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.

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

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.

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！