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

[tuckamore]

I almost through reading 時をかける少女 (The girl who leapt through time) by 筒井康隆 (Tsutsui Yasutaka). Because of my success with the 2 Peter Pan books, I thought I’d try to find something else written for young audiences.

Wow — such an easier book. I’m not sure how the intended age group for 時をかける少女 compares with that for the Peter Pan prequels, but 時をかける少女 is leaps and bounds easier. The writing is probably the simplest that I’ve read in Japanese (with the exception of text specifically written for learners). I haven’t bothered to look one word up in the dictionary — although there are plenty I still don’t understand. Sadly, I’m finding the story to be a bit blah. If I weren’t reading it so quickly, I probably wouldn’t have the patience to finish it. I am surprised at this, though, as there are numerous adaptions of this book, so I thought the story would be more gripping. Instead, I find it boring and predictable. Maybe I’m missing something.

As I’m reading, I cannot stop myself from analyzing how suitable this book would have been for me as a beginner. On the one hand, the simple sentences and infrequent use of kanji leads me to think it would have been good. On the other hand, I’m skeptical of this apparent ease. If I didn’t have a solid grounding in…hmmm, it is syntax? predicting the next word or word type? — I’m not sure what to call it (gained from a gazzillion hours of listening), I would be having a painful go at trying to parse the stream of kana into words. And, this, I predict, would have led to greater frustration than having to stop to look up kanji-based words used in a ’more advanced’ book.

At this point, I’ll never know how the scales tip between these trade offs for Japanese. But, I hope that someday I’ll be tested in Thai, as Thai does not use breaks between words either. Or, maybe not, maybe my Thai will follow that of my Japanese and I won’t begin reading until I’m a relatively fluent listener? Stayed tuned. Would love to hear how any beginners fared when use kana-heavy books written for native speakers (or beginners of any language that write without word separations)-- how difficult was it to find the words?

Ah, one last note, reading these books with real tangible pages has broken my dependency on my kindle and its dictionary. Now I know I can manage without and it is liberating.

[vonPeterhof]

Wow — such an easier book. I’m not sure how the intended age group for 時をかける少女 compares with that for the Peter Pan prequels, but 時をかける少女 is leaps and bounds easier. The writing is probably the simplest that I’ve read in Japanese (with the exception of text specifically written for learners). I haven’t bothered to look one word up in the dictionary — although there are plenty I still don’t understand. Sadly, I’m finding the story to be a bit blah. If I weren’t reading it so quickly, I probably wouldn’t have the patience to finish it. I am surprised at this, though, as there are numerous adaptions of this book, so I thought the story would be more gripping. Instead, I find it boring and predictable. Maybe I’m missing something.

Yeah, I had similar feelings when I finished that book. Although I'm only familiar with one of its adaptations, the 2006 anime movie, and that one isn't even so much an adaptation as a remake/stealth sequel. The story in that one benefits a lot by having a much more proactive protagonist, not to mention Mamoru Hosoda's direction.

[tuckamore]

Yeah, I had similar feelings when I finished that book. Although I'm only familiar with one of its adaptations, the 2006 anime movie, and that one isn't even so much an adaptation as a remake/stealth sequel. The story in that one benefits a lot by having a much more proactive protagonist, not to mention Mamoru Hosoda's direction.

Thanks for sharing this, vonPeterhof! It may sound strange, but it is reassuring. When reading Japanese, I have this nagging doubt about whether I actually get it. I know I lack precision even if I understand (if that makes any sense?).

I had a surprising interference from Thai into my Japanese this weekend — with my handwriting, of all things. I don’t handwrite much in Japanese these days and, in trying to build my reading skills in Thai, I’ve been handwriting quite a bit in Thai. Anyways, when writing something in Japanese, I went to write ‘む’ and my hand automatically wrote the Thai letter ‘m’ (ม). I immediately erased and tried again, but had the same result. It wasn’t until the 4th try did I succeed in convincing my hand that I actually wanted to write Japanese and not Thai. Talk about muscle memory. Then, shortly after, it happened again when I attempted to write ‘み’. This time the stroke started out like Japanese, but I ended it like the Thai ‘m’ (ม). I couldn’t help it, like it was out of my control. I blame that loop at the bottom of ม.

Thinking I lost my touch, I immediately wrote out a hiragana and a katakana table — あいうえおかき…etc. In my first months of Japanese, I would write these tables out in those spare moments here and there, but haven’t done so in ages. Hiragana came without a hitch. But, I struggled to remember certain katakana — notably ヌ、ル、フ, ホ. But, as soon as I looked them up, I gave myself a good slap to the forehead ‘DUH!’

[tuckamore]

I’ve paused Living Language Thai for now, at chapter 12 of 15. It's not my favourite, but I'll go back to it for reinforcement. Instead, I’ve been using Beginning Thai and Linguaphone Thai (course from the 80s). I’m still not that fond of Beginning Thai. But, I have it, it’s only 10 lessons, and so far it’s been a good way to consolidate basic vocabulary. So, I thought why not use it. In contrast, I am loving Linguaphone Thai. So far, this is the best intro course I’ve looked at.

I started another book in Japanese this past week： 壁のなかに時計 (John Bellairs）。I knew nothing of this book except for a short excerpt on Wikipedia and am finding it a relatively easy read. It’s also more interesting than 時をかける少女。It has some katakana combinations that I don’t think I’ve seen before, for example, ツィマーマン の ツィ。I find reading a short synopsis on Wikipedia (in both English and Japanese, if possible) extremely helpful for orienting me at the beginning. For this book, the Japanese synopsis was specifically helpful in matching the names in the katakana to the original. I should finish this book sometime next week and I will then have read 4 books in Japanese since January! For comparison, last year, it took me 3-4 months to read just one book of a similar level. All these books are aimed at youth, but I’m fine with that. I’m reading without a translation. I’m reading without a dictionary (not that I don’t meet a lot of unknowns). I’m reading with enjoyment.

[tuckamore]

Watched some videos on Youtube the other night. I haven’t done that in a while.

For Thai, I watched some of AUA’s videos (Level 1, but I forget which sub-levels). I really like these videos. I don’t have to try too hard. Gives me the illusion that if I had a patient partner I could actually get by in Thai. Inflated confidence? まあいいか-- I’ll take motivation wherever I can get it.

Spent some time (ahem — too much time) watching comedy skits in Japanese. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. I was encouraged that I was (usually) laughing at the same time as the audience. The speed blew me away. Mental fatigue crept in after the first several skits, each about 10-15 min in length. I didn’t have the endurance to keep up with such high paced dialogue. (I don’t know who’s who in Japanese comedy, so I don’t know what comedy teams I was watching.)

How was my comprehension? If I had to put numbers to it I’d say my understanding of the content was, I’d guess, 75-90%. There were just a few cases where I was completely lost in the conversation. But, this overestimates my understanding of individual sentences and words. By that I mean, I couldn’t tell you want they actually said. Verdict — it would be helpful if I actively did something to increase my vocabulary, but my enjoyment didn’t usually hinge on the individual words I didn’t understand. Granted, lots of subtleties and not-so-subtleties presumably passed right over me. しょうがないでしょう。

There is a lot of play on words in these skits, where one of the duo needs something explained to them. Often, the same thing is being explained several times in the same skit - bonus listening practice. Every so often one of them would say a word, and I’d be like, ‘え? なにそれ?’. But, a moment later, I’d realize it was part of the exchange, as the partner would need it explained, too.

悪くない夜だった

[tuckamore]

I feel like I’m in the process of levelling up in Thai. Everything that I should know seems easy to follow or absorb. I’m still within the beginner range. But, it’s my first taste of feeling like I’m getting this language. I’m now spending more time actively working with Thai. I have mixed feelings about this. In my mind, Thai has always been a side project. I don’t want it to take precedence over Japanese. (Ah, please don’t remind me about French. I’ll comment on that another time.) But, the momentum is so strong right now. I not only don’t want to loose it, I want to maximize it. So, I’m going with the flow. I’m sure to hit a plateau anyways.

The largest improvement has been in reading and vocabulary. Thai script is no longer such a bugbear. Early on, I remember telling a colleague: heck! if I could learn to read Japanese and English, I should be able to manage Thai. (He laughed and agreed.) Truthfully, though, I wasn’t convinced that I’d ever be able to read without having to go through all the tone rules for the initial consonant for every syllable. Or, at a very minimum, I thought I would have to know enough words to sight read, skipping the process of sounding anything out. But, with just a bit of effort and exposure, which tones go with which tone marker+consonant combinations has become intuitive. I had read that this was so, but I wasn’t a believer. So, to any Thai learners out there that are as skeptical as I was about reading becoming a reflex without dissection, I say, keep trucking, it’ll work out.

Being able to read has in turn sped up my absorption of new vocabulary. (I’m not sure why this would be compared to using transliterations, but I know its real for me.) I also think there is synergy going on here. My reading has improved because my vocabulary has grown and now my vocabulary is growing because I can read. Don’t be fooled, though. The written language still has a lot of tricks up its sleeve that I haven’t worked out. Interestingly, I probably should, but I don’t consider the lack of spaces between words to be one of these menacing tricks. Yet, lack of spaces is what makes the exceptions I’ve having trouble with harder than what they would otherwise be. I guess, after Japanese, I am accepting of no spaces and see these exceptions as the hurdle rather than vice versa.

Speaking of Japanese — even though I’m making progress with reading in Thai, I cannot help myself from longing for the simplicity of Japanese. Ha! that’s probably one of the few times anyone has called the Japanese writing system simple. As challenging as kanji are, I don’t usually need to puzzle anything out — I either know it or can guess it or I don’t and cannot. The kana pose extremely few problems. Thai script in comparison seems so cumbersome. Given enough time with Thai, I may ridicule myself for ever having had this thought.

One feature of Japanese that I have come to better appreciate is that words of English origin are generally written using katakana. So, katakana was a flag that automatically got (and sometimes still gets) me looking for the conversion from katakana back to standard English. Of course this doesn’t always work out because not all katakana words have English origins, but it was a tremendous shortcut. In Thai, on the other hand, I have no easy way to know whether I’m possibly reading an English loan word. And, the Thai system of including letters from borrowed words but cancelling them out with the silencing symbol makes it harder, not easier, for me to read. Until now, I took this katakana feature of Japanese for granted.

I also think katakana English words were more transparent to me, even during my earliest weeks of Japanese, than English loan words are in Thai. I sometimes cannot identify them even after I know that they are ‘like’ the English word. And, on top of that, right at the get go, the sheer quantity of English loan words in Japanese was such a boon for me. Not so much the case in Thai. Totally opaque. Even the English loan words. No easy shortcuts.

[tuckamore]

I’m on to the next book of my series: 闇にひそむ影. I’ll probably finish next week which will make 5 books in Japanese for the year.

I’m actively doing something about my vocabulary deficiency in Japanese, finally. After considering my options, I decided to go back to using the Kanji in Context books — mostly because I already own them. It supposedly has 8-9K kanji-based words. I used this set of books a while ago, putting all entries from the workbooks and any words in the reference book that were not included in the workbook into Anki. I think I got about one-third to one-half of the way through. And, then for a variety of reasons, I stopped. Since then, I’ve started a couple times, but never kept at.

This time I’m taking a different approach and I’m not using Anki. I have nothing against Anki. It was the essential tool in guiding me across the bridge from beginner to intermediate. But, I don’t want to use it right now. I’m using word lists.

I’m also typing out the sentences in the workbook after I go through each lesson in the reference book. I find that typing Japanese sentences (copying from other sources) increases my intuitive understanding of sentence structure — I don’t get the same result from handwriting. What I’m noticing is that the example sentences are easy to understand. I don’t have to do mental gymnastics like I did when I used these books before. I was probably using them when the examples were a tad beyond my level.

Another difference this time is that I’m following the how-to-use guide in the book and only focusing on the vocabulary that are not marked. The marks indicate words that are more advanced or those that will be seen again when the other kanji component is introduced. If I feel like it, I will go back to these words after I finish all the lessons. In my previous attempts, I was getting bogged down by these harder vocabulary.

My current goal with this book is about 2-3 lesson/week, which should take about 2 years. Yep, that’s right, I said 2 years. It’s a long term project. I would like to complete Sections 1-3 this year and then Sections 4-5 next year. I don’t want vocabulary study to take over the other activities I do in Japanese. Also, if I keep up my reading, then by the time I get to the more so-called specialized/advanced vocabulary of Sections 4-5, it should be easier and faster to go through. (I say ‘so-called’ because I know lots of these words already and I wouldn’t call them advanced.)

Plans change, especially when the time frame for using one source is as long as 2 years. So, I won’t hold myself accountable if my goals shift or in the optimistic, but unlikely, outcome that I’ve out grown the source.

Right now, I’m on lesson 7 — and I hope to breeze through Sections 1-2 as it is a lot of review. However, even at these basic levels, I am trying to pay better attention to details. For example, with an ’easy’ kanji like 大, I’m paying close attention on whether it is ‘だい’ or ’たい’, because I’m usually just guessing.

[tuckamore]

I learned this fun fact last night: the Thai word for teacher, ครู (kruu), comes from guru of Sanskrit/Pali.

Thai has extended and shortened vowels like Japanese, but their ’style’ is different. I think I’m naturally a bit more receptive to the Thai style. But, having studied Japanese for so long, my reflex is to force the Japanese style on the Thai. To my ear, it’s all in the timing. My Japanese-ish timing also wants to spill over into Thai syllables that end with the sounds ’m’, ’n’ or ‘ng’. I didn’t realize how well I’ve internalized Japanese timing until I see its influence on my Thai (although, I surely throw extraneous stress into my Japanese left, right, and centre).

This weekend, I browsed through 2 books that I bought at the Bangkok airport when I had baht burning a hole in my pocket. Honestly, I spent most of my remaining baht on Thai snacks, but wish I had bought more books instead. (This little anecdote nicely sums up how I most like to spend my money — travel, food, and books.) These books are a comic format from a series called “Why?”. I think it is originally a Korean series. They are aimed at kids and this set covers different scientific disciplines. The two books I have are on microorganisms and genetics. From the pictures and figures, they look like they will be fun books and I’m impressed with the scope. I was surprised at how many words I could read in my cursorily look. But, I’m not yet brave enough to begin reading Thai without having an audio source to go with the text. I have a comfortable din in my ear for words I already know. But, I don’t think it is robust enough to apply to unknown words, yet, even if I can supposedly read them.

I was geeking out about some things in the microorganism book. Namely, a picture of a copepod, a key research subject of mine. It has the caption ไซคลอป, which I’m assuming comes from and means ‘cyclops’. I don’t know if this word is used for copepods, in general, or is specific to cyclopoid copepods, as that is what is pictured. Perhaps when I’m able to read the description, I’ll learn more. I was also tickled to see a section on interactions between crude oil and marine microbes, as I have a special interest in this topic. Cannot wait to see what they say about it.

For other progress, I’m on lesson 13 of Linguaphone and Lesson 8 of Beginner Thai. I’ve also been listening to Maanii (Book 1) while reading the English translation. Once I feel like I can follow right along with little effort, I’ll switch to reading along in Thai. Then, I’ll move on to the next book. Right now I’m following a good chunk of it.

Lately, I seem to be alternating between updates for Japanese and Thai. So, I’ll leave it here for now and will come back to Japanese next time.

[tuckamore]

I have hit a huge, long coming milestone in Japanese. I have finished reading a non-YA book, 三毛猫のホームズの駆落ち by　赤川次郎, with pleasure and amazing ease. Totally stoked! It was 99.9% unassisted — no translation, no kindle. The more amazing thing is that I read the entire thing, all 350+ pages, in one week! Shout out to the crummy weather we had on Saturday when I read ~100 pages.

It seems I finally found a book that is ideal for my level. Bonus — there are over 20 books in this series and I own 6 of them. It is a detective series and the book is very heavy on conversation, relatively deficient in descriptive paragraphs. This, I think, is what makes it so accessible to me, especially with (conversational) listening being my greatest strength. When I finished the book, I initially celebrated with reservation, thinking I am a one trick pony. And, I picked up the next book I have in this series with hesitation, bracing for a reality check. But, I’m already 25 pages in and it is smooth sailing so far.

The hardest thing about this book was the main characters’ names — 片山義太郎、片山晴美、片岡義太郎、山波晴美. I have a very bad habit of skipping over names when I’m reading, even in English. In my head, I often just refer to characters by their first initial or something. I never read them out consciously or subconsciously. In a book like this, keeping who’s who straight between the 2 義太郎 and 2 晴美 was a struggle for me.

Lessons learned:

1. I feel like I get a similar benefit to binge reading like I’ve gotten from binge watching TV. I’ve realized that to get to a sweet spot when reading, I need to read at least ~20 pages in a sitting. This could take 30 min or 1 hr or 2 hr. But, anything less than this page count and I haven’t quite gotten into the rhythm. The more I read in one sitting, the greater the payback. It’ll be interesting to see whether the number of pages to reach this sweet spot decreases as I improve.

2. I had a hard time following who was saying what. This was hard enough when only two people were talking, but when there was 3+ people — ay! How quotes and attributions are used in Japanese is not innate to me. I had to slow down and really pay attention to the sentence endings, verb forms, etc. to figure out what style goes with which character. In the spoken language, I am usually only listening for meaning and I don’t absorb these sorts of nuances without conscious effort. I do usually notice extremely formal or very crude language, but not the more common variations towards the middle. And, in the spoken language, it’s not usually important for knowing who is saying what, because I can see and hear who said something. But, in reading, I need to pay better attention to these ‘ways of speaking’ in order to follow the dialogue. I’ve been aware of my deficiency of not pay attention to the speech register for a long while. So, hopefully, with some focused effort while reading I’ll start to internalize these differences better even when listening.

3. Vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary. I’m not concerned with looking up words while reading. Rarely, did not understanding words interfere with following the progression of the story or my enjoyment of the book. Clearly, though, my sentence-level understanding was sometimes very poor. But, I just kept going and I’d usually figure out what was meant a few sentences later, although the unknown words still remain unknown. But, if I really want to improve my Japanese, vocabulary is my biggest hole. I repeat myself about deficient vocabulary in every update I make on my Japanese progress, because it bears repeating.

4. I often made guesses at kanji readings that I never bother to verify. So, who knows if my guesses are correct. Sometimes, though, after seeing a kanji for the umpteenth time, the reading and/or meaning would be dredged up from the depths of my memory. 肯く(nod in agreement) is a nice example. I kept seeing this word, and it didn’t bother me that I didn’t know it and I’d skip over it. Then, probably about 1/3 into the book ― bam! the reading うなずく jumped out at me from somewhere deep in my mind (and I know this word, so all was set right)

5. The use of furigana has me totally perplexed. Let’s again use the word 肯く as an example. 50 pages from the end of the book, there is furigana for this word. 肯く had to appear at least 100 times before this without any furigana. Why add furigana at the end? Another example, is 家 as a suffix after a family name. I kept reading it as け throughout the book, but again in one of the last chapters there is furigana that says it should be read as something else. (I forget what, ち maybe?) And, for my last example, in the new book I’m reading, one of the characters is named 英哉. Not until after he is mentioned 4-5 times, does his name have furigana attached. Is this common practice across Japanese novels and I’m just not acquainted with reading enough? I had thought that when furigana is used, it was generally used at the first instance of the word and then dropped off.

There is a sentence from this book that I have a question on that I’d like to throw out here to see if anybody can help me. But, I don’t have the book with me, so I’ll follow up with another post on another day with this question.

[vonPeterhof]

How quotes and attributions are used in Japanese is not innate to me.

I've been using Japanese for work for the past 3.5 years and this is what I struggle with the most even now. I mean, I can generally understand those structures pretty well, but building them myself without confusing either the other person or myself takes a lot of effort. And telling Person A what person C had told Person B is like half of all my work-related phone calls..