Sumisu's Japanese Log

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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:18 am

I'm currently hooked on 日本人の知らない日本語 episodes. I first heard about this from someone's log on this message board but I can't remember who it was. Someone recently posted (all?) 12 episodes on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/c/SaiAikTunOfficial/videos

Some of the acting is pretty rough, but the subject matter (foreigners learning Japanese) is perfect for a language learner. And because it's a comedy, the acting doesn't really matter so much.
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golyplot
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby golyplot » Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:08 am

That was probably me. Ironically, I still haven't progressed beyond the first episode myself.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Sat Jul 17, 2021 12:43 am

Today was fairly productive for listening practice. I listened to today's episode of OK Cozy Up, a news program, for 50 minutes. It's been a few months since I listened, and I was driving, so it was mostly passive listening and I didn't understand as much as I did when I listened a few months ago. I need to listen to this at least a few minutes a day to keep up my level. Then I listened to two episodes of Noriko from early January where she was discussing New Year's topics. Finally I listened to about 15 minutes of a Nikkei Radio show, Market Square. They speak extremely fast on this show and I tried slowing it down but ended up understanding it better at full speed, to my surprise. I may listen to more later when I do chores.

I've also started focusing on grammar a little more. I realized after my most recent italki that I now have a decent vocabulary. Of course I have a long way to go, but I feel like I now have enough words to express most things I want to say, even if not as artfully or as precise as I might like to. But I lack the grammar to speak smoothly and combine thoughts together fluently. As a result, I think it's time to do another deep dive on grammar. I just ordered An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese on Amazon and will get started on that in the coming days. In the meantime I'm reviewing Genki and looking things up online.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Thu Sep 09, 2021 2:47 am

I'm still learning new kanji every day, which I expect to continue for a while. But there's also the issue of having to relearn "known," similar-looking kanji. Tonight, for example, I came across the word 焦がれる. My brain processed 焦 ("char") as 無 ("nothingness") at first, even though I "knew," or at least thought I knew, both characters. Part of the reason was I only knew 焦 from 焦げ臭い (burnt smell) and so the が in 焦がれる threw me for a loop, even though the reading of the kanji itself turns out to be the same in both cases (こ). Also, 無 is the much more common of the two characters so my brain is sort of primed to see it. I rarely handwrite kanji anymore but in this case I copied out both characters a few times by hand so that they would sink in. As I write them, I can see that they are actually quite different, but in the heat of the moment my brain just misfired. I have to be realistic and accept that this is going to continue to happen until I have done much, much more reading.

I also learned a new kanji: 嗅 ("sniff"). This is related to 臭 ("stinking") but frustratingly, the characters do not share either kun or on readings. Why Japanese???
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby devilyoudont » Fri Sep 10, 2021 9:58 pm

In this case they were close in old Chinese so Japanese probably took one from 1 region and the other from another or possibly the on reading of 1 was imported in a different time period than the other.

\o/ Hurray explanations which clarify but make nothing easier.
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golyplot
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby golyplot » Sat Sep 11, 2021 5:51 am

I mix up "easy" kanji embarrassingly often when doing Wanikani reviews. For example, a while back, I mistook 電 for 竜 and have mixed up 島 and 鳥 many times. Just this evening, I mistook 負 for 急. I also sometimes mix up kanji with similar meanings or readings, even if they look nothing alike.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Sat Sep 11, 2021 6:00 pm

golyplot wrote:I mix up "easy" kanji embarrassingly often when doing Wanikani reviews. For example, a while back, I mistook 電 for 竜 and have mixed up 島 and 鳥 many times. Just this evening, I mistook 負 for 急. I also sometimes mix up kanji with similar meanings or readings, even if they look nothing alike.


I feel for anyone who actively hates learning the kanji. I look at it as a fun puzzle but even I get really frustrated with these mix ups sometimes. Making matters worse is I sometimes come across kanji that aren't on the jouyou list. I'm currently working on translating a J-Pop song - not exactly high literature - and the lyrics contain 蔓, which is jinmeiyou, and 嗚, which is not on either list! I wonder if native speakers know these kanji or are just able to intuit them somehow after having mastered the jouyou list.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Fri Sep 24, 2021 12:53 am

Tonight I confused a couple of words, both of which I "knew." I was adding a sentence to Anki that had the word 深刻 (しんこく: serious; acute; grave). I confused it with 遅刻 (ちこく: late), I think because I've been seeing 遅刻 a lot lately so my eyes just kind of skipped to the 刻, even though I was also familiar with 深刻. This all happened in less than a second, but it's something that happens from time to time. It's a different problem than similar-looking kanji, which is another issue I wrote about a few weeks ago. With certain situations like this, I've learned to slow down and look closely at the word to make sure I'm reading it correctly. An example of this is 日本 and 本日. The first time I saw 本日 really threw me for a loop and to this day I take just a brief pause to make sure I'm reading them correctly. When reading quickly, this type of thing happens even in English so I'm not going to worry about it.

Another interesting thing about Japanese is identical Kun readings for different verbs, which use different kanji. There's probably a word for this phenomenon, but I don't know what it is. I've found that when this happens it sometimes actually helps me to better learn both words. For example, until tonight I had really struggled with getting 冒す (おかす) to stick. Tonight I learned 犯す (also おかす) and I feel like now I have something to "hook" 冒す to. The meanings of both words are somewhat related, which also helps (risk-taking/committing a crime/making a mistake). Another example of this is 誤る and 謝る (both あやまる). I had the worst time learning 謝る until I learned 誤る.

頑張って
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AllSubNoDub
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby AllSubNoDub » Sat Sep 25, 2021 1:30 am

蔓 is 2101 in the Aozoro Bunko frequency list and it's 2445 in RTK (RTK 3). Learning up to this point in the frequency list gives you 90.9% coverage of Aorozo Bunko.
嗚 is 2597 in the frequency list, it's not in RTK. Learning up to this point gives you 94.8% coverage of Aorozo Bunko.
Given those frequencies, I would say they're somewhat advanced, but would assume natives know them. Here's the list, if you're so inclined.

I'm learning Japanese bass ackwards, so I actually "know" (ahem) a lot of the kanji mentioned since they're some of the first mentioned in RTK:
臭 "stinking" is 128 (mnemonic: St. Bernard with nose in the air smells something stinking)
嗅 "sniff" is 129 (mnemonic: scratch 'n sniff sticker of mouthwash, replaces one stinking smell with another)
冒 "risk" is 18 (mnemonic: you'll risk your eyesight if you look directly up at the sun)
負 "defeat" is 67 (mnemonic: imagine after you defeat an enemy, you bound up his hands with a shellfish, a claw on each wrist)

Neat. :D

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting. I'm frontloading kanji in order of difficulty instead of order of frequency (hence, 嗅 being the kanji right after 臭, since you just have to add 口 "mouth" number 11). So I'm missing literally hundreds of common, every day kanji (but will eventually get to those) and I don't know any readings. However, I can write tons of kanji and have a rough idea of their meanings, and also I don't think I would mix them up. Anyway, it's all just a big experiment (which I hope works out). I've been tempted to do WaniKani after RTK.
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golyplot
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby golyplot » Sat Sep 25, 2021 5:00 am

You might as well start Wanikani now. It gets off to a slow start, and you're likely to be bored early on after doing RTK and possibly give it up prematurely.
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