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.

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.

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.
　

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

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.

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.

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.

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！