Sumisu's Japanese Log

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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Wed Mar 10, 2021 4:01 am

Between my last entry and tonight I hadn't done much besides Anki. There are a bunch of new cards I've been wanting to add to my deck for over a week but I haven't done it yet. But tonight I spent about 90 minutes with Japanese. After going through my Anki decks, I spent a few minutes on Yahoo Finance. Then I did one of my favorite activities which is to browse through products on Amazon Japan. Tonight I was reading through the comments for a rice polishing machine, trying to figure out why you would want to polish your own rice. Then I watched a video on YouTube of a Japanese chef riding his motorcycle to a small roadside restaurant where he ate ramen, curry, and gyoza.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:52 am

Over the last few days, I added about 30 new cards to my Anki decks and have done about 20 minutes or so of reading per night. I've also watched about 30 minutes of YouTube videos. Lately, I feel like I'm in maintenance mode with Japanese. However, that's not entirely true. I'm still learning new words every single day. But there's just a lot less bang for the buck here at the intermediate level compared to the first year of learning as a beginner. In order for me to bridge the enormous gap between the early intermediate level and the advanced level, I have two choices: (1) study 30 minutes per day for many, many years, or; (2) study 2-3 hours per day for a lesser number of years.

I definitely want to reach an advanced level. Perhaps next month, next year, I will be able to devote more time to language learning. For now, I'm learning slow and steady.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:28 am

頑張っている

This morning I spoke with my tutor on italki for an hour. With italki, sometimes I surprise myself by producing a word I had forgotten that I have learned. But other times I am unable to produce a word that I though I had learned inside and out. I speak Japanese for one hour every two weeks.

I spend more time listening than speaking. Nonetheless, I feel that I do far too little listening. Listening is the key to the language, in my opinion. Today I listened for about one hour.

Reading is my priority. Today I read for 30-45 minutes - not enough.

My only writing in Japanese lately has only been typing search terms into Google or sites like Jisho.org. Once in a great while, I will reply to a 日本語 tweet in 日本語.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Sat Apr 24, 2021 1:15 am

Things have been relatively quiet lately. A few days ago I listened to several episodes of Japanese with Noriko in a row, but have failed to follow up. I need to develop a habit of listening to one episode per day, rather than these occasional bursts that I do. I watched Kikujiro, a 2000 film starring Beat Takeshi, with English subtitles. There was a lot of slang that I didn't understand, but I enjoyed the movie.

I've maintained my Anki streak, but haven't been adding new cards lately. I've done very little reading lately. Part of the problem is that I recently injured my back and neck by spending too much time slouched over my laptop, so I'm away from the computer more than I would like. I bought a new 23" monitor to alleviate this but it won't come in until next week.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Tue May 25, 2021 6:24 am

頑張っている
I am still learning/studying Japanese.

今は掃除しながら音楽を聞いている
I am cleaning while listening to music
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Wed May 26, 2021 6:59 am

今晩は日本語を少し覚えていた
Tonight, I studied a little Japanese.

日本語がもっと時間に配りたい
I want to devote more time to learning Japanese.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Sun Jun 13, 2021 3:45 am

Today I learned two Wasei (和製) by reading a newspaper article:

フリーダイヤル: Toll-free number (from "free dial")
タオルケット: Towel blanket (from "towel (blan)ket")

Surely I won't be seeing "free dial" too many more times; I can't remember the last time I heard about a toll-free number in English. But it appeared in print today, and I'm glad I got to see it because I think it's a cool 和製.

When I first started learning Japanese, I was taken aback by the number of English loanwords and felt that they somehow diminished the Japanese language. While I still get annoyed by certain instances of katakana usage (who doesn't?) I'm starting to feel that katakana can also be used to great effect when used skillfully to produce beautiful Japanese. The Wasei add yet another layer to this language that has so many layers.
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Sumisu
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Mon Jul 05, 2021 2:51 am

This month marks my 3 year anniversary for studying Japanese. When I first cracked open the Genki I textbook, I had no idea that I would still be studying this language in 2021. While I am often frustrated by my lack of progress and/or inadequate study time, I'm going to try to be positive today and reflect on how much I've learned these last 3 years.

I remember sometime around my second week of studying being frustrated that I had not completely mastered hiragana and katakana. This was because I read a comment online somewhere that these could be mastered "in 24 hours." So I felt slow and stupid. I now feel that way again with kanji, as I have not yet learned all of the Joyou kanji. I know there are people who learn all the kanji in one year, or even less. Here I am 3 years in, and I still have not learned them all. However, I now have the ability, with the right subject matter, to read an entire paragraph in the Nikkei without looking anything up.

I know I shouldn't be so hard on myself. But at this intermediate stage the "end" or the "goal" seems so tantalizingly close yet so far away. Ideally I'd like to be able to read as well in Japanese as I do in English, or at least close to it. But I'm a LONG way from that goal. How strange it is to be able to read some things, even advanced topics, effortlessly while other things are nearly indecipherable.

When it comes to listening, I also have to remember where I started, which was 0% comprehension. My listening is the same as my reading. Sometimes I'll listen to NHK news, for example, and at times forget I'm listening to a foreign language. Other times I'll watch a yakuza movie and will barely understand a word.

I think I've mentioned this before in this language log, but what I wasn't counting on when I started 3 years ago was that I would need to work even harder at the intermediate stage than the beginning stage. And the problem with that is because I can operate comfortably in the language at times, my motivation for really pushing for 1, 2, 3 hours of study per day is just not there right now. I hope that reflecting back on where I started and where I am now will give me the motivation to make another big push with my language learning. I need to set some concrete goals and work towards those. If I do, I know that in another three years I'll be at a really great level. If I can confidently say that I "speak Japanese" after 6 years of study, that's really nothing to be ashamed of if I can pull it off. 頑張って!
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golyplot
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby golyplot » Wed Jul 07, 2021 5:44 am

For what it's worth, I raced through Wanikani in under a year, but then forgot a lot of it. I actually resubscribed to Wanikani and have been doing it again and it's a real slog. Learning the kanji takes a long time no matter how you do it, and you won't really learn a kanji until you've seen it a lot in writing.
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Sumisu
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Posts: 109
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Location: USA
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 0c0a4beb42
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Re: Sumisu's Japanese Log

Postby Sumisu » Thu Jul 08, 2021 12:21 am

golyplot wrote:For what it's worth, I raced through Wanikani in under a year, but then forgot a lot of it. I actually resubscribed to Wanikani and have been doing it again and it's a real slog. Learning the kanji takes a long time no matter how you do it, and you won't really learn a kanji until you've seen it a lot in writing.


I made the decision early on to learn the kanji via vocab that I encounter from various sources. When I see a new kanji, or a new reading of a "known" kanji, I plug it into Anki, using the complete sentence. I use Heisig's keywords but I could never bring myself to do RTK the recommended way. This has all worked well for me insofar as the kanji I know I know really well. But I sometimes get frustrated when I see several in a sentence that I still haven't learned, and wonder if I've been learning inefficiently.

You're right that it takes a long time no matter how you do it. Maintaining a grasp of all 2,000 (and really it's more like 2,500+) kanji plus all of the readings is a really gargantuan undertaking. I know it's polite and fashionable to claim that Japanese, or any foreign language, isn't difficult, but between us I think it kind of is. But I find it to be worth the time I put in and don't intend on stopping now. I wish you luck with Wanikani; I know others have had success with it.
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