Current Events > Update on my Hiragana/Japanese learning thread.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Why is the text in Bleach so small?
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What do you mean?

Text being small ceases to be an issue once you can read the characters comfortably as well as fill in the blanks mentally for unreadable words
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I'm alternating between reading manga with furigana and manga without furigana. Bleach has furigana, but sometimes it's practically impossible to read the furigana because turns out Bleach uses tiny text bubbles with massive amounts of tiny text.
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YonicBoom posted...

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ArmieBuff posted...

Learning is good

It's very good

Thinking of starting a language learning board, but I wanna wait till I've actually learned Japanese well enough before I do something like that. Nothing is worse than people who claim to be an "authority" on something they don't yet know well enough to teach.

Hmm.
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YonicBoom posted...

Thinking of starting a language learning board, but I wanna wait till I've actually learned Japanese well enough before I do something like that. Nothing is worse than people who claim to be an "authority" on something they don't yet know well enough to teach.

Hmm.

You don't need to be an authority to make a board like that. All you gotta do I show interest in it. Do you know any other languages?
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Sadly, I don't. My limited Mandarin-speaking abilities have faded from years of disuse. The plan is to go for that once I'm "done" with Japanese, but that could be a while. It's either that or bang out Spanish or French really quickly (like 1 year's time) just to reach that "self-sufficient" stage where learning becomes possible in the actual language. Learning what I have through this Japanese nightmare has made me fearless to tackle other languages going forward.
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Tag

I have a headache, a fever, and 260+ flashcards I need to do.
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M3sterybumper posted...

Rimmer_Dall posted...

I have a headache, a fever, and 260+ flashcards I need to do.

Probably best to take a break then tbh

Nah, I did them. Would've sucked royally the day after if I hadn't.
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One of the nicest things that people don't seem to talk about much in the JP learning community are the resources for learning higher-end grammar (N3+) IN Japanese itself

You do have to have a solid vocab base to make it work, but it's done nothing but wonders for learning the finer points since it's all actually written by natives and not some random junk that may or may not be right.

People meme about the "monolingual transition" but you just realize one day by accident you're ready for it and from there, you're bound for excellence.
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I hope I can reach that point within the next 8 months.

I've been going overboard with adding new cards to my vocabulary deck lately. There was that one day where I added 120 cards. Gonna add a hard limit where if I have more than 200 reviews coming up the next day I won't add any new ones. Apart from upcoming words in Tae Kim. That way I should never spend more than an hour reviewing.

Unless you count WaniKani.
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It's not out of the realm of possibility. Once you have a vocabulary somewhere between 3-5k words, and a solid handle on the grammar, the sky is the limit.

I've stopped stressing about carding words so much anymore, I just read and play and listen, mostly carding new Kanji or words that consistently give me problems. Even those things work themselves out with enough time. I'm not keeping track anymore because I'm too busy enjoying stuff at this point to care.

Hell, I just bought a card game in Japanese and could read all but like 1 or 2 words in the entire rule book/cards text. One was freaking of all things. You start to really notice your gaps in knowledge the moment you think you have pretty decent coverage, even though you technically know a lot.

The puzzle slowly completes itself...
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I get some weird stuff playing Japanese playlists in the background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOllDySXcFo" data-time="&start=1964

What even is this game?
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YonicBoom posted...

Sadly, I don't. My limited Mandarin-speaking abilities have faded from years of disuse. The plan is to go for that once I'm "done" with Japanese, but that could be a while. It's either that or bang out Spanish or French really quickly (like 1 year's time) just to reach that "self-sufficient" stage where learning becomes possible in the actual language. Learning what I have through this Japanese nightmare has made me fearless to tackle other languages going forward.

That's a shame. Mandarin would've really helped you out with Kanji and the similar sounding pronunciations of some words
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Checking back into my thread.

I'm 47 days into learning and I think I'm ready to start adding in some extra resources for learning.

I'm about 40% of the way through duolingo's curriculum but I feel like to get a good grasp on it I'll need to do some independent study as well.
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It's been mentioned multiple times, iirc, but NHK Web Easy is a great way to practice once you've developed a basic foundation.

Also I was playing TWEWY for the first time yesterday and they had some cool easter eggs for people who know a little Japanese.

I knew what natto was and one of the characters said domo arigato to me and I knew what that was, too. That made me happy.

TWEWY in general seemed like a cool game to play if you have a slight bit of Japanese understanding, since it sprinkles a lot of little Japanese stuff all over the game that you won't 'get' otherwise.
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Steve Nick posted...

Also I was playing TWEWY for the first time yesterday and they had some cool easter eggs for people who know a little Japanese.

I knew what natto was and one of the characters said domo arigato to me and I knew what that was, too. That made me happy.

Those are pretty common knowledge and don't require you to learn Japanese. I mean doumo arigatou was in a popular Styx song in the 80s.
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ssjevot posted...

Steve Nick posted...

Also I was playing TWEWY for the first time yesterday and they had some cool easter eggs for people who know a little Japanese.

I knew what natto was and one of the characters said domo arigato to me and I knew what that was, too. That made me happy.

Those are pretty common knowledge and don't require you to learn Japanese. I mean doumo arigatou was in a popular Styx song in the 80s.

I didn't know them 2 months ago, and now I do, though! And yeah, my friend actually told me about that Styx song yesterday when I mentioned it to him.
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Once you reach a point where you can enjoy stuff for real in it, the "overworking" thing becomes minimal.

That said, the hardest part is getting there, and that takes some time and dedication... and faith that you're gonna get there, and accepting that even once you reach learning independence that you're still gonna have to do a lot of studying.

However, once you can start defining things and the world around you in your own words, in Japanese, with proper verbiage/grammar, you're gonna have a great time. You've just gotta get the base vocab/grammar to support that first.

Unless I stumble on something entirely 100% new that I have no way to define, any flashcards I do are in Japanese. Certain "power" words will take you far with this, ()() / / , great use of , and just knowing lots of words for various situations are all ways to dance around vague knowledge while still explaining things.

Example, let's take a word like and instead of simply saying what it is in English, provided you have the vocab for it, just explain it like a parent might to a kid in simple-ish terms (or, as complex as you can understand without having to cheat or use a dictionary)


That's a pretty good definition even if it only covers 1 possible meaning, but I suppose we could go further and define another



Forge

"making metal things stronger with heat, fire, and tools"
"practicing and training to improve your skills/techniques/etc"

Just think of how you might try and explain these things to a kid if they asked what they were.

Other times you might just know a shit ton of words to describe something else, which is valid too.




There's certainly no lack of words to describe a corpse in any language. Of course, it's up to you to figure out the specific usage of each one.

Anyway I guess the point is to slowly wean yourself off of English for these things, but no matter what you're not gonna be able to do that for quite a while.
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I've been studying/reading Japanese for like four years and words I don't know still pop up a decent amount, so be prepared for that not to end for years. I know enough that it's not too much of a hindrance to reading though. Like I got through Yakuza Kiwami 2 in Japanese just fine. VNs I can read pretty comfortably too unless they get really technical or specialized in vocab.

YonicBoom posted...

enjoy stuff for real in it, the "overworking" thing becomes minimal.

Very true, especially when you're reading things you couldn't before

Started adding some Japanese definitions from weblio to my deck instead of English ones from Jisho. Mostly for things that I already comfortably know what they mean and just need to know how to read or things that have a really simple definition.

Don't exactly need to be fluent in Japanese to understand

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Even if I can't necessarily read the text that comes after.

1000 35

The part that reads is more than enough.
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fuckin weeaboos i swear
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Rimmer_Dall posted...

Started adding some Japanese definitions from weblio to my deck instead of English ones from Jisho. Mostly for things that I already comfortably know what they mean and just need to know how to read or things that have a really simple definition.

Don't exactly need to be fluent in Japanese to understand

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Even if I can't necessarily read the text that comes after.

1000 35

The part that reads is more than enough.

This is a quality post. Speaking of
()


x

That definition you posted for is pretty lol since most of it is a breakdown of the chemicals/salt content typical of it. 99% of people will never care about that but will understand what it means when they see it written.

A large majority of noun definitions are indeed gonna wind up being a combination of things you may already know, just read differently, because Kanji.

More vague or specific things may require more specialized vocab, but all in all it's not that hard.

By the way, one thing I'm severely confused by in some of the weblio definitions

https://www.weblio.jp/content/%E5%B9%B8%E3%81%84
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https://www.weblio.jp/content/%E5%B9%B8%E3%81%9B

https://www.weblio.jp/content/%E5%A1%A9%E8%BE%9B%E3%81%84


What are the bolded parts?
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Rimmer_Dall posted...

What are the bolded parts?

The old kana usage (pronunciation is different on those kana today), kana have not always been read the same way as now and sometimes there are gonna be things like that to let you know, if it matters (it doesn't)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_kana_orthography

This ought to clarify any questions you have going forward about that

Yeah, those are super obscure readings that would only ever matter if you studied old Japanese texts or were preparing for the highest level of the Kanji Kentei test.

https://jisho.org/word/%E6%9C%9D%E3%83%9E%E3%83%A9%E3%81%AE%E7%AB%8B%E3%81%9F%E3%81%AC%E7%94%B7%E3%81%AB%E9%87%91%E8%B2%B8%E3%81%99%E3%81%AA



Expression
1. don't lend money to a man who doesn't have an erection in the morning (because he's not healthy and might die before he can repay) Archaism, Proverb

KEK
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happibivouac posted...

fuckin weeaboos i swear

Weeaboos is fake Japanese
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Welp, looks we might be adding @Leanaunfurled to the club here. That xseed annoucement

This is a great little topic, thanks for the tag! But yeah, I'm seriously considering to just start learning at this point (for more than just the Kiseki series).
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Been mostly doing listening/watching lately. New intake of fresh words is slowing down because I'm mostly watching easy stuff or things that have vocab I already know well. Mostly, just trying to enjoy stuff and reinforce things I know. It's been a stressful past few weeks and I'm in no mood to grind super hard.

Gonna try to do Lazy Kanji, without writing. I'll try not to take it too seriously and just blaze through at least 100 a day and try to get it over with as soon as possible. Won't select wrong if I know the kanji but answer the wrong keyword or something like that. This'll just be a really casual thing to get familiar with them all. I'll be adding all the RTK keywords to WaniKani too just so they match up whenever the respective kanji come up as reviews.
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Huh, it actually is and not .
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Rimmer_Dall posted...

Huh, it actually is and not .

Yes. It's a command made towards time, not a description of what he is doing to time. You can tell that the latter would be strange for two reasons:

1) It would be odd for him to give himself a command.

2) is an intransitive verb, and therefore does not take the direct object particle .

shin megami if finally got translated. Which of you dukes did it

Did it? That's great!

This guy is so utterly and hilariously bad I can't help but be entertained.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytozNSrsnp0" data-time="&start=328

For some reason he insists on doing 3 heart and no-damage challenges even though he's about as good at the game as I was when I was eight or something.
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