Forum Replies Created

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 24 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • in reply to: Extra kana practice with different fonts #44735

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    http://www.realkana.com/options/

    You can choose to practise kana in different fonts on realkana already. Those are some of the more common styles, I think.

    Ahh, thanks, that should be helpful.

    I’m not sure I see why you’d want to have flash cards of unusual kana fonts. The fact that they are “unusual” means you’re not going to have to see them all the time, so they’re not something you need to specifically practice. Yeah, sometimes I see text in weird fonts and I think “What the heck is that one supposed to be?”, but if I manage to figure it out then I know for the next time I see it (if ever). It’s one of these things you have to take on a case-by-case basis as fonts can sometimes be drastically different, although you do get better at guessing over time.

    I certainly won’t try to learn a crazy number of styles, but practicing with a few will I think better help me get to what makes a character a character, instead of memorizing things that may not be the same from font to font. Example of this below the next quote.

    Saw ads on the side of a bus when I was in Japan that had a character with two little horizontal lines next to a vertical line with a slight hook, and I was staring at it going “… is that supposed to be シ or ツ?” In hindsight, it was probably シ, and those are tricky to tell apart anyway, but still. Don’t underestimate ad designers’ abilities to come up with new and fascinating fonts. =P

    When learning katakana, I differentiated all the “smiley face” characters by considering “number of eyes” and “half smile or full smile”. Then I ran across a fixed-height font where all of them appeared “full smile”. I was supposed to use the angle of the “eyes” to tell which character it was supposed to be, but I was lost as I hadn’t been forced to learn it that way.

    Another example is き. I didn’t realize the diagonal line and curve didn’t always connect, so when I first ran across that in another old game I was stumped. When I realized what it was I thought it was just something they were forced to do due to how little space they had to make it recognizable, but looking at realkana.com now I see that’s the way it is with a number of fonts.


    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    The dictionaries that I own have romaji to english and vice versa. I think this is fairly standard. The one that I would recommend is: Its straight foreward and it romanizes よう as you and not yō.

    Was going to say you forgot to mention what the book is, but while quoting I see it’s a formatting problem stopping it from showing up, so a slightly modified version: Random House’s Dictionary

    in reply to: How important is Anki for TF? #44285

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    Whether you learn something in a few days or a few months is less important than what you remember about it in a year. I initially learned hiragana in a couple weeks, but it took months of practice before I felt pretty comfortable going both from character to sound and sound to character while making acceptably few mistakes.

    in reply to: かなぁ? #44253

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    Thanks. And interesting.

    in reply to: Help please! #44252

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    I think using the “Save Page” option in your browser should work. At least, minus video and sound clips.

    in reply to: Did Season 2 – Chapter 6 – Practice use your name? #44207

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    It does for me.

    in reply to: こんぼんわ! #44165

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    Even knowing 0 proper Japanese words, it’s a pretty cool thing to see recognizable characters on screen and then realize it actually is something you know. I remember shortly after starting with hiragana and katakana and watching Pacific Rim, and being able to go “Hey, that monster just destroyed a… VI-DE-O store!”

    in reply to: TextFugu Season Completions for Great Motivation of Heart! #44152

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    Finally got done with season 3. Two main reasons it went slower. The amount of daily reviews on WaniKani has increased quite a bit, so that takes up more of my “Japanese time” each day. I also don’t want to get too ahead of myself–the ~50 most common verbs are slow to get solid in my mind, and I feel like things will be worse if I try to add too much on top of that yet.

    in reply to: Custom Excel Dictionary..? #44103

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    It’s a little more than copy/pate, but in Anki if you go to File > Export you can choose to export as “Cards in Plain Text”. That gives output that looks like

    <span style="font-family: Mincho; font-size: 50px">あたま</span>	<span style="font-size: 50px; ">あたま</span><br>Head<br><span style="">[sound:41-atama.mp3]</span>
    <span style="font-family: Mincho; font-size: 50px">からだ</span>	<span style="font-size: 50px; ">からだ</span><br>Body<br><span style="">[sound:42-karada.mp3]</span>
    <span style="font-family: Mincho; font-size: 50px">あさごはん</span>	<span style="font-size: 50px; ">あさごはん</span><br>Breakfast<br><span style="">[sound:43-asagohan.mp3]</span>

    With a bit of search/replace in a text program you could get rid of the tags and into a format that should be pretty easily pasteable into a spreadsheet.

    EDIT: Ahh, I see I’ve been beaten to this advice. I didn’t see the option to not include tags, but I haven’t kept the program updated.

    • This reply was modified 10 years, 9 months ago by  JoshuaJSlone.
    in reply to: Guide to Using Anki 2 with TextFugu #44101

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    I mostly use AnkiDroid so I’m a bit less familiar with all the options and procedures of the desktop version, but it looks like this is what you need to know:

    By default leeched cards are suspended, but if you don’t want that behavior you can change it in a deck’s Options, under the Lapses tab.

    Once a card has been suspended, go to Browse. Looks like suspended cards are highlighted in yellow. To unsuspend then, highlight them and hit the Suspend button near the top middle. By suspending I don’t think it actually moves it out of the deck, so no worries about it knowing where to go.

    I don’t see a way to directly sort and view suspended cards, but it looks like if you right-click in the header area of Browse you can add a “Lapses” column, so sorting by that would probably get you to suspended cards quicker than just scrolling and looking for yellow.

    in reply to: Hiya From London! #44093

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    Howdy, Danny. I’m not as deep into them as some other groups, but I enjoy Perfume and other acts the same producer is behind as well.

    in reply to: raw manga/light novels #44080

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    I saw on some list of resources and bookmarked for later use. Seems to be legitimate, has quite a selection of manga viewable in the browser supported by ads. Seems like it’s built around stuff that was otherwise out of print, so while there’s a lot there it might mostly be stuff we wouldn’t recognize.

    in reply to: Is it just me? #44079

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    Embarrassing admission–I was getting katakana instances of シャ and シァ conflated, with the little ya and a characters looking similar enough. It does seem to happen, though at my level I can’t tell what’s going on with those examples. Maybe they’re intentionally going for a nonstandard spelling–I know that happens enough in English.

    in reply to: Is it just me? #44073

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    I think the sound of しゃ is kind of a mix between “sha” and “sya”, but it makes more sense to me to write it as “sha”.

    Trouble is, that loses any differentiation between しゃ and しぁ.

    just having to nod and say “Aye (yes)”

    I’ve always enjoyed the word Aye, so it amused me to find Japanese had nearly the same thing in Hai. :)

    • This reply was modified 10 years, 9 months ago by  JoshuaJSlone.
    in reply to: は and が particle in like/hate questions #44049

    JoshuaJSlone
    Member

    I’m not much further than you, but: I believe it can go either way, it’s just a matter of what’s being emphasized in what order.

    いぬ が すき ですか?
    Do you like dogs?
    A. はい、いぬ は すき です。
    Yes, I like dogs / Yes, as for dogs, I like them

    This is the example question from the text. I’m going to try to reword it to keep the meaning mostly intact, but exaggerate how they’re different depending on where the が and は are. Someone jump in if I’m not getting it right, either.

    いぬ が すき ですか?
    DOGS: Do you like them?
    はい、いぬ は すき です。
    Yes, the thing you were talking about (dogs), I like.

    whereas with は and が switched, it’s more like…

    いぬ は すき ですか?
    THINGS YOU LIKE: Dogs?
    はい、いぬ が すき です。
    Yes, the thing you were talking about (my likes), includes dogs.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 24 total)