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Michael Lowrey:
Do As Infinity was good also, thank you.Honestly I am a bit surprised there hasnt been an AKB recommendation yet either.I havent listened to them but based on past articles they r very popular.Whether you like their music or not idols do offer a lot of options to practice Japanese, and can be very entertaining. Of course it helps if you like idols. A popular non-music option is AKBingo! I can’t get enough of that show. It’s genuinely entertaining.
The nice thing about idols is they are paid to speak clearly. You can’t beat that when you’re starting out.
Andrew: It does seem like something is missing.
It seems like a Number of things are Missing. ;)
I’ve found looking things up by radical to be incredibly tricky at times. Sometimes I can find the kanji pretty quickly. Most of the time it takes wayyyyyyy too long. Sometimes, and too often, I never find it. I’ve debated posting a question on tips for looking kanji up, or using radicals more effectively.
One thing I found out last night that was interesting, and I don’t know if it will be useful in the long run, is I was translating a card from a game. I had a terribly hard time seeing the kanji because it was so small. After wayyyyyy too much time of getting nowhere I took a picture of it with my phone. After that I zoomed it all of the way in, and realized it was a combination of yen, and cross. There were other radicals, but that instantly became clear to me. Now mind you I could see the shape of the kanji on the card without the zoomed in picture, but for some reason with it zoomed in my mind was able to pull the pieces out a lot quicker.
Bbvoncrumb:
I DUNT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT GOODDAYSIRHEHE, SORRY, FORGOT MY CAPS!
READ OP FOR DEETS!
;p
Bbvoncrumb:
By za whey I’m pretty sure Koichi did a video explaining how to practice R sounds.
Or not, that’s also a possibility.Hehe, he did. That’s why my opening statement in the OP mentions it. ;)
Armando:
Where do you guys buy cds from? I was gonna buy from bk1 (now honto) since my previous order (for books) went well, but there’s also cdjapan, yesasia, etc. Any differences?Couple of different places. One of them had incredible deals for singles 100 yen, sometimes as low as 50 yen. Although, you can find them in just about any shop in Akihabara. Heck, even 7-11 has some. Your best bet is to shop around. Some places charge way more than others for the exact same disc. I didn’t realize this first, and overpaid for one. I think the general rule I found was the smaller the shop the more likely you’ll find a good deal.
@Kanjiman8 – Point well taken. That video was a good example. I suppose it goes back to my original theory then, but from the perspective of pattern matching, not noise reduction. I know the brain is really good as filtering out stuff it considers noise. That is to say the shear volume of information our senses gives us needs to be pruned for only meaningful stuff. The brain has to make snap judgements, and it leans towards the familiar. Japanese is still not familiar by the brains standards, so it filters more than I want it to. Meanwhile, the brain is also really good at pattern matching. To a Japanese person who is familiar with all of the patterns, pronouncing the same word differently isn’t going to interrupt understanding, and will likely go unnoticed. To me however I’m hearing what is being said because I don’t have enough context and experience to fill in the blanks automatically.
All of this adds up to my inexperience hurting me in two important ways. That is, the normal strengths of the brain are currently weaknesses.
@Yggbert – You didn’t find your brain skipping over the R sound as noise then?
There is some good stuff there on pronouncing R, but not really any talk on hearing it, or if not hearing it common.
Looking back on your early days of learning Japanese do you recall if R sounds eluded your ears more than other sounds?
I guess I like being an outlier. ;) Some of the first words I spoke to a Japanese person had the づ sound in them, and she didn’t even bat an eye at me. It’s not because I’m super awesome at Japanese, just read my posts on this forum to confirm that I’m not. It’s that what Andrew said was very correct, everyone pronounces things a bit differently, and as a result you’ve got a bit more slack on the stranger sound.
I’m also reminded Koichis goal for us to focus on the 80%, and worry about the 20% later. I’d say this is definitely 20% territory. It’s a good question, but I think listening practice, and speaking practice will answer it for you in the only meaningful way.
I hear some people say subtitles are a crutch, and I don’t disagree, but sometimes I just need to understand what I’m watching on TV. ;) I still try to listen as well as read, and find myself pausing, rewinding, listening, and looking up words, and noting them for later. An hour show may take me 90 minutes to watch, but I think that’s a good sign.
Subtitles are better than nothing. Still, I can’t wait to turn them off.
Yeah, being in Japan gave me a lot of practice in that regard. My ability to pick out random words from the noise got a lot better. I still don’t always hear the words correctly though. For example, I was watching TV today, and I swore the actors were saying ”おめがし”, but they were saying ”おめかし”. Even after I confirmed it was おめかし I would go back, and listen to them say it, but every time I heard おめがし. That made me a bit sad.
From my personal experience I assumed learning Japanese would take a long time, so I took way too long to do the first two seasons. I regret that. I’ve been picking up momentum ever since.
I like the advice of finding alternate ways to practice. I try that to some degree, but haven’t had a ton of luck in finding productive ways to do that. The best I’ve come up with, for my current skill level:
* Practice writing. I know Koichi said to skip it, but I found I could read hiragana a lot faster, and with fewer mistakes once I got good at writing it. Also, I can practice writing it during a boring meeting, and one of my goals is to take notes in Japanese.
* Active listening/watching. I’ve just started doing this, and a little more than half of the time it’s with subtitles on. Still, if I hear a phrase, or a word pop up, and I want to know what it means I try and look it up, and flag it in my denshi jisho to export to Anki later.
Eventually, I suspect I’ll be able to watch TV, play video games, and other things to practice. I’ve picked up a lot of material from Japan to do this. I’m just not at the stage to leverage most of it. Also, I bought Japanese board games, and RPGs to translate as a way to practice when I’m ready.
If anyone has any suggestions for other ways to practice please let me know. :)
Ryatt:
I go through Anki daily, sometimes 2-3 times just to be able to read, speak and understand the sentences/vocab/kanji better.Wait how do you get Anki to do that? It always makes me wait at least a day.
zeldaskitten:
In anki, it tests you on onyoumi.The kanji deck is all meanings and onyoumis.The vocab deck is where it tests you on actual readings of actual words.I hope that helps!I wish someone had told me that when I was at that stage. :)
