Learning Japanese From Zero

[golyplot]

This morning, I was reading the "Christmas Presents" story from the graded reader, and noticed the word もらった coming up a lot, so I looked it up (it means to receive). Then I searched WK out of curiosity to see what level I would learn it at on WK, and as far as I can tell, WK doesn't have it all, which was very disappointing. I know WK is missing words commonly written as kana only and of course it can't cover everything, but this seems like a word that is relatively common and written with kanji (貰う), so I can't understand why WK doesn't have it.

[vonPeterhof]

I'm not familiar with the content of WK, but the kanji 貰 is outside the Japanese school program, and seeing the word written as 貰う is actually somewhat uncommon, especially when it's used as an auxiliary verb. Tae Kim's grammar guide has some examples of how it's used, although it's sort of tacked on as an afterthought in a lesson mainly dealing with the verbs あげる and くれる.

[golyplot]

I'm not familiar with the content of WK, but the kanji 貰 is outside the Japanese school program, and seeing the word written as 貰う is actually somewhat uncommon, especially when it's used as an auxiliary verb. Tae Kim's grammar guide has some examples of how it's used, although it's sort of tacked on as an afterthought in a lesson mainly dealing with the verbs あげる and くれる.

I'll admit I don't actually know anything about how common that kanji is. I just assumed it was common because that's what turned up when I googled "もらった".

[golyplot]

I gave up on the graded readers last night. Ever since I finished Colors and Flowers last week and moved on to the adventures of Ai-chan, I haven't been able to understand any of it. I think the challenge is finding things that are aimed at Japanese learners rather than Japanese children.

I was pretty proud of how well I was doing on WK yesterday, but this morning, I had a pretty bad session where I missed a bunch of kanji I knew due to carelessness. Normally when I start missing a lot of reviews, I'll just take a quick break and do the rest of the reviews later to get out of the rut and do it in a better mood, but this morning I stubbornly persisted because I wanted to get the level up out of the way and start the next as soon as possible. Oh well, at least I did level up.

[crush]

Yeah, on it's own it can mean to receive something, but it can also be used similar to how あげる and くれる are used, showing someone did something for you. Japanese Ammo has a video on it, too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp-2PNSANJ8

[golyplot]

I haven't been doing as much Japanese as I'd like lately because I keep getting distracted by Magic: The Gathering. It's so hard to resist the temptation to spend my time thinking and reading about MTG instead.

Anyway, tonight it finally happened: I missed a level radical on WK. The good news is that there is still a margin of error in the system. You can miss up to three kanji and still level, and only one of the kanji requires the radical I missed, so I effectively just have two "lives" left instead of three. If I manage to make it through the rest of the level without too many mistakes, I can still level on time. I just have to be even more careful than I usually am.

[dampingwire]

I haven't been doing as much Japanese as I'd like lately because I keep getting distracted by Magic: The Gathering. It's so hard to resist the temptation to spend my time thinking and reading about MTG instead.

Why resist?

(I know nothing about MTG - but the words match and it's in Japanese so what have you got to lose )

[golyplot]

Now that I've enlightened my first kanji on WK, my kanji chart is starting to look a bit more colorful.



I learned Nagoya on WK this morning, which I'd never heard of, unlike Tokyo and Kyoto. To be fair, the only reason I'd heard of Kyoto prior to studying Japanese was due to the Kyoto Protocol. Unfortunately, my non-WK studies are pretty much stalled.

[golyplot]

I've been feeling a bit discouraged and haven't done much Japanese lately. Even WK was beginning to feel more like an obligation than a fun challenge. So when I saw 129 reviews this morning, I was prepared for a grueling slog. Instead, I got them right, and again, and again. I just kept doing everything perfectly. It was surreal. I didn't miss a single question until around two thirds of the way through the review session. I ended up missing several more towards the end, but it was still very impressive.

[golyplot]

I've been getting a little discouraged again.

I watched the Cure Dolly video about how to tell apart transitive vs intransitive verbs after I saw it recommended online, and I think it will be helpful. I'd sort of noticed these patterns already, but I never really realized they were explicit common patterns I should be looking out for. It should definitely help with keeping them straight in the future. On the other hand, I found Cure Dolly's voice to be indistinct and a struggle to follow, so I probably won't be watching any more of her videos. I think she really needs to work on the quality of the recording.




In case anyone is curious, I've so far watched the first nine videos in Misa's Grammar Lessons for Absolute Beginners series. I haven't been keeping up with that as much as I should. I haven't been doing much of anything lately apart from continuing WK.