A Polymath Focuses on Japanese, 2019

[schlaraffenland]

Congratulations! This is all really wonderful news! I wish you lots of luck as you get acclimated in the new position, and I look forward to your updates...

For other language candidates, I really want to learn a vowel harmony language...I just haven't decided what. I also have been tempted by Basque: I'm not sure if Basque native speakers would appreciate this, but by my looking at their words, I thought "if space aliens spoke a human language, it would be this."

Heh... I feel the same about Basque And, coincidentally enough, I have also been contemplating learning it. I am of Basque heritage, but I never seriously considered taking it up, for whatever strange reason. It only hit me in the last week or two that I could actually learn a language to which I had a familial connection for once.

[Xenops]

Congratulations on the ESL job! I am an ESL volunteer, and might try to find a job in the field once I become an empty-nester (which is soon). I agree that I have learned a lot about teaching a language from these forums.

I was thinking about starting a language teacher's thread. I haven't seen one.
ETA: Here is the thread.

Congratulations! This is all really wonderful news! I wish you lots of luck as you get acclimated in the new position, and I look forward to your updates...

Thank you both: I appreciate it. I spent some time volunteering before as well.

I actually started a blog for more detailed posts about life in general, and you can see it here:

https://potatoinboston.wordpress.com/

For other news, I have caught up somewhat and hold 9th place in the 6WC. We'll see how long this lasts. It has made realize, too, how much of a time-sink Japanese is: I probably could have made leaps in an "easy" language if I had dedicated to the time to it instead, but Japanese is a marathon--I don't think you can sprint even if you wanted to.

[Xenops]

Hello friends,

I moved into a temporary place to escape a bad roommate situation, and I have lots of boxes in a tiny space. I also have officially applied to missions' programs to be a missionary to Japan. It is starting to feel real now, and I look at my boxes of stuff, and I think "I need to get rid of all of this before I move overseas". Many of them are books, and even language books *gasp*. I concluded, that if I haven't loved Spanish enough in several years to pick it back up in earnest, it probably isn't going to happen soon, so I justified removing my Spanish collection. I haven't gotten to that point with French: maybe I still have hopes of picking it back up soon.

Japanese has been going with a consistent pace: I recently lost my top-10 spot in the 6WC, but I'll get back on it. The challenge has made me realize how little I actually spend studying: this needs to be fixed, and perhaps it will be easier now that I'm in a new place, and can make new habits. And I posted a new blog post, and I'm due for another one tomorrow: https://potatoinboston.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/why-japan-part-i/

I haven't been serious with Scottish Gaelic yet, but I concluded, because the pronunciation is very strange, that I will not attempt to it FLC style: I anticipate that I will want to pay for help.

I played with Finnish, because 1. vowel harmony interests me, 2. there's a guy at church that I liked that is half Finnish, and 3. it reminds me of Greek. None of these reasons, I decided, where substantial enough to continue in the language: with vowel harmony I know enough to make it work in my constructed language, the guy doesn't like me back, and if it reminds me of Greek, maybe I should just start learning Koine Greek already: the ideal situation will never arise, so why keep putting it off? I've always wanted to learn it. I have the books, and I found the audio of the New Testament that corresponds with my Greek NT that I have (in modern Greek pronunciation, to boot).

[Xenops]

I have been on this forum, I swear. ...I just haven't updated in a while.

There is also great news: I got a full-time job in medical lab sciences, which is what I went to school for. This has been such a relief, since I wasn't sure how I would pay for my expenses and loans. This also looks like a good fit: it's at a smaller hospital, and despite being out of of the lab for a year, the managers are willing to work with me to catch up on learning. As they said, "we'd rather have someone who is nice that we can train, than someone that knows everything that we don't like".

...The sad news is that, I will probably leave my part-time job as an ESL instructor--I have never been so reluctant to leave a job before. Even though I enjoy it, I have to consider the commute from that job to my full-time job, and my introvert need for personal time...It doesn't make sense to keep it. Since I will be working the evening shift at the hospital, I could volunteer teach ESL classes at my church in the mornings in the spring: it would be less pressure, I would continue my ESL teaching experience, and I could gain experience teaching actual classes rather than one-on-one.

The plan is to pay off loans, and see where God leads me, still possibly Japan.

For language news, I have been focusing on Japanese. The General Forum has had good discussions on over learning, and I have to wonder if I do this too much, and if I burnt myself on over learning with French. I also see my perfectionist streak with the Let's Learn Kanji book: I don't don't move on until I can reproduce the kanji radicals *perfectly*. Perhaps I need to give myself permission to move on to new material with only 80% memorization, rather than being stuck with the same material forever.

This week I have been good about studying from Japanese for Everyone almost everyday. I am also drifting from the kanji radicals to learning actual kanji, but let me tell you...Learning the radicals makes it so much easier. For example, 猫 means "cat", and it looks complicated enough. But the left-most radical means "animal", the top one means "grass", and the bottom one means "rice field". Remembering my dad's description of his cat "being a mighty tiger in the tall grass, outstanding in his field", I never have forgotten how to write this kanji.

I'm still dabbling in Scottish Gaelic...It's so interesting, still. I'm surprised my interest has held this long. I'm debating whether to focus on Gaelic or Japanese for the next 6WC: decisions, decisions...I contemplated taking the lower level JLPT this December. Conversely, I have to wonder if I lost interest in French because I had too many false starts: if I stay consistent from the beginning, would I keep going and not give up?

For French...I haven't decided its fate. That's all I can say.

Edit: I just saw that registration for the December JLPT is long closed...That answered that question.

[Xenops]

I can't comment on what this is like with Japanese specifically, but the broader point on overlearning, and insecurity about moving on if you haven't perfectly mastered the last topic/chapter... very relatable. I confess my strategy for managing that doubt about knowing the material enough is to use Anki. It's like a band-aid. Ideally you'd be at ease with uncertainty and trust that things that don't feel 100% solid will get solid over time. But for now I dump a lot of stuff into Anki and let Anki remind me about them later. But it's not for everybody. You did mention back in August you were using Anki. Were you using it for the radicals and if so did you find it effective? I know so little about Japanese, so please forgive me if I've asked a stupid question.

Good luck with those decisions about languages, and congratulations again on landing the job!

Thank you.

I don't know how I feel about Anki: obviously it works, but I think I overdo it there, too. For example, I plugged in every snippet of dialogue and examples from 1-2 chapters of FiA, and if the course didn't burn me out, the putting everything into Anki did. So I have to figure out a good balance with this program.

[rdearman]

The best advice I ever got about anki was DELETE, DELETE, DELETE. If a word is boring, or a leech, or easy, or you just are burned out on it then just get rid of it. Cards should be easy to generate, and shouldn't cause any pain to delete. Personally I just suspend cards, that way if I ever want them back I can just undo the suspension. Another thing is to don't worry about the amount of words you know, or delete, or whatever. Only worry about doing 20 minutes or whatever time limit you set yourself. So it doesn't matter if you still 100,000,000,000,000 cards. Just work through them 20 minutes per day (or whatever time you set yourself).

As far as loading cards in, well I personally generate loads of cards and have no compunction about suspending them. I don't do it manually if I can help it. I use frequency lists, or strip words from books programmatically (I've put links up to videos with how-tos)

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =17&t=9259

[Xenops]

I had a delightful time at the East Coast LLorg meetup. Thank you everyone. It was encouraging to see members in person, and gave me further enthusiasm for language study, while also tempting me to return to French and other languages I dabbled with.

But the meetup also encouraged my resolve to get one language to a higher level: Japanese. Earlier I contemplated taking the basic JLPT in December 2018, but found that the registration has closed. So my new goal is to study for the December 2019 JLPT, either N3 or N2 (B1 and B2+, respectively). Since the test builds up on previous levels, I will solidify the N5 and N4 material before moving on.

I have been using the Let's Learn Kanji book, and I recognize the 90+ most common kanji radicals. I was all set to study the lesser known radicals, but two different Japanese people asked me "why are you studying rare radicals?" I had to consider that my time might be better spent on things that are more common. If I come across a new radical, I will probably learn it in the context of the kanji.

For study materials, I have been studying from Japanese for Everyone almost everyday. I was also able to borrow the obscure tapes via interlibrary loan, so that's nifty. I'm not sure if I recommend the book for A0 beginners, but for review, it's just right.

I exported my old Anki decks, and deleted from the app. I'm starting a new deck from scratch with JfE content only. I used to have a single deck for everything Japanese, and it was too much. I'll probably make smaller decks for specific things, so I can have the confidence boost of finishing reviews of a deck, even a small one.

Stay tuned.

[devilyoudont]

I have been using the Let's Learn Kanji book, and I recognize the 90+ most common kanji radicals. I was all set to study the lesser known radicals, but two different Japanese people asked me "why are you studying rare radicals?" I had to consider that my time might be better spent on things that are more common. If I come across a new radical, I will probably learn it in the context of the kanji.

So, something to know is that typically, Japanese people use the word radical a bit differently than how language learners use it.

Japanese people tend to think of each kanji as having 1 radical. This radical is how you look up a kanji in an old paper dictionary. Japanese people may wonder if there is any point to learning radicals given the availability of electronic dictionaries.

Learners on the other hand, tend to think of each component part of a kanji being a radical. In other words, radicals are the alphabet that kanji are built out of.

Japanese people often have very little idea of how Japanese is taught, and why it's taught differently to language learners than how they were taught. It basically comes down to: there is a world of difference between learning to read when you are already a fluent speaker in an immersive environment, and learning to read when you're also learning the spoken language at the same time.

None of this is to say, "hey, go back and learn your radicals!" as I personally haven't learned a lot of them myself. Just giving some insight on Japanese people not understanding the point of pedagogy directed at foreigners.

[Xenops]

今晩は、皆さん！Good evening, everyone!

I haven't posted in a while, but it doesn't mean much anything. Actually, the past month has been more interesting than most.

First of all, I got the happy news that I can take 3 week vacations once a year...As long as it's not during the summer nor during the holiday season. Considering I wouldn't have enough vacation hours to go earlier, I contemplated visiting Japan as a tourist in October: it won't be terribly hot, I can (most likely) get the time off, and I would see another season (last time I went in summer). It will be 8 years since I last visited, and since I feel lead to move there eventually, I wanted to visit to make certain my conviction, and that I would like it as much as I did before. This time, though, only as a tourist: I didn't see Tokyo nor Kyoto last time.

With these thoughts in mind, I happened upon another logger's OP:

I wanted to attend the Polyglot Conference this year, however, real life and money troubles (AKA 'the usual stuff) got in the way and I couldn't go.

Now I'm brushing off my disappointment and looking ahead to next year instead!

The location has already been announced as Fukuoka, Japan (October 18th-20th). This is ideal for me as, since I've discovered a love for travelling, Japan has been on my list of countries to visit and having almost a whole year to prepare for it will hopefully mean that I can go. *fingers crossed*

Wow...I can probably attend that.

So yes, Japanese will be the focus. I looked at the panels of a previous conference, and I noted a lot of them were in French. I'm easing back into French, but it's not a priority. I like the idea of knowing French; I just need to move to liking the idea of studying it.

Also this past month, I had my first date in 10 years (the last date was in July 2008), and it was with a Christian Japanese guy...And it was awkward. Part of it was I'm so rusty with dating protocol ("are dates like job interviews?"), part of it I was nervous, part of it was cultural differences, and that we don't have a lot in common. Still, the event left me curious, and I have been researching how Japanese handle dating, because they prescribe everything. Because of this--if you are familiar with the protocol--it seems way more straightforward than American dating, so I would be interested in dating other Japanese Christians. Btw, if you happen to know good Japanese dating etiquette blogs, please send them my way.

I noted PM's new 365 challenge...I'll think about it. I'm more inclined toward the February 6WC a this point: shorter commitment time. Still, all of the cool kids are doing the 365 challenge..

Another important realization: why I burn out. It's not that I tire of studying any particular language, but I burn out on any particular method. Even though I'm only on chapter 5 of Japanese for Everyone, I now want to spend time dedicated to Anki. I also make the text exercises longer by learning various kanji on the way (I'm tired of not knowing how words are "spelled"). So I just need to mix up my routine more, that's all.

[Xenops]

I have been busy with the February 6WC, and then...I got burned out before I could finish. Not so much because I'm tired of Japanese, but because I'm tired of keeping a strict record of my study times. I lost the competitive spirit, and the recording became a chore.

For other news, I bought my plane tickets to Japan, and I will be there October 14-October 28. At first it didn't seem real, but as I research my trip, and try to fit in Japanese studies, it's becoming more real: "oh shoot! I only have 7 months left to study!" I will be in Fukuoka to attend the polyglot conference.

As has been my habit of late, I'm still doing lots of soul-searching, and concluded that "if I do languages for fun...I'm not obligated to update anyone on my progress." I think with the addition of social media to everyone's lives, we feel the need to announce our progress on projects to everyone: but for me, I realize that it removes some of the fun and spontaneity--it becomes a part-time job instead of a relaxing hobby. So while I will still focus on Japanese (I have a deadline!), I will not make updates on this blog detailing my progress, if any. I will probably join the ranks of Speakeasy, reineke, and smallwhite and not publicizing my learning...But I'll still be on the forum.

Lastly, I finally updated my (life) blog, which you can see here: https://potatoinboston.wordpress.com/2019/02/23/why-japan-part-iii/ This post is pretty confessional and raw, but future posts should be more light-hearted.