Learning Japanese From Zero

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golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu Dec 23, 2021 6:31 am

Tonight, I tried reading a NHK News Easy article without looking anything up and with furigana off. I was able to understand most of it, but I got lucky in picking an article where you could guess most of it from context.

There were however a few unknown words in there, like 加工. The real kicker though was 十分. I assumed it meant "10 minutes", but apparently, it means "sufficient". WTF? No seriously, WTF?!


In other news, I got curious and looked up "kimetsu no yaiba" and was surprised to discover that yaiba is an alternate reading for 刃. The weird alternate readings just keep coming! I guess it makes more sense in a case like this though, since fantasy stories probably deliberately pick obscure and archaic language to sound cool. Heaven knows that English language fantasy does the same thing (grimoires anyone?).
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bolaobo
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby bolaobo » Thu Dec 23, 2021 11:55 am

The Chinese character 分 also means one-tenth. I imagine this meaning is preserved in some compounds, so that might help you remember it.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Fri Dec 24, 2021 5:51 am

Today, I decided to take the 2012 N4 JLPT practice test, just like I did a year ago and six months ago.

My new scores were
Vocabulary: 29/34
Reading and Grammar: 23/35
* Grammar: 14/25
* Reading: 9/10
Listening: 23/28
* Task-based comprehension: 7/8
* Point-based comprehension: 7/7
* Utterance expressions: 3/5
* Quick response: 6/8

Overall, I was again frustrated by how stable my scores are, although I did mostly have slight improvements at least. On Vocab, I got 29, two points higher than six months ago and one point higher than a year ago. On Listening, I got 23, a point higher than six months and a year ago. The Grammar section was still miserable and I felt like I was randomly guessing on everything - I ended up getting 14 on grammar, +3 on a year ago and -2 on six months ago. This time around, I did especially badly on the section where you have the guess the order of words filling in four consecutive blanks in a sentence.

The only part with a noticeable improvement is that I did much better than before on the reading section. This time, I got 9/10 on reading, compared to 6/10 on both the previous attempts.



In other news, I came across the word 微笑む on SR, which is apparently read hohoemu, where neither kanji has a reading resembling any reading I've seen before. Argh.

Also tonight, I tried watching the first episode of Sailor Moon Crystal without subtitles to see what it was like and how well I could understand it.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Fri Dec 24, 2021 9:23 pm

The JLPT website has two sets of practice tests, one from 2012 and one from 2018. I already took the 2012 one yesterday (and six months ago and a year ago), but I decided to take the 2018 N4 exam today as well.

Overall, the grammar section felt slightly easier than the 2012 (but it was still a struggle and I scored even worse than yesterday), and the listening section was harder (or maybe I just had trouble focusing).

My scores for the 2018 practice N4 test were:
Vocabulary: 32/35
Reading and Grammar: 23/35
* Grammar: 13/25
* Reading: 10/10
Listening: 17/28
* Task-based comprehension: 4/8
* Point-based comprehension: 5/7
* Utterance expressions: 4/5
* Quick response: 4/8

As usual, there were several words I didn't know on the last section of the vocab test (the one where a word is written in hiragana and you have to guess which of four sentences is using it correctly) - specifically, suiei, kengaku, and kouji. I was very impressed with myself for managing to guess suiei correctly despite not having seen the word before.

I figured that sui was probably 水 and ei was probably 永, which is similar to the kanji for "swim" (泳), so it must mean swimming (it helps that that one of the sentence choices was about swimming). As it turns out, I was slightly off on guessing the spelling - it turns out that 泳 itself can also be read "ei", which I'd never heard of before, but I guessed the meaning right anyway.

As for kengaku and kouji, I guessed those completely wrong. (The only other question I missed on the vocab was the one to guess the spelling of kashite. I guessed 貨して instead of 貸して. I can never keep those kanji straight!)

I also noticed that 水泳 and 見学 both came up in later sections of the test as well (grammar and listening, respectively). It's interesting how it seems like they tend to reuse vocab across a given year's test.

As with yesterday, reading went well and grammar poorly. I'm not sure why I did so much worse than normal on the listening section. Maybe I just had more trouble focusing on the questions than usual. Listening tests are pretty unforgiving in that respect - if you miss part of the question, there's no hope of figuring it out. Or maybe the 2018 is just harder than the 2012 one.


In other news, I came across the word 句読点 on Satori Reader this morning, which is read kutouten for some reason. In fact, the reading is apparently so unusual that SR added a note specifically calling it out.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sat Dec 25, 2021 5:16 am

Last night while watching Sailor Moon, I noticed they kept saying something like maboroshi ginzui, but I had absolutely no luck trying to look up the later part (I already recognized the first par as "illusion"). So when it came up again tonight in ep2, I turned on the Japanese subtitles briefly to see what it was. It appears to just be a made up word (ginzuishou) anyway, though I'm guessing it has something to do with mercury and crystals based on the kanji. Ug, it's hard enough to understand things when they're not using made up words.

Edit: I just looked it up and it's probably just "the silver crystal". Not sure where the "illusion" part is supposed to come into it.

I was also puzzed by the 逢える in the lyrics of the ending song and didn't have much luck looking it up. Apparently, 逢 is just a fancy way of writing 会, and it's just the potential form of 会う.

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Dec 26, 2021 5:00 am

Doing the JLPT practice exam yesterday inspired me to try out Anki again to see if I could fill in the gaps in my vocabulary. I know I tried Anki a while back and found it frustrating and not very useful and eventually gave up on it. I've also tried out Satori Reader's integrated SRS system, only to eventually give up and delete all my cards in frustration. Multiple times. But we'll see how it goes.

The biggest issue I have with Anki is how it requires a PC and the UI is like something out of the 90s. It seems like it would only appeal to the kind of person who loves customizing bash scripts and manually installing audio drivers on an old Linux computer. While it's very customizable, even basic changes tend to require going through half a dozen menus hidden in unintuitive places and then editing an html template. And there's some really basic functionality, like remapping keyboard shortcuts, that isn't supported at all. For some reason, everyone constantly praises Anki on Reddit and I've never been able to understand why. Of course, a lot of those people also say that you don't get the full benefit unless you spend lots of time creating your own decks too...

Anyway, I downloaded the "Pass JLPT N3 Vocabulary" deck, and I spent a couple hours today on Anki. Of course, it will take several days to even "graduate" new words to real reviews. For now, I'm just going through as many cards as possible and suspending any cards I already remember well from Wanikani plus obvious katakana cards, and setting the rest on the journey towards graduation. So far, I've been suspending around 60% of the cards right off the bat. It's annoying that the shortcut for suspending a card in desktop Anki (shift + 2) requires two hands, and suspending isn't even supported in AnkiWeb at all (at least as far as I can tell).

One interesting edge case was the card for 額. Wanikani taught me that 額 means "framed picture" and is read "gaku", but in the Anki deck, it means "forehead" and is read "hitai". It reminds me of the whole kaku/kado/tsuno thing I ran into a while back. I wasn't sure what to do with homographs like that so I went ahead and suspended the card.

In other news, I watched another Hayato video this afternoon and learned a new word - yagi (goat).

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ozymandias
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby ozymandias » Sun Dec 26, 2021 9:31 am

golyplot wrote:And there's some really basic functionality, like remapping keyboard shortcuts, that isn't supported at all.


The Customize Keyboard Shortcuts add-on solves this problem. The following are the add-ons I recommend your using to enhance Anki's utility:

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Also, this video helps you understand how the algorithm works in order to avoid what's been called ''ease hell'' (having a massive number of reviews every single day). If you don't have the time to watch it, below you'll find the configuration Conan Liu uses:

New cars tab

Review cards tab

Rewards tab

Lapses tab


You could use a template for your cards in order to make your review sessions less boring. I find this template for Japanese by a Reddit user really beautiful:

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Watch this video to learn how to add that template to your cards.
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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Mon Dec 27, 2021 4:05 pm

Anki update

I continue to spend considerable time on Anki each day. However, yesterday was mostly a matter of trying to learn the cards I already reviewed Saturday instead of going through new cards. I went through 398 new cards on Saturday and only 76 on Sunday. (Note that I suspended the majority, so the effective number of new cards is less than half that). Both Sunday and Monday morning, I started the morning with a 30 minute Anki review session, and in both cases, that wasn't even enough to get through all the overnight reviews. It did sap my enthusiasm for Anki somewhat, but I do remember them sometimes, so I'm still hopeful that they'll stick if I review them enough times.

Also, I figured out this morning that I could edit confusing cards to add my own definitions and example sentences from Jisho. However, this is a really time consuming process.

As for Wanikani, I've been doing pretty much the bare minimum effort to keep my review count under 4100 for the last few days. Sometimes I wonder if doing Wanikani more would be more useful than my current Anki experiment.


Also yesterday evening, I encountered a word that I'd studied on Anki for the first time (in Satori Reader): 出来事/dekigoto (incident)

私は、この一週間の大変だった出来事を、全部ジンジャーさんに話した。
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genini1
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby genini1 » Mon Dec 27, 2021 4:50 pm

golyplot wrote:Last night while watching Sailor Moon, I noticed they kept saying something like maboroshi ginzui, but I had absolutely no luck trying to look up the later part (I already recognized the first par as "illusion"). So when it came up again tonight in ep2, I turned on the Japanese subtitles briefly to see what it was. It appears to just be a made up word (ginzuishou) anyway, though I'm guessing it has something to do with mercury and crystals based on the kanji. Ug, it's hard enough to understand things when they're not using made up words.

Edit: I just looked it up and it's probably just "the silver crystal". Not sure where the "illusion" part is supposed to come into it.



It's more 'dream' than 'illusion' in this context. So it's more like the silver crystal of dreams.
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golyplot
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1726
Joined: Mon Jan 16, 2017 9:41 pm
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=12230
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Dec 28, 2021 5:32 am

Last night, I looked up Sailor Moon Crystal episode summaries on the fan wiki to find out what was going on. It turns out there was quite a bit I was missing. I decided to read the summaries before watching each episode in the future so I would be able to follow along better.

Of course, even with the plot details, I still don't understand how Sailor Mercury appeared in the Dark Kingdom at the end of ep3 when only Sailor Moon caught the bus and Ami was with Luna. Does anyone know what was up with that?


As for Anki, here are my stats so far. The review counts are actually underestimates of the true number of reviews I did since they don't count suspending cards, especially for the first day (Saturday) when I was going through mostly new cards and suspended hundreds of them. Anyway, I have work tomorrow, so I won't be able to do anywhere near as much Japanese study as I did over the holidays.


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