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

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnuwgZeklzY" data-time="&start=95
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As soon as I'm finished slogging through the last dungeon in MM I think I'll try an OOT 3 heart run.

Do Master Quest. It's nuts.
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Come back leana

Tried out FFIX in Japanese. Ended up staying up all night playing.

God I wish the game had furigana. So many words I understand by kanji meaning and context, but which I can't read. Like "kidnapping" and "play".
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Rimmer_Dall posted...

Tried out FFIX in Japanese. Ended up staying up all night playing.

God I wish the game had furigana. So many words I understand by kanji meaning and context, but which I can't read. Like "kidnapping" and "play".

You'll never have to look them up again though.

Chip away for long enough and you'll start running into less and less stuff you don't know. Of course, at first it seems nearly insurmountable, but on a long enough timeline you'll get there.

I've started incorporating more and more kanji into my Japanese diet. The way I have my Anki deck set up right now is the kanji (With the reading), an example sentence, and then the meaning and translation on the back

Example

Front:



Back:
To eat
"I eat meat"

Kinda basic but it gets the job done. Also verb conjugation is hard
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Verb conjugation seems hard up front, but once you know enough verbs that you can focus on reading them, and have seen them over and over and over it stops being like that.

I've actually dropped flashcards completely for the time being and am just reading and listening a lot more. I write words on sticky notes and post them around my desk at work, but I usually don't need to see them too many times unless the word is some truly weird reading or odd usage.

Also, I'm balls-deep in j-j dictionary usage, as it's easier to remember stuff that way, even if you do sometimes get sucked into the "look up 3 unknown to understand 1" thing.

So after 8 months or so, I finally finished the 2200 Kanji flash card set as recommended by Nihongoshark. Now I have a 1K set of vocabulary words and I also need to start working on my Genki. I'm dreading starting either of them because I know it'll take 2 hours if I start the vocabulary set and get the ball rolling. Now that I've completed my Kanji, reviewing it is pretty lax, I can knock it out in a half hour, even if I skip a day.
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You're only just now starting grammar and vocab?

YonicBoom posted...

Verb conjugation seems hard up front, but once you know enough verbs that you can focus on reading them, and have seen them over and over and over it stops being like that.

I've actually dropped flashcards completely for the time being and am just reading and listening a lot more. I write words on sticky notes and post them around my desk at work, but I usually don't need to see them too many times unless the word is some truly weird reading or odd usage.

Also, I'm balls-deep in j-j dictionary usage, as it's easier to remember stuff that way, even if you do sometimes get sucked into the "look up 3 unknown to understand 1" thing.

The hardest part for me upfront is remembering if a certain verb is either godan or ichidan, and I'm still not familiar with all the different forms, I'm kinda stuck in the basic ~/~ phase atm

I like the thought of eventually learning in Japanese, to make it a more organic experience than learning in English though. I have a friend/tutor that does the same thing

I've really fallen off my progress since starting school though. Balancing Calculus, Phsyics, and a foreign language with work is a lot
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Wind Waker in Japanese is a pretty painless experience. Though I really need to chill with the adding too many cards to my deck. I still haven't finished Tae Kim.
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YonicBoom posted...

You're only just now starting grammar and vocab?

Yup. I'm pleased to say that knowing the kanji helps a lot. It helps you recognize what the sentence is and helps you remember it as well.
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MarqueeSeries posted...

I like the thought of eventually learning in Japanese, to make it a more organic experience than learning in English though.

It really helps with the problem of trying to translate on the fly instead of thinking within the language, even if it takes a while to get there.
Like, if you learn = you're a step ahead compared to learning what it means in English, since you'll be thinking that instead of searching for an English word in your soul.

Rimmer_Dall posted...

Wind Waker in Japanese is a pretty painless experience. Though I really need to chill with the adding too many cards to my deck. I still haven't finished Tae Kim.

"too many cards" isn't the worst problem you can have, as long as you're not carding pointless stuff that you remember without trouble. If you easily remember something with only a few exposures to the card, it's probably not something you should have carded in the first place. That varies a lot since you have no idea what your brain is gonna be good at remembering at any given time, but it will at least help cut down on the pile or help you cull it a bit if it seems overwhelming.

Sad_Face posted...

Yup. I'm pleased to say that knowing the kanji helps a lot. It helps you recognize what the sentence is and helps you remember it as well.

I'm mostly curious as to the retention rate of all 2200~ once you do start vocab and reading. It took me around 6 months to build up a vocab/grammar base to where I stopped keeping track of the actual number of words/kanji I notionally know. From there, pure consumption took over. I just don't worry anymore if I know several hundred "literally never used" kanji but am still missing ones from the jouyou list, because at that point I know when I see them and won't likely forget them after that.

I wouldn't worry about it either way, I just wish I had some perspective on that myself to know what your situation is like vs my own.

Funny enough, I have never used any sort of mnemonics to try and remember Kanji or words, but I found myself explaining them that way to a friend the other day and told him "they're not hard to remember if you do this thing that I literally did not do." Which really makes me wonder.

YonicBoom posted...

"too many cards" isn't the worst problem you can have, as long as you're not carding pointless stuff that you remember without trouble. If you easily remember something with only a few exposures to the card, it's probably not something you should have carded in the first place. That varies a lot since you have no idea what your brain is gonna be good at remembering at any given time, but it will at least help cut down on the pile or help you cull it a bit if it seems overwhelming.

The issue is mostly I've been neglecting my grammar in favor of adding new words. On the positive, since my vocabulary is so big (relatively speaking), every time I learn a new grammar point it's basically an eureka moment where my understanding of the language seemingly skyrockets.
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Rimmer_Dall posted...

The issue is mostly I've been neglecting my grammar in favor of adding new words. On the positive, since my vocabulary is so big (relatively speaking), every time I learn a new grammar point it's basically an eureka moment where my understanding of the language seemingly skyrockets.

The best part of this is that after a certain point (knowledge of all base grammar) it comes right back down to... vocabulary. Just learning different ways of saying the same things, with slight tweaks and nuances. And that's so much easier when you can refer back to what it means in JP. Really expands your options.

YonicBoom posted...

I'm mostly curious as to the retention rate of all 2200~ once you do start vocab and reading. It took me around 6 months to build up a vocab/grammar base to where I stopped keeping track of the actual number of words/kanji I notionally know. From there, pure consumption took over. I just don't worry anymore if I know several hundred "literally never used" kanji but am still missing ones from the jouyou list, because at that point I know when I see them and won't likely forget them after that.

My retention rate so far is probably a good 60%, if I'm being generous. I definitely need to keep working on my Anki flashcards. I've actually been delaying working on my vocabulary and grammar for the past 3 weeks because I dread spending 2-3 hours on them everyday like I did with the kanji. I don't know if it was a good idea, but I can't stop now >_>
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Sad_Face posted...

My retention rate so far is probably a good 60%, if I'm being generous. I definitely need to keep working on my Anki flashcards. I've actually been delaying working on my vocabulary and grammar for the past 3 weeks because I dread spending 2-3 hours on them everyday like I did with the kanji. I don't know if it was a good idea, but I can't stop now >_>

You should lower the interval modifier. You want to strive for a retention rate of about 80 percent for optimal time efficiency (i.e. least number of reviews you have to do per day). There's an equation in the anki manual showing what you should change your interval modifier to in order to hit a target retention rate. You just need to plug in your current retention rate and your target retenion rate into the equation.

log(desired retention%) / log(current retention%)

So log(80%) / log(60%) = 0.44, so you change the interval modifier to 44% in that specific deck and your retention rate should theoretically rise to 80% over time.

The 80% number is from this graph, based on an anki simulator run with various parameters.


http://massimmersionapproach.com/table-of-contents/anki/low-key-anki/forgetting-strategically/

Also, consider implementing the Low-Key Anki setup. It really helps remove any stress from reviewing and reduces the number of cards you need to do per day. By a lot.

http://massimmersionapproach.com/table-of-contents/anki/low-key-anki/intro/
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Come back leana ;_;

Rimmer_Dall posted...

Also, consider implementing the Low-Key Anki setup. It really helps remove any stress from reviewing and reduces the number of cards you need to do per day. By a lot.

I may have to do this, I've kept a backlog over the past week so I'm up to about a 100 when it should be down to 30-40 each day. It also doesn't help that I haven't sat down to work on this for an hour straight. I'm trying to go through it now but I keep getting distracted (being at work, and procrastinating on that too).
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Have any of you guys thought about taking the JLPT?

I want to take N1 but I'm afraid the listening will destroy me. I still suck at listening.

Not gonna bother doing any kind of JLPT until I'm good enough to pass the N1.
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I'll take the N1 whenever I'm ready, but only because I'm sick of posers making lame excuses as to why they won't take tests to validate some portion of their linguistic knowledge.

Passing it means very little in the scheme of things but there's a remarkable number of popular self-appointed leaders of the Japanese learning community who refuse to assess their abilities in this way for fear of losing what little credibility they have.

Out-of-context quotes.


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Come back leana ;_;

I'm taking N1 for the 2nd time this December.

Dragonblade01 posted...

I'm taking N1 for the 2nd time this December.

Finally done with Essential Grammar in Tae Kim's guide. Special Expressions and Advanced Topics left.
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Rimmer_Dall posted...

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.

Lmao

Rimmer_Dall posted...

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.

Lmao

Been watching through . Haven't needed to mine much vocab since this is a really simple show.

Otherwise, just studying as usual while keeping up with news. Nothing exciting to report.

YonicBoom posted...

Been watching through . Haven't needed to mine much vocab since this is a really simple show.

Otherwise, just studying as usual while keeping up with news. Nothing exciting to report.

lmao I think I know a guy who might be interested @MacadamianNut3
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I gotta say, this show has a LOT of setup for what I think is gonna be a fairly decent payoff, depending on how they complete the story. Then again, if it's anything like every other Anime, it's gonna deliberately do something totally dumb and be inches away from truly powerful storytelling.

It's not boring though, which is good.

Already deciding what to watch next, might finish up or start something entirely random.

God dammit the GameCube version of Ocarina of Time runs so badly it's ridiculous. No furigana either, although that's not as big of an issue as I expected it to be.
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As expected, the N64 version is much more pleasant. Plus it let's me try out the uncensored 1.1 version.

Managed to get an undubbed FFX International version as well. I can't believe they didn't include Japanese VA in the International version even though they have Japanese text.
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IIRC the only parts of that would have been significantly easier with furigana would have been... basically the Shadow Temple. Aside from getting used to some words like or though, it's not terrible since you see them every other 5 seconds.

Nice thing is when you go to play it's sort of the same pattern, lots of similar/repetitive words, and most of the "difficult" words show up at the tail end of the game.

EDIT- also some of my Light Novels finally arrived, which I ordered last month.

Rimmer_Dall posted...

As expected, the N64 version is much more pleasant. Plus it let's me try out the uncensored 1.1 version.

Managed to get an undubbed FFX International version as well. I can't believe they didn't include Japanese VA in the International version even though they have Japanese text.

EDIT: God DAMMIT! The subs are a translation of the English dub, not a transcript of the Japanese one! Gonna have to get the original.

I didn't know anything got censored. What was it?

Mostly dumb stuff like the moon symbol on blocks/mirror shield being replaced, the chanting in the Fire Temple music being replaced, Ganondorf coughing up green rather than red blood upon beating his first form, etc. Nothing earth-shattering.

Dialog was basically unchanged. Some of it definitely reads better in Japanese, while other parts read better in English. Localization crew did a nice job, you're not missing anything by playing it in English.

Also, I've started learning Mandarin for shits and chuckles, I view it as the better language and so far most/all of the Kanji learning stuff I picked up with Japanese transfers right on over.

I'm only about 300 Hanzi deep (a week or so worth of study) but this isn't particularly hard. The grammar is so straightforward that it's actually hard to deal with, after coming from Japanese and its often roundabout ways to say stuff.

Q -
()

A -
(), or a more direct translation perhaps is ()

The neat thing is that if you have a good handle on Japanese and English grammar, Chinese is awesome because SO FAR it appears to be the best of both worlds with very few of the drawbacks. Verbs aren't really conjugated, you just set up the "when" in advance or use a certain marker to say "it happened." Word order is largely English with certain elements of Japanese (mostly the TOPIC handling). The only huge negative (barely) is that counters are out to own your soul, but those are things you get through context anyhow.

I'm not sinking too much time into it (about an hour a day) but it appears that learning to deal with Kanji is a huge time-saver. Tones are (so far) not terrible like everyone would think. Also only having ONE way to read any given character is AWESOME.

...still, there's around 5000 Hanzi one must know before you're truly worth a damn, so many things are yet to be seen.

The goal is to be reading in 4 or so months after heavy grinding (I'll probably have around 3-5000 words under my belt at that time) and let input carry me from there, but again, not working too hard on it since most of my watching/reading is Japanese. I'm employing much harsher learning strats and imposing time restrictions to this just to see how it goes.

Wish I had known about this video when I was new.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUFExxTeZhU" data-time="
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First Burned items today on WaniKani.
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M3sterybumper posted...

Read that as sluts and giggles lol

Truth is, if I were to return to my old job/life speaking a high-ish level of Mandarin, that would be the actual truth. These days, that's not really my style.

N1 test is tomorrow. Pretty confident overall, but I definitely wouldn't say passing is a sure thing, lol

How long have you been studying in total?

YonicBoom posted...

How long have you been studying in total?

I couldn't say. I don't count hours, and I wouldn't be able to keep track even if I did. I also don't exclusively study for specific tests, but also study in more holistic ways since I live in Japan.

Dragonblade01 posted...

N1 test is tomorrow. Pretty confident overall, but I definitely wouldn't say passing is a sure thing, lol

Tell me how it is.

I'm interested in taking it. Maybe next summer.

I know I should take it once even if I fail just to have an idea what to work on, though.

I don't have too much trouble reading (fiction at least, I've been reading JP VNs for a couple of years) now but I have a bit of trouble actively producing Japanese on my own rather than just reading comprehension so that's what worries me.