Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

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Kamlari
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Kamlari » Thu Mar 30, 2017 3:36 pm

Captain,
a passage from a book, try to crack it. The text is not exactly for beginners but it's easy to crack , even if you know nothing.
I'm sure you'll manage somehow, at least some of it.

Original layout:
Image
Audio:
http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/Yumi/02b%20soto%20ni%20deru%20toki.mp3


whenever I went out I was afraid that

Taliban with guns would leap out at me

or throw acid in my face,

外に出るときは不安だった。

銃を持ったタリバンが
目の前に飛び出してくる
かもしれない。

顔に硫酸をかける
かもしれない。

そと に でる とき は ふあん だった。
じゅう を もった たりばん が
め の まえ に とびだして くる
かもしれない。
かお に りゅうさんを かける
かもしれない。
0 x
Frei lebt, wer sterben kann.

J'aime les nuages... les nuages qui passent...
雲は天才である

1. There’s only one rule to rule them all:
There are no Rule(r)s.
2. LISTEN L2, read L1. (Long texts)
3. Pronunciation.
4. Delayed recitation.

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smallwhite
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby smallwhite » Tue May 02, 2017 10:11 am

Call-Me-Captain wrote:22 Mar 2017
What am I supposed to do now?

So what did you end up doing?
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SophiaMerlin_II
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby SophiaMerlin_II » Tue May 09, 2017 1:28 am

I know this thread has been necro'd to an extent, but I've read the whole thing and can't help but want to comment. :oops:

I know this was touched on somewhat earlier, when someone was mentioning RTK, but since your first goal really involves reading, Kanji are very, very important.

What I would suggest, personally, would be:

1) To understand the basic rules of stroke order. Contrary to popular opinion, Japanese people do sometimes write with the wrong stroke order. But the basic rules (top down, left right) and a few other smaller rules would steer you in the right direction.

2) Learn the radicals. Some radicals are very simple (dots, cliff, box, etc) while others are more complex (being whole kanji stuffed inside other Kanji). Start with the smallest ones, and work your way up. Many Japanese language Kanji dictionaries list Kanji by radical, then by stroke count.

3) Begin with simple Kanji. A good way to do this would be to go based on stroke count. A simple kanji will often be found inside larger ones. Why memorize a 25 stroke kanji, if you could learn the 5 kanji inside of it, then put them together? There will be very common kanji that you see which should probably be learned pretty early, despite the number of strokes. For example 私、猫. So one would want to make the effort to learn the radicals/components of these early on. For example in 猫(cat) you can very clearly see 田(field).

4) Realize that a kanji by itself will probably sound one way, and if it is next to another kanji will probably sound different. 人(ひと)vs. 日本人(にほん じん). So in that sense, just be sure to check pronunciations.


---

On a broader level, unless your main interest in Japanese revolves around "weebiness", then Anime and Manga, and to a certian extent Light Novels (LNs) are not a resource that you want to rely on, especially early on. You will be introduced to a large variety of speaking styles, including regional and historical accents, excessively casual construction, archaic constructs, frequent puns and word play, and sometimes over-politeness as well. In that sense, unless you are specifically interested in these materials, they don't form a good starting point, especially when you are pressed for time.

With a limited daily time-table, you will probably need to theme your time to a certain extent. I would suggest that you do certain foundational things every day. So I would try to learn a few radical or kanji every day (1-3 maybe). Then you'd want to do about 20~min of listening, or a grammar workbook. If you purchase a graded reader, you might try to read a page or so every day, just to get the hang of it. They have furigana/ruby text (small hiragana over kanji to show pronunciation) so that will ease your reading pains somewhat. On the lower level readers, each page has about a sentence or so.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby smallwhite » Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:59 am

Call-Me-Captain wrote:22 Mar 2017
What am I supposed to do now?

9 pages of sharing! I look forward to the OP also sharing with us their experience so far.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby DangerDave2010 » Fri Jun 23, 2017 3:43 pm

Kamlari wrote:
DangerDave2010 wrote:Try the Tae Kim guide do Japanese grammar.

I don't believe in learning anything without listening to it.


I have sworn by listening as a noobie too.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Call-Me-Captain » Tue Jan 02, 2018 5:42 pm

Hi everyone!

Thank you so much for all of what you have shared - And apologies for replying only many months later.
(I had a very busy semester abroad these past few months, so I honestly haven't even read all of your advice just yet - But I am doing so right now.)

Before I start commenting on your answers, just a quick update on what I actually did this past time.
At first, I followed AndyMeg's advice and started listening to some very simple Japanese audio (Hukusume fairytails) and transcribed it as best as I could into Hiragana only - Without really understanding what exactly I wrote down, but therefore familiarizing myself with the sounds.
As soon as I went abroad I temporarily stopped doing so, and spent my spare time mainly with certain phone applications.
I set myself a goal to spend at the very least 30 minutes daily on language learning, and while I did not manage to keep that promise fully, I did not end up that far away from it.
I made very heavy usage of [url=duolingo.com]duolingo[/url] for most of the time. To complement that, I also spent some boilerplate time (Bus rides, ...) with kanji-learning apps such as Japanese characters and other rather simple apps. I also tried simple reading exercises, such as comparing some speech-bubbles of the kids manga よつばと! with the english version, usage of the app "Easy japanese news" (Although I must admit that I did not understand very much. And unfortunately the learning process of this kind is quite time consuming - For every character I don't understand I have to first google it, and so on), and even using google translate and google in general to find out more about translations of certain expressions and sentences I was curious about.
In consequence, I did learn a bit already. Nevertheless, I do not want to fool anybody and have to admit that the learning process was very very slow - And inefficient (Due to a packed schedule, I couldn't take any official courses at my university either - It really just was a hobby/goal of mine that I tried to pursue in my free time by myself.). I guess I know some very basics of grammar (sentence structure, verb conjugation), a tiny bit of vocabulary (Mostly what duolingo teaches you) and can recognize maybe about 200-300 kanji, although that does not mean that I can necessarily read sentences in which the kanji is not standalone, but incorporated into an entirely different word.
To sum it all up, I tried to get the most out of the free time I had, and did make some progress, although it can't be characterized as very efficient.
(Right now, I am trying to prepare to make more efficient use of my time so I'll be able to progress more quickly next semester. I'm also trying to take advantage of some resources and am therefore going to apply to "summer abroad" language learning programs. I'd need to both get accepted and get a scholarship in order to actually be able to participate, but that's another issue entirely, haha)

Sorry for the rambling - Just thought I'd share this before actually going through all of your awesome comments!

leosmith wrote:
Call-Me-Captain wrote:I'm currently trying to learn Japanese, by spending about 30 minutes a day

Some will disagree, but I don't think it's enough.

No no no, I agree entirely. The reason why I set the bar so low is so that I actually end up sticking to the plan, though. There are quite a few days during which I really can't muster up much more than 30 minutes, so I want to actually pull through with it. And to be fair, there's also quite a number of days on which I end up doing more than that, although it very rarely exceeds 1 to 2 hours.

aokoye wrote:A lot of people, myself included, like the Genki series.

I have to admit that I did not make use of a single textbook during this semester, relying more on apps. My reasoning behind that decision was made after looking through some of the earlier chapters - My half-a-year-ago self concluded that they were probably more efficient in a classroom environment, as they relied on some audio I didn't have and talk with others (I just had the pdf on my phone). I should probably give it another shot this semester.

Kamlari wrote:You can use this site
http://www.coscom.co.jp/j-index.html
to get started.

I unfortunately did not take advantage of this site during this past time, but I'm compiling a list of all the resources mentioned in this thread right now, and will go through each of them - Thanks!

DangerDave2010 wrote:Try the Tae Kim guide do Japanese grammar.

I've actually been using it quite a bit! I have not been following it closely, but used it to support my "grammar learning" through more "proper" means, as applications such as duolingo don't quite introduce you to it formally.

RandomQuotes wrote:If your goal is to speak Japanese, then it's a bit out of fashion due to it being audio lingual based(and using romaji transcriptions, but if you're using the book right, that shouldn't matter), but I don't think you can do much better than "Japanese, the Spoken Language" by Eleanor Harz Jorden.


If you don't mind dense grammatical explanations and have a tutor that can check your answers with, "An Introduction to Modern Japanese" by Bowring and Laurie is wonderful.

Thank you for the advice! I'll try to check whether my university has these books available in their library.

Kamlari wrote:Anyway, 95% of people who begin learning Japanese give up sooner rather than later.

While I unfortunately haven't been active in this forum and answered the comments here (Which is honestly the very least someone deserves for spending time to write an answer... So I truly apologize for that. Sorry!), I haven't given up learning yet :P

smallwhite wrote:Now, what I'm interested to know is - with a 30 minutes x 12 years schedule as opposed to the more common 1.5 hours x 4 years schedule, should the learning strategy be different? Would you adjust your advice based on which schedule the person is on? Or do you give the same advice to everyone?

Interesting thoughts indeed.
Also, I guess I forgot to mention this earlier on - The 30minute bit is actually mainly meant for myself, so that I end up actually sticking to a schedule (Instead of skipping a lot of days just because I did not have the planned time that day). As mentioned a bit earlier, I ended up spending more than that time quite often, but unfortunately also ended up having some days were I skipped practice entirely.

I guess another thing I forgot to mention was that I unfortunately have no active language learning experience whatsoever. I'm native in both German and French because I grew up speaking/hearing/writing/reading both, and I only picked up English as a side effect of being interested in Computer Science when I was rather young, so besides just reading and later, speaking I don't have any "active" language learning experience there either (But I guess that I did pick it up somewhat at the very least). So that's another detrimental fact right here, I guess. But hey, doesn't mean I should just give up, right? Haha

Since I won't quote every single comment, I just want to say both sorry and thank you for all the ones I left out. I truly appreciate all of your help, and the resources you suggest! Also, don't worry, I don't mind slightly more "negative" honest opinions, in fact, I appreciate your honesty.

smallwhite wrote:Is the OP's 30 minutes continuous?

Kind of, haha! Haven't lost motivation though, for whatever that's worth.

Ani wrote:I don't think anyone has asked the OP yet if he is able to wear headphones on his commute, or get a shower speaker or find an extra hour every Saturday morning for italki sessions. I think we have a thread around here somewhere with ideas for finding more time in your day.

I can't be too loud in the small room I have back in the U.S. since the walls of the dormitory are quite thin and I'd prefer not to bother the other residents too much. So I haven't used any apps that require me to actively talk, for example. However, I do have a rather bulky pair of headphones so I am using applications with sound, listening to some audio and youtube videos. I also do have some boilerplate time lying around (for example, commuting), and am using a part of it (Although not all of it) with apps such as the kanji learning one. That thread you are mentioning sounds interesting!

reineke wrote:Japanese resources
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2907

Thank you!

Fortheo wrote:[...]
Good luck. Stay consistent and you'll see progress.

Thank you, I'll definitely check Assimil out.

reineke wrote:According to the analysis, Japanese and Korean are considered more difficult than Arabic and Hebrew.The analysis suggests that Japanese is probably the most difficult language for English-speaking students.

I have to admit that I did not read the papers you (and other people before) referenced, but maybe it'll help to know other languages too (In my case German and French)? Not that it really matters that much, but just a small thought.

Kamlari wrote:No idea if The OP is still reading it

Now I am. A bit late, of course. Sorry!
But thank you very much again for all of the advice and resources!
(I also really like these sentence breakdowns you are doing!)

I should probably look this up, but there was one question I had with japanese verbs. From what I understood, there are 3 different "types" of verbs that should technically be identifiable by their ending (Well, two of them). Now what I was wondering was whether you could divide the u-verb group into different subgroups, depending on whether they end with mu, ku, etc?
Another thing I often have trouble with, even though it should technically be easy, is finding which part of the sentence is being talked about, ie is the subject. Now, in most sentences it is quite easy to understand, but I nearly always get "positional" sentences wrong; ie "There is a chair behind me" or "I am behind a chair", etc, stuff like that. Another example: あなたの前にいます. Is it I am in front of you or you are in front of me? After getting that particular sentence wrong often enough, so I know that the "in front" applies to the "you" through the の, and there the implied subject of the sentence, I, is "in front of you", but I still get similar sentences wrong - Even though I technically know what modifier applies to what part of the sentence, etc. Any tips for this particular issue?

Kamlari wrote:著る is unaccented, 切る is accented
著る drops るru to conjugate, 切る drops -u.
If you don't know what pitch accent is, it's high time you did, at least to know what you ignore.

I'm ashamed to say that I actually really didn't know what pitch accent was. Well, I had an inkling, but ignored it... I'm on it now.

SophiaMerlin_II wrote:1) To understand the basic rules of stroke order. Contrary to popular opinion, Japanese people do sometimes write with the wrong stroke order. But the basic rules (top down, left right) and a few other smaller rules would steer you in the right direction.
2) Learn the radicals. Some radicals are very simple (dots, cliff, box, etc) while others are more complex (being whole kanji stuffed inside other Kanji). Start with the smallest ones, and work your way up. Many Japanese language Kanji dictionaries list Kanji by radical, then by stroke count.

To be honest, I have pretty much ignored those two things up until now. I focused more on trying to understand (Well, read I guess) the characters instead of trying to write them. I should really get onto that.


Again, thank you all so much for providing so many resources and so much help! I truly appreciate it. And I really am sorry for not having answered in so long.
I jotted all the mentioned resources down, and while I did already go through a few of them, I will make sure to properly look at the other ones in the next 1-2 days, and try to make a more organized plan on how to best use the little time I'll have available during the next four months.

Thanks!!!

I hope you all have a nice day. Oh, and I nearly forgot - A happy new year to everybody!
Sincerely
CMC
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