Liberal Arts Major
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
<->
"What the fuck is Alice doing in Wonderland anyway? Who the fuck told her she could leave the god damn kitchen in the first place?" -Random guy on Xbox Live
http://www.backloggery.com/kodan882
Liberal Arts Major
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
Ist (Is)
Die (The)
Zitadelle (Citadel)
And Dieist. Or was it Istdie? ...I forget which one. But Dieist/Istdie = That.
...So basically I can form a sentence, but that's it. "Die zitadelle ist die zitadelle" ("The citadel is the citadel")
I learned a tiny bit of German from a game called Uprising. I pirated a copy of the game, but the game was solely in German, none of the English or other installation files existed <_<
Fortunately, English is pretty similar to German, so it was sort of easy to pick up on words by using a little common sense.
<->
"What the fuck is Alice doing in Wonderland anyway? Who the fuck told her she could leave the god damn kitchen in the first place?" -Random guy on Xbox Live
http://www.backloggery.com/kodan882
Liberal Arts Major
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
<->
"What the fuck is Alice doing in Wonderland anyway? Who the fuck told her she could leave the god damn kitchen in the first place?" -Random guy on Xbox Live
http://www.backloggery.com/kodan882
Liberal Arts Major
At school, it would be backwards: you would learn there are multiple words for "the" and then you'd see some German where that turns out to be relevant. This is an inferior way to learn languages.
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
Russian is another language I wanted to learn.
<->
"What the fuck is Alice doing in Wonderland anyway? Who the fuck told her she could leave the god damn kitchen in the first place?" -Random guy on Xbox Live
http://www.backloggery.com/kodan882
Liberal Arts Major
I also would like to learn Russian, in theory, but I don't learn languages so much as I learn about then, and Russian is not all that relevant for me right now.
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
After saying I might possibly do this I did absolutely nothing for months because **** yeah procrastination.
Until a few days ago where I was really bored (You could tell I was bored because I was watching The Matrix Reloaded at like 7 AM on a Saturday morning) and glanced over at the flash cards for kana I had made about a month earlier (and also ignored) and decided I might as well actually do this.
I'm moving at a slow pace (like ~10 a day) because right now it's entirely self-taught/self-directed and I don't really have a solid plan yet but hey I just finished Hiragana today. Assuming I keep the same pace up, and I probably will, Katakana will follow by the end of the week.
progress~!
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Liberal Arts Major
10 a day is actually probably too many for long-term recall unless you're using them on a regular basis. I would suggest 5 a day, conveniently corresponding to the number of vowels the kana recognize. You should also take breaks between reviewing the ones you've already gone over. So, each day after the second, you go over, say, 10 total: 5 new ones and 5 you've done before, but more than a day before.
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~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
That shows what I know!
Here's a more in-depth explanation of what I'm doing.
I made up a thing of index cards with all the kana (kana on one side, the romaji on the other, along with other notes like stroke order and some specific trivia when applicable (like when a given kana is actually read differently if a particle, etc.) Generally at entirely random times throughout the day I'll run through the entire thing (of kana I've "learned" only, obviously) a few times. I'll make mental notes to myself if I notice some are giving me some (consistent) trouble. When I actually go to learn a new set, I do only go for 5 at a time for that very reason. I go for a vowel set. Usually I'll "begin" that session with a kind of writing session where I just write out all the kana I know, usually two times. Then I'll set up a little chart (the standard grid with the vowels) and more or less at random fill them in (the previous writing is usually in some kind of order so I can make sure I get them all on a single pass which I realize is unrealistic)
Then I'll set out to learn the new set. One at a time I tend to write it out a bunch of times before moving on to the next one. Then once I'm through with that I'll write the entire set out a bunch of times, changing the order here and there so I'm not always mechanically writing them in the same order. Then I go back to the full set thing, writing everything I know out including the new ones a few times. That set of index cards also gets added to the stack of kana I know so all future runs through it include the new set.
At some point later in the day I do another set of 5. In the very beginning I did this back-to-back but after Day 2 I decided I'd rather put breaks in the middle.
This might be totally bad for long-term recall, I don't know! Like I said, I don't really know what I'm doing! As of today, I'm at 20 Katakana (+ 48 Hiragana.) It seems to be working okay so far, but I don't know if I'm setting myself up for a disaster. I will say that after Katakana is done I'm kind of back to not having a plan again. You mentioned before that kanji isn't recommended unless you're competent at conversational speech and well... I'm totally not. I came to a similar conclusion myself and figured that's probably where I should go next but that may take a bit until I figure out how exactly I want to tackle that. In the meantime I figured I'd keep the kana practice up because hopefully it'd help solidify it in my memory and also because I figure just stopping immediately would cause me to forget a lot alarmingly quickly. I can't really see myself stopping it, because that just seems counter-productive. On the other hand, if I'm going about this in a sub-optimal way I may never catch it if I never really end up in a situation where I'm really testing my long-term memory.
Like I said, I have no plan here! Really I'm just hoping I don't ingrain some really bad habits or anything! I figured learning kana would be pretty "safe" in that regard, but what do I know? >_>
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Liberal Arts Major
- Skip the second session of five; just do one set of five new symbols per day. Memorizing ten new symbols a day is pushing it, even if they're fairly simple ones.
- Rather than filling out charts, you should try writing words. The chart has an intrinsic structure that you remember even if you're filling it in at random, and that's not something you want. Words, especially if randomly chosen, don't have any of that. This is also better because you can't rely on what you've already written down to figure out what comes next, as you can when either you fill in a chart or write down everything you remember.
Choosing words is somewhat difficult, so I've written a small script that can generate words of random length according to Japanese syllable structure. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination (witness wo showing up everywhere), but it seems to work fairly well. Note that the vast majority of possible words are not actual words.
- Find some children's books, which should be written in kana, and try reading them. This will improve your actual Japanese as well as your ability to recognize and remember kana.
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
Also, played with that script you wrote. That's pretty cool! Thanks.
felt like i got EXPOSED.
sort of. >_>
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Liberal Arts Major
I don't know what EXPOSED means here. =\
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
In my defense it's the ones that generally involve a non-y combo, but still~!
felt like i got wrecked there
Might try to finish Katakana first though, because the other thing was I wanted to write whatever was generated in both Hiragana and Katakana when possible and that's hard when a decent number of syllables make that impossible on the Katakana side.
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Liberal Arts Major
In my defense it's the ones that generally involve a non-y combo, but still~!
felt like i got wrecked there
Oh yeah, me too. I felt I had a reasonable grasp of hiragana and then I (a) tried writing that script without looking at a chart and (b) tried to write down some of the output without looking at a chart and I failed in both cases. But hey, at least I can read it! Some of the time!
Might try to finish Katakana first though, because the other thing was I wanted to write whatever was generated in both Hiragana and Katakana when possible and that's hard when a decent number of syllables make that impossible on the Katakana side.
This is probably a good idea. If you're planning on following my suggestion with the children's books, you would want to do that after getting more acquainted with katakana as well.
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
As for books, I think the issue there is how I'd get them. Because that seems unlikely!
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Liberal Arts Major
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Liberal Arts Major
___
~ Ogordemir ~
"The sciences have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." ~ H.P Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Liberal Arts Major
Or maybe not, we'll see!
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Editor
(This may be completely incomprehensible and was more for my own practice than for an actual attempt to communicate. Also, I don't know how to say it in Japanese but fuck short forms, so hard to keep straight.)
My recommendation once you have hiragana and katakana down (or even just hiragana, because katakana is 100% memorization after you know hiragana) is to get some vocabulary down. Mine is so bad even after almost a year of Japanese that I can't use that site Ogor's posted, and I've tried on multiple occasions. Literally have to look up like every other word. Once you have hiragana (and katakana I guess), some vocabulary, and a basic understanding of sentence structure, you can start writing practice sentences, which is basically the only way I ever make any progress in Japanese.
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"You're childish. What are you getting? Are you getting strawberry? Ha! That's such a childish flavor, only children eat strawberry."
Liberal Arts Major
<->
http://www.backloggery.com/kodan882
Editor
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"You're childish. What are you getting? Are you getting strawberry? Ha! That's such a childish flavor, only children eat strawberry."
Liberal Arts Major
It's more, "how do I deal with that adequately?"
it's a work in progress
and probably will be for a few months or so.
because i'm not good at this
also because **** yeah procrastination
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Editor
but once you get to te-form and short form and adjective conjugation oh man watch out
(i really should not still be struggling with adjective conjugation at this point)
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"You're childish. What are you getting? Are you getting strawberry? Ha! That's such a childish flavor, only children eat strawberry."
Liberal Arts Major
Any suggestions on how to proceed? I'm not sure how well this may work because in Kenri's case it seems you took class(es), as opposed to my totally undirected approach/mess/trainwreck. Not totally sure about Ogor, but... Are there any methods/stuff you think I should go for in particular?
I've heard about Anki as a good program to use, and that there are "decks" of vocab and stuff that sound like they might be helpful. My concern there is that Anki sounds like it's better for review and not learning, but I could rationalize it as at least doing something even if it may not be optional.
For Kanji (and I'm starting to toy with starting this a lot earlier than I indicated for a few reasons) I've heard good things about Remembering the Kanji. I've also heard some good things about Genki but that seems more general (which isn't a bad thing at all, just not Kanji specific)
I've heard bad things about Rosetta Stone (and I'm not too surprised by that) but good things about Pimsleur.
So, I don't know if you guys have any suggestions/ideas/warnings/etc.
I'm also probably unlikely to make any serious progress outside my holding pattern on kana for the next while. Aside from being lost and discouraged, my current procrastination method is taking the form of a Breaking Bad marathon to see what the hype is about. So that might eat two weeks or so. >_>
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?
Editor
But yeah I don't have much advice. You could pick up a textbook and workbook -- I feel like even without instruction most of it would be easy enough to pick up, though your pronunciation would likely suffer. But I think Ogor will probably claim that that's a bad way to learn and he'd probably be right. >_>
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"You're childish. What are you getting? Are you getting strawberry? Ha! That's such a childish flavor, only children eat strawberry."