JLS log - Spanish, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Chinese, Japanese

[JLS]

I feel well-set with hiragana. I can sight-read for sound just fine (though not for comprehension).

I am halfway through learning the katakana. I realized that there is opportunity for katakana to come more intuitively to an English speaker than hiragana. Because katakana are used for loan words, it will be easier to remember the katakana based on their use for English loan words. What American cannot appreciate the relative ease of remembering アメリカ?

[JLS]

46 katakana learned. Good enough to proceed, fine-tuning along the way.

[robokey]

What American cannot appreciate the relative ease of remembering アメリカ?

No joke, as an American, this was one of the first Japanese words that really stuck with me. I practiced writing it a lot!

Glad to see you have learned the kana, that is already a great accomplishment. Looking forward to seeing your progress!

[JLS]

What American cannot appreciate the relative ease of remembering アメリカ?

No joke, as an American, this was one of the first Japanese words that really stuck with me. I practiced writing it a lot!

Glad to see you have learned the kana, that is already a great accomplishment. Looking forward to seeing your progress!

ありがとう。I'm quite enjoying it!

[JLS]

A few notes.

Chinese is a help
I find my prior learning of Chinese aids in learning Japanese kanji. I've developed a sort of memory for the shapes and squiggles. I developed this because I practiced physically writing out the Chinese kanji. Now I'm importing the same practice into Japanese kanji.

Handwriting practice - memory
I now have six pages of handwritten Japanese practice. Some hours on DuoLingo plus writing the hiragana and katakana from memory has been a great help. Handwriting, if done right, incorporates trifold memory: Visual integrated with hand integrated with mouth (if you sound out words as you write them). More connections is better.

Is it important to sound out words as you write them? Yes. When I couldn't remember a hiragana, sometimes I only needed to make the sound with my mouth and it prompted the memory of what I should write.

Moving forward on katakana
I'm not going to spend much more time on practicing the katakana. I know what they all should sound like, and the sounds of each one will get embedded as I read and write.

Using Google Earth
I've been doing street-level drops on Japan to see what I could find. I'm surprised there's as much English in public as there is. In some places there is English AND katakana. In other places, words and kanji I don't know, but I can guess based on where I see them.

I'm having fun... Which is why I think I'm making any progress.

[JLS]

Took a break for a couple of days. I may not have done any Japanese since 5/25. That's fine. After 1.5 hours of review I refreshed myself on writing out the hiragana and katakana from memory.

[JLS]

I'm not too concerned about hours and minutes for spaced repetition. If you study something the day before, and review it the next morning, that's generally quite good to bake it in. Also, perhaps it's good to limit how much you learn at any one time. Keep it to what you can meaningfully review.

[JLS]

Found this quote and video on another blog concerning language learning.

“Master your instrument, master the music, and then forget about all that (stuff) and just play.” - Charlie Parker, jazz musician

[JLS]

私の家 - My house.

Not much, but I believe this is the first time I looked at a Japanese sentence and understood without looking up what I was seeing. I vaguely recollected that the first part was "watashi," I knew that the character in the middle indicates that "watashi" is descriptive of what follows, similar to 的 in Chinese, and I knew 家 meant home, because that's what it is in Chinese. So, without a translation's help I knew this was referring to "my house."

So here is my first translation without assistance, with a little help from Chinese, from which I learned one relevant grammar rule and one helpful kanji.

It gives me a little sense to what extent Chinese and Japanese may assist each other.

[M23]

Found this quote and video on another blog concerning language learning.

“Master your instrument, master the music, and then forget about all that (stuff) and just play.” - Charlie Parker, jazz musician

Good advice. If we imagine telling a story about what we ate for dinner last night we might learn verb in all sorts of different tenses and vocabulary that would have to do with dinner, but like Chis Potter said we would have to over learn something. So we might learn verbs and vocabulary about cooking food that might answer a question about prepping the food, we might learn verbs and vocabulary that would help us tell a story about travel to Italy and learning how to cook the dish, we might learn vocabulary that would help us tell a story about the one time we made the dish for our uncle, and so on. For the moment, however, we are just saying what we ate for dinner last night and we do not need to worry about the other stuff unless someone asks.