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)

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。

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.

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.

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

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.

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！