Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

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

Postby Xmmm » Sun Mar 26, 2017 2:52 am

Xmmm wrote:
Xmmm wrote:
Kamlari wrote:Never studied 30 minutes a day, it would drive me crazy. But I do remember Dr Arguelles saying somewhere that he spent 15 minutes a day on Russian for years.
http://foreignlanguageexpertise.com/



Dr. Arguelles had learnt Russian by simply fitting it into his schedule, studying for no more than 15 minutes a day, while pursuing other languages as well. After six months he felt ready for full immersion, and went to St. Petersburg to live with a family for a futher three months, but had then barely spoken it since. That was nearly twelve years ago. Last weekend I had several long conversations with Dr. Arguelles in Russian and despite occasional small grammar slips, I was amazed at the broad range of topics he felt comfortable discussing and the enormous vocabulary he had at his disposal.


http://rawlangs.com/2013/09/16/what-is-a-polyglot/

[Commentary from Xmmm: Это неправда. Я не верю этому.]


Arguelles seems like the straight-arrow type so I'm trying to think how it could be true:

1. He puts in about 50 hours over the course of six months with his 15 minute a day thing. Decides he likes Russian.
2. He goes to Russia for three months of full immersion -- and since he's Arguelles, full immersion means 15 hours a day. That would be 1350 hours.

So, okay that's 1400 hours. It's a little light, but maybe that gets him to C1 passive skills. Or maybe he did 18 hours a day. But how come he's fluent after twelve years of not speaking? That doesn't seem to square with the general accounts of productive skills dropping off fast when not used ...


I found one of Arguelles' posts on the HTLAL board. There's no indication he did three months of immersion in Russia, so that article I linked to seems to be flat out wrong.

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... PN=1&TPN=1

If I read this correct, Arguelles is saying that 15 minutes of Russian a day for five years is enough to learn the structure of the language and gain some conversational ability (B1?), but that if you really want to read well and dig in the language, etc. it will take one hour a day for five years. That sounds more reasonable.

FWIW, Steve Kaufmann learned Russian in one hour a day for five years and to me his passive skills seem like C1, and his speaking is maybe a B1+ or a weak B2. He clearly understands everything that is being said to him, but he hesitates in his responses and gets stuck looking for words.

Of course, the problem for this thread is that Japanese is a more difficult language to learn than Russian. So the estimates need to be doubled.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby reineke » Sun Mar 26, 2017 3:46 am

Japanese resources

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2907
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Fortheo » Sun Mar 26, 2017 5:37 am

If your first goal is to be able to read japanese, then you picked probably the most difficult linguistic challenge in regards to Japanese. The spoken Language isn't all that challenging compared to other languages—the pronunciation is very easy as it doesn't consist of many sounds that native English speakers don't already know (with the exception of the R, but that's about it), the grammar, while different, is also pretty direct. Reading Japanese on the other hand........that's a serious commitment.

Some good Japanese courses for people who want to study 30 minutes a day would be Pimsleur and Michel Thomas. Pimsleur has five levels now, so about 75 hours worth of material, and Michel Thomas has about 20 hours worth of lessons now I think. Both courses supplement each other very well, but unfortunately they won't help with reading. Actually, I shouldn't say that— simply knowing the words before hand will help you a little bit when you go to try to map the spoken word to the written symbol, but other than that those courses won't help much with reading.

Maybe a course like Assimil would be good for reading? That's a course you could definitely get away with doing one lesson a day within 30 minutes, and you'll be listening and reading to the language, effectively (hopefully) killing two birds with one stone. You'll soon find that a lot of Japanese learners tackled reading Japanese differently, but they all had one thing in common—they put in a ton of work over a long, long period of time.


Good luck. Stay consistent and you'll see progress.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Kamlari » Sun Mar 26, 2017 7:43 am

reineke wrote:Japanese resources

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2907


Found an interesting doc file there.
!0 Japanese What’s to learn BEGIN HERE.doc
http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/!0%20%20%20%20Japanese%20What%92s%20to%20learn%20BEGIN%20HERE.doc

The OP, or anyone wishing to learn Japanese for that matter, should definitely have a look at it.

I'm sure of at least one thing in life: learning Japanese is fun.

So, have fun!
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Kamlari » Sun Mar 26, 2017 11:38 am

Some very general tips.
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How to learn Japanese
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvtQWsJtp-M

Links to various resources:
http://nihongo-e-na.com/eng/
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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.

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

Postby Kamlari » Sun Mar 26, 2017 12:39 pm

1.
OJAD-Online Japanese Accent Dictionary
http://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/

Sorted by
parts of speech: 品詞別
and textbooks: 教科書別
You can choose a fe/male voice to hear the forms.

Verb conjugation tables, pitch accent marked:
http://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/kouzokugo
http://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/kouzokugo/index

2.
sci.lang.japan Frequently Asked Questions
This is a list of questions and answers about the Japanese language originally from the Usenet newsgroup sci.lang.japan.
http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/afaq.html

3.
Browse through 1000 kanji
http://thejapanesepage.com/node/kanji/d ... yframe.htm
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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.

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

Postby aokoye » Sun Mar 26, 2017 5:05 pm

Xmmm wrote:Of course, the problem for this thread is that Japanese is a more difficult language to learn than Russian. So the estimates need to be doubled.

Says who and for whom? The FSI estimates are just estimates and they are only really useful for their own internal language education program. I can think of a number of languages that intimidate me personally significantly more than Japanese. Given Russian's grammatical structure I'd probably have a harder time with it than I would Japanese, though I've never studied Russian (I have a number of friends who have or are studying Russian in a very intense program though).
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Kamlari » Sun Mar 26, 2017 5:49 pm

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.
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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.

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

Postby outcast » Sun Mar 26, 2017 5:53 pm

I would humbly suggest that everyone thus far is both right and wrong, at the same time.

I think it is possible to accumulate the tools and assembly parts to speak a language with only 30 minutes a day, provided it is done every day. I did this for a little while with Korean (albeit an hour), before I inevitably got seduced by advancing at a faster pace and increased my time. But even if it had been 30 minutes, as long as it was intensive and focused with no distractions, I have no doubt many people can do that (I oftentimes cannot), and get my equivalent of 45 minutes of work done.

I do however believe that for listening to become 2nd nature and speaking to become fluent (and not reading and writing!), you do need intensity PLUS stamina, and at that point 30 minutes would not suffice. For these are the two language tasks that require almost immediate instinctive reactions (live speech and real time listening... you can also include texting when you must reply on the double with no time to "compose"). And the only way you get from taking 3 minutes to think of a single sentence to almost instantaneous response time of a long answer, while still retaining the ability for cogent, smooth output (another way of describing so-called fluency), is through intensity and ever longer "work-outs".

Which is why I have heard before of people learning only a few minutes for many years, not be able to speak a word or understand much at all, but when immersed in the language suddenly and getting the intensity and stamina, the progress will be massive, since the tools and building blocks already were there. Perhaps kind of what was described with Pr. Argüelles and Russian.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby aokoye » Sun Mar 26, 2017 6:05 pm

Kamlari wrote:Off topic

aokoye wrote:Prefered gender pronouns: Masculine

Not zi?

No, not zi (or zie), I prefer he/him or they (as in the singular "they").
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