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)

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。