Not all those who wander are lost

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CaroleR
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby CaroleR » Sat Nov 12, 2022 4:29 pm

sfuqua wrote:He uses mnemonics, and different anki decks use different mnemonic sets. A few of these online are full of disgusting, misogynist clues that make a respecter of women want to throw up. Not everybody who studies Japanese is an incel. :shock:

It's not just Japanese. There's a theory in mnemonics/memory communities that making mental images as violent and disgusting as possible helps to remember something. That may be, but why would anyone want that kind of association in their mind? Not to mention, passing it on to others. Some advise creating cartoon images to avoid associating violence with real people, but it's still violence. We can be more creative with our memory techniques, imo. Weird and silly can work just as well.
4 x
Join me in the crowded streets of dull possibility – Billy-Ray Belcourt

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sat Nov 12, 2022 4:48 pm

I always modify any anki deck I download from shared decks to change the colours. I often change the font, and I sometimes change the layout.
I have Deuteranomaly colour blindness, which means that I don't see green the same way other people do. Of course, I don't know what I am missing; I just think that everybody else has some strange choices in colour.
Besides moving the palette of colours around in order to make parts of the card "pop" for me, I also usually darken the background of the card. I hate, hate, hate black text on a white background on an anki card. And I love different colours for different fields on the card. :D
I usually put an image on each card type, which clues me into what type of card I am doing. Plus, the images make the cards pretty. When I was doing multiple decks with multiple languages, this made it a little more bearable to handle more than one language in the same queue. :D
I'm just studying Japanese now, and this reduces the need to separate the different card types.
If anybody is embarking on a big deck, I recommend that you play around with the aesthetics of the cards. You are going to see a lot of them. :o

Oh, and about mnemonics for learning Heisig's 2000... I'm using a deck right now that attempts to come up with something silly for each kanji, using the names of the radicals (the component parts) in the kanji; so far silly is working OK. I will admit that I used a bunch of mnemonics with sexual connotations to memorize the ogham alphabet for Irish. Nothing violent or degrading, but silly with innuendo seemed to work for it.
I was scanning another shared Heisig deck and I read through the card for 中. I always remember the meaning of this kanji, and I always flinch when the mental image used for this kanji in that deck pops into my head.
I think there are good alternatives to the mnemonics in some of these decks, that might keep your brain in a healthier place. What would be the effect of thousands of disgusting mnemonics on the brain? What would be the effect of associating a beautiful writing system like Japanese with violent and degrading thoughts? :shock:
I don't want to program dangerous nonsense into my brain at the same time I am learning kanji. :?
As I write this, I am surprised at how prudish I sound here. I guess being a husband and a father of a teenaged daughter affects my tolerance for degrading mnemonics about women.

And I think some of the guys who produced the disgusting mnemonics need to change their attitude if they are ever going to get a date :lol:
9 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Tue Nov 15, 2022 2:18 am

I've been having fits getting typing in Japanese working on my linux machine, but here it is:町
The first thing I have typed in Japanese. It means "town"

Victory is mine!
13 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Fri Nov 18, 2022 6:45 pm

OK, the best of times and the worst of times.... :o

I've started "reading" . I put it in quotation marks because I am scanning my favourite manga, just seeing what I can find that I can recognize. I'm at about 350 kanji right now, so I'm missing a lot. It's not even as much as you might think, because the list of kanji I am working off of is based on Heisig's famous list, which is in an order that is easy to memorize not order of frequency or anything like that. I have learned the kanji for "Gallbladder", but I haven't learned the kanji for "Go." :lol:
Luckily enough numbers are early in the sequence, so I am getting those, and I have learned a bunch of radicals, "components" of kanji, so more and more of the print is looking familiar. :D
It's the best of times, the pictures keep me turning pages and I can see that I'm learning something. :D

It's the worst of times. As the kanji build up, I am starting to get a lot of interference. Many of them are starting to look like each other. I keep forgetting and confusing them. Several factors lead to this:

First, this is Japanese, and it is a hard slog to learn the kanji. As I understand, native speakers study kanji at least up through middle school. :(

Second, I am learning kanji from a list, not from a natural context. I have to go from zero to perfect in each lesson. Because of the nature of the task, there is no chance to "half learn" as one would with words one finds in context. (of course I can't learn from context very well since the context is also in unfamiliar kanji) :o

Third, I think that my mnemonics aren't working as well as they should. I hit a new kanji, and I see the mnemonic and I usually say, cute I see it, and then I recognize it when I see it in review... maybe I see it the next day and remember the mnemonic and remember the kanji...and eventually I just start recognizing it without running through the mnemonic.... Just like I'm supposed to. :D

But then, when I see it again, I recognize that I have seen it before, but I can't remember the meaning. It's frustrating. I think I need to pay attention to the mnemonic longer than I have been. I think I can do better than I have been doing. I can also just slow down my new cards, but where's the fun in that? I'm going to watch this, because I think I can do better... 8-)

All is well; it is an enjoyable challenge. :D

I mentioned my favourite manga earlier. I am absolutely in love with the Children of the Sea, manga and anime, 海獣のこども Maybe I love it because the main characters appear to be about the same age as the kids I teach. There is beautiful artwork in the manga, and the anime is absolutely gorgeous. The anime is slow and luxurious in its pacing for an hour and a half, and then it starts moving fast and gets confusing for most people, as I understand. The teenage Japanese girl I was talking to in the Japanese bookshop, said that she thought it was beautiful, but that she didn't understand it. I think I understood it the first time through, maybe as a Carl Sagan inspired science teacher, or maybe because back in the day, Alan Watts made perfect sense to me (at least when I was stoned). :lol:

Anyway, when sweet, fiesty Ruka yells, "I want to see it!", opens her eyes, and then explodes into the entire universe, well it's cool. :o

I have a weird taste. :D
6 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Tue Nov 22, 2022 6:52 pm

I think I may just try to blast through the 2200 Kanji in Heisig, the ones that define basic literacy before I do much of anything else. Many people have completed this process in 100 days, and it would be cool to be able to recognize most of the kanji on a page, even if this knowledge is very incomplete. I've learned the kana, although my katakana is still weak. I may just let my reviews spiral down on the kana deck while I finish the RTK deck. It seems that after RTK, I would be able to recognize about 85% of the kanji in an online digital library, Aozora Bunko. Of course I should be able to read 100% of the kanji in government documents.

Anyway, after RTKś 2200 kanji, it makes sense to start to learn vocabulary. Kanji are combined to make words, and the meanings often are only loosely related to the meanings of the kanji. Kanji often have many pronunciations or readings in Japanese language study terminology.

So finishing an RTK deck is only a beginning, but it should be a good beginning. Some people dislike learning the RTK first since it probably takes months, and they prefer to learn the sound and meaning of Japanese language all at once in the context of sentences.

I'm looking at several directions that I might go in after the RTK:

1. There is a deck from Ankidrone, https://tatsumoto.neocities.org/blog/table-of-contents.html that seems to have about 7000 words and sentences in it As I understand, the words are from a frequency list from anime and manga. The sentences are from a book series that prepares students for different levels of the JLPT test. The instructions are to do the JLPT N5 test and then begin sentence mining.

2. There are several versions of anki decks made for a "Core" list which contains vocab that originally were from a frequency list from newspapers. There are decks that have 2000 sentences and kanji, decks that contain 6000, and some decks that contain 10000 sentences. Many people seem feel that the larger decks are overkill.

3. There are also JP1K decks that have the 1000 most common words and sentences. The idea is that after these decks one should start sentence mining.

4. I have a deck that has all the sentences from Assimil Japanese. I have tts voices for it, and of course I have the audio. I could learn the sentences in anki and I could shadow the audio. Nobody else seems to use it, but I think it might be good for pronunciation, which I'm really not covering anywhere else.
3 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Tue Nov 22, 2022 8:42 pm

I complained two messages back about poor retention with my RTK deck. With so many people across the Internet learning Japanese, there is plenty of good advice. I decided to ignore the advice that says I should delete the deck :D
I've decided to slow down and let the time for each card increase. This gives me time to do more things to increase comprehension. 8-)

I'm writing my own mnemonic for each card, and I'm keeping the built-in Heisig and Koohii mnemonics hidden. I will steal a built-in mnemonic if I like it, but I will always change it to make it more specific to me, to a certain place or a certain person or something. By making the mnemonic more vivid, I hope to make it stick. When I review a kanji, I stop to stare at the kanji itself while I repeat the mnemonic. :)

If I'm still having retention problems in a couple of days, I'm going to start drawing each kanji, at least on my hand, if I'ḿ out and about.

And I'm going to accept that I am going to have a lower retention rate than I would with something with a Latin alphabet.

People say that it gets easier. I'm looking forward to it getting easier... :lol:
4 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
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Location: san jose, california
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Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
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Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Wed Nov 23, 2022 5:01 am

I just got a thrill. :D
I read the title to Your Name in Japanee.
The two kanji in it were among the few hundred that I know. :shock:

I rule. 8-)
I read a two kanji (and two kana) title in Japanese. :lol:
9 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

Lawyer&Mom
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Wed Nov 23, 2022 3:51 pm

sfuqua wrote:I just got a thrill. :D
I read the title to Your Name in Japanee.
The two kanji in it were among the few hundred that I know. :shock:

I rule. 8-)
I read a two kanji (and two kana) title in Japanese. :lol:


Yesterday I read the word “milk” in my k-drama. Yes, it was written on the side of a small, white carton at a grocery store but for a moment I was a golden god…. Savor the victories!
8 x
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sfuqua
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sat Nov 26, 2022 2:17 am

I think this is going to be a pretty brutal slog, even at only 22 cards a day. Some days will be good; some will be bad.
Yesterday, it was all easy. I punched through my cards in an hour, and I really felt like I was getting somewhere.
Today everything was hard and slow. Two hours to get through my cards. Horrible stats.
I was slow and bad.

Of course, learning a vocabulary list where everything is unfamiliar and there is no context is difficult.

I did a few things to try to increase my retention. I readjusted my interval modifier, so that each successful step dmultiplies the interval by 2, not 2.5 as the standard numbers do. I massively increased the number of reviews I need to do to pass a card if it is new or if it is a lapsed card. I also set it up so that lapsed cards are only graduated to the next day, rather than to 50% of the last interval, as I was using based on advice from the "refold" site. This will give me way more reviews, but they should be easy and fast.

I'm trying to imitate the process of seeing kanji in the wild. I'm trying to improve things with overlearning.

I did see more progress yesterday in "reading" (finding kanji I recognize in input).

And if it doesn't work, I'll try something else. Maybe I'll have to slow down and reduce my new cards, but I hope I can figure a way to keep up the current pace. I'm about 20% of the way.
2 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sat Nov 26, 2022 3:16 am

One thing that is a little annoying with the arbitrary "100 day" plan I am on, is that it doesn't leave any bandwidth to do anything with listening.
I'm holding off on overloading myself to over 2 hours of Japanese a day. I would like to keep my motivation high, and it's sky-high right now. Maybe for once in my life I can actually concentrate on one thing long enough to get somewhere. :D

I've got so, so far to go, and I'm very impatient to get there. :lol:
2 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...


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