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
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.
