Sumisu's Japanese Log

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AllSubNoDub
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby AllSubNoDub » Sat Sep 25, 2021 4:23 pm

golyplot wrote: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.


Fortunately, I've got time and more grinding ability than is good for me. I've got Spanish to keep me busy for a while and probably won't start actively learning Japanese till I stop encountering Spanish words so frequently. I looked into it a little and apparently most people suggest not doing WK after RTK since you'll get mnemonic interference and there are faster ways to progress after you have all the RTK characters (though people have tried it and succeeded). One of the big factors is WK apparently limits your daily progress? So I think I'll do core 2k/6k or Anki all the Tae Kim example sentences instead (a popular post-RTK choice). I follow both of your logs though and find them very motivating, keep it up. :D
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golyplot
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby golyplot » Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:10 pm

If you go through Wanikani as fast as possible, it takes a little under a year, with most levels taking a week. I actually went through WK almost as fast as possible (reaching level 60 in 353 days), but I would definitely not recommend it. Personally, I'd recommend going through the first half or so as fast as you can, then taking your time on the rest. The high levels are both much harder and much less useful. You can see my level 60 post here.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Sat Oct 30, 2021 6:22 pm

One thing I haven't spent too much time on is learning Japanese family and given names. But I do try to learn the more common ones, plugging them into Anki as I come across them. I use the following website to see how common the name is:

https://myoji-yurai.net/

Today I came across the name 良子 (りょうこ). I initially read this as むすこ (息子), once again confusing similar-looking kanji. The fact that it was written with さん (良子さん) didn't help because people also say 息子さん when speaking politely about another person's child. So I looked it up and apparently only 30 people in Japan have that name, and it's ranked as the 53,319th most common family name. As a result, I didn't add it to Anki. However, because I've written about it here I'll probably remember it anyway now. I'm sure I'll see the onyomi reading for 良 (りょう) come up again in the future so it's not all a waste of time.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Sun Nov 07, 2021 2:44 am

This week I completed the first chapter of An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. This is the textbook that comes after Genki II in the Japan Times series of books. The book is mostly in Japanese, with a few dialogues and short stories in each chapter, which are untranslated. Each chapter also contains dozens of sentences that demonstrate about 10 grammar topics, with English translations. It also contains two discs for listening practice. I'm pretty excited to start working my way through this book. Although I wouldn't say I enjoy using textbooks, I would say that I benefit from using them. To really master a chapter in a textbook is a good feeling, as painful as it is to do it. Reading through the first chapter made me realize how lazy I've been with my language learning lately. Besides Anki, I only do "fun" activities in the language. That's all fine and well and I am still making progress every day, but I feel ready for another phase of really getting serious and hitting the books properly.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Sun Nov 14, 2021 1:55 am

I just finished Chapter 2 of the Intermediate textbook. One thing I hadn't noticed at first is that they provide notation for pitch accent in the vocabulary section. I'm definitely happy to see this, but it also makes me kind of upset. This is the same company, Japan Times, that publishes the Genki books. In my opinion, those books should have indicated the pitch accent as well, even more so because the best way to learn this is in the beginning. At this point, my bad pitch accent has become fossilized and I'm not sure I will ever put forth the effort to correct it in any big way. I imagine they omitted pitch accent from Genki so as not to overwhelm beginning learners, but they could've put it in there and indicated that you could ignore it if you wished.

The other problem with this book, which is no fault of the publisher, is that I haven't been able to find any pre-made Anki decks for this material, apart from cards with just single words. I'm planning to harvest some of the sentences from the dialogues and grammar sections to create my own cards, but haven't started yet.
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby AllSubNoDub » Sun Nov 14, 2021 3:16 am

Sumisu wrote:I just finished Chapter 2 of the Intermediate textbook. One thing I hadn't noticed at first is that they provide notation for pitch accent in the vocabulary section. I'm definitely happy to see this, but it also makes me kind of upset. This is the same company, Japan Times, that publishes the Genki books. In my opinion, those books should have indicated the pitch accent as well, even more so because the best way to learn this is in the beginning. At this point, my bad pitch accent has become fossilized and I'm not sure I will ever put forth the effort to correct it in any big way. I imagine they omitted pitch accent from Genki so as not to overwhelm beginning learners, but they could've put it in there and indicated that you could ignore it if you wished.

If it makes you feel better, this guy ranked Ananya's Japanese higher than Matt's or Dogen's, despite them having better pitch accent, because her Japanese sounded more natural.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Sun Nov 14, 2021 5:25 pm

AllSubNoDub wrote:
If it makes you feel better, this guy ranked Ananya's Japanese higher than Matt's or Dogen's, despite them having better pitch accent, because her Japanese sounded more natural.


Interesting video. I'm not going to worry about it too much. I just want to be able to be understood and not have such a thick accent that it's painful for my conversation partner. It sounds like that can be done even without perfect pitch accent.
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AllSubNoDub
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby AllSubNoDub » Sun Nov 14, 2021 5:39 pm

Sumisu wrote:
AllSubNoDub wrote:
If it makes you feel better, this guy ranked Ananya's Japanese higher than Matt's or Dogen's, despite them having better pitch accent, because her Japanese sounded more natural.


Interesting video. I'm not going to worry about it too much. I just want to be able to be understood and not have such a thick accent that it's painful for my conversation partner. It sounds like that can be done even without perfect pitch accent.

Yes, same here. :) And iirc he ranked Steve Kaufmann's Japanese really high despite him having a relatively bad accent. Also, from what I understand, you can get a lot of bang for your buck pitch accent-wise by applying some relatively simple rules of thumb and just being more "aware" of it from now on as you listen.

It's funny that you mentioned the textbooks. I was just listening to someone talk about how many books in the 70's-90's did actually focus a great deal on pitch accent (e.g. the Eleanor Harz Jorden books), then it fell out of favor in the late 90's. Presumably, to lower the difficulty barrier to prospective students since it's not an impediment to intelligibility and rarely any cause for confusion. It seems to be making a resurgence now as it becomes more apparent that many people desire and are able to reach near-native levels in Japanese.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Fri Nov 19, 2021 4:42 am

I took a break from my textbook tonight and spent a few minutes going down a rabbit hole regarding the kanji 丁. I feel like this is an underrated kanji, if there can be such a thing. According to Jisho, it ranks only 1,312 in usage in newspapers. But it's all over the language, especially the spoken language, e.g. the ubiquitous ちょうどいい. It's a fairly common counter for things like cakes of tofu, and long cylindrical objects: where exactly 本 ends and 丁 begins when it comes to such objects is above my pay grade.

The kanji is a simple two strokes, made just a little bit more elegant than a "T" via that slight upstroke on the second stroke. The primary onyomi reading is ちょう, and it passes this reading on to the very common 庁 and 町, as well as 頂. However, ちょうis but one of a whopping FIVE onyomi readings for this character. Of these, only ちょう and てい seem to be common in modern usage. This large number of onyomi readings stands in contrast to a single kunyomi reading (ひのと), which is only used, ironically enough, in connection with the Chinese sexagenary cycle. In that system, it was the name for the fourth day of the week, and 丁 retains the sense of fourth-in-rank to this day. The ひ in ひのと derives from 火, so in addition to fourth, this kanji also has a sense of the element of fire.

The 丁 rabbit hole looks like it keeps going for a while, but I'm going to stop here for tonight.
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Fri Dec 03, 2021 2:11 am

I've been kind of lazy lately, but today I "completed" the kanji 家 in that I have now learned words for all five of the readings. I'd already known いえ、や、うち、and か for a while now, but today I came across 本家 which uses the け onyoumi reading. In the context I saw it in, it was referring to a parent-subsidiary relationship for a corporation, where 本家 is the parent, and 分家 is the subsidiary. These words seem to have originally referred to Japanese households, with the 本家 being where the head of household lived.

However, I now see that this kanji also has the following readings for Japanese names: あり、え、く、つか、and べ. If I keep learning long enough I'm sure I'll come across at least one or two of these at some point...
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