日本語一筋 [JP]

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Sizen
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Re: 日本語一筋 [JP]

Postby Sizen » Thu Feb 23, 2017 2:08 am

I went to visit some friends who had recently moved over the weekend and a mutual friends of ours, who has spent quite some time in Ukraine, brought a bottle of Khortytsia vodka which we happily broke open, and finished, on Sunday night. This gave me the courage, and the nimbleness of tongue, to tell everyone a Japanese joke (in English): 寿限無 (Jugemu). It's a fairly popular joke in Rakugo and there are all sorts of ways of telling it, but the important bit is that it includes a very long name (Here it is in romaji: Jugemu Jugemu Gokō-no surikire Kaijarisuigyo-no Suigyōmatsu Unraimatsu Fūraimatsu Kuunerutokoro-ni Sumutokoro Yaburakōji-no burakōji Paipopaipo Paipo-no-shūringan Shūringan-no Gūrindai Gūrindai-no Ponpokopī-no Ponpokonā-no Chōkyūmei-no Chōsuke) and as the joke progresses, the person telling it tends to repeat the name many times, progressively rattling it off faster and faster.

Despite having a third of a bottle of vodka in me, I have to say I did pretty well. I messed up the name once, but luckily my audience spoke no Japanese, and even if they had, they may have been too inebriated to notice the slip up. Either way, everyone seemed to enjoy the joke, so I'm glad I took the time to practice saying the name over and over again.

For those who have never heard it, it's actually quite well known in Japan and turns up often enough in popular culture: like here, or here, or here. Now that I think of it, I only know it from anime, but I'm sure it's turned up elsewhere...

Anyway, here's a full version of the joke for your listening pleasure.
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vonPeterhof
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Re: 日本語一筋 [JP]

Postby vonPeterhof » Thu Feb 23, 2017 9:11 am

I actually first heard Jugemu a few weeks ago, since the current season of the anime 昭和元禄落語心中 had an episode centred on it. It also made me retroactively realise the inspiration for the name of Lucy(...) from the anime Servant × Service (the selection of names isn't quite as off the wall as in the original or the Gintama parody, but its origin story is pretty similar), and possibly also for Monty Python's Johann Gambolputty.
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Sizen
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Re: 日本語一筋 [JP]

Postby Sizen » Thu Feb 23, 2017 7:24 pm

vonPeterhof wrote:...and possibly also for Monty Python's Johann Gambolputty.

Funny you should mention Monty Python. I just stumbled across a baffling scene in Girls und Panzer the other day that directly references one of their skits.

Being of course a reference to this iconic skit that later became the origin of the use of the word spam for "annoying messages".
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Sizen
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Re: 日本語一筋 [JP]

Postby Sizen » Tue Feb 28, 2017 9:53 pm

After many years of flip-flopping about it, I've finally started employing a morning routine. Every day, I get up, do some stretches, prepare and eat breakfast, read a little in English (lately either Einstein Never Used Flashcards which was brought up in a recent discussion on the forum or Struck By Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities). After this, I'm ready to start studying Japanese. First, I review the cards I added studying日本語総まとめN1語彙. Then, I go through another two pages of the same book, adding new cards to my deck after I feel I've got a satisfactory understanding of all the new words. At this point, I'll usually take a little break to listen to some music and check the forum, twitter, etc. Then it's back to the grind: reading the news. I'll go through some articles on the NHK news website. I prefer the articles with video components because then I can listen to the report first, looking up all the words/phrases I don't understand until I have a thorough understanding of what's being discussed. Once I've done that, I'll read through the text of the article once, noting the news words that didn't appear in the video (the audio and text don't always match up 100%), and then I read through it again, using my tablet to highlight the new words I came across and making notes for sentences with interesting structures or word usage. Normally, I do this with one to three articles depending on how motivated I am and how interesting the news is that particular day. And then I'm done!

I've found that I'm much more productive on the days where I have the time to go through my whole routine in the morning: not just because I accomplish a bunch in the morning, but because I tend to keep some of my momentum from the morning for the rest of the day. This is a plus, because I tend to do some intensive reading/listening at some other point in the day, and actually having the motivation to do so consistently feels wonderful. I feel ever closer to reaching my goal of beating my 'apathy'.
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Sizen
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Re: 日本語一筋 [JP]

Postby Sizen » Mon Mar 27, 2017 8:37 pm

I never really know what to post about, but things have been going well. It's hard to believe it's already been about 4 weeks since I last updated my log. Time flies when you're enjoying languages, I guess.

My main source for learning Japanese this past month has been reading/listening to the news. I used to not like following the news (in any language), but earlier this year, I had a small pep talk with myself and wagered that, like with many things, I'd be able to get into the news if I looked for personally interesting stories to follow rather than simply reading random articles every day and hoping to remember what's happening in the world. And so far, this has proven to be true. Now I can read the news in Japanese, and with a bit of effort looking up new words and phrases, I can understand it with the same level of depth as I would in my native language. Cool!

So that's great and all, but the news is only one part of my studies. I also spend time reading comics, watching anime and doing other assorted activities. If I were to change one aspect of my studies, it would be to spend more time on these less academic activities (without reducing my overall study time), and to put an emphasis on n+1 style material: nothing too hard or too easy. My gut tells me that I will improve the most with this kind of approach to Japanese at the moment, and I think I'm going to trust my instincts on this one. So while the masochist in me enjoys getting in way over my head, I'll try to do more extensive activities.

In other news, and perhaps to spite myself for choosing 日本語一筋 as the title of my log, I've started working on Hebrew. It'd been a while since I'd felt this drawn to a language, so I've just sort of been riding this wave of enthusiasm I've been experiencing to see where it takes me. I should mention that while I have put about an hour into it every day so far, it hasn't interfered at all with my desire to study Japanese or my routine. So no worries there.

להתראות or またね
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CurlySue
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Re: 日本語一筋 [JP]

Postby CurlySue » Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:27 pm

Sizen wrote:In other news, and perhaps to spite myself for choosing 日本語一筋 as the title of my log, I've started working on Hebrew. It'd been a while since I'd felt this drawn to a language, so I've just sort of been riding this wave of enthusiasm I've been experiencing to see where it takes me. I should mention that while I have put about an hour into it every day so far, it hasn't interfered at all with my desire to study Japanese or my routine. So no worries there.

להתראות or またね


Nothing like that New Language Smell, eh? :)
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Sizen
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Re: 日本語一筋 [JP]

Postby Sizen » Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:20 am

CurlySue wrote:Nothing like that New Language Smell, eh? :)

No sirree. Especially when it's from a language family you haven't ever looked at!
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CurlySue
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Re: 日本語一筋 [JP]

Postby CurlySue » Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:23 am

Which resource(s), if any, are you using for Hebrew?
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Sizen
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Re: 日本語一筋 [JP]

Postby Sizen » Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:42 am

CurlySue wrote:Which resource(s), if any, are you using for Hebrew?

So I started with duolingo and did about two thirds of their "Letters" course while comparing with wikipedia to make sure I learned the proper handwritten characters. After that, I got kind of bored of duolingo, as I tend to do, so now I'm working through L'Hébreu sans peine. It maybe feels a little dated already, but I often prefer the older Assimil courses. So far, it's been enjoyable and relatively easy to follow, but I feel like had I not spent the time to learn at least part of the writing system, plus 30 or so words and some grammar points, the first lesson might have been a little daunting despite its relative simplicity.

And yeah, I'm just going to keep on chugging along and eventually I might start to look at popular culture or other resources for more material. But for now, I'm pretty content with this setup, especially since I don't plan on spending more than an hour a day on Hebrew for the time being.
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Sizen
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Re: 日本語一筋 [JP]

Postby Sizen » Fri Jul 14, 2017 3:53 am

If there's one thing I'm consistent about, it's being inconsistent... At least when it comes to posting.

I've been chugging along with my "studies" since the last time I posted, and things are going unequivocally well. I've been pretty consistently reading manga (不滅のあなたへ Fumetsu no anata he by 大今良時 Ooima Yoshitoki, which, coming from the same author as 聲の形 Koe no Katachi, is very unexpected; 徒然チルドレン Tsuredzure Children by 若林稔弥 Wakabayashi Toshiya; ふらいんぐうぃっち Flying Witch by 石塚千尋 Ishidzuka Chihiro, who I was surprised to find out is actually a guy; 古見さんは、コミュ症です。 Komisan ha komyushou desu by オダトモヒト Oda Tomohito, which wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but is still enjoyable; etc). I've been watching anime here and there (放浪息子 Hourou musuko, the original manga of which I now own and plan to read; 月がきれい Tsuki ga kirei, because there wasn't much else I felt like watching last season; グランブルーファンタジー Granblue Fantasy, because I played the game and why not; BanG Dream!, cuz I'm gonna watch stupid moe anime if I feel like it; etc), and I've been playing some games (Nier: Automata, which I'm still playing; グランブルーファンタジー, duh; BanG Dream!, uhhh... okay, I guess I'll play the game too...; etc). I'm even reading through the BanG Dream! novel right now, because I guess I have nothing better to do.

The new season is upon us, now, and it already looks like it's going to be a good one (for me at least). ニューゲーム New Game Season 2 is out and despite a tremendously unneeded service scene in the first episode, I'm very excited; 徒然チルドレン Tsuredzure Children got its own anime and I'm ecstatic; セントールの悩み Centaur no Nayami was recommended to me and, yeah, why not. What do I have to lose. Not sure there are many other series that really grab my attention (although I haven't looked in to the anime that Amazon acquired since I don't think Canada has Amazon Strike anyways), but I'll at least watch the first episode of some more series and see how they treat me.

Other than that, I've been doing Glossika Daily Life for Japanese for two reasons. One, I do not use my Japanese at all outside of consuming media, so I figure I should "work" on speaking. Two, having never lived in Japan as an adult, there's a lot I don't know about getting around on a daily basis outside of restaurants and booking hotels/train tickets. With a language like French, I can easily just improvise because I'm very comfortable in the language, but with Japanese, I feel like studying up on proper "speech protocol" might come in handy.

I've also gone back to studying kanji like I used to. I'm familiar with at least one reading of, I'd say, somewhere between 2000 and 2500 characters (most Jouyou and then some), but I stopped learning to write them at about 1500 characters. So I'm back to learning at a rate of about 2 per day, studying through vocab and sentences in the N1 kanji book I got back in 2011 before I took the N1. I don't have any goals; I just sort of feel like spending a few minutes each day studying kanji.

Oh, I also went to Japan for 18 days and Quebec for 10 days. In Japan, I went to Tokyo, Hakodate, Kyoto, Uji (100 internet points for whoever can guess why), Hiroshima and Itsukushima. It. Was. Fantastic. What was nice was that my experience this time round was the exact opposite of most foreigners in Japan. Inexplicably, only once did someone ever initiate a conversation with me in English, and I was quickly able to switch to Japanese when the poor man reached the limits of his English abilities. Every other time, everybody spoke to me in Japanese, regardless of whether or not they heard me speak in Japanese beforehand. This lead to a few interesting situations, like getting our portraits done, searching a mountain for frogs with some older gentleman and being invited to a brothel by an old lady. (No, we didn't go.)

I was pretty happy that I didn't have too much trouble communicating in Japanese while I was there. I booked all of our tickets for the shinkansen, called for a taxi and booked a last minute hotel over the phone, among other things, all in Japanese. Small stuff really, but I was happy I could be a somewhat competent communicator in Japanese.

I also saw 夜は短し歩けよ乙女 while I was there. Two thumbs up. The musical theatre stuff had me cracking up.

Quebec was mostly to see family (I'm half Quebecois), so not much to report there, except I had a lot of fun seeing all my second cousins, second cousins once removed and great aunts and uncles.

Anyways, where do things stand now? Well, my Japanese is getting there. My biggest hindrance at the moment is vocabulary. I can watch the kinds of anime and read the kinds of manga I like without much difficulty (i.e. minimal pausing/rewinding and dictionary searches), read NHK news comfortably (barring subjects I'm unfamiliar with), and am sometimes surprised by the complex ideas I can understand (especially military stuff). The language has become a normal part of my life and I'm looking forward to taking it even further.
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