process of language learning fairly endearing, the actual heavy lifting involved with learning a few thousand kanji is a bit rough on the 目.

  Also, my handwriting is horrible, as you can 見る in this here example:

Yes, that is Genkō yōshi (原稿用紙)

I'm sorry for murdering it with such uncouth pen strokes.

I'm not exactly rushing, though I am writing a bit faster than I should. I spent a long while practicing ひらがな and I got.....ehh....decently good, I guess, but I stopped writing it, focusing on slogging through Remembering the Kanji - Book 1, the strategy being once I can write most any sentence, I'll get my needed practice then. Not that it'll help, there's a reason why neat handwriting is pretty much impossible for me, and it's a problem that has plagued me since I first learned how to write.

I'm not exactly concerned about it, I just have a rather deep-seated feeling that writing is intrinsic to the learning process.

So, with post one, I am tracked to six or seven some-odd-thousand listening hours, and a rather small 五百漢字 in my Anki deck currently. Hopefully as the months go forward, that number will increase, and I'll start inserting more Japanese in to my posts.


p.s. My current rules for inserting japanese kanji into my posts is when I know the reading and can correctly pick the correct kanji out of the list that shows up in my IME. Also, ignoring grammar for the time being.