Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

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

Postby aokoye » Mon Mar 27, 2017 10:27 pm

Xmmm wrote:
aokoye wrote:I'm going to stop engaging in the "how many hours" part of this thread because a. we've seriously derailed the thread and b. it's going nowhere.


I notice though, that you didn't provide any alternate estimates or a suggestion as to how they could be derived! How did I know it would end like that?



Xmmm

My suggestion would be to do some searching on google scholar. It's not as if people haven't published studies the length of time it takes to teach students languages or the length of time it takes learners to acquire various skills. You just have to go looking for it. Heck you could even do a lit review if you wanted! I personally don't actually want to spend a portion of my spring break doing the research for you.

So there's your answer - if you want to keep flogging this horse be my guest, but I honestly have better things to do and this thread has been derailed enough as it is.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Xmmm » Tue Mar 28, 2017 12:03 am

aokoye wrote:
Xmmm wrote:
aokoye wrote:I'm going to stop engaging in the "how many hours" part of this thread because a. we've seriously derailed the thread and b. it's going nowhere.


I notice though, that you didn't provide any alternate estimates or a suggestion as to how they could be derived! How did I know it would end like that?



Xmmm

My suggestion would be to do some searching on google scholar. It's not as if people haven't published studies the length of time it takes to teach students languages or the length of time it takes learners to acquire various skills. You just have to go looking for it. Heck you could even do a lit review if you wanted! I personally don't actually want to spend a portion of my spring break doing the research for you.

So there's your answer - if you want to keep flogging this horse be my guest, but I honestly have better things to do and this thread has been derailed enough as it is.



So your suggestion of how I can come with a better number is to google it.

I took a quick look at the first google scholar paper that tried to answer the question. The answers were "it depends", "there are many definitions of fluent," and "Gladwell has this 10,000 hour rule." If you don't want to wade into that morass, why should I? I have no reason to think the FSI estimates are unusable except for your say-so.

I will stick with the FSI estimates. You say they're useless, but Kanewai in his immortal post that answered the question definitively on this forum cross-correlated the FSI estimates with national outfits like Academie Francaise and Istituto Cervantes. They seemed close enough for government work ...
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby reineke » Tue Mar 28, 2017 12:42 am

Look up CEFR in practice. If you extrapolate the estimates from information applicable to ordinary Western Europeans studying Western European languages and apply the FSI multiple for Russian and Japanese you'll come up with some numbers of holy crap proportions for both. The difference between 6000 and 9000 hours to reach C1 becomes less important than choosing the right language in the first place.

Of course, who gives a hoot about ordinary Eastern Europeans and Asians studying Western languages.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Kamlari » Tue Mar 28, 2017 10:06 am

No idea if The OP is still reading it. Anyway, here's a piece of a Japanese masterpiece.

Image
Movie clip
http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/watasi%20wa%20arufa%20de%20ari,%20omega%20de%20aru2.mpg

私はアルファであり、オメガである。
わたし は あるふぁ で あり、 おめが で ある。 I tm Alfa am (and) Omega am. Ego sum alfa et omega.
tm は wa - topic marker

私 わたし I
は は topic particle tm はwa
アルフ ァ あるふぁ alfa, katakana (foreign word)
であり、 で あり、 copula, conjunctive, literary I am and...
オメガ おめが omega, katakana (foreign word)
である。 である copula, literary, present tense
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1. There’s only one rule to rule them all:
There are no Rule(r)s.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Kamlari » Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:04 pm

Another piece of real Japanese.
It's from a movie, I don't remember the title.

Image
A message from an English woman (who married a Japanese man) to her Japanese granddaughter
Katakana here means she is a foreigner, not Japanese. (The Granny wasn't clever enough to learn kanji.) Normally, Japanese texts are written without spaces, except in texts written entirely in hiragana for small children. Reading texts with kanji is often easier and much faster, once you know the kanji, of course.

Katakana
ニシノマジョカラ ヒガシノマジョヘ
オバアチャンノ タマシイ
ダッシュツ ダイセイコウ
From West's witch to East's witch (From the witch of the West to the witch of the East)
Grandma's soul
Escape(-did) Escaped (from this life, id est: died) big success

Hiragana
にしのまじょから ひがしのまじょへ
おばあちゃんの たましい
だっしゅつ だいせいこう

Kanji
西の魔女から 東の魔女へ
おばあちゃんの 魂
脱出 大成功

西 【にし】 west
の particle 's, of
魔女 【まじょ】 witch;
から particle from
へ particle to へe
東 【ひがし】 (n) east;
おばあちゃん (fam) granny; grandma;
魂 【たましい】 (n) soul; spirit;
脱出 【だっしゅつ】 escape; break-out
大成功 【だいせいこう】 (n) huge success
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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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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Kamlari » Tue Mar 28, 2017 5:00 pm

Image
Towards the end of World War II, Japan is starving (except for Hirohito of course).
Normally, Japanese text are written vertically, from right to left.

ねえちゃん
ハラへってしにそうじゃ。
いんばいたのむ
健太 【けんた】
タエコ
(He's kanji, and she's just lousy katakana)

ねえちゃん
はら へって しにそう じゃ。
いんばい たのむ
けんた
たえこ

Big sis (older sister)
Bellies shrank (We're hungry) and (we're) about to die.
(Go back to) prostitution, (we) beg (you)
Kenta (boy's given name)
Taeko (girl's given name)


姉ちゃん 【ねえちゃん】 (more familiar than 姉さん) elder sister; girl
腹減った 【はらへった】 (exp) (col) I'm/We're hungry; past tense, plain form

腹 【はら】 abdomen; belly; stomach;
減る 【へる】 to decrease (in size or number); to diminish; to abate;
へって linking form: shrank and... the same as past but て instead of た;
死にそう 【しにそう】 (adj-na) at the point of death; almost dead; about to die;
死ぬ 【しぬ】 to die; plain form, present/future; past tense: 死んだ しんだ
じゃ regional plain copula is/are (as far as I remember it was Hiroshima)
淫売 【いんばい】 (n) prostitution; prostitute
頼む 【たのむ】 to request; to beg; to ask;
健太 【けんた】 boy's given name
タエコ girl's given name
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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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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby aokoye » Tue Mar 28, 2017 5:24 pm

reineke wrote:Look up CEFR in practice. If you extrapolate the estimates from information applicable to ordinary Western Europeans studying Western European languages and apply the FSI multiple for Russian and Japanese you'll come up with some numbers of holy crap proportions for both. The difference between 6000 and 9000 hours to reach C1 becomes less important than choosing the right language in the first place.

Of course, who gives a hoot about ordinary Eastern Europeans and Asians studying Western languages.


The Japan Foundation (think the Japanese version of the Goethe Institut or the Alliance Francaise) appears to be attempting to switch their classes to CEFR levels. They like the "can do" aspects of it that are apparently not a facet of the JLPT. There is at least one textbook series published by them that is graded on CEFR levels. I'll link to it when I'm not on my phone. It'll be intersting to see if there's has been any pushback given that it appears the main proficiency test for Japanese that is recognized in Japan is the JLPT (I know there are a few others). There is also apparently a new metric that is going to be added to the CEFR in general that I need to look up when I get home. I went to a talk about it last week.

edit: The textbook series is called Marugoto and here's a link to a PDF that talks about the "can do" statements for the CEFR. That was the only even kind of easy resource I was able to find in English - there's more detailed information in Japanese. The other CEFR thing I mentioned is about developing descriptors for mediation (as in the skill of mediating).

edit 2: It looks like the CEFR link about mediation doesn't work - this one might (or so says the conference program website).
Last edited by aokoye on Tue Mar 28, 2017 8:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby vonPeterhof » Tue Mar 28, 2017 5:57 pm

Kamlari wrote:Towards the end of World War II, Japan is starving (except for Hirohito of course).
Normally, Japanese text are written vertically, from right to left.

ねえちゃん
ハラへってしにそうじゃ。
いんばいたのむ
健太 【けんた】
タエコ

I'm unreasonably annoyed by the fact that the note is written using post-War orthography. :evil: At the time it would have been written like this:

ねえち
ハラへてしにぢや
いんばいたのむ
健太


I can excuse しにそう, タエコ and じ for ぢ as a child's misspellings, but I'm pretty sure that small script kana were only used sporadically in (non-Chinese) loanwords and never in native Japanese words, until around the 1950s.
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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby Kamlari » Tue Mar 28, 2017 6:01 pm

vonPeterhof,
you're perfectly right.

And I suppose it would have been written in katakana. Children were taught katakana first. I think.

But that's exactly how it was spelt in the movie. A contemporary movie for contemporary people.
As far as I remember it's called an anachronism. But I'm not sure.

Image
The movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otoko_wa_Tsurai_yo

愛って・・・ 何だろう
あい って・・・ なん だろう
(And as for what we call) Love ... What (would it) be (I wonder)

愛 【あい】 love; affection; care;
愛する to love; many Japanese verbs are just Noun + (irregular) verb する
愛してる あいしてる (I) love (you) (colloquial form)
愛しています あいしています (I) love (you) (polite form)

って; て (prt) (abbr. for と, というのは and other similar combinations) casual quoting particle;
何 【なに; なん】 what;
だろう; だろ (exp) (polite でしょう) seems; I think; I guess; I wonder; I hope; One of the plain forms of the Copula で ある。
Last edited by Kamlari on Tue Mar 28, 2017 6:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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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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Re: Learning Japanese: What to do after having learnt the Kana

Postby vonPeterhof » Tue Mar 28, 2017 6:07 pm

Kamlari wrote:vonPeterhof,
you're perfectly right.

But that's exactly how it was spelt in the movie.
I know, I can see the screenshot. My nitpicking was addressed at the movie, not your reproduction of the note.
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