Learning Japanese From Zero

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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed Dec 29, 2021 4:56 am

I read another NHK News Easy article today, and was very confused when I saw オミクロン株 because I always thought that 株 meant "stock". But per Jisho, it can apparently mean "strain (of bacteria, etc.)​" as well.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed Dec 29, 2021 7:52 pm

I read another NHK News Easy article which was pretty easy, since I could already guess it all from context anyway (being about a newly approved COVID medicine).

I was amused however by the line "お腹に赤ちゃんがいる女性には使いません。", since I'm pretty sure that Japanese has actual words for "pregnant" - (e.g. 妊婦). Presumably, the NHK News Easy authors decided that "pregnant" is too complicated a word and hence the "women with a baby in their stomach" circumlocution.

P.S. In the process of looking that up on Jisho, I came across the word 悪阻 (tsuwari), which has a completely weird reading utterly divorced from the normal kanji readings.
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu Dec 30, 2021 3:48 pm

Last night, I finished listening to Teppei and Noriko's podcast, and started listening to Noriko's solo podcast again. I noticed they were using the word souzou a lot, one of the words I've been studying on Anki, though it's also on Wanikani.

Last night while watching Sailor Moon Crystal ep7, I was mostly zoned out, imagining stories of my own instead of paying attention, but there was one moment that jumped to my attention. At the end when Sailor V appears, Zoisite yells "onore" at her. I remembered hearing this (己) on Wanikani (though I can usually never actually remember the reading when it comes up for review), and was taught that it means "oneself". But apparently, per Jisho, it is also a derogatory word for "you".

Satori Reader:

次の瞬間、リリーは宙を舞った

I was surprised to see 宙 by itself here, because I'd always seen it as part of the word 宇宙 before. I didn't know it could be used by itself. To be fair, SR includes a note for this sentence saying that it is literary language and that 宙 is "not often used on its own". It also says that 舞 is rarely used and mostly just in fixed expressions. It's interesting because when learning these words on Wanikani, there's no indications of which ones are common or not. I had no idea that say 舞 was less common than 踊り .

トマトからは、汁がはじけ飛んだ

I was a bit surprised by this one too, since Wanikani teaches that 汁 means "soup", rather than "juice". I guess I should have known better though since Wanikani itself includes the word 果汁 (fruit juice).
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sat Jan 01, 2022 6:05 am

I noticed that Stand By Me: Doraemon was on Netflix and decided to watch it last night (without subtitles). It's not the kind of movie I'd normally watch, but I figured it would be good to learn what Doraemon is like, since it's such a cultural icon in Japan. Of course, I could only understand a fraction of the dialog and sometimes had to guess what was going on based on the visuals.

Satori Reader:

I initially read 中間 as nakama, but apparently, it's actually chuukan and means "middle". Darn those homophone kanji! In this case, they even look nearly identical!

In the same story, I initially read 絵画 as ega and then mentally transformed that to eiga (movie). But somehow it is actually read kaiga, despite being e in every other circumstance.

Speaking of homophone kanji, I recently mistook 機械 for 訓戒 in my Anki reviews (and of course, there's also 機会 that has the exact same reading, which I've also confused it with in the past), and mistook 激しい (fierce) for 励まし (encouragment) on Anki this morning because the kanji have the same reading and the later is more common (in particular, Noriko constantly says "励ましな message" and the like).

Speaking of Noriko, her 19th episode is about あいづち and フィラー, and it was only while listening to it this morning on my 18th time through her podcast that I realized that "fiira" is probably just a katakana'd "filler". I'm kind of embarrassed that I listened to it 17 times without realizing that before. Whenever I heard it before, I tended to think of the German "Fehler" (mistake), which makes no sense in context, so I always just assumed it was a native Japanese word or else a loanword warped beyond recognition. Of course, it's not like you can tell it's katakana when you are just listening to it either.
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Jan 02, 2022 6:10 am

Two Year Update

Exactly two years ago, I started learning Japanese from zero. Obviously a lot has gone differently than I expected. My Japanese journey began in the airport on the way home from the holidays, on New Year's Day, 2020. My original plan was to study Japanese for 12-15 months and then visit Japan to celebrate my newfound language skills. I would have never guessed that travel to Japan would be impossible now, let alone that I would not have even flown again for Christmas two years later. And of course, learning Japanese turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. However, I have still made a lot of progress over the last two years.

Current level
Based on taking the official JLPT practice tests, I'd estimate that I am now N3 in vocab and close to N3 level in reading and listening. However, I still struggle with the grammar section even at the N4 level. (see below for the exact stats)

The ironic part is that back when I started, my goal was just to be able to watch anime without subtitles. I barely cared about reading skills at all, and figured it would only be useful so that I could read signs and writing that showed up onscreen in anime. I've spent considerable time practicing listening, and while I can understand a fraction of the dialog in anime, particularly everyday sayings, I still miss a ton and would always use English subtitles if I actually cared about the story. But I am getting better, and I can e.g. understand most of Noriko's podcast almost effortlessly.

As I've been self-studying, my speaking skills are essentially 0. The big difference from last year is that in February, I started going to a weekly Japanese practice chat (virtual) meetup. However, I gave up on it in September, since I hardly ever tried to say anything and felt like I was making no progress. Usually the way these meetups happen is that the two or three most fluent people spend all the time chatting amongst each other. Even if I tried to say something, it would take me so long to decide on how to say it that the conversation would move on, or else I would say things hesitantly with a questioning tone on every word implicitly asking whether I had it right or not and that meant noone could understand me. It's a real chicken-and-egg problem. I've thought that the solution is to hire a tutor on iTalki, but then I think that I need to get the basics down so that iTalki isn't a complete waste of time, and the result is perpetual inaction.

Reviews

For the benefit of other learners out there, I figured I should give my thoughts and experiments with all the study methods I've tried.

Wanikani: I'm a huge fan of Wanikani, and have been doing it since day 1. It's a great way to learn the kanji and a fair bit of vocab too, and it is all set up for you and works out of the box (unlike Anki). Plus the Wanikani community is an underappreciated asset. Nothing is perfect, and I often dream of making my own, better version, but it's the best on the market. It does cost money if that's a concern for you, though fortunately, I can afford it. There are tricks to reduce the cost which I stumbled on completely on accident, so I managed to get a lifetime subscription for only $105, but that's not for everyone.

My Wanikani journey has been a bit weird. My first year, I raced through WK as fast as possible and hit level 60 after only 353 days, then abandoned it a month later. However, I soon realized that I had forgotten (or rather failed to properly learn) a lot of it, especially the high levels that I raced through without the SRS having a chance to work. In May, I resubscribed, and decided to try to re-review everything. I eventually reset to level 46, but still had a pile of over 5000 reviews, and I've been trying to work my way through everything ever since. It's very slow, but I am making progress.

Lingodeer:
Buggy piece of shit. Avoid.

Anki:
I actually used to be a lot more hostile to Anki than I am now. I tried using Anki with the Core2k deck early on, but had a bad experience and gave up after a month or so. Just this last week however, I took advantage of the holidays to give it a second try (with a N3 vocab deck this time), and so far it is working better, though it's hard to tell after only a week.

That being said, Anki definitely feels like it is designed to appeal to the kind of person who enjoys customizing their Linux desktops and manually installing audio drivers and mucking about with bash scripts and so on. Anki is incredibly customizable, but it also requires extensive customization to even be usable, and the options are scattered about randomly in hidden submenus and you often have to edit HTML templates to do what you want. Plus, the UI is straight out of the 90s.

The biggest problem with Anki though is that it requires a PC, making it unusable to me most of the time. There is a browser version called AnkiWeb, but it is extremely limited in functionality - you can't even import decks or change settings, meaning that you still need a desktop anyway. One of the great things about Wanikani is that it is web-based so you can use it from anywhere with no setup required, while the exact opposite is true of Anki. But Anki is probably the best option for people who are short of cash (but still have a PC) or are dedicated do-it-yourselfers.

Bunpro:
I went through the month-long free trial of Bunpro several times, but was never impressed enough to subscribe. The biggest issue is the lag. The site is often laggy and unresponsive while doing reviews, which makes doing reviews a miserable chore. If they could just get their act together and fix the technical issues, I'd be willing to give it a more serious try.

That being said, I also have reservations about how suitable SRS is to learning grammar in the first place. I think there's a big risk of overfitting, where you just memorize the expected answer by recognizing the sentence or the cue, rather than actually learning the grammar. Bunpro says that they use multiple sentences to help with this, but I still experienced the same sentences coming up a lot and the overfitting effect.

Satori Reader:
SR is another product I'm a fan of, though the subscription is relatively expensive. Admittedly, I've only been using it recently, and I'm not sure what the experience would be like for a lower level beginner. For the last three weeks, I've been reading two stories there every day, and I think it has helped, given my improvements in reading on the JLPT practice tests.

I spent a long time trying various sources of free beginner materials to practice reading, but it's just so much nicer when everything is done for you. With Satori Reader, you get series of stories written for Japanese learners where definitions and translations for everything and notes about grammar, usage, etc. are just a click away, plus there's audio for all the stories too, and even buttons to play the audio for a specific sentence.

There's a lot in SR that you can theoretically hack together yourself with various browser extensions, but it's a lot easier if you don't have to.

Podcasts:
I've spent a lot of time listening to Japanese podcasts over the last year and a half. In fact, I listen to them in the background pretty much all the time when I'm not doing something requiring focus - cooking, eating, walking around, flossing teeth, etc. In fact, I estimate that I listen to podcasts over three hours a day on average, although I'm almost never actually paying attention to them. But I figure that it's still helpful and you might as well do it.

My favorite podcasts are Japanese with Noriko and 4989 American Life. The former is aimed at beginners, while the later is at a more advanced level.

JLPT Progress
To measure my progress, I took the 2012 N3 practice test here, along with both N4 practice tests. Here are my scores:

2012 N4:
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

2018 N4:
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

2012 N3:
Vocabulary: 28/33
Reading and Grammar: N/A
* Grammar: skipped
* Reading: 13/16
Listening: 17/27
* Task-based comprehension: 4/6
* Point-based comprehension: 5/6
* Summary: 3/3
* Utterance expressions: 3/4
* Quick response: 2/8

I previously took the 2012 N4 last year, so I can also compare my progress to that. Compared to last year, I got much better at reading, and slightly better at vocab. However, I still struggle with the N4 grammar section, even after two years of study.

As for the N3 practice test, it was absolutely exhausting to go through, but it also had a cheering effect, since I could clearly see my recent study paying off there. I effortlessly aced the first half of Vocab (kanji knowledge and recognition). On the second half (word knowledge and usage) I struggled more and sometimes had to guess, but I still did decently.

Reading was a challenge, but I still managed to get most of the questions correct. However, there is one caveat. In the interests of measuring my Japanese ability, I ignored the time limits that the real test has for the reading section (on vocab, I happened to come in just under the time limit anyway, though that still shows how much harder it was than N4, where I always finished vocab with tons of time to spare).

On the real test, you have 70 minutes for the grammar and reading sections put together, but while taking the practice test, I spent 81 minutes on the reading section (I didn't even attempt the N3 grammar section). As you can see, this means that I have enough Japanese knowledge to read and understand the questions and answer them correctly, but I'd need to practice analyzing Japanese essays to the point where it becomes fast and effortless before I'd have a hope of passing the real life JLPT.

As for the N3 listening section, I did surprisingly well, except that I completely bombed the Quick Response section. I'm not sure why.
Last edited by golyplot on Sat Jul 02, 2022 4:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Tue Jan 04, 2022 4:02 pm

Since early December, I've been reading two stories every day on Satori Reader - a chapter each of Akiko's Foreign Exchange and Kona's Big Adventure. Yesterday, I got up to the part of Akiko's Foreign Exchange where she decides to write a story about her host family's cat to help students learn Japanese - named Kona's Big Adventure!

Last night, I watched the Hilda and the Mountain King movie, dubbed in Japanese. I had already read the book, which helped a lot with following the story, though I was on my own for the TV-original Frida and David subplot. When they went to the library, it took me a moment to remember that on the show, Frida had become a witch.
Last edited by golyplot on Sat Jan 08, 2022 2:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Wed Jan 05, 2022 6:11 am

Today, Anki actively harmed me on Wanikani, rather than just computing for scarce time. 克服 came up for burn review on WK today, and it is also in the Anki deck I've been studying recently. In the Anki deck, 克服 is listed as "overcoming", so that's what I put, but WK expects "conquest". Of course I added a synonym on WK, and I'll probably remember that it means both next time, but it's still annoying that I missed burning it due to that and that I'll have to wait for it to go Guru 2 -> Master -> Enlightened -> Burned all over again.

延びる also came up on WK, which I missed due to putting "to grow longer", but it turns out that that is 伸びる. I've had a lot of trouble remembering those words on WK in the past, but it certainly doesn't help that I didn't realize there were actually two separate words with the same reading and different meanings. At least now I know that I'll have to pay attention to the kanji to guess the meaning.

In typical Baader-Meinhof fasion, immediately after that, I listened to podcasts and noticed Noriko say "nobite". I looked it up and it turns out she actually said 伸びて. It looks like the context was talking about the growing number of channels for Japanese learners, which seems like a very tangential connection to the normal meaning of "stretching". Why wouldn't she use something like 増える or 多くようになる instead?

Satori Reader:
私はとても興奮した

I didn't recognize the word 興奮 at all, but when I clicked on it and saw the reading and meaning, it suddenly seemed familiar. I think this is one of the upper-level Wanikani words that I learned last year and then forgot again. It's a shame that I've forgotten so much from WK.

私は、本当にその通りだと思った

I've heard "sono toori" so many many times listening to podcasts, but I never realized how it was spelled until seeing it written out here.


頭から溢れ出しそうなくらい、アイデアが湧いてきた

This was actually in the last two chapters, not the current one, but I didn't comment on it before. 湧 had a furigana, indicating that it is a kanji I never marked as known in SR, which often means that it wasn't on WK in the first place. However, I had a feeling this one was on WK and looked it up, and sure enough it was (along with the vocab 湧く), at level 60. I'll get back there and learn the upper levels properly some day. Hopefully.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Thu Jan 06, 2022 5:39 am

SR:

今、中間試験の勉強中なんだ

Recently, I wrote about misreading 中間 as "nakama" on Satori Reader. Well, this morning 中間 showed up in the story again, and I misread it as nakama again. That was pretty frustrating.

飛ぶように走るとは、まさにこういうことだと思った。

Speaking of getting the same things wrong over and over again, there are several words that I've just keep getting wrong over and over on Anki over the last couple days. Try as I might, I can never remember the meanings for aruiha, masani, izure, futo, wazawaza, etc. Anyway, that's why I was surprised to see one of the words I kept failing (まさに) show up on SR tonight.

WK:

This morning was a disappointment, but I did really well on WK this evening, in both speed and accuracy. In fact, I did a rare second session this evening and did equally great on both, so i wasn’t just entirely luck either.

Of course, the downside of getting through reviews really fast is that it also means I get mentally tired and have to quit really fast as well - this evening, I had to stop after only 6 and 9 minutes, having down 35 and 50 reviews respectively. But it’s a lot better than the alternative!

Also, another Anki-induced synonym fail on WK this evening, when I put "recovery" for 回復 rather than the "restoration" that WK expects. Previously, I had studied on 回復 and got tripped up, guessing "restoration" when the card said "recovery".
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sat Jan 08, 2022 3:10 am

Obligatory disclaimer: Listening to music is one of the worst ways to learn a language, and I don't know why anyone recommends it. Understanding song lyrics is absolute Hard Mode - you don't have context or intonation to help you guess the meaning like you do with normal speech, etc.

That being said, I watched a bunch of recommended Japanese music videos last night and tonight to try to see if there were any that stuck in my head (even if I didn't understand the lyrics).

My least favorite was Lost Umbrella because the singer was completely unintelligible, as well as unpleasant to listen to, apparently due to being a robot Vocaloid voice.

The two I liked most were:

前前前世 by RADWIMPS - I just saw the music video on their channel, so I had no idea until afterwards that this is actually a song from the movie Your Name.

嗚呼、素晴らしきニャン生 by Ado - apparently this is a cover of an old Vocaloid song. Someone linked the original in the comments, and I watched it too since it had English subtitles so I could actually find out what the lyrics meant. Despite being a Vocaloid song, it was a lot easier on the ears than Lost Umbrella for some reason.

Incidentally, 嗚呼 is apparently read "aa", which has got to be one of the most bizarre readings I've come across. In that vein, I came across 悲鳴 (himei) on SR today, another surprising reading for 鳴, though apparently that's just the normal onyomi, which I'd never seen before.


In other news, I canceled my subscription to Satori Reader last night. Maintaining my commitment to read two stories on SR every day has often been stressful when I don't get around to it until the night, and I figured it was best to take a break from it for a while, at least when my subscription ends on the 24th.
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golyplot
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Re: Learning Japanese from zero by listening

Postby golyplot » Sun Jan 09, 2022 6:17 am

Yesterday, and then again today, I only read one story on Satori Reader instead of two. I decided that I would still have the goal of reading two stories each day, but I would only do it when I happened to have free time and in the mood for Japanese study. Previously, I would often end up late at night, having only read one story that day and forcing myself to quickly read through the other story to maintain my commitment, and I decided to not do that any more last night.

From the one story I did read:
先生が来るまで、ちょっとお待ちくださいね」と言った。

I listen to the audio of each story before reading it, and while listening, I thought I heard the word 車, but it was just 来る-まで here. This seems like a case where it's especially difficult to recognize the word boundaries.

Also, I assumed that 先生 was referring to one of Akiko's teachers, but apparently, it means "doctor" here. Arrgh!

そして点滴と、私の腕に刺さっている針を確認した

Before checking the translation, I interpreted this as "I (Akiko) looked at my arm, and sure enough, there was an IV needle sticking into it", but apparently, it actually means that the nurse checked the IV. How on earth do you figure these things out? One of the frustrating things about Japanese is how it often feels like you can know the meaning of every word in a sentence and still completely fail to understand the overall meaning of the sentence. It doesn't help that so much is omitted and left to be inferred from context.

Also this afternoon while looking for Japanese music videos, the opening animation to 干物妹!うまるちゃん randomly showed up in my Youtube recommendations. I had no idea what it was or what was going on in the video, but I looked it up afterwards and later watched the first episode (w Eng subs) out of curiosity.

One thing that bugs me is that I assume that 干物妹 is some sort of pun on 妹, but I can't figure out what it could be. Jisho suggests "dried fish" or "young woman who has given up on love", but those don't really make sense. Anyone know what the title really means?


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