Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

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Kamlari
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Kamlari » Sun Mar 26, 2017 6:53 pm

Jouyou kanji
recorded examples (wav audio files), stroke order, translation into English.
http://www.saiga-jp.com/kanji_dictionary.html

I might add more links later.
Let me explain why I'm doing it.
The main reason: finding learning material for a beginner is extremely time consuming. So if you have hardly any time to study, it would be almost impossible for you to find anything.

I might later write something about how I would use the materials if I only had 30 minutes a day to study.
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1. There’s only one rule to rule them all:
There are no Rule(r)s.
2. LISTEN L2, read L1. (Long texts)
3. Pronunciation.
4. Delayed recitation.

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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Xmmm » Sun Mar 26, 2017 7:17 pm

Kamlari wrote:Off topic

aokoye wrote:Prefered gender pronouns: Masculine

Not zi?

Xmmm, your avatar - is it Солженицын?

As to Japanese and Russian. I know both of them pretty well. I'd say Russian is more difficult. And I like them both.
Or perhaps not more difficult - it takes more time, more forms to memorize.



Yes.

I'm also a bit familiar with Japanese. I took a year in college and was definitely a solid A2 level with A2 speaking skills. Totally lost now though maybe I'd get a headstart if I tried again as a false beginner.

My perception is also that Russian is harder than Japanese (at lower level anyway) -- but I'm deferring to the experts on that. I never got to the level where Japanese politeness levels, etc. were taken into much consideration. Just standard college/business Japanese.

All the people who are down on FSI estimates and keep repeating the caveats ... what's the alternative? Just say "it takes as long as it takes?" Is that really true for the average person? The average person might finish French in 100 hours or 10000 hours or anywhere in between with equal probability? Or does the average person really take about 960 hours* give or take a couple hundred? I'm guessing it's the latter.


*Kanewai estimate based on FSI estimate plus homework time.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby aokoye » Mon Mar 27, 2017 12:25 am

Xmmm wrote:All the people who are down on FSI estimates and keep repeating the caveats ... what's the alternative? Just say "it takes as long as it takes?" Is that really true for the average person? The average person might finish French in 100 hours or 10000 hours or anywhere in between with equal probability? Or does the average person really take about 960 hours* give or take a couple hundred? I'm guessing it's the latter.


*Kanewai estimate based on FSI estimate plus homework time.

For Japanese I haven't found an alternative, though I also haven't tried. There are various institutions that suggest the number of classroom hours it takes to pass their proficiency tests (the Goethe Institut does this) though I'm not sure how accurate those are either, especially given the sheer amount of variables.

What you appear to be suggesting though, is that even if a statistic or estimate doesn't actually apply to the vast majority of language learners we should still use it. That doesn't seem very logical to me. Never mind too that almost no one actually uses the proficiency scale that the FSI does (I actually do know a number of people who have been and are tested on it and a few people who know how to do the proficiency interviews required for the speaking bit but that's because of the program that they're in). The US government does for national funded programs that involve language learning (so this includes military language stuff, likely some non military diplomatic related testing, a small handful of university programs, and maybe a few K-12 programs), but that's about it.
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Prefered gender pronouns: Masculine

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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Xmmm » Mon Mar 27, 2017 1:47 am

aokoye wrote:What you appear to be suggesting though, is that even if a statistic or estimate doesn't actually apply to the vast majority of language learners we should still use it. That doesn't seem very logical to me.


It's very logical. It's called a Bayesian inference. When you have absolutely no idea, start with a SWAG* and then adjust the estimate as more data comes in. 1760 hours is the SWAG for Russian S3 level skills. If you have a better number, that's great -- tell me. But what people say is "there is no number, estimates are impossible." This is not only demotivating but makes it hard to do any planning.

I'm roughly at the halfway mark and I self-assess as S1+ so I seem to be right on track. If I get to 1760 hours and it turns out I have to tack on 200 or 300 hours of Italki and I eventually declare victory at 2200 hours, I promise not to cry about it.



* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_wild-ass_guess
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby aokoye » Mon Mar 27, 2017 1:59 am

No one is telling you that it's impossible to estimate how long it will take you to reach X proficiency in a language. What people are saying is that using FSI's numbers doesn't make any sense because none of us are in that situation or a situation that comes even close to it. You can't make a logical educated guess off of FSI estimates when you're in a situation that is completely different.
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Prefered gender pronouns: Masculine

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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Ani » Mon Mar 27, 2017 2:11 am

Xmmm wrote:
It's very logical. It's called a Bayesian inference. When you have absolutely no idea, start with a SWAG* and then adjust the estimate as more data comes in. 1760 hours is the SWAG for Russian S3 level skills. If you have a better number, that's great -- tell me. But what people say is "there is no number, estimates are impossible." This is not only demotivating but makes it hard to do any planning.


Uhh. A single data point cannot be called bayesian inference, even if it were an applicable data point. The whole idea is that you have *data* to be adjusting your estimated probability with. The point that people keep making when someone references the FSI numbers is that the numbers are based on a completely different situation. They are not, as you say, a SWAG related to the problem at hand. Citing your own experience is an anecdote. The plural of anecdote is not data.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby reineke » Mon Mar 27, 2017 3:19 am

Foreign Language Learning: A Comparative Analysis of Relative Difficulty
National Security Agency

See the table on page 10. Japanese is the only language that has a mark in every column. Basically this means that it's as hard as heck. Korean is considered just as hard (except for the writing system). Russian has three marks.

According to the analysis, Japanese and Korean are considered more difficult than Arabic and Hebrew.The analysis suggests that Japanese is probably the most difficult language for English-speaking students.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... JkDz69jagg
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby vonPeterhof » Mon Mar 27, 2017 5:33 am

Xmmm wrote:I never got to the level where Japanese politeness levels, etc. were taken into much consideration. Just standard college/business Japanese.

Unless by "business Japanese" you mean "a couple of basic greetings in order to impress your Japanese business partners before proceeding to the negotiations in English", the politeness levels are vital for business Japanese.

Even though I'm a native speaker of Russian I can totally relate to those who say that it's more difficult than Japanese. If my experiences with Greek (both Ancient and Modern, though more so the former) are anything to go by, I'm definitely not the type of person who has enough patience to master variegated conjugation/declension patterns and exceptions therefrom. I can only see myself doing that as a hypothetical foreigner if I were really interested in the culture: like, enough to want to memorize the preambles to the political programmes of each of the political parties in the State Duma of 1906, or to find out all of the names of the camera operators who worked on films by Andrei Tarkovsky and Elem Klimov. With Japanese, while these conjugation charts may look like a lot of work, I've never actually felt the need to memorize them; most of the information in them ended up sticking with comparatively little trial and error.

As for the main topic of the thread, my path after kana was basically Heisig's Remembering the Kanji -> Tae Kim's grammar guide -> the Core 2k/6k Anki decks, after which I felt more or less comfortable tackling native materials (I had actually started tackling them long before getting done with those materials). Also, I didn't notice anyone linking to Nukemarine's guide for beginners, so this may be of assistance.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Kamlari » Mon Mar 27, 2017 10:14 am

Jim Breen's WWWJDIC
Word Search/Home
http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic?1C
Text Glossing
http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic?9T
Multi-Radical Kanji
http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic?1R

Once you know kana it's not difficult to handle pieces of real Japanese.
It's not a long way from
阪 【おおさか】 (n) Osaka (a city in Japan, if you don't know)
to
大きい 【おおき】 (adj-i) big-is/are
from
Natsume Sōseki 目 漱石 (a famous Japanese writer), his most famous book is 吾輩は猫である  わがはい は ねこ で ある 'I Am a Cat')
to
大きい。  めがおおきい。 (Somebody's) eye/s big-is/are. ( is a subject particle, the preceding noun is the subject of the sentence)
夏子ちゃん目が大きい。 (speaking of wa) Natsuko-chan (her or your if you're speaking to her) eyes are big.
夏子さんは目が大きいです。 Natsuko-san, (her or your if you're speaking to her) eyes are big (polite です).
夏 なつ summer
子 こ girls' given names often end in 子 こ (child)
夏子 なつこ a girl's given name - SummerChild.
ちゃん is an affectionate way to address a person: children, girls or someone very close
さん a polite way to address somebody, both male and female, more or less Mr. Ms. or Miss.
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Frei lebt, wer sterben kann.

J'aime les nuages... les nuages qui passent...
雲は天才である

1. There’s only one rule to rule them all:
There are no Rule(r)s.
2. LISTEN L2, read L1. (Long texts)
3. Pronunciation.
4. Delayed recitation.

Xmmm
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Xmmm » Mon Mar 27, 2017 1:49 pm

aokoye wrote:No one is telling you that it's impossible to estimate how long it will take you to reach X proficiency in a language. What people are saying is that using FSI's numbers doesn't make any sense because none of us are in that situation or a situation that comes even close to it. You can't make a logical educated guess off of FSI estimates when you're in a situation that is completely different.


What numbers make sense? Are you prepared to provide any numbers (or any algorithm that will lead to a concrete number)? If you're not prepared to provide numbers, or an algorithm, then you are just saying "forget about estimating."

The caveats about FSI are well known. I'm happy to use "better numbers" but everyone who doesn't like people using FSI estimates is very coy about what estimates can be used.
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