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  • in reply to: today I learned #12764

    jkl
    Member

    Today I learned there are verbs whose stem is written using katakana, for example サボる.

    また仕事をサボっています = Skipping work again

    in reply to: Denshi jisho with audio? #12597

    jkl
    Member
    in reply to: difficult sentence — よう, i-form + といた #12309

    jkl
    Member

    So it is a contraction after all. The WWWJDIC gives the example below in its entry for とく, which it explains is a contraction.

    窓が閉まっているか確かめとけ = See that the window is closed

    Contractions are very difficult to deal with if you don’t already know about them. I looked around and found this list:

    http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/colloquial-contractions.html

    One notable omission from the list is the contraction のだ -> んだ.

    in reply to: difficult sentence — よう, i-form + といた #12242

    jkl
    Member

    I found another example of i-form + とく.

    券の手配しとくよ。 = “I’ll see about getting the tickets.”

    I guess that makes

    前もって予約しといた方がいいですよ

    something like “You had better see to getting reservations in advance,” or maybe “You had better make sure you get reservations in advance.”

    I also found another use of the idiom 注意を促す, and it looks like it means “call attention to” or “bring attention to.”

    警察たちはすりへの注意を促した。 = The policeman called our attention to the danger of pickpockets.

    Putting it all together, I think we have

    彼に集中するよう注意を促しといたよ

    is like “I saw to it to call his attention to acting in a concentrating sort of way.”

    in reply to: difficult sentence — よう, i-form + といた #12231

    jkl
    Member

    There is a recording of the sentence. I can’t believe smart.fm hasn’t shut down their media servers yet.

    http://assets3.smart.fm/assets/legacy/JLL/audio/Int/JS00907A.mp3

    It doesn’t sound like いった to my beginner’s ears.

    I also found another use of the i-form + といた construction.

    前もって予約しといた方がいいですよ。

    The translation says “You had better make a reservation in advance.” I don’t have a recording of that one. I found some information about the idiom “…方がいい”, but nothing about 予約しといた.

    Mecab says とい is from a verb called とく, and it says its form is “連用タ接続” but I can’t figure out what that means.

    in reply to: today I learned #12153

    jkl
    Member

    Today I learned the idiom 上京する, which means “to go to Tokyo.”

    in reply to: Tips For Retaining Vocab? #11877

    jkl
    Member

    To study vocab I create study sessions based around a theme. Usually that theme is something like “sentences which contain kanji X.”

    I built a sentence deck from materials on smart.fm, and I use the Anki browser to find matching sentences and create a cram session. I study each sentence and keep notes of all the distinct words I find that use the kanji I am focusing on, and how the words are read. The cards have the sentence written on the front, and the audio and translation on the back.

    Because the study session has a theme, I feel it is easier to make connections between words, recognize usage patterns, and get a sense for which meanings and readings are common and which are obscure. Dictionaries give you lots of information on readings and meanings of kanji, but they don’t tell you what is common and what isn’t, so you don’t know what you need to focus on now, and what you can ignore until later.

    Before doing this, it is a good idea to get an idea of which kanji are common in your deck and which are not. To put together a good cram session, you need 50-100 sentences, so you can’t cram based on kanji that only show up once or twice, or kanji that show up too often. For example, today I studied 切, which is in 85 sentences, and I found 23 distinct words. I wrote about how to compute kanji frequencies using Python in another post. If you aren’t a hacker, you might try just using general information about kanji frequency to give you some good ideas of kanji to focus on.

    The idea is to find kanji that are common enough to be useful, but not so common that you have to slog through hundreds of sentences with dozens of repetitions of identical usage. You will learn those while working through your cram sessions for other kanji.

    in reply to: Anki "Delayed Cards" #11500

    jkl
    Member
    in reply to: Reply To: Finding the most common kanji in your deck #11492

    jkl
    Member

    Well it looks like code tags don’t work, and I can’t edit that post either. I hope it is clear what should be indented.

    Edit: Moved script to pastebin.

Viewing 9 posts - 151 through 159 (of 159 total)