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I am trying to get down all of hirigana and Katakana by April first I already know most of the hirigana, I also trying to get down basic sentence structures…. Particles and verbs stuff like that.
Did somebody say… “get down”? http://youtu.be/dx_nxtpH7ig
No, no they didn’t.
Lol I like how they put furigana for 0 in the subtitles xD
ehh, slightly on topic
I might attend JLPT this summer in London and do n4. Apparently it takes around 1500 vocab, and I think I can reach at least that amount by then, so I figured that maybe I should do it. It will give me a goal, and a little paper I can’t use for anything…
Anyone else attending this summer?Me, also in London.
Anonymous@Mister
Lol’d
I’m studying how to form more complicated sentences by taking advantage of and combining many grammar types, word-choice, and a wider assortment of particles to try and sound a lot more fluent.
Unfortunately my sentences starts to fall apart the bigger it get’s :( but that’s changing with the help I’m getting from lang-8. I’m also trying to get a lot better with honorific/humble language but apparently I completely butcher every attempt, my corrections I get are dripping in red-ink.
My latest sentence is:
YouTubeで、ファンを作るボーカロイドの音楽ビデオを捜していたときに「はと」ビデオをみつかります。
I was searching Youtube for Fan-Made Vocaloid Music Videos when I discovered the “Hato” video.Thankfully, I only made a few mistakes:
YouTubeで、ファンが作ったボーカロイドの音楽ビデオを捜していたときに「はと」のビデオをみつけました。Doing reviews for RTK is starting to get really easy. Just doing 30-50 kanji a day is so much easier than doing the previous 90-150. I have really seen it pay off to do RTK, though I have to wonder how much I could have learned during the 2 months it took to complete…
I am almost halfway through second step in core 2k, and learning words is going at a pretty fast rate atm. I think this is partly due to core2k, but also due to improved studying techniques on my part.Also did a lang-8 entry today… While my sentences are starting to get longer, and get corrected less, now my problem is becoming particles >_< I will have to improve on that…
@Mark: I doubt anything you could have done in those 2 months would have had the same impact on your Japanese studies as a whole.
@Mister Yeah, I can see it pay off well in the long run :D But I could have learned maybe 600 words in 2 months, which is also a lot. But those 600 words are now way easier to learn thanks to knowing the kanji :)
I went ahead and signed up for JLPT4 this summer. Now for hoping I can get good enough in time :D Also Mark, I will see you there I guess!
A question to those who have done it before, how does the listening part work. Do you only get to listen once, or can you listen to it multiple times? :/I finished Exploring Japanese Literature, and I’m moving on to Short Stories in Japanese: New Penguin Parallel Text. It has furigana (the first time the word is used) and some notes at the end. So far it has been much easier than EJL.
You seem to read quite a bit. Out of the ones you have read which would you recommend the most, to start off the reading journey?
Also, how was Breaking into Japanese literature, and the follow-up?
> Out of the ones you have read which would you recommend the most, to start off the reading journey?
I would say that of all the things I have read, the most encouraging one was a children’s book called 鬼の毛三本. Probably the hardest thing about it is understanding what the title means (hint: 本 is a counter, and often counter expressions go after what they are counting). It has a large amount of text on each page (actually, the left pages are all text, and the right pages are pictures), the kanji have furigana, so words are easy to look up, the sentences are relatively simple structurally, and there is enough repetition of vocabulary that you can start to understand entire sentences without having to look up words.
> how was Breaking into Japanese Literature?
Breaking into Japanese Literature and Exploring Japanese literature have a really nice format. There is a mini dictionary on each page and a translation on the facing page, so everything you need is right there in front of you. They are both great to read in bed, because you don’t need a computer to look things up or anything else. You can read a few pages before going to sleep and get a little more Japanese time in each day, on top of whatever else you are doing.
That being said, the texts are difficult. There are long descriptive passages with lots of uncommon words, archaisms, etc. So if you are going to read them, you have to have the right attitude, which is that you don’t expect to understand the text without help. Expect that you are going to have to look at the definitions and translation for every single sentence, and forget about trying to learn every single new word you come across. Learn what you can, and enjoy the story.
The Read Real Japanese Essays / Fiction texts were easier, as I recall. But the dictionaries are in the back, instead of on the same page, which is inconvenient. There are interesting grammar notes in the back as well though, which can be useful. In a final note, BIJL and both the RRJ texts have audio, but EJL doesn’t.
>That being said, the texts are difficult. There are long descriptive passages with lots of uncommon words, archaisms, etc. So if you are going to read them, you have to have the right attitude, which is that you don’t expect to understand the text without help. Expect that you are going to have to look at the definitions and translation for every single sentence, and forget about trying to learn every single new word you come across. Learn what you can, and enjoy the story.
Yeah, when I reading 通学電車, this happened. However, even if you do end up looking up every single word, the effort in doing so is not pointless. You can actually really learn ALOT
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