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@Joel: I just tried the sample N3 questions again (on the JLPT website) and got 3/5 listening questions correct this time! :D For one of them that I got wrong, after learning the answer and a further play through, it all made sense; for the other, I was still a little unsure, however. Also, I may have replayed the audio more times than you’d get in the actual exam… but it’s progress! It’s been a while since I tried them, and that time I understood very little of what the people were saying, so it wasn’t down to simply remembering the right answer :P Too bad in life you don’t get multiple choice though…
Well, if you *do* eventually have kids, at least they’ll have a family more accepting of learning Japanese than you had :P
@Kyle: Damn, you’ve had it pretty rough. Well done on getting through it all and welcome back. Good luck with continuing Japanese. You started TextFugu before even me, I think, so it’s cool that you’re still coming back after all this time :D
“Mass of Fermenting Dregs” – Who the hell comes up with names like these? To be honest, I was actually expecting them to be death metal; the name would fit well alongside the likes of “Cradle of Filth”, “Autopsy Torment”, “Gutworm”, and “Cattle Decapitation” :P
OT: As Zach suggested, last.fm is perfect for what you’re wanting. Just go to http://www.last.fm/listen/globaltags/japanese and it’ll play a random selection of Japanese music. I haven’t been there in a while so I just noticed they use a video player now instead of just a simple audio player like before; not sure whether that means they have a reduced selection now, but I’m sure it’s still good.
Also, there should be a thread on this forum called “What I’m listening to now” that has a ton of music suggestions in it. Though good luck finding it, as nobody’s posted to it in a while, I think, and the search feature here doesn’t work properly.
…through the magic of Google, here you go: http://www.textfugu.com/bb/topic/what-are-you-listening-to-now/On the old version of this forum, there was another thread with the same title, and in that thread I found the very first (and practically only) Japanese group I ever fell in love with: Perfume. In the 3 or so years I’ve been learning Japanese, I’ve only ever regularly listened to Perfume (and MEG, who’s produced by the same guy). Here are the first two songs I heard that got me hooked:
Erryday.
I’m kinda addicted to it though, and not in a good way. I feel terrible if I don’t do all my cards every day, so I just keep on doing them even if I’m having a crappy time or am losing sleep because of them (i.e. from staying up late doing a bunch of cards I forgot about during the day). There’s probably a bunch of better, more useful things I could be doing with my time than spending it reviewing so many cards – and there are a couple of reliable sources that agree you shouldn’t be wasting too much time on flash cards – but I can’t bear to let them go undone for a day. Having said that, there *are* days occasionally where I completely forget to/don’t have time to do my cards, but like I said before, I feel bad when that happens.
Key tip: if reviewing cards is causing you grief, take a break and come back to them later, or just stop for the day and start doing something more productive like reading a news article or watching a TV show or listening to some music (all in Japanese, of course).
@Kyle: Were there really about 10 of us? Also, I never had to do 1000+ in day or anywhere near that, that’s insane! That’s got to have been Bbvoncrumb, he’s hardcore like that (⌐■_■)
@Joel: Great work! O-meh-deh-tow go-zye-mass and all that ;)
Please share your secrets for building listening skills, I really want to know how you managed it! I’m sure I’ve said this before but I could probably pass N3 fine if it weren’t for that darned listening section ¬_¬
@Larasati: Good luck with it :D I will say though, even though somebody might have compared that exam to JLPT N3, I don’t think being able to pass the latter exam necessarily means you’ll be able to pass the former. JLPT only has sections on reading and listening, whereas I’m assuming – since the scholarship people want to know if you’d be prepared to function normally in a proper university – the other exam will test your speaking and writing skills too. I’m not 100% sure on that but it would be a pretty crappy exam if they *didn’t* test you on all areas. Just something to look out for.
Anyway, keep us posted on your progress :)
@No one in particular: I wonder how long it’s going to be before they drop the ‘N’ from the start of the JLPT numbers. The system was changed in 2010 – coincidentally around the time I started learning Japanese – so N3 isn’t really New anymore.
As far as I know, older games such as on the Super Famicom couldn’t have furigana because the resolution was too low for the characters to be readable. Even if the FFVI *did* have furigana, since you know so little Japanese it wouldn’t make much difference, you’d still have no clue what anyone was saying. I’m not saying *don’t* try to play games in Japanese, just that if you do, you’re going to have a tough time of it because even the entirety of TextFugu covers very little. I guess it helps if you’ve played the games before though.
https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=final+fantasy+6&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ul_kUpvfK7Cv7AbnkoCwCw&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=643#q=%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%8A%E3%83%AB%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BF%E3%82%B8%E3%83%BC6&tbm=isch
All the battle and menu screens for FFVI seem to be kana-only, whereas the dialogue boxes use kanji too.“…strange and a waste of time” – what would they *rather* you do with your time, I wonder? Most people have hobbies that won’t necessarily get them a career or the like; in your case, learning Japanese isn’t any different. I’m not looking for a job with Japanese language or to move to Japan, I’m just learning Japanese because it’s interesting (don’t even watch anime or read manga or any of the usual reasons). Thankfully my family are fine about it. Most likely they thought it was a little strange at first but overall I think they think it’s good that I’ve got a hobby that’s productive and somewhat intellectual :P Also, any foreign language on your CV/resume is always good, even if the job doesn’t require it – it’s not only a good talking point in interviews but it shows some good “transferable skills”. Seeing as the general public see Japanese as some mysterious, inscrutable, ridiculously difficult language to learn, it’ll certainly fool them into thinking you’re especially intelligent ;)
@Joshua: Nice advice but I’ve no idea how to change player settings to show any other hidden languages like that haha.
Apart from this (probably) small handful of Blu-Rays that have hidden language options, it sucks how *most* games/movies sold in Europe (speaking of the UK, specifically), only have French, Spanish, Italian, and/or German language options as standard (sometimes Dutch and I think I’ve seen Norwegian before); Japanese language options are really scarce on media here. The only game sold here I’ve ever found to have Japanese language audio (and *subtitles* too, which is about as good as it gets!) is Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for the Gamecube – one of my favourite games so was awesome to find those settings.
Find books, TV shows, movies and games that interest you and get stuck in. You’ll be learning without actually having to “study”. To be fair though, it all depends on what you mean by “Basically, I know a lot of Japanese” – if you really do “know a lot of Japanese”, regular native media is probably fine, but if you find you’ve overestimated your language ability (as plenty of people do), you can always try to find easier materials in the same vein (e.g. picture books, kids shows, bilingual books with both Japanese and English).
Also, what’s with the spaces? Japanese doesn’t use spaces, and if it’s readability you’re going for, kanji do that already (by which I mean they help show word boundaries).
@Joel: How’s Ni No Kuni? I’ve heard it’s pretty good and considered getting it myself. Not sure if I’d be able to understand much of it, even though it’s got furigana.
If you’re having fun and the learning doesn’t feel like a chore then yup, it’s a good method of learning. The more “input” you get, the better, and anything made by natives for natives is ideal. I would say, though, it’d probably do to vary your sources: rather than solely reading manga, maybe try books or newspapers, or watch TV shows, listen to music, that kind of thing, just so you can get a wide variety of different types of the language.
You don’t have to press Enter after *every* word: you can type several, then Space to kanjify, then Enter. If any of the kanji it predicted were wrong, you can change them before you press Enter, I think.
Where I come from, they’re about as close as you can get :P
Yeah, I’ve seen that trick before. That only really helps if I’m writing them down though, for stroke order.
ソ and ン *do* suck too, I just forgot to mention them.
When I learned the kana, I used smart.fm – originators of the Core 2k/6k decks, currently known as iknow.jp, and flash-card system of choice in TextFugu a few years ago before they turned subscription-based and everything was moved to Anki. I think I did about one kana row per day and reviewed them at the rate the SRS told me to, from what I remember, with a short break between hiragana and katakana. I wasn’t really in a hurry to learn them as at that time I wasn’t even all that sure I wanted to learn Japanese; I was doing it just for something to do and because it seemed kinda interesting. Definitely wasn’t the average Japanese learner: didn’t watch anime, didn’t read manga, had practically no knowledge of Japanese culture or the language, and didn’t curse my parents for not bringing me up in Japan…
After a while, reading kana becomes automatic and it feels good when you realise it :P Even three years later though, I still always read ツ and シ wrong! I can tell the difference easily when they’re right next to each other but on their own it’s still difficult :S
