The Problem with Learning New Skills

There has been quite a drop in the number of posts in this blog and that is indicative of a drop in pace of my learning Japanese. At first, the lag developed when I took a short break to deal with my friends death. After a few days I continued to use it as an excuse. Eventually it got harder and harder to motivate myself to study. I had cut the Pimsleur lessons back to three a week, stopped reading further in TextFugu, and even spent a week of doing only maintenance on my WaniKani and not learning new unlocked items.

I finally decided to get back in the saddle today and to my surprise, one of the sections I covered in TextFugu was about "The Dip." This is when after initially learning a new skill the amount of results coming out of effort put in begins to drop, at least for awhile. This means that the intermediate stage of learning a skill is riddled with putting more effort into it and getting less out of it. I was running into this before I took my "break" and was a factor in my lack of motivation.

I'm familiar with this concept, I have seen it before with Spanish, IT knowledge, and singing. It's really important to push through it because after you pass "The Dip" the amount of effort required for results is lower.

So, this is me picking it back up.

To be fair, I didn't completely stop learning. Pimsleur offered some really good new grammar points and I have gained a ton of new vocab from WaniKani and Anime. I did try to focus on learning more vocabulary than anything else. Being able to read and write more words will really make learning the grammar points more fun. You can only go so far with basic nouns and verbs before you start to get worn out using them over and over.

I have been working in my head on a full Japanese post about myself. There are a few more things I'd like to pick up before I write it, so it will be "in the pipe" for awhile. The upside is that I am able to write full paragraphs now. Granted, my skill level shows, but I can do it none-the-less.

The Difference Between Round and Round

I unlocked more vocabulary on WaniKani today and I came across something fun and odd. Previously I had learned the word 丸い which means round. Today I learned 円い which also means round. 丸い refers to things that are more 3 dimensional like a ball or a cylinder being round. 円い refers to flat things that are round like a drawn circle or a coin. 円 is the character for ￥ or yen. So if you can think of a coin being flat and round, that's what you would use it for.

The kicker is 丸い and 円い are both pronounced まるい! Two different words meaning the same thing but written differently depending on context. Maybe a little confusing, but I think it makes sense to. In English we would need to write that something is flat and round to distinguish it from something that is just round. At least 日本語 has a nifty shortcut.

A Slow Week

I decided to use this week as a review week. I haven't started any new material. I have basically only been reviewing my Anki decks and doing my WaniKani reviews and lessons.

Speaking of WaniKani, I hit level 2 last night after completing my review before heading off to bed. This unlocked a TON of radicals, Kanji and vocab. I woke up early this morning (well I have been doing that this whole week to get used to DST) and completed all the lessons. I just finished the first post-lesson review and I'm surprised at how well I'm doing. Kanji isn't as hard as i thought it was going to be. Once you really start to get used to it it's not as terrifying. Sure there is a lot to remember but that challenge is pretty fun.

I also have nearly mastered Katakana. I'm still iffy on some characters. シ、ツ、ン、ノ、ソ throw me off quite a bit. I'm finding it is easier to practice reading loaner words than actual Katakana characters. Really, Katakana comes down to word recognition since you kind of fudge the pronunciations sometimes anyway. The TextFugu Katakana and Katakana Words Anki decks have been  extremely helpful. I have them combined so I get a mix of words and individual kana every day.

I did Pimsleur Monday - Wednesday. The level II is much more fast paced and intense. Also, the one I have is not the same edition as the level I have so I'm having to learn some different vocab on the fly. This is challenging considering I do this on my ride home from work. So, I'm taking this level a bit slower. All though, I did learn the following phrase that I will end with.

あいにく、失礼しなければならないんです。
(Unfortunately, I must excuse myself)

Kanji, Onyomi, Kunyomi, Okurigana, Furigana, Hiragana, and Katakana (to a lesser extent, Romaji)

Introdocution

This post is as much for my sake as it is for anyone learning Japanese. The writing and reading of Japanese is complicated by the fact that there are 3 writing systems (4 it you count Romaji, which I don't) used in conjunction with each other. One of those writing systems, Kanji (漢字) has several different ways to be read. So unlike English and most (if not all) European languages, not only do you have to learn pronunciations and dialect when reading, Japanese has the added complication of learning several ways to read the same language, and, the necessity to learn them all in order to actually begin reading in the language.

Hiragana (平仮名), Katakana (片仮名), and Romaji

Hiragana and Katakana are the Japanese Syllabary. It similar to an alphabet, except each character (文字・もじ)  represents a syllable usually either a vowel or a consonant and a vowel. For example the syllables for a, e, u, i, o, and ka are あ、え、う、い、お、か in Hiragana and ア、エ、ウ、イ、オ、カ in Katakana. There is one syllable that is a consonant by itself and that is ん・ン for 'n'. For the most part every Hiragana has a matching Katakana, but there are more Katakana than Hiragana combinations.

So, why does Japanese have 2 syllabaries?

Katakana

As I mentioned above, there are more Katakana combinations than Hiragana. Katakana is primarily used for loaner and foreign words, scientific words, and for emphasis (in stead of using italics). The additional Katakana combinations help approximate the sound of foreign words in Japanese. Japanese handles loaner words differently than most languages I have encountered. Many loaner words in English retain their original pronunciation or honest attempts at them. Japanese, however, imports them in their native pronunciation and often alters or shortens them. As an example, スーパー is the Japanese word for Super Market. It imported just Super and transformed it to a native pronunciation. It sounds something like soo-pah. Another example is my name マーク which is pronounced similar to mah-ku.

Hiragana

Hiragana is used to write Japanese words and particles, and is used as Furagana (振仮名) & Okurigana (送仮名).  Basically, any Japanese word for which there is no Kanji for, or for which the Hiragana usage of the word is more common than the Kanji, will be written in Hiragana. In addition, all the particles in Japanese are written in Hiragana (for some reason わ is written は).

Furigana (振仮名)

Furigana is the Hiragana written above Kanji (when Kanji is written left to right) or to the right of Kanji (when Kanji is written top to bottom) to aid in the pronunciation of the Kanji. This is used in children's literature for words children may know but have not yet learned the Kanji. It is also used with difficult Kanji (meaning not part of the standard 2000+ Kanji) or old archaic Kanji and Kanji usages to aid in pronunciation. While Furigana is helpful, you will likely see it rarely. So don't go thinking you can get away with not memorizing the readings of Kanji because you falsely assume Furigana will be everywhere. Due to technical limitations I can't really give a written example here but below is a picture depicting it.

Furigana

Okurigana (送仮名)

Okurigana is the Hiragana that follows a Kanji as part of the word. The Okurigana let you know information such as what form and conjugation of a verb is being used, which words with a similar Kanji is being used, and other things I haven't learned completely yet. I will cover readings of Kanji in the next section, but generally, a Kanji followed by Okurigana will mean the Kunyomi reading is used. One example of Okurigana is 大きい which means big. The part in red is the Okurigana which indicates it is the word big where in 大した the Okurigana indicates it is the word for considerable or great. Same Kanji, two different words and 2 different readings. Confused yet?

Romaji ( ローマ字)

I don't consider Romaji as part of Japanese. Romaji is the westernization of Japanese words. I have been using it through out this blog (Hiragana, Katakana, and even Romaji are all Romaji forms of the actually Japanese words). It exists only to make a word readable in western languages and is not normally used in Japanese. There are some exceptions. Some loaner words which have not been imported to Katakana and for which there are no direct translations into Japanese do appear in Romaji. One example I ran into while studying billiards related terms is "scuffer." Hell, most spell check programs don't even recognize scuffer as a word. But, I have seen it in Romaji on large number of Japanese billiards related websites. There are multiple ways of importing Japanese words to English but none of them are official and some are used in some instances and others in others. So there is really no point learning this or even considering it part of Japanese. Notice the "Roma" in Romaji is written in Katakana? Yea, Roma, as in Roman. Makes my case for it not being truly Japanese.

Kanji (漢字) and its Onyomi (音読み) and Kunyomi (訓読み)

As if the Kana's weren't confusing enough, but at least easy to learn, ultimately, most Japanese writing and Reading will require knowledge of Kanji. Kanji are character imported from Chinese. The Chinese would visit Japan and teach them their writing system. But they didn't just do this once. Each Dynasty came and taught the Kanji to the Japanese and brought with it their new pronunciation. The Japanese in their great wisdom and abhorrence of future learners of the language decided to keep the Chinese readings, all of them, and add to it their native Japanese words. This means that a single Kanji will have multiple ways to be pronounced (readings) and multiple meanings.

When I started learning Kanji this was so damn confusing. I would see words like 大きい, 大した, and 大家族 and just assume that 大 was one word and pronounced the same way and meant big. Having listened to a large amount of Japanese I started to notice things that were large or big had several different ways to say they were big. I just assumed that, as in English, they were all synonyms. Turns out they were all the same word, kind of. They all use the same Kanji. So what the hell is all this mess?

What the hell is a Kanji

First, you have to realize that a Kanji is separate from its reading (how it is pronounced, I'm going to use "reading" here on without this clarification). A single Kanji represents an idea or concept of sorts. 大 is a Kanji imported from Chinese. You can still see it in regular use in Chinese and has about the same connotation (I know this informally after watching something in Chinese and gleaming from context that they were using 大 to relate to an increase in size). It can have several different readings depending on it's context. Sometimes there is a rule to know which reading is which, and sometimes you just have to memorize it.

By itself, a  Kanji is not a word. It can be used by itself as a word, but by itself it is not a word (don't worry, I'm explaining this now). This is the second part of Kanji you must know. Kanji is separate from its vocabulary. The meaning or translation of a Kanji is derived from its context, not its mere presence. You may see a Kanji by itself in a sentence and in that context the Kanji is a word. You may see a Kanji with other Kanji and that will make it part of a compound word where its concept may retain its meaning, but the translation as a single Kanji word will not be present. You may also see the Kanji with its Okurigana in which case the Kanji with the Okurigana combined is the word, but not the Kanji by itself.

Combine those two concepts with the knowledge that Kanji is imported Chinese characters and you now know what they are. It is all very contextual as to what the Kanji does.

Onyomi

The Onyomi (音読み) of a Kanji is its Chinese reading. This is the 1-5 different ways a Kanji has been taught to the Japanese by the Chinese as the pronunciation of the Kanji. I often see this referred to as the "On" reading, On-reading, or Chinese reading on various Japanese<->English resources. In modern usage, most Kanji will only use 1 or 2 of its Onyomi and in many cases (at least I'm finding) one is used more than the other. Continuing with the 大 Kanji, it has 2 Onyomi たい and だい. As you can see, they differ only slightly. Another example is 力 which has two more different Onyomi りき and りよく.

That's great that we know these Kanji things have a Chinese reading associated with them, but what do we use it for in JAPANESE??? This was not clearly laid out in any place I could find. It was pretty frustrating. It was as if other sites just expect you to know what the hell and Onyomi was and how to use it. TextFugu offered the best explanation for this, but it is not available in their free content.

The Onyomi for a Kanji need to be memorized because there are no clues given to you by the surrounding Kanji or Okurigana. The Onyomi is used in cases of compound Kanji words. 大家族 means big family and 大 uses the だい Onyomi (だいかぞく). I learned this word from Clannad's theme song, if you are wondering. Why does it use だい instead of たい? I don't know if there is a rule. 大変 which uses the たい Onyomi (たいへん both characters use their Onyomi here) and means big problem or very strange (it has a contextual translation) and you hear everywhere in Anime. So, I don't  know but, I do know that if you remember the readings you can kinda guess which one to use if you are brushed up on your vocab.

So, mainly it will be used when the Kanji is with other Kanji.. except numbers. What? There are other exceptions, but the biggest one is numbers. I have noticed that Japanese numbers retain their Onyomi  when by themselves and sometimes use their Kunyomi when mixed with other Kanji. Really, though, the number Kanji never really change meaning, so you if you mess up reading them aloud, I think you will be understood but maybe showing your lack of familiarity with the language. These are everywhere though, so they are impossible to ignore. After I have my counters all nailed down, I will have more info on numbers and their readings.

Kunyomi

The Kunyomi is the Japanese reading of a Kanji. I often see it referred to as the "Kun" reading, Kun-reading, Japanese Reading, or standard reading (this is damned confusing, sites who use "standard reading" should be shot). In the intro to this section I said that the Japanese decided to mash their own word pronunciations on the Chinese characters. Luckily, for the most part, they provided a guide for when this is used. Usually when  Kanji is by itself it will likely use its Kunyomi reading. When a Kanji is followed by Okurigana it will also likely use its Kunyomi.

Continuing with my 大 examples, 大きい meaning big uses the おお Kunyomi (おおきい). Occasionally you will see 大 by itself and it is read the same as 大きい. This is informal, but I have seen it done.

A Kanji may have multiple Kunyomi as well. The Kunyomi for 上 (above) is うえ, あが, あげ, and のぼ. By itself, 上 uses the うえ Kunyomi. The 上がる (あがる using あが Kunyomi, meaning to actively lift or raise something) and 上げる (あげる using the あげ Kunyomi and meaning for something to rise on its own) give a hint as to which Kunyomi they use with their Okurigana. 上る (to rise, as in to rise in power), on the other hand uses the のぼ Kunyomi and doesn't give any hints. You just have to memorize that one (I mess that one up all the time in my flash cards because it is an odd exception, I just try to use some mnemonic about Oda Nobo-naga rising to power on his own without the help of all that extra Hiragana).

Now there are some exceptions to Kanji with Okurigana. 大した uses the Onyomi reading たい instead of the Kunyomi reading (たいした). I have read these exceptions are rare and you just have to memorize them. This one is not so hard because it is fairly common and the Onyomi for 大 is also everywhere. I'm nervous about finding others that do this, though.

Conclusion

You can see why Japanese ranks in the top 10 hardest languages for English speakers to learn. While the spoken language is fairly consistent and logical, its written counterpart is a mess ripe with rules and exceptions and multiple writing systems combined. Be prepared to spend days worth of your life pouring over different Kanji and vocab words memorizing what system to use where and how. Luckily, once you can start reading basic Japanese, you can start to pick up the rhythms and nuances. Easier. But it is a large hurdle before you can even do that. With just over 2,000 Kanji in modern usage to use in an extensive modern vocabulary with a mixture of Katakana loan words heavily sprinkled in, you have your work cut out for you. Just as I do.

Still Chugging Along

I took a day of yesterday from Pimsleur which I resumed today. I'm at a break in TextFugu because I need to get my katakana skill sup a bit before going on. I just don't get the chance to see katakana as often besides loaner words, which I already know a bunch anyway. Once i feel I'm ok with my katakana I will continue on with TextFugu.

Speaking of textFugu, I started using their WaniKani site to learn and practice Kanji in addition to the Anki decks from the TextFugu site. I also picked up the Ultimate Vocab deck from the site which is free when you are a member and have been learning new things from that as well. Right now I'm having trouble with 事. It just eludes me every time I see it. But, between what I had already gleaned with my previous Kanji studies and with what all i have learned in the past few weeks, I seeing that i can read a lot of signs and such in Anime.

Anyway, WaniKani is addictive... like crack cocaine levels of addictive. And it is working. I remember the 音読み for just about everything and I make it a habit of learning it for new Kanji i look up. Maybe this weekend I will explain 音読み and 訓読み this weekend, since I now understand what the hell they are and kind of when to use them. the 訓読み for numbers has helped a lot with those strange counters. I found out they use a form of the numbers 訓読み so it's just a matter of remembering that and then adapting. The 音読み has helped me read and understand more multi-kanji words.

Here is a side effect: I can understand some written Chinese now even though I cannot pronounce it in Chinese. I realized this when I was watching a YouTube video of a strange Chinese commercial. I knew a good percentage of the Hanzi so even though I didn't know exactly what they were saying I did have an idea without looking at the subtitles.

 The last few days have been kind of tough outside of the Japanese learning. I did learn one more form of condolence:

ご冥福を祈ります。(ごめいふくをいのります)

It can be translated as "rest in peace".  It translates literally as I pray for your happiness in the next world. The kanji for 冥福 are made up of "dark" and "fortune." I think it has a kind of macabre beauty to it.  In any case: ご冥福を祈ります、エミリー様。

My Condolences...

DISCLAIMER: This may be morbid, so forgive me in advance if it seems so. It's no secret that I have always handled death in ways that most people don't understand. As a result of my "odd" behaviors, I no longer attend funerals and try not to be around others who are grieving.

This post comes with sad news. A childhood friend and sweetheart of mine was reported missing this weekend and I just received word that her body has been found. I haven't been close with her in many years, but she did come hang out for my birthday celebration this past year. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for her we never officially dated, but we were really close in Jr. High and High School. She was always such a sweetheart, strong willed, funny, and pretty damn smart.

Needless to say, I'm broken up about this news. But, I'm also a student of Japanese. This is where the morbidity may come in. As I take a break from my tears I became curious how the Japanese give condolences. I guess there is really no good time to learn this, just like there is no good time to fill out a will or get life insurance. It's simply a morbid and often unpleasant topic. But learning is a coping mechanism. And for me, studying is helping ease the pain a bit.

I learned 2 phrases.

ご愁傷様でございます。 (ごしゅうしょうさまございます)

and

心よりお悔やみ申しあげます。(こころよりおくやみもうしあげます)\

The first (ご愁傷様でございます) is kind of weird from an American worldview. It just kinda acknowledges that someone is grieving. This is the polite form you use with someone who is not in your family.

The second(心よりお悔やみ申しあげます） means "condolences from the bottom of my heart" basically (more literally, condolences rise from my heart). I believe this one is ok to use for family or friends, but is maybe too informal for strangers.

In any case, I had to learn that and write this out to kind of deal with what's going on right now. I know it's morbid, but it helps.

You know you have been studying Japanese when...

• You say "Yes. Ketchup, 2 please." to the drive thru worker.
• You have stopped saying 1 million and have completely replaced it with 百万(ひゃくまん).
• Your friends stop talking to you because they are annoyed with you constantly throwing Japanese into the conversation.
• You start correcting the subtitles.
• Yoda-speak no longer sounds odd.
• You dream in Anki format.
• You have the Google IME installed on every computer you touch.
• When you talk to yourself, you start using it as a chance to perfect your accent.
• You start wishing you could have kids so you could give them a Japanese name.
• You say to yourself "I could watch another house of cards episode, but I have a wanikani review due in a few minutes."
• Your "perma-tabs" include google translate, jisho, and at least 1 of the 40 some of learning sites you are using.
• Google gave up giving you English only results even when you search with only English words.
• You update your language learning blog/log religiously.
• Sleep? But I only have 3 more lessons until the next chapter!!!

Benchmarking Your Self-Studies

People who take traditional language classes have it kind of easy in at least one way. While standardized tests are are not an exact science, they do allow for progress tracking. When you are studying a language on your own, you don't really have any guide posts to tell you "You should be here and doing this." Even if you are taking a structured self-study course the tests and end points can seam trivial, especially if you happened to already know the material in a section.

So how does one measure their own results? I don't know. But I can tell you how I do mine. When I started this I installed a few apps on my phone that are basically Japanese flash cards. They break things up like hirigana, kanji and phrases into  sections and track your accuracy completing the sections. I don't think they are valuable learning tools so much as they have proven as great ways to track how far along I have come.

When I started 2 months in January, I could complete each of the hiragana sections in 15 minutes with about 70% accuracy (that's that built in exposure working in my favor). Today I was able to complete all the sections combined in under 5 minutes with 99% accuracy. Damn you ち and さ and き, I know you, but you look so damn alike I press the wrong one sometimes. Incidentally, my trick for remembering ち vs さ is that ち's bottom does NOT for a "c" for it's "chi" sound. Anyway, that is some remarkable improvement.

I decided to stop tracking the Kanji I have learned on this blog. It's getting unmanageable since I'm getting them from multiple sources. But, according to one program , I know close to 300 now. It's still not enough to read kid focused Japanese websites yet (some of the Kanji I know are more advance words, so I have this strange gap between easy common kid friendly kanji and some more esoteric rarely used Kanji).

This brings me to something I read somewhere and I agree with now. Don't bother trying to track how many Kanji you know. 1) the number doesn't mean anything. You could know 3000 of the completely wrong Kanji and not be able to navigate your way out of a train (電車駅) or subway(地下鉄駅) station. 2) You may not actually know as many as you claim. This is true even for native speakers. Many young native speakers have Kanji Amnesia which is like "I'll know it when I see it or my phone/computer popes it up when I type the hirigana." Great reading comprehension with 0 recall ability. 3) It is no actual measure of progress. As you learn more Japanese you will learn more Kanji, yes, but as you learn more Kanji you may not actually learn more Japanese. This was certainly the case when I was studying Remembering the Kanji.

So how do I track my progress? By trying to read Japanese sites. Sometimes I get nothing, sometimes I get pieces, and sometimes I'm lucky and get decent chunks of info.. While I can't actually put it to number like I can my kana, I can say it has certainly improved from "The fuck are all these symbols???" but is still nowhere near any kind of admirable comprehension level. When I can read the front page of any online Japanese kids newspaper without having to look anything up, that will be my first milestone. My final milestone will be reading all of 新世界より. It was one of my original goals for learning the language in the first place.

Yea... about my decisions in the my last post...

I did end up getting sick and stayed home from work. I slept for most of the day trying to fight off the fever I had. But after finally waking up and feeling a little better I decided to look around at other tools for learning Japanese. What harm could that do, right? I was planning on taking a few days off from the others anyway.

I came across TextFugu. People were raving about how good it is. It is basically an online text book that has a bunch of Anki decks and worksheets. The first Season (which you could say is a chapter) is free. I started it at about 6 and I finished it about an hour and a half ago. I immediately bought the lifetime membership.

Why? Because I really like the teaching method and delivery. The Kanji lessons are similar to Remembering the Kanji and better since it teaches you the actual meanings AND readings (Remembering the Kanji only teaches you 1 possible and sometimes not all together accurate English meaning making it easy to understand what the Kanji is but not how to read it in Japanese). The delivery method is light and playful. It has a feel similar to this blog, in my opinion. The author has an approach to teaching the same way I would teach someone Spanish or any language for that matter.

But, one thing that had me sold? Actual reading and writing lessons. The reading and writing lessons in Rosetta Stone are sub-par. In just the few hours I studied TextFugu today I feel my confidence in reading hirigana greatly improved. Another thing, there is the promise of learning informal Japanese. I don't think Rosetta Stone will ever touch that.

For now I'm going to shift gears to TextFugu completely. I'm not abandoning the others just yet. I will continue with Pimsleur next week since I just do it on my drive home anyway. But for now I'm putting Rosetta Stone and Remembering the Kanji on hold.

No post yesterday? Your *#$%^% right there wasn't... and Japanese I COMPLETE!!!

There was no post yesterday because, put simply, I didn't study. I started Pimsleur, but stopped. I started Remembering the Kanji, but stopped. I totally skipped Rosetta Stone Why?

After my realization Tuesday night that I was about to finish Japanese I of both Rosetta Stone & Pimsleur and freaking out about not having much in the way of advanced self-learning I did some research yesterday. To my surprise, no one had anything good to say about either. In fact, everyone was pretty much calling them crap and a waste of time. This made me second guess what I was doing.

I studied Japanesepod101.com for a bit instead. Many people said it was a better alternative to Pimsleur. I checked it out and It has its merits, but it just spits info at you in my opinion. Pimsleur, if you do it right, makes you repeat things over and over and recalls previous lessons right when you are about to forget them. I decided that they both have their ups and downs and since I'm already almost done, I would stick with Pimsleur. The gripes against it don't out weight the value I see in it.

Most are of the opinion that Rosetta Stone is a huge waste of time. Complaints range from no explanations and lack of cultural sensitivity (what??). Rosetta Stone teaches languages like you are a child growing up with out people who speak English around to explain things to you. The idea is that is how we are meant to learn languages. I'm no language learning expert. but my fluency in reading, writing, and listening have increased greatly as a result of using it. I get my knowledge of the why from my independent research. You can see in my previous post where I have looked up things I had questions on and linked to the answers. I kinda like it that way.

The complaint about cultural sensitivity... ok... Many of the pronunciation sections are filled with English loaner words. And why not? A TON of modern Japanese nouns are loaner words (not all of them from English). The complaints about the lack of Japanese people in the pictures? Well, this is a PLATFORM (singular) for learning LANGUAGES (plural). I think the images are fairly diverse as far as races go. I don't think there are too many white people, but I might be seeing through the filter of being a white male. I dunno. I don't think that makes the platform any less valuable for learning the language. There are 6 voice actors (3 male and 3 female) who are all native Japanese Speakers. It's a good system for learning how it should sound.

In the end, I decided NOT to modify my curriculum at this time. And, as a result:

Today I finished both Rosetta Stone Japanese I and Pimsleur Japanese I!

I'm excited about this milestone. I plan on taking a few days off from both. I will continue on with Remembering the Kanji tomorrow (2 days off is going to hurt on those Anki cards.. eek). I believe gaps in learning are essential and healthy. I value practice and that's why I will continue with my Kanji learning in the meantime plus, I have a ton of Anime to catch up on so it's not like I will be devoid of Japanese. I will resume my normal schedule on Monday or Tuesday (I think I'm catching a cold and that may make speaking difficult so an extra day may be needed).

For now...

私におめでとう！

Maybe I'm studying a little too much?

Here is a break down of today's lessons:

30 minutes with Pimsleur
15 minutes reading Remembering the Kanji
30 minutes reviewing new and already learned Kanji with Anki
20 minutes researching various questions about Japanese on the internet
1 hour and 30 minutes with Rosetta Stone
Another 20 minutes internet research.

3 hours and 25 minutes. And that's just the Monday-Wednesday schedule. I spent 9 hours self studying on this past Saturday.  This also doesn't account for the other various things I look up or learn during the day when a  question pops in my head.

I looked it up today and Rosetta Stone recommends 30 minutes a day and that at that pace it will take about 3 months to complete a level. If I do everything I plan to tomorrow I will have completed level I. I'm also close to finishing Pimsleur's level I. I started all this just a few weeks ago.

Maybe I'm going too fast? Or maybe since I have been exposed to the language for so long this is an OK pace? I don't know. I do know that I can have full conversation in my head and my dreams are swimming with Japanese and Kanji.

I don't know what's good and normal. I'm not feeling overwhelmed. I'm highly motivated to learn and I haven't shied away from anything yet. But I'm afraid I'm going to run out self learning material In 2 months (with the exception of Remembering the Kanji which should last me about 6 months at 20 Kanji a day). I'm not sure where to even begin for advanced learning on my own.

I guess I will cross that bridge when I get there.

Todays Trouble Kanji. (kanji: 160/2042)

河 , 活 , 江 , 沼 , and 永 gave me trouble today. 河 for river is easy for me to remember when I see the kanji, but when I'm given "river" I keep coming up blank as for what the Kanji is.


活 is "lively" but i keep failing to remember that water on tongues makes for a lively party. I just need to think of it as drops of acid instead of water. A bunch of  people dropping acid on their tongues is a very lively party. I think i will use that to remember it.

江 for "creek" wasn't too bad, i just kept drawing a blank on it. If i see the Kanji I have it but not the other way around. You "craft" "water" into a "creek".

沼 as a "marsh" I just couldn't get. With 召 being seduce (but me remembering it as blowjob) and 沼 being water seduced maybe if I picture it as a marsh filled with slobber from  sloppy blowjob i will remember it. The book did say to be evocative with your memory.

永 as "eternity" was just being stubborn and not sticking in my head.

は vs が & 石 vs 右 kanji: 120/2042

Before I started my Rosetta Stone lesson for today, I did some reading the /r/LearnJapanese. There was a post asking for help with は vs が. Anyone new to Japanese will soon encounter Japanese particles. Particles function similar, but not exactly like, prepositions in English. They help identify where an action is taking place where someone is going to, who said what, etc. They are tough to grasp at first because there is no English equivalent and depending on the usage of preposition may change which particle you will use in Japanese (for example, playing a game in a house and living in a house will use て and に respectively even though they are both translated as "in").

は and が are perhaps the trickiest to grasp and even more so to explain. I know that が is supposed to be used for the subject of the sentence and は is supposed to be for used for the Topic of the sentence. The problem lies in English not really having an equivalent to a Topic. The first comment to the post mentioned before links to this article. Let me tell you, I have read many explanations of how and when to use は and が and this article was the best.

I thought I had it covered until today's grammar lesson in Rosetta Stone.

あなたは鍵がいりますか
vs.
あなたは鍵を持っています

"You need the key?" and "You have the key." Why did the key become the subject in the "need" sentence but an object in the have sentence? Does the key produce the desire within the topic maker? I dunno.

Today's Kanji were fairly easy. 石 vs 右 threw me for a loop though. 右 is right and 石 is stone. They look pretty close. 石けん is soap. So I was thinking soap had something to do with the right hand or something. Turns out 石けん is from 石鹸 (also means soap) which is something like salty stone. So I just need to remember that 右 has a line at the top.
　

A Rosetta Stone "Gotchya"

This is something that had been bugging me in Rosetta Stone that I hadn't figured out until today.

After you complete all the parts of a lesson but before you move on to another unit you will, at some point, be prompted to take a review for that lesson. I find it is usually after I finish the next lesson's vocabulary. After you have completed the review it will tell you that you will be prompted to repeat the review in a few days.

I thought this would be automatic, but it is not. I have been trucking along doing a lesson a day including all of the lesson activities it prompts me to do until it prompts me to do the next core lesson. Some of these activities include activities from previous lessons. But I had not been prompted to review the much older lessons from other units I had already completed.

The unit 1 lesson 1 review was supposed to prompt me to re-take after the 18th. It is now the 23rd. I was starting to get worried because it had already passed time for the lesson 2 and less 3 reviews to prompt as well. I could not find anything in the settings to make those prompt.

What you have to do is from the home screen, navigate back to all the units you have already completed and THEN it will prompt you for the reviews due in that unit. Silly me.

So, before you start a core lesson, navigate back to the previous units and complete whatever review work you are supposed to do. This will keep the older content fresh in your head. Even though Rosetta Stone works heavily by reincorporating what you have already learned into the new knowledge, these reviews contain the core knowledge that is important to take away from that lesson. If you mess up you should go back and study that lesson again.

WTF Rosetta Stone! Kanji: 100/2042

No Pimsleur today. I wrapped up lesson 4 of unit 3 in Rosetta Stone today and completed the milestone for unit 3.. kinda.

So the first milestone for unit 1 was fairly understandable and somewhat easy.  Unit 2 had a few oddities added to it, such as figuring out what question to ask based on the answer given. It wasn't difficult once I figured out what they were trying to get out of me. This continued in the Unit 3 milestone and wasn't so bad until the last question.

I'm supposed to ask a question to which the answer is "washing the plates because they are dirty from the guests eating on them." So I ask

何をしてますか?

And it tells me I'm wrong. What? What the hell am I supposed to ask? Up to this point I have been at a dinner party and had all kinds of conversations with people about where they work and when they play soccer. Everyone has left. I see my friend at the sink, but can't really see what she is doing. The only I can logically think to ask is "what are you doing?"

I had to cheat and press the speaking help button. to my surprise, I'm supposed to ask

どうして皿を洗っていますか？

"Why are washing the plates?" What? We just had a dinner party and I'm asking my friend why she is washing the plates? I guess I'm pretty forgetful. Oh well.

I'm glad I didn't up the number of Kanji per day. While learning new ones becomes easier and easier, retaining the older ones becomes more difficult and the Anki session start taking longer.
But it is rewarding. I know at least 100 Kanji now (slightly more as I still know quite a few from my other studies that have not appeared in Remembering the Kanji yet).

My favorites from today are 召・昭・則

 召　is to call, beckon, or "seduce" It easy to remember because 刀 is sword and 口 is mouth. Imagine a sword as a penis and it is being seduced by a mouth. I lovingly call this Kanji "blowjob".

Then 昭 shining becomes fun too. Like, someone "shining" the a light on a blowjob.

則 is rule, because a shellfish with a sword "rules" in my book. Similar to how 貞 is upright because a shellfish with a magic cane is a mighty "upright" shellfish in my book.

A Mighty Upright Shellfish

Micro-Practice: Counting at the Gas Pump, Cash Register, Car Milage

Yesterday I shared that I had successfully counted to 99,999,999. One of the micro-practices I have been doing is to read numbers in Japanese whenever I can. As an example, yesterday I was filling up my gas tank and I was alternating between counting the total sales amount and the number of gallons.

The Pimsleur lessons provide lessons on filling up your tank at a gas station.

満タンにしてください。

Is basically "fill 'er up, please." Japan, like most other countries in the world, uses the metric system. So instead of gallons, practice saying リットル instead.

Filling up on gas is a perfect time to practice counting and a bit of conversation. If you are lucky enough to be alone at the pump, you can count the numbers out loud, ask the pump to fill your tank, and thank the pump. If there are others around and you don't want to appear like crazy person talking to yourself and a gas pump (what fun is it if people don't think you are crazy??), you can simply practice in your head.

I make a mini-game out of seeing how fast I can keep up with the scrolling numbers. It's a decent challenge.

You can also practice reading the numbers on the cash register or translating what the cashier says is your total. I really recommend doing math completely in Japanese for your totals and change. I'm pretty strong in math, but doing it in another language was difficult at first. Having done it for a few weeks now, I feel it has definitely contributed to my confidence in Japanese number. It is definitely easier than translating the numbers in your head, doing the math, and then translating the answer back.

To practice counting large numbers, you can count your mileage. My car happens to have over 150,000 miles so that is a conveniently high number to work with right now.

From this, hopefully you can see where practicing numbers can be done in other similar situations.

Finally Learned 100!! 80/2042 Kanji

No Rosetta stone today, but Pimsleur finally came through on counting. Today I finally learned 100 (百) that means I can now count all the way up to 99,999,999! An odd thing about 百 is that it changes pronunciation from ひゃく to びゃく for 三百 (さんびゃく), 六百(ろっぴゃく), and 八百(はっぴゃく). It does make them a little easier to say.

One difference about the Japanese numbering system is the use of a 10,000 grouping. In English we get to 1,000 and it is the same all the way until 1,000,000. 999,999 is nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. Thousand is the highest grouping in that lot. But in Japanese, 万(10,000/まん) is used. so you get to　九千九百九十九(9,999) and then go to 万. So one million is 百万(ひゃくまん）. The next grouping is 100,000,000 which I have not learned yet. So, that means Japanese numbers are grouped in 4's making commas (grouped in 3's) in the English counting system annoying and translating between the 2 difficult. I could more easily hear a number, write it down and then say the English for that number than I could trying to direct translate.
 (For more I recommend reading this).

so I can count from 一 to 九千九百九十九万九千九百九十九 (1-99,999,999).

Watchers of One Piece will likely remember 百万ベリfor those pirates who had bounties over 1,000,000 beri. It gets repeated quite a bit.

Pimsleur only covered up to 千 (1,000). But my Remember the Kanji has taught me 万 (10,000) today. So I can go ahead and use it. Just to check if I was right, this site has a convenient chart of all the numbers (I didn't cover it here, but notice the changes in the pronunciation of 千). Now, counting to 99,999,999 is all well and good, except the words you use when counting different items changes. I don't know all of these yet but some examples are:

一人「ひとり」 1 person
二人「ふたり」 2 people
二日「ふつか」 2 days
三日「みっか」 3 days

Also, for anime watchers, if you have ever heard someone itemize points (1st, 2nd, 3rd) you will hear a different one (I haven't those yet, I only know them when I hear them). We do this in English all the time too and take it for granted (couple, single, triple, first, second, etc). One way you can tell a native from a non native English speaker is how they handle counters. One step at a time.

Anki and kanji: 60 down, 1,982 to go... still??

No Rosetta Stone today and Pimsleur is still introducing directions. So I decided to try and adderess something that was pissing me off about Anki.

Anki is a great flash card program. Don't get me wrong, so far I have loved it. But, the deck I got for Remembering the Kanji only shows cards with English words as questions and the Kanji as answers. This is helpful for people who want to learn how to write kanji, but I think it is detrimental to those of us trying to learn to read. So, what I wanted to do was show Kanji as questions and English as answers. I figured it would be a simple process. It is not.

This video did help me get it straight, but now I will be stuck doing some odd reviews for awhile as my "backwards" cards get caught up to my "forwards" cards. Oh well. At least it works now and I found I actually have a pretty damn good recall of what these Kanji mean when I look at them.

Remembering the Kanji does not have the pronunciation of the Kanji (which can change based on which meaning of the Kanji is being used anyway). But, remembering the sound of a word and what it means is easy enough to attach it to the Kanji. My ability to take a document and read it aloud in Japanese will probably suffer for awhile, but my ability to read and understand it and even translate it will be pretty damn good. Which is perfect seeing as I don't think I will be giving speeches written in Kanji any time soon.

The fruit of Today's Combined Lessons & I Finally Can Say What I'm Doing

So between Pimsleur covering the directions （右・左・真直 more on those another day when I know more） and Rosetta Stone hitting hard with numbers, I think I'm really getting some of the basics down. I feel comfortable with my number up to 99. Why the fuck did they skip 100 and go to 1000? I know how to count from 1-99, 1000-1099,2000-2099, 3000-3099.. notice the huge lack of fucking 100's? I guess I could go study it on my own, but I just find it odd I have these weird gaps in my ability to count simply because I haven't learned 100 yet.

So, if you are new or confused in the number system, this is how it works. You have your normal numbers 1-10. To go over 10 it is spoken and written like 10-1 (十一), 10-2 (十二), 10-3 (十三), etc. The you get to 20 and it becomes 2-10 (二十). Then it goes on as 2-10-1 (二十一), 2-10-2 (二十二), 2-10-3 (二十三), etc. So all to way up to 99 (九十九) I got. Then you would use the character for 100, except I don't know that yet.

It's a damn easy system and it makes learning counting numbers easy. But then you have to throw in Japanese counters when describing objects and people. That is a discussion for another day. I still only know a few anyway.

But, the fruit of everything today is:

私は日本語を勉強しています。
「わたしはにほんごをべんきょうしてます。」

"I am studying Japanese." How very apt.

And on that note, こんばんは。

Kanji: 60 Down (kinda), 1,982 to go

Ok, So this morning I was mentally reviewing the first 20 Kanji and I realized I couldn't draw 6 六 or 8　八 in my head. I need to remember that 6 is a classy animal with a top hat and that 8 is two wide open lines. Needless to say, I spent some time reviewing these.

Today's Kanji had some tough ones. 昇 to rise up, ascend it kind of tough. I just need to remember it is the sun rising over 1,00 needles and I will be fine.

博　is for doctor. I like this one. 専 (10 rice fields glued together by a specialist) is specialty and to remember 十 as needles, 博 is a needle specialist a doctor. this is the  はく　kind of doctor, not the 医者kind of medical doctor. More like a PHD kind of doctor.

Kaniji continued: 40 down, 2,002 to go

Today's fun kanji： 自・白・胆・胃・旭・千

 自 and 白are easy for me to visually mess up. 自is oneself (eye with a tear drop) and 白 is white (a drop of sun). The extra line is, for some reason, harder for me to make out in 自.

 I had to repeat 胆 (gall bladder) a few times. Flesh before sunrise. I'm just goin to imagine gall bladders get taken out before nightbreak.


胃for stomach, flesh that support the brain. I dig it.

旭 (rising sun) I had the second hardest time. But, the baseball rising in popularity in Japan is good way to think if it rising the sun.

And, I love 千(1,000). It's an eye dropper trying to get 2 more 0's on 10.

These exercises really don't take long. Compared to the 2 hours of Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur combined. I think I could up this to 30 or 40 a day, but i want to wait until I have seen some tougher kanji to make that decision.

Two more from Rosetta Stone today:
月居日・　げつきょび　Monday.. moon-day. Really easy to see that one.
日居日・ にちきょび　Sunday.. see the pattern.
I got nothing on the rest of the days of the week though.

Dekomori vs. Milk

Today's Rosetta Stone lesson includes the phrase:

この牛乳はますいです。

Which translates "This milk tastes bad". I was immediately reminded of Dekomori from  "Chu 2 Byo". In fact, Dekomori is how I remember 牛乳(milk).

Back to studying.

Today's kanji lessons begin. 20 down, 2,022 to go.

Today I'm taking a break from  Rosetta Stone because I had a mentally exhausting day at work and I don't have the patience to focus on it. I might give it a shot here in a bit if I suddenly get more energy. Instead, I started my Kanji lessons. I'm using Remember the Kanji and starting with lesson 1. As the intro to the lesson suggests, I already knew most of these. 一,二,三,四,五,六,七,,九 and 十are the numbers 1-10. I have actually been acquainted with these since I was a child as we had to call them out and write them for karate (It pays to have had a Japanophile 先生). But, I like the way the book shows how to memorize 四 as a mouth meeting with 2 animal legs.

Which brings me to the next set. 口 is a mouth. It's a wide open hole. 日and 月I know from Rosetta Stone as being the sun and moon respectively. 田 I had already learned as a radical, but I guess I just don't understand how important a rice field will be in the grand scheme of things. 目for eye is... odd. You have to think of the center block as an iris/pupil and the outside blocks as the whites of the eye. I can see it.

古 for old is kind of morbid and awesome. Think of a tombstone.. the book says to think of old text on the tombstone, but I'm just going to imagine it marking where an old person is burried.


吾 as I. Hmm... I can't seem to translate it that way. I'm guessing that when it is mixed with stuff it it will have the usage of I. But there are 5 mouths/holes in your head.　(Figured it out, me/oneself is a better translation than I, but I will keep using what the book tells me to).


冒as risk is fun. an eye looking up at the sun is risky bidness fo sho.

朋 two moons is companion. I actually couldn't get this translated properly, but I found it is とも　as in ともだち「友達」. that makes sense... except for the complete lack of 朋 in the kanji for friend. In any case, i;m going to remember it as the moon finding a friend in its reflection.
¯\(°_o)/¯

明 as bright. The sun shining on the moon is bright.

That's 20. I went a little further in the book, but the flash cards for today are only the first 20. So, now I have to reevaluate how many kanji I really know. In addition to these 20, I'm fairly sure I can recognize close to 50 more. I guess my initial guess was modest. It wasn't until I actually started counting that I realized I knew so many. But, I officially only know 20. I think I will be able to continue these with the rest of my studies for now. In future posts I wont be listing every kanji, just the ones I found interesting or difficult.

Micro-practice: Driving to the Bar

Pimsleur's Japanese I includes conversations necessary to order drinks at a bar. I find myself practicing this in the car on my way to the bar often. The conversation is fairly simple and at this point in my studies I am confident I could order what I want. Of course, when I get there, there is no one behind the bar who would understand what I'm saying. That's no the point though. You should practice another language as often as you can. Simply following the instructions in any study guide will likely not be enough to master a language. Much of what I have read and experienced first hand when i was learning Spanish in high school, is that it is imperative that you practice as much as possible.

I call this micro-practice, I do it often. I will be including things I do in these mini study sessions during times of convenience in this blog. For now, it's time to go to bed.

おやすみなさい。

今日は！ 私のお名前はマークです。

Hi! My name is Mark and I am learning 日本語. I have been a fan of Japanese culture and language since I was a child. It all began with karate lessons and in my recent adult years I have become a huge fan of anime and manga. I have dabbled with trying to learn Japanese in the past, but after having completed 300 full series of anime, I decided it was finally time I ditched the subtitles and went native.

I'm currently taking a multifaceted approach to learning the language. For listening and speaking skills, i'm making use of the Pimsleur's Japanese I, II, and III audio lessons. Which I do Monday through Friday on my daily commute home from work. I and also making use of Rosetta Stone Japanese I, II, and III Saturday through Tursday for reading, listening, speaking, and typing. Finally, I will begin using a combination of Remember the Kanji I, II, III and Anki to learn kanji this week.

This blog is not really meant to be read by anyone, but I have learned that making language learning blogs while studying a language is super helpful. I also have stumbled across a few others' Japanese learning blogs which I have personally found helpful answering novice questions. Since I don't have a teacher or native speaker to rely on for these kinds of questions answers, blogs like this one have helped fill that gap.

To give you an idea of where I am at in the learning process, I'm an nearly completely proficient at reading hirigana. I have not studied katakana for some time so i still struggle with it. As for kanji, my last estimate was that I'm at about 30 or so. Part of this blog's purpose is to serve as a count tracker for my kanji studies.

My listening ability is warped well ahead of my reading, writing, and speaking abilities as I have been watching anime daily for the past 4-5 years with subtitles. I have picked up on a lot of phrases, nouns, verbs, and even grammar. I realize most of it is impolite and informal, but it has made the ear tuning portion of my learning that much easier. I already have a decent sense of when to use certain particles, even though I have no formal teaching of when they are used.

My speaking ability lag behind all else. This is because I have no one to speak to. I have a friend who plans to start studying soon, but even when they do they wont be at a conversation level for awhile. So, for now I talk to my cats and use Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur. None of which really offer the feedback required to gauge my progress. That is an avenue I will pursue after i have gained a better understanding of the language as a whole.

As for handwriting, I will tackle that after I have finished my goal of 2000 Kanji. I may dabble here and there with hirigana,  but I don't have any immediate plans to focus on this area as I have almost no immediate use for handwriting in general. I am learning and slowly become proficient a using the Microsoft IME. That is really serving as my writing outlet at this time. Stroke order and other such handwriting related knowledge is just too much to fit into the already intense coursework I have created for myself.

I hope anything I write here helps another learner, or at least provides some entertainment.

じゃまた！