Tuckamore: slow growing and gnarly (Japanese, French & Thai)

[tuckamore]

And telling Person A what person C had told Person B is like half of all my work-related phone calls..

I'd surely be fired Thanks for sharing, vonPeterhof, as I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one who struggles with this (not that I’m glad you struggle).

Coincidentally, this is exactly the type of sentence I said that I was going to seek help on.

Here it is:

「晴美さんがぜひ一度会ってお話ししたいんだと晴美さんに言って来たと片山さんに言ってくれと晴美さんが言っていました」

For context, there are two 晴美 being referred to in this line — 片山晴美 and 三浦晴美. The speaker is 石津 and he is talking to 片山義太郎 (referred to as solely 片山 below). (片山)晴美 and 片山(義太郎) are siblings. For comfort, this line is supposed to be hard to follow because of the two 晴美 and it is rephrased twice in the subsequent sentences — once by the narrator and once by 石津. I have written the rest of the conversation below, so if anyone wants to try to help me they can see how the clarification unfolds. (I added the speaker before each line to make it easier to follow.) But, even after I know who said what to who, I cannot parse this sentence.

Can anyone help? Or, is it a fool's errand?

片山は頭を振って、
片山：「おい！それは何か暗号か？」
石津：「え？ーーーーあ、わかりませんか？」
片山：「それでわかる奴がいたらお目にかかりたいよ」
石津：「ええと、つまりですね、晴美さんが二人いるからややこしいのです」
片山：「ああ、そうか、つまり、三浦とかいったっけな、あっちの晴美は」
石津：「そうです、あっちの晴美さんがこっちの晴美さんへ、こっちの片山さんに会いたいとーー」
片山：「片山は一人だ」
石津：「あ、そうか、つまり、そういうことなんです」
要するに三浦晴美が片山に会いたがているということらしい。

(I think) I understand that the first part of the sentence:
晴美さんがぜひ一度会ってお話したいんだと晴美さんに言って、
where the first 晴美 is 三浦晴美の晴美 and the second is 片山の妹の晴美.　So, we have that 三浦晴美 told 片山晴美 that she (三浦晴美) would very much like to meet and talk with 片山 sometime.

But, 言って　here is followed by 来たと片山さんに....言ってくれ and I haven’t quite figured out how it fits together. And, because it’s hazy, I’m not sure who 言ってくれ is going to? Does it mean, “tell 片山 for me when he (or you— 石津?) comes that 三浦晴美 said.....?”

(I think) I also understand the last part: …と晴美さんが言っていました,
where this 晴美 is again 片山の妹の晴美. So, we have that 片山晴美 told everything before this to 石津 (the character actually speaking this line).

I like the puzzle, but this one has got me beat.

[vonPeterhof]

But, 言って　here is followed by 来たと片山さんに....言ってくれ and I haven’t quite figured out how it fits together. And, because it’s hazy, I’m not sure who 言ってくれ is going to? Does it mean, “tell 片山 for me when he (or you— 石津?) comes that 三浦晴美 said.....?”

The way I see it, 言って来た here is part of a single verbal phrase meaning "came and said" or "came saying", with the the following と also being a quoting particle rather than a conditional. With the help of the extra context I managed to parse the sentence thus, with the colours denoting different clauses and the two Harumis denoted with bold and underlined text:

「晴美さんがぜひ一度会ってお話ししたいんだと晴美さんに言って来たと片山さんに言ってくれと晴美さんが言っていました」

"Harumi-san told me to do her the favour of telling Katayama-san that Harumi-san came to Harumi-san saying that she would really like to meet and talk sometime."

[tuckamore]

The way I see it, 言って来た here is part of a single verbal phrase meaning "came and said" or "came saying", with the the following と also being a quoting particle rather than a conditional. With the help of the extra context I managed to parse the sentence thus, with the colours denoting different clauses and the two Harumis denoted with bold and underlined text:

「晴美さんがぜひ一度会ってお話ししたいんだと晴美さんに言って来たと片山さんに言ってくれと晴美さんが言っていました」

"Harumi-san told me to do her the favour of telling Katayama-san that Harumi-san came to Harumi-san saying that she would really like to meet and talk sometime."

Wonderful! Thank you, vonPeterhof! 勉強になります。Your use of colours to identify the different clauses is brilliant. It is obvious now that 来た was really throwing me off. In hindsight, I should have paid more attention to the fact that 来た is in the past tense. (I know my tenses, but I don’t always fully appreciate them without conscious thought. It’s one of my top weaknesses.) If I did this, maybe I could have puzzled it out. But, then again, by the time I got to trying to figure out the middle section, my head was already in a knot trying to keep who said what to who straight, that I couldn’t keep any more information in my head.

[tuckamore]

I’ve still got great flow going on with Thai. Actually, now that I’m reading so comfortably in Japanese (resulting from finally finding something at my level, not because I’m suddenly an amazing reader — although it feels that way), I’m torn between where to spend my time. Not a bad dilemma to have, I admit.

I’ve taught myself how to touch type Thai using the website http://thai-notes.com. I highly recommend their lessons. I cannot compare their lessons with anything else that may be available, but I learned to type doing several of their lessons a day over the course of 2 weeks. I am not using a marked keyboard, but my fingers can find any Thai letter almost automatically, albeit still slowly. But, I couldn’t tell you what key is which letter, I’d have to type it out. I literally just have to let my fingers do the typing. I felt hindered by not being able to type before, and now I can more easily look stuff up online and search my computer’s dictionary app.

I also worked a lot with the first volume of the Maanii Reader books, both the audio and written. From my understanding, the Maanii Readers are a series of readers that were used to teach Thai kids how to read Thai. So, I guess this would qualify as materials created for native speakers. So, far I’m loving it.
The first page starts off something like this:
Maanii
Maanii has eyes
Crow
The crow has eyes
Uncle
Uncle has eyes
And, it progresses into longer, but still simple to understand, sentences after the first few pages. I assume subsequent volumes get increasingly complex. The repetition and variations on the same sentence structure and vocabulary is awesome. The cultural aspect is an added a bonus.

And, some generous people have made recordings of the books and translated the books into English. So, what we have now is a parallel graded-reader with audio. I am really enjoying using this resource. I’m half way through studying the first book.

I’m using the Maanii resources found at http://seasite.niu.edu/Thai/ and https://ressources.learn2speakthai.net. The SEAsite website has a lot of activities and explanations that accompany each lesson from the first two books. I cannot get most of the actives to work on my computer, but it doesn’t matter. I’m especially keen on their dictation exercises and their notes on grammar and word use, which I have no problem accessing. Their audio, however, isn’t as good as the audio at Learn2SpeakThai, although I do use the line-by-line audio from the SEAsite website when going through their lessons. The audio at Learn2SpeakThai is excellent — they have both line-by-line audio and audio for entire lessons. I’ve been listening to the entire first book from the Learn2SpeakThai website while commuting. It’s a nice 15 min chuck of comprehensible and, for my level, fairly enjoyable audio. And, I think I’m getting some benefit to listening to two different recordings of the same text (or at least I’m noticing some variations between speakers).

I’m also on Lesson 20 of Linguaphone Thai. But, truthfully, I think I’m getting more out of the materials that the SEAsite website has about the Maanii reader. And, I’m enjoying the story aspect of the Maanii reader more than the Liguaphone conversations. The story in the Maanii reader is not gripping, but it holds my attention even after listening to it dozens of times (probably because each time I listen there is a new sentence that moves from opaque to transparent and this can be addictive). I also have no real immediate need for conversational skills. So, learning Thai through a simple story about daily life written for elementary school students in Thailand is just as suitable to me as learning how to ask for prices and give directions to a taxi cab driver. That said, I do like Liguaphone Thai. I wish, however, that their Thai font was larger and, if I had to rely on the transliteration, I would be wishing that they used a more conventional system.

[tuckamore]

Another great week for reading in Japanese. Over the weekend, I finished my 2nd book in the 三毛猫ホームズ series (took me 2 weeks to read) and I broke into the 3rd on Monday. I am reading these books extensively — I may look up 20-25 words in total and generally don’t care about what I don’t know. This last book, 三毛猫ホームズの騎士道, took place in an old German castle, and so I did look up how 掘 is read. I figured out it meant moat from context, but didn’t know how it was said. Also, from the title, I learned 騎士道 means chivalry.

I have a soft goal of reading 20+ pages a day in one sitting. A small break is OK, but nothing that takes me away from being engaged with the story for too long. I’m finding that it takes me a couple pages to get into my reading rhythm. If I stop shortly after reaching this point, it’d be like running for 5 min and then stopping (I always struggle horribly for the first 5 min of my run until I find my rhythm) and if this were the case I’d rather not run at all. I’m finding 20 pages to be the sweet spot balancing the rocky start of each reading session with the amount of time I want to read in one sitting. I think it takes me about 45-50 minutes/20 pages in these very dialogue heavy books. Pipe dream: get this down to 30 minutes or so. That would free up ~1/4 hr that I could spend reading more pages or doing something completely different. It would also be easier to block off 30 min in my day than 45-50 min. (That extra 15 min seem trivial, but in the course of my day, a 45 min block is a disproportionately greater commitment that those additional 15 min may make it seem.)

I’m continuing to work through Kanji in Context. I’m about half way through Section 2, at 300 kanji. So, theoretically, I should know any higher frequency word (based on what KIC deems is so) that includes any or any combination of these 300 kanji. At the start here, I’m noticing a few things:

— In these first few hundred kanji, I don’t think I’m ‘learning’ that many new words. Most of these words are words that I’m already familiar with on some level. But, for some words, the meaning had always been a bit fuzzy. Or, for some kanji that have many readings, I never properly took the time to instinctively know what readings go with which words. 通じる is a good examples of this. It always tripped me up as I never bothered to learn whether it was つうじる or とおじる (or something else), although I knew the meaning and in hindsight would recognize it in listening. Now, I’ve got these sorts of formerly iffy readings and meaning down pat.

— I’m a lazy reader. But, I’m noticing a boost from this concentrated kanji study that is helping compensate for my lazy ways. I read almost entirely by sight. So, when I know the meaning of a word (but have forgotten the reading) or can figure out the meaning based on the kanji, I cannot usually be bothered to actually mentally read the kanji. The reader in my head (who, by the way, has perfect pronunciation in Japanese) might even substitute a Japanese synonym I know well or even an English word or even make up a reading. I’m a lazy reader in English, too, so it’s no surprise I’m a lazy reader in Japanese. But, this reading style does not do me any good for improving on my Japanese. What I’m noticing, after a couple weeks of concentrated vocabulary/kanji study, is that readings are becoming more automatic when reading. So, it doesn’t even become a question of whether I should bother pausing long enough to come up with the correct reading — I just do. This may seem like an obvious result, but I’m also getting this automaticity for kanji that I have yet to get to in KIC. It’s like my brain now knows words with kanji deserve respect in their own right, not just as a vessel for meaning.

— A surprising discovery: I have a pretty good sense for guessing the readings for kanji compounds of unknown words. It’s not stellar, but I usually make a pretty accurate guess. It is unbelievable for me to think I’ve gotten to this level. I remember way back when, when simple morphs in readings blew my mind (e.g. like how 発 morphs from はつ in 発明 and 開発 to はっ in 発禁 or to ぱつ in 出発; but all bets are off when it comes to morphs like ほっ in 発足 or 発作). I thought all these variations had to be individually learned, but clearly there is some pattern, which I’ve identified subconsciously. Yay!

— Another surprising discovery: my grasp of transitive and intransitive verb pairs is not as bad as I thought. I used to think for my level this was a huge weakness of mine and it has been forever on my to-do list to do something about it. But, as I work through these word lists, I realize I actually know which verb form is transitive and which is intransitive. I have my doubts how well I consistently and spontaneously produce each appropriately. But, given a chance to reflect, I am fine. And, within a pair, just one form would likely give me pause.

— Looking back, I think this is the first time I’ve devoted this much effort to learning vocabulary individually. Besides the odd word list here and there, I’ve learned most of my vocabulary (in chronological order) through course books (in dialogues, exercises, etc), through (learner directed) sentences in Anki (thousands of them), or through context (extensive)/intensive study of native media (hours and hours and hours). Which probably explains some of the fuzziness in my understanding of certain words that I mentioned in the first bullet. So, this activity is a nice complement. I think I would be bored senseless to learn the bulk of words word-by-word without at least a sentence level context. But, for any word that I already have familiarity with, but may not really know, I am easily able to take these words to the next step and make the meaning more concrete.

[tuckamore]

The other day I went to an smallish Asian grocery in my town. As I was shopping, among all the conversations going on around me, my ears reflexively perked up at specific customers talking to each other. At first, I didn’t know why I tuned in, only that what they were saying sounded very familiar, comfortably familiar. Actually, I couldn’t really hear them as I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. I just picked up on the sounds, rhythms and aizuchi-type interjections (is there a good word in English for aizuchi? I cannot think of one at the moment). On closer listen, I realized that they were speaking Thai. Sweet! Then, I full out eavesdropped and was surprised at how much I could pick up. If I was bolder, I would have approached them — with a reason, because I would actually love to find an in-person conversation tutor and maybe they knew someone. But, I wasn’t bold enough. Maybe the next time I go to this store I’ll prepare myself beforehand for this sort of chance encounter.

Otherwise, it’s been a busy few weeks. And, when my free time becomes scarcer, so does my amount of contact with Thai. (Japanese, on the other hand, hardly suffers as I can relax in Japanese.) I’m on Lesson 22?23? of Linguaphone and hope to spend some more time with Maanii and her friends this weekend.

Oh! and knowing how to type in Thai has been so liberating. I now have easy access to google and whatever it digs up from the world wide web. I highly recommend making the effort to learn to type once familiar with the writing system.

[tuckamore]

One of my main goals for starting this log was to be a motivator in getting me reading in Japanese and I am feeling very satisfied with what I’ve accomplished. I have a lot more ground to cover, but it is a solid win!

The other main goal, to improve my listening skills in French, has not moved along well. At. All. It may have retreated. And, the bigger problem now, is that my time previously spent reading in French has given way to exclusively reading in Japanese. So, I’m not in contact with French at all these days. I need to do something about this immediately. My current thoughts are to quickly breeze thought the audio of Assimil as a refresher and then start using DW Learning by Ear again. I am also entertaining some other ideas. I’ve given myself to June 1 to get my act together and just do something, anything.

As I contrast my journey in Japanese (++ listening / - -reading) and French (- -listening / ++reading), I cannot help but reflect on the path Thai is taking. Right now, listening is much stronger than reading (be sure to read as: stronger not strong). So, it seems to be following in the foot steps of Japanese. I’m OK with this right now, as I think listening is, generally, a harder skill for me to develop. Or, at least, takes repeated exposure over a longer time. And, listening is ever so important for a tonal language. (This is not to say that it’s not important for non tonal languages — just look at my French.) With my history with Japanese, however, I am keenly aware that, unless I actively work on reading, I could be be stuck for years with decent listening skills and pathetic reading skills. I’m optimistic that activating reading in Thai with a strong listening base will be easier than was the case for Japanese because of Thai’s more-or-less phonetic script. But, I’m also experienced enough to know that being able to read well will need its own investment and dedication (especially with a language that uses a different script and has no spaces between words). I try to keep this in mind when working with Thai, so I do not forget to put some effort into reading what I already understand aurally.

Something I cannot wait for is, when looking at a page of Thai, for words to immediately start jumping out at me. Right now, it is intimidating to stare down a page of Thai text. It takes a lot of effort to break that wall of text into anything meaningful. The lack of spaces kills me. I’m sure long ago at some point, I was at this same place in Japanese. But, it must have been such a long time ago, as I don’t remember this specific problem (there’s been so many hurdles that this particular one must have not left an impression). Even with my poorly developed reading skills in Japanese, I cannot right now remember a time when words and fragments did not jump out at me. I’m looking forward to reaching this milestone in Thai someday.

[tuckamore]

I’m still exceptionally giddy over the fact that I’m reading so much in Japanese. It has seemed like an unattainable goal for such a looooong time, that I’m a little in disbelief. Finding reading material at the right level is key. This, however, is so much easier said than done.

I’ve seen suggestions that if a book is too hard, put it down and find another and another and another until you hit one that works, and recommendations to open up a book somewhere in the middle to judge whether it is a good fit. But, doing these things is not easy when you don’t live in a place where you can pop into the local book shop or library with books in your target language. Also, for me with Japanese, at least, just opening a book to a certain place to check it out may not be a good representation of whether that book is suitable for me. It takes me some pages to get situated. If I were to jump into the middle of the books that I’ve been recently reading, I’m sure I would have come to conclusion that they would be too hard. (Though, I don’t have this problem in French — maybe I feel this way because Japanese is a more contextual language. I don’t know?) I also cannot skim well in Japanese (I’m getting better, but it’s hard), so it takes considerable effort to even know what genre a book is. So, forget knowing before hand whether it will be something that has the potential to hold my attention. Fortunately, for now, the act of reading any novel in Japanese, in and of itself, is enough to hold my attention. (The lack of skimming skills limits me with internet searches, too. I would probably google more in Japanese if I could skim better. But, when I want a piece of information I cannot be bothered to read so carefully before knowing whether there is a chance I’ll get my answer.)

It’s a catch-22 — needing to read well enough to find books that will make me a better reader.

So, I’m thrilled to have lucked into finding a series of books that work for me. (A set of 6 were the right price on e-bay and I took the chance. Score!) I just began my 5th book of this series. That makes 4 books in 6 weeks! After this one, I only own one more. But, the central branch of my library has 3 more. So, I’m contemplating whether to head downtown or switch to something new. I’m in my comfort zone right now, so I’m a bit shy of switching to something new. But, I know it’s good for me to move on. On the other hand, I only have easy access to few more books, so I think it’s also reasonable to remain comfortable for the time being to finish up what I have access to.

[tuckamore]

This was a week of low moral in language learning. Strong doubts about whether I know what I’m doing, whether I have what it takes (both innate ability and tenacity), whether I’m fooling myself, etc. Spiral, spiral, spiral...down, down, down. These negative emotions, of course, zapped my motivation. Fortunately, I think I rebounded by the weekend. But, my confidence is shaken.

This said, I did accomplish some things this week, which helped me to not dwell on my doubts.

― Japanese: I finished the 5th book I had in the series I’m reading and have moved on to the next: 三毛猫ホームズ卒業論文. The other 5 that I’ve read were all written in the 80s. This one brings me into 2003 ― same characters, same personalities, but as the jacket cover says, we now have cell phones. I also learned from this jacket cover that the author (赤川次郎）wrote 40 books for this series over a span of only 25 years. Wow! And, I know from Wikipedia that his works are not limited to this series. A prolific writer, eh? I’m also still diligently working on strengthening my vocabulary using Kanji in Context. I think I just passed 500 kanji.

― Thai: I finished working through the first volume of Maanii. I love this resource! Highly, highly recommend it and the accompanying activities/explanations at the SEAsite website for anyone beginning Thai. I wish I had used it earlier. I’m mostly using it for listening, vocabulary building, and dictation. I haven’t really read it per se, which is ironic as it was created to teach Thai kids how to read. I’ve started listening to the second volume during my commute and I’m surprised at how much I understand without yet looking at the translation or Thai text. On Lesson 30-something of Liguaphone.

― French: I’ve taken my first steps to building a listening habit in French. To ease myself into it, I first relistened to the entire audio of French without Toil. I understand most lessons easily, but there are some I’d like to revisit. I also listened to an episode of DW Learning by Ear’s Un paradis perdu (Gestation des Déchets). While I could easily read the script as though it were English, the audio was complete gibberish to me. I knew they were speaking French, but that’s about it. (How did these skills get so incredibly unbalanced?) You could say, I have no where to go but up.

[tuckamore]

Japanese

I am participating in the Tadoku test run that is happening until the end of the month. I’ve never counted pages, clocked hours, etc, so these two weeks will also test my ability to track some metrics.

I finished reading all 6 of the 三毛猫ホームズ books that I own. So, I went to my central library to pick up 3 more. And, surprise, they actually have the very first book in the series from 1978. The other 2 will be the most contemporary (2013, 2014) that I will have read in this series. I began the first one last night. Of all 7 books, now, this has been the easiest for me to get started with. Usually, I have a fuzzy understanding of the first handful of pages, but this one I could dive right in. I don’t know if this is a sign of improvement or just that this particular book starts off easier. It’s also nice to be formally introduced to the characters. Because this is a long running series, each book that I’ve read only has a line or two introduction for the main characters with only the absolute essentials. With this book, I am getting a proper introduction.

The following is not so much about my language learning, but some surprises I found when I pursued the foreign language section of my central library:

1. The French pickings are slim. My local branch has only about 5 books in French and shelves and shelves full of Russian and Spanish. But, I thought that the central branch would have a greater inventory of French books. Mais, non.

2. I was reminded of my favourite TV program when I was living in Japan. サザエさん！ This was the only show that I truly understood when I was in Japan. I loved it! It came on on Sunday evenings at 6:00 or 6:30pm and I would often arrange my time so I could be home to watch it. I was entertained by other shows, but I didn’t necessarily understand much. In サザエさん, they spoke slow enough, with text-book pronunciation, about daily life in Japan. I learned so much from this one show — linguistically and culturally. If it’s possible to get a hold of サザエさん outside of Japan, I highly recommend it for beginners.

Personally, I was made aware of サザエさん within my first moments in Japan as I share the same name as one of the characters. So, after I introduced myself, I more often than not heard something in an excited voice like あっ、サザエさんのタラちゃんsomethingsomething (笑）(I don’t know exactly what they said, because I knew no Japanese at the time.)

Anyways, back to the library — they had a サザエさん manga and I snatched it up. Before becoming a TV series, it was originally a comic strip. I think I also read at some point that it is the longest running anime show (in the world?). (My memory might be wrong about this, though.)

3. I saw a book written for Japanese people on how to be a conversationalist. The very first section starts super simply with ‘let’s talk about the weather’. And, then gives a handful of openers based on the weather. I now have this on my list of books to check out at some point.

4. In anticipation of the future I looked over the Thai section. It’s hard for me to gain much from looking at the Thai script on the binding. But, there was one book on display and I noticed that the writing under the Thai title looked Japanese (in romaji). And, lo and behold, it is a book by 赤川次郎 translated into Thai！The very same author that wrote the 三毛猫ホームズ that I’m reading! So, someday, when I’m ready to break into Thai, I’ll be getting this book in Japanese and using it as a parallel reader.

5. The author for just about half the books written in Thai is Sopak Suwan (โสภาค สุวรรณ, some dozens and dozens of books). Almost all these books were donated and have a short summary written in English taped to the inside of the front cover. If I understood correctly they were donated by the author’s father (who according to one insert was a Thai ambassador?) I don’t know anything about Thai authors and novels, so I’m blind here and thus know nothing about the author or her works. Based on the English summaries, I’m not sure these are my typical reads, but having an English summary would be a nice start.

Thai

I am still loving Maanii! There is a tremendous amount of repetition for just about every word. It almost makes it hard not to learn all the words. I started working intensively with the Book 2 this past weekend. Unfortunately, I cannot get the actives at the SEAsite to work. I benefited a lot from the dictation and build-a-sentence drills for the first book and was hoping for the same. Oh, well. So, I’m just using the line-by-line audio and the notes and vocabulary pages.

The line-by-line audio of the SEAsite is a terrific companion to the chapter audio at learn2speakthai. The line-by-line at SEAsite is much faster than the chapter audio at learn2speakthai. So, I am listening hard to the line-by-line until I get each word and syllable. And then, I listen to the chapter audio from learn2speakthai while out and about, and it is so easy to follow. (The line-by-line at learn2speakthai is painfully slow for me, but it probably would have been perfect when I was just starting out. In contrast, the quality of the chapter audio at SEAsite is not very good. So, they work so well together. I thank everybody that made these resources available.)

I’m on Lesson 35 of Linguaphone. I am sort of bored by this course, so these last 10 lessons or so are taking longer than they should. I’d like to wrap it up by the end of the month.

French

I’m struggling to build a reliable habit of listening in French. I’m listening here and there, but it’s sloppy and I know, without a habit, what little I do do could disappear without my notice. I think it’s mostly a matter of building the habit around a particular time of day/activity. So, I’m working on figure out what will work best for me.