On How to Learn Languages

Submit your blog!

2011-06-16T14:04:00.000-03:00

If you have a non-profit blog or website about learning languages, please post the link in the comments of this post and I'll add it to my left bar.

Prefer to only listen the second language during the first 3 months

2010-09-20T15:33:00.001-03:00

In this post I explicitly said "Don't use the written target language in this phase".

Well, scratch that.
What I really wanned to say is "prefer listening over reading during the first 3 months".

There are 2 reasons for that:

1) The number one problem of language learners in the beginning is that they worry too much about not being able to understand spoken language.

Step 1 was designed to erase that completely.

Extensive listening during the first stage of learning a new language is a liberating experience.

It frees you to enjoy the language as stress free as possible: By effortlessly listening.

2) Learning the target writing system when you already know the sounds of the language. This makes learning languages with weird phonetics and cryptic writing (such as English) much easier.

Twitter!

2010-03-03T21:01:00.000-03:00

Hello, guys!
Follow my twitter:
http://twitter.com/wuerges

I promise very low volume of twitting in both English and Portuguese. Not more than 2-3 twits per week.

Hearing disability and Language learning

2010-03-03T12:55:00.003-03:00

Please check this awesome post from RevTK forums:

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=95421#p95421

Game Recomendation: Demon's Souls for PS3

2010-01-06T23:40:00.000-02:00

A cheesy game, with a cheesy title. But a hell of a game: Demon's Soul it is.

Recently I got this game and at first it was a pain because althought it is a Japanese game, it is completely dubbed in English. It has no Japanese audio.

But the game is really interesting and really, really hard and it really got my attention completely during the last 2 weeks. Half because the game itself and half for reading these strategy guides from the internet. In Japanese, of course.

For Demon's Souls, this is the best:
http://www.geocities.jp/kouryakubo/ds/index.html

The sad thing is that I beat the game today =/
Now I need something else.

Btw, anyone knows what is the equivalent of gamefaqs for Japan?

Human Rights Declaration in 100 languages

2009-12-18T20:21:00.001-02:00

Awesome page from librivox:

http://librivox.org/the-universal-declaration-of-human-rights-by-the-united-nations/

Quick Guide to learn any language effectively, enjoyably.

2009-12-18T14:17:00.001-02:00

1) For 3 months, listen to the target language. Audio books, Movies, Music.
- All you have to do is pick up one word here and there.
- Don't use the written target language in this phase.
- Translations are OK.

2) Learn the basics of the writing system.
- Memorize the alphabet/hanzi/hangul/whatever.
- Alphabets and syllabaries should not take more than 2 weeks to learn.

3) For a few months, try to learn as many new words/day as possible.
- You need about ~2000 words families.
- The faster you do it, the better.
- Mine these words from real, authentic, native targeted material.
- Prefer transcriptions of audio you have already listened.
- Also use Books, Comics, Articles, etc.
- Use Flashcards to memorize words within sentences.
- Translations are OK.

4) Forever, listen and read to the target language.
- Now on, translations are evil.
- Use only monolingual dictionary definitions in the new Flashcards you make.

How much words someone needs no know?

2009-11-26T10:32:00.003-02:00

"Native speakers' vocabularies vary widely within a language, and are especially dependent on the level of the speaker's education. A 1995 study estimated the vocabulary size of college-educated speakers at about 17,000 word families, and that of first-year college students (high-school educated) at about 12,000."

Source: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabulary

"満年齢で6歳になる子どもの場合、理解語彙の総量は、およそ5000～6000語ほど。13歳では3万語前後。20歳ではおよそ4万5000～50000語ほどという調査結果が出ている"

Source: Japanese wikipedia http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%AA%9E%E5%BD%99

My translation:
"When completing 6 years of age, children have a vocabulary size of around 5.000 to 6.000 words. At 13 years old it is 30.000+. At 20 years old, it is around 45.000 to 50.000 words, according to the result of the research."

I'd say these numbers are pretty consistent with what I read before.
For some reason, Japanese vocabulary is larger than English's. Maybe because it is easier to learn new words in Japanese, after you know the language well enough?

Japanese vocabulary size

2009-11-23T11:17:00.001-02:00

Well, I made this test:
http://www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/mtg/goitokusei/goi-test.html

And got these results:

あなたの語彙数は27000語です。
The size of your vocabulary is 27000 words.

中学生レベル：２万～４万語。
Mid schooler level: 20000~40000 words.

Yes, yes. I like to believe in everything that says good of me.
If you know another japanese vocabulary test, please send me!

French project progress (2)

2009-11-11T12:02:00.003-02:00

I listened to a bit more French this week. Basically I started to watch Ange et Demon twice.
I now know how "danger" sounds more exactly. =D

Btw, the title of the movie is quite intriguing. In the English dub, it is Angels and Demons.
Why in French it is not Anges et Demons, like it would be in Portuguese or Spanish:
"Anjos e Demônios" and "Ángeles y Demonios", respectively?
It is funny. I kinda understand it, the pluralized version sounds icky. I just don't know it exactly.

French project progress

2009-11-02T19:36:00.000-02:00

Answer to the last comment: My French is going slow! Same for Mandarim.

I recently noticed that my last post was misleading.
The trick sentence is "Ok, after French I'm now going for Mandarin". This could give the impression that I actually learned French, but that is not the case. I'm just taking it slow. Once a week I listen to 1 hour or 2 of French. Maybe a bit more.

For instance, yesterday I watched the move "Decalage Horaire" with Jean Reno and Juliette Binoche. Btw, I strongly recommend it. It was a very nice movie.

I watched it half with subtitles, half without. I could understand a few complete sentences already hearing for the first time, but its not something substantial.

I'm more around the "catch a few words" phase. I still simply can't process half of what I hear. I still can't identify some sounds as words. French sounds are still not natural for me.

For instance, the word "danger" meaning danger =D. Right now I can't remember if it is more like "donger" or "danger" or "denger".

Ah, I started making sense of some things, like when verbs end with "i" its the past form. But I'll worry more about this later, I'm still not ready for it.

Japanese great success

2009-10-15T19:34:00.003-03:00

I could talk! Yesssssss!

This week I was helping in the organization of an event, and there were a few japanese presenting their papers. I could talk a bit with them about their work and tell a bit about the city I live. Easily! Hurray!

Mandarin project begins!!

2009-09-22T09:49:00.003-03:00

Ok, after French I'm now going for Mandarin.

I think I'll have more success now because I'll manage to do the study from Chinese to Japanese, that's it, I won't abandon Japanese, like I was more or less doing with French.

So for 1 week I watched Taiwanese TV and I'm already getting used to a few sounds. Unlike Japanese, Chinese sounds are really different from Portuguese and I'm finding them quite challenging to get used to.

Well, I grabbed this sentence pack (http://smart.fm/lists/132095) from last.fm and used the anki plugin to withdraw them. I now have a deck with 540 cards with 2 models.

Reading: Chinese sentence -> Japanese translation

Listening: Chinese audio sentence -> Chinese with Japanese translation

Handbook of Bilingualism

2009-09-14T10:02:00.002-03:00

This is a book recommendation for those wanting to learn about second language acquisition.
It is not about learning languages it is about how people learn languages.

Check it by yourself and be surprised on how much it tunes in with AJATT and Kaufman's views.

It is really fun how it debunks old research, specially about grammar based learning and the critical period hypothesis.

The first chapter is about learning vocabulary!
One thing that I found really interesting is that it says that each word generally has about 25 meanings and more than that, these meanings evolve with time.

There are 2 chapters that talk about brain function and have pretty pictures of brain imaging comparing Early Second Language learners and late second language learners with poor or great skills. It seems the brain gets less and less active with the improvement in skill in the language.
The book didn't got to this conclusion, but isn't it maybe the vocabulary solidifying?

Btw, the link is here:
http://tinyurl.com/o5tjvb

Final Fantasy XIII news and Famitsu

2009-08-28T09:25:00.003-03:00

If you like games you might like to follow a few new sites to be aware of what's going on in the scenario.

This generation, for the XBOX 360 and the playstation 3, unarguably the best games are coming from west, so for most of the games you'll want to read the news in English, as they were written, not a clumsy translation to Japanese.

But there are still many Japanese titles you don't want to miss, one of them might be Final Fantasy XIII. So, welcome to Famitsu:

http://www.famitsu.com/review/title/0000/0000/0001/9553/

Btw, the thing I don't like about it is this:
※詳しくは週刊ファミ通2009年9月10日号（2009年8月27日発売）をチェック！

Does someone know a better source of news?

New, blank anki deck + New anki kicks ass

2009-08-12T14:16:00.003-03:00

I just created a new, blank anki deck. I still have my old one somewhere, but it's been some time I don't open it anymore. There still vocabulary I'd like to use anki to learn so I threw that out and created a new one.

Btw, new Anki ROCKS!!!
This new reading generation system + furigana is AWESOME.
5 stars of 5.

Also I read the first volume of Kimi no Todoke. Even if you don't like Shoujo manga (like me) it is very entertaining. I give it 4 stars of 5.

Claymore chapter 94

2009-08-06T11:44:00.001-03:00

Wheew, very tense. When will this act come to an end? And how?

The secret to speech

2009-08-05T17:07:00.001-03:00

When I find out I'll tell you!

I new reached a stage that even thought pronunciation is super easy, my speech ability is still very weak. But I do I feel it improves a bit everyday, even without virtually no effort. So I just keep doing what I always did.

When I'm closed in my mind I can speak what I want, but when I face a real opportunity I simply can't maintain the pace. I can't come up with words at the required speed. Like an iceberg, the words are there, but very little shows up on the surface. I'm afraid of doing mistakes or I feel ashamed of what I might say.

I feel what I need now is not really output training, it is social interaction.

Claymore chapter 93

2009-07-31T14:34:00.002-03:00

Claymore was one manga that I started to read in English and then reread it completely in Japanese. Definitely worth it. Specially these last chapters are getting more and more tense.

Professor Layton for DS

2009-07-13T09:54:00.002-03:00

Warning: This post is for you, even if you are not a gamer/anime freak.

Unless you lived under a rock, like me, you probably heard about Professor Layton games for Nintendo DS. I just started it yesterday. I'm in the 7th riddle (very beginning). It is an adventure game that requires you to solve small riddles, unrelated to the story, in order to progress. The game has an inexplicable charisma.
I strongly recommend it. Even if you are not a gamer.

Finished Jump Ultimate Stars, for nintendo DS

2009-07-06T11:33:00.003-03:00

Today I finished Finished Jump Ultimate Stars, for Nintendo DS. That means, I got all characters, played all the scenarios in the story mode and reached all the objectives for each of them.

It is a fighting game, but it has a mission description for each stage, that requires understanding. Character names and skills are all written in Japanese. But the most important is that the game is addictive. Specially for this last one, I strongly recommend it.

One of my favorite characters in the game is Allen Walker, wich I knew it was from D.Gray-Man, but I never watched it. Now I'm doing it. It also seems like a nice series. I still not recommend it, but definitely try Allen when playing Jump Ultimate Stars.

Caught up to Evangelion

2009-07-02T17:12:00.003-03:00

Wheew, for EVA I had to use the dictionary for some terms. I thought that EVA would be one of the hardest series to understand, but maybe because it is so familiar for me (I've seen the anime + the movie a 100 times) it was easier then Naruto. Wich btw, remembered me that I still need to read that last One Piece.

Caughting up to Naruto and One Piece

2009-07-01T18:46:00.003-03:00

I had read Naruto until volume 44 in English. Now, last week, I've read the volumes 45 and 46 in Japanese. For One Piece there are still 1.5 volumes left.

On how to learn Japanese: 2nd phase

2009-07-01T16:08:00.004-03:00

I wanted to go to Japan, but today I assumed a great commitment. This commitment will keep me where I am for at least 3 more years.

Reaching fluency was an urgent matter, but now that things are different I'm here to announce the second phase of my Japanese learning.

I decided to stop worrying about how many hours, how many words, how much time, what dictionaries to use, what kind of input is best, how much I got better with how much time.

I'm glad with the Japanese I got until now. I discovered I can read manga and 小説 just for fun. And I'll keep doing that. For fun, not for learning purposes.

I'm confident that just by doing that, in a few years (not 18 months anymore, but just in time for my real goals), I'll be fluent.

AJATT quiz

2009-06-03T13:49:00.001-03:00

Recently the following thread appeared in kanji.koohii.com forum.
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=3360

I felt compelled to answer.

1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS?

3937 seen facts, 482 unseen. Taking off RTK.

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

Half from dictionary, about ~200 are names., others are from
anime/dorama/newspapers. I have not kept track of data.

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to meaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?

I do only recognition. My cards are full kanji, I have the readings
and Japanese definitions in the answer field.

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

The movie method for unknown readings. I use no special review system for it.

5. How many cards on average do you add to you deck per day? Or if life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?

At total, 8.5/day. With peaks of 80 cards/day and valleys of no cards at all.

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?

3-4 hours/day.
Mainly from anime, doramas, Jmovies, newspapers, 2chan, 知恵袋, etc.

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.

I can read the news, but I can't decipher them only by listening.
I can read light novels, but I need the dictionary much more for
them than for the news.
I've took 5 months to read one light novel(ハルヒ涼宮の憂鬱),
but now I'm at 30% of my second one (十二国記), after 1 week.
I can read almost anything from Internet, with an
occasional dictionary lookup, but I can only type simple posts.
I can understand understand some doramas perfectly even without Jsubs,
but there are still doramas than I can't understand even 30%
and I can't speak much more than I can write.
Same for anime.
I'm playing trough FFIV remake for the DS with almost 100% understanding,
if you take of the hiragana items.

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

Quite satisfied. The only painful part is the SRS review time.
Adding news sentences is fun.
Currently I only read, watch and listen things I like.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?

Nope. I'm not even close to my goals.

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?

Native-like ability for listening, reading and writing.
Strong oratory skills.

11. How confident are you of getting there?

Strongly confident.

12. From when you started adding items to your SRS, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do again differently if you could?

I'd like to try the movie method instead of RTK.
I'd avoid rikai-chan. It is more addictive than cigar.

13. How long have you been studying?
13 months, ~15 days.

First light novel completed: 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱

2009-05-28T07:45:00.004-03:00

Yo, I completed my first light novel: 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱

I started it 西暦2009年1月16日, so it been ~130 days. It has ~300 pages so it has taken me 2.3 pages per day.

I kinda expected more from myself. I could have done it much faster.

I was that slow during the beginning chapters, during my vacations, then I got slower. Then I stopped. Then I started to read it again and all I know is that only this week I read more than 50 pages (the end is quite exciting) until I finished it.

My reading pace totally change while reading the book. In the beginning it was a mental exercise. It took a while, but it finally turned into leisure. I noticed that observing my sleeping pattern. At first, when I read during the night, I'd lose my sleep. This also occurs quite often when I do programming or play a mental game like go at night: I totally lose my sleep if I perform a task for which I need concentration to complete.

But lately It has not been affecting my sleep anymore. Actually it helped me sleep, like when I read English or Portuguese before going to bed.

^_^

Ah, and the Joyo Stats of this week have a new twist. I've submitted a patch to anki to put the stats for the New Joyo list. Here is how it looks like:

Kanji statistics
The 3805 seen cards in this deck contain:
2257 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1935 of 1945 (99.5%).
Jinmeiyou: 47 of 248 (19.0%).
New Joyo: 95 of 191 (49.7%).
180 non-jouyou kanji.
Jouyou levels:
Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
Grade 4: 199 of 200 (99.5%).
Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
JuniorHS: 931 of 939 (99.1%).

Bilingual Sentences Source: Hideo Kojima

2009-05-21T10:49:00.004-03:00

http://www.kjp.konami.jp/gs/hideoblog/

That's it!
小島秀夫 (こじま　ひでお）, the creator of Metal Gear and Zone of Enders, is learning English. And he has a blog! And he seems to be doing good!

Writing the compounds + anki stats

2009-05-15T23:07:00.003-03:00

As a rule, I have trouble to write compounds.

This week, I tried to copy the senteces by hand during the reviews, and some I could, some I didn't.
I'd say I can write from memory only 30% of whan I can read.
But I don't think it would take much effort to learn how to write the rest.

I purposely ignored this until now and I plan to ignore it a little bit longer.
I have plans to go to Japan next year. If these plans get confirmed, I'll start copying every sentence during my reviews by hand.

If not, I'll continue with recognition only and I'll pray than production will come on its on. It is already comming, I just don't know how much I'll have to wait.

So, if you are in a hurry to write by hand, recognition only might not be for you.

Finally, the anki stats:

The 3526 seen cards in this deck contain:
2108 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1845 of 1945 (94.9%).
Jinmeiyou: 51 of 287 (17.8%).
212 non-jouyou kanji.
Jouyou levels:
Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
Grade 4: 199 of 200 (99.5%).
Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
JuniorHS: 841 of 939 (89.6%).

How (fast) to remember compounds

2009-05-10T08:42:00.003-03:00

I have great news for those who have already finished RTK. Remembering compounds is piece of cake.

Some will give you trouble but most of them stick after the first few reviews, for life. Much, much easier than RTK.

But as it is so easy, I did not developed a method. I go through them randomly, as I encounter them. If I fail remembering them twice, I make a place mnemonic (like in the movie method) and go on. Simple as that.

I have no data to show how fast I remember them, but I remember that there were times that I added comfortably 100+ sentences/day. I never could do it with RTK, so do your math.

But I still have something to point out.

First, you need to find room for the readings in your brain, just like the primitives in RTK.

When you first encounter a new reading, it will bog you down. It'll take some time to get used and after some time, it will be part of you and it will help you go forward.

I think this readings are connected with how much you listen to them. Kanjis with reading しょう、かん、けん readings are numerous. You listen to it all the time. You will build a kanji framework for them quickly.

If you looked from a "grammar" perspective, they would be the hardest. Most readings share kanji that look a lot alike to each other, but these are very very irregular.

But that is not what happened to me.
They are the easiest to remember.

Grammars do exist!

2009-04-30T15:20:00.003-03:00

I might have not made my position publicly clear about grammar study in language learning, but I will now.

I'm against it. I think it is, in most cases, a waste of time.

Grammars are very valuable. Study of grammar brings a deeper understanding of the language. It is just that knowing it has very little effect on your comprehension and your output. That's it.

If you already know the language well, learning grammar will boost your ability to reflect over sentences. It will give you ability to discuss the language with other people.

It will probably make your reading or listening skills better, but its effects are minor comparing to simpler things like reading for your own enjoyment.

But if you enjoy learning grammar, thought, you'll be killing 2 birds with 1 stone. If you fall in this category, for all means check this link:
http://www.geocities.jp/niwasaburoo/

Massive unintentional grammar practice

2009-04-25T13:02:00.002-03:00

Today my thoughts were drifting, and then something came up in my mind.
Maybe I'm doing a lot of grammar specific practice.

How? By "unconjugating".

I see conjugated verbs everywhere and I have to "unconjugate" them to check the dictionary.

So maybe, I'm a bit of an hypocrite (you know, being a forget grammar evangelist).
But maybe that's what reading and listening a lot forces you to do.

Practice grammar is probably needed after all, but you do it without noticing.

Cramming trought the Joyo

2009-04-12T16:37:00.003-03:00

I know I advocate natural language learning, and that searching for specific words is not optimal. But I was growing nervous that my Joyo % was not raising anymore and started to cover it systematically.

This is probably not the best way to learn Japanese, but I really love statistics and the kanji count that was not raising anymore was bothering me. So I'm cheating. I'm going throughout the anki unseen kanji, picking some words and adding sentences for them. Even if these sentences are not so great.

After I'm done with the Joyo, I'll continue doing sentences the right way.

The 3444 seen cards in this deck contain:
2060 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1817 of 1945 (93.4%).
Jinmeiyou: 48 of 287 (16.7%).
195 non-jouyou kanji.
Jouyou levels:
Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
Grade 4: 199 of 200 (99.5%).
Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
JuniorHS: 813 of 939 (86.6%).

Vocabulary is everything

2009-04-03T15:13:00.004-03:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070802182054.htm

I might be a little biased to read this article and say this, but yes, vocabulary seems to be everything.
The more words you know and the harder they are, the easier it gets to learn new words. Simple as that. And grammar comes by accident.

Memorization of vocabulary in context, with the aid of tons of audio is the key. End of story.

Anki stats update

2009-04-02T09:36:00.002-03:00

Quick tip:
Try reducing your session times. I adjusted the review lenght of my session to 3 minutes. I do 3-5 already in the morning and voila! My reviews are done.

And the kanji stats:

The 3339 seen cards in this deck contain:
* 1983 total unique kanji.
* Jouyou: 1753 of 1945 (90.1%).
* Jinmeiyou: 46 of 287 (16.0%).
* 184 non-jouyou kanji.
Jouyou levels:
* Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
* Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
* Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
* Grade 4: 199 of 200 (99.5%).
* Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
* Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
* JuniorHS: 749 of 939 (79.8%).

Input X Output

2009-03-31T16:26:00.002-03:00

If we weight the importance of output and input, input would comprise with 98% of the efficacy, output would be 1% and more 1% to unknown factors.

It is not that you can or not become fluent from input only. It is that the best way to achieve it is to focus at least 98% of your effort on input.

980 hours of input and 20 hours of output have much better effect than 500 hours of input and 500 hours of output.

It's not a question of belief. It is a fact.

Yes, my numbers are skewed, but it is not possible to account it perfectly.
Anyway, probably 1% for speaking practice is already way too much.

For Japanese I've read far more than 30000 sentences.
Right now, only my sentences deck account for more than 3000 sentences.

Also, I've listened far more Japanese that I have read.

I'll take some lifetimes to do the same with output.

Speech

2009-03-26T22:09:00.006-03:00

Well, all I can say is that I already can speak a little of Japanese.

I have not put it on trial yet, but I plan to do it soon.

Until now, the only interactive output I had was chatting on the net, only for a few days, months ago.
I stopped because I noticed that it had no effect on my Japanese. Just reading and listening were working very well.

But now something is changing. I'm talking with myself a lot in Japanese lately. I do not do it actively.

I do it without noticing.

Btw, this made me recall that before I could speak English, I ranted with myself the same way I'm doing with Jap now.

It started without form. At first there were only sounds. But these sounds kinda fit into each other. Lately these sounds are becoming words. For now, it feels that I'm fooling myself that I can speak Jap, but my hope is that these grunts will become proper speech.

Input before output. But maybe, the time for output is near.

Progress Report: The News and Output

2009-03-13T15:24:00.005-03:00

I'm doing fine reading the news. It depends of the article. Sometimes I might not need the dictionary at all, somemtimes I'm forced to look up more than 20 items.

Listening is not going so well. It is much harder to understand it listening. It's too much information compressed in so few words. I guess now it has been 4 months since I started the news operation, but I think I'll still need more 4 months.

On the other hand, anime and dorama are becoming very easy to understand.
Sometimes I don't need make any effort at all to get probably more than 95% of understanding.

I think this is finally triggering my output. I feel like soon I'll be able to construct my thought directly in Japanese. I'll try to write something once a week in my lang-8 journal to measure how I'm going.

Finally, the anki stats:

The 3210 seen cards in this deck contain:
* 1968 total unique kanji.
* Jouyou: 1737 of 1945 (89.3%).
* Jinmeiyou: 57 of 287 (19.9%).
* 174 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:
* Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
* Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
* Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
* Grade 4: 199 of 200 (99.5%).
* Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
* Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
* JuniorHS: 733 of 939 (78.1%).

Ow, no! My Japanese is getting too good to keep playing games!

2009-03-11T10:42:00.006-03:00

After a long and sad time without a TV, I finally manage to get one and turn my playstation on this year. I put persona 4 in there and started to play it.
The last time I was playing it was awesome. Every word was new. Every kanji had a new reading. Every expression had to be decifered. The game skills, items, moves, options? They were incomprehensible.

Now I can understand pretty much everything. Even the curvy balls like 何処 are not so curvy anymore.

So my question is. Does anki + massive listening for fun rip off the challenge from language learning?

Btw, I'm almost giving up on French. It's so hard! Japanese is so comfy!

Japanese names

2009-03-03T19:59:00.002-03:00

It's been hard to find new kanji in texts. Vocabulary never ceases to appear, but kanji is kinda different.

So, I started to tackle names.

Japanese names are interesting. I'm not sure how it is yet, but it seems there are many different ways to write the same name so I'm not intending to be able to do that. I just want to be able to read them, even without 100% accuracy.

You may call me a cheater again but I fixed a file with the names of a few hundreds of japanese writers and just imported them in my deck.

Kanji Stats:

The 3100 seen cards in this deck contain:

* 1931 total unique kanji.
* Jouyou: 1724 of 1945 (88.6%).
* Jinmeiyou: 46 of 287 (16.0%).
* 161 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

* Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
* Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
* Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
* Grade 4: 199 of 200 (99.5%).
* Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
* Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
* JuniorHS: 720 of 939 (76.7%).

Freedom from the SRS and the dictionary

2009-02-27T15:24:00.004-03:00

Today I realised someting nice.
If a card is scheduled for more than 6 months, it might as well as be erased.
Plain normal reading will give you more exposure than your SRS deck. And this exposure will be of better quality.

I'm also changing my strategy for reading and SRSing:
* I'll try not using a dictionary anymore.
* I'm not adding adding cards for vocabulary that I can figure out from context.
* I'll add to the SRS sentences for the words that I had to look up.

Actually I was doing this already before writing this post. I was reading this text:
http://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye4072374.html
The only word I looked up was 殺到. The rest I could figure out.

Early rising

2009-02-17T12:26:00.003-03:00

I'm not an early riser. But I can imagine some of the benefits it would bring me.

I live in the south of brasil, in a city called Sao Jose, but my job is in Florianopolis, which is an island. I have to cross the bridge everyday to get there. The bridge is the only access to the island, so there is a lot of traffic, specially from 7:00 am to 8:30 and from 17:00 to 19:30. My goal is to totally bypass that.

I'm waking up one hour earlier each day, until I get to 5:00 am. I'll cross the bridge around 6:00 am and 16:00.

Btw, the picture is the view from my window, that mass of land in the horizon is Florianopolis.

Anki stats

2009-02-13T12:48:00.001-02:00

Just for the records, the last anki stats: 258 joyo kanji to go.

The 2955 seen cards in this deck contain:

1877 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1687 of 1945 (86.7%).
Jinmeiyou: 41 of 287 (14.3%).
149 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
Grade 4: 199 of 200 (99.5%).
Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
JuniorHS: 683 of 939 (72.7%).

Japanese Progress Report

2009-02-07T18:41:00.002-02:00

Today while watching the episode 19 of Tales of the Abyss, I realized I was not chocking on unknown vocabulary anymore.

I'm finally starting to get that native feel of vocabulary, where you only need to listen the word once to "get it". Like when you hear a new word in English and think "ah, this must be that", without looking it up. I had already experienced that many times while reading, sometimes while listening, but now it's turning into something usual.

Nevertheless, I'm feeling great about it.

Learning french from the perspective of a portuguese/english bilingue

2009-02-05T14:10:00.002-02:00

I started listening to lots of French today. One might try and do the same expecting to get the same results. For that, I'll leave here a disclaimer.

At the time, I can speak and listen both english and portuguese at native level. This gives me a huge advantage for learning French. I have an impression that 95% of French vocabulary is cognate or with English or Portuguese. The grammar has a lot in common with both languages and pronunciation has a lot in common with Portuguese.

If one starts to learn French only knowing English, he might have much more troble with vocabulary and pronunciation than me. So be more carefull.

Prerequisites for learning a language

2009-02-05T13:47:00.002-02:00

When I first started this blog, I thought that anyone, at any age, could learn a new language. After this long year, I realized there actually are some requirements.

1) The habit of reading.

If you don't normally read in your own language, you will not be able to read in a foreign one. Reading gives great opportunity to learn new words while having fun.

2) You must enjoy listening to something.

Music is not the best. In my experiente, the best are dialogues. I strongly recommend shows like South Park. It's almost only made of dialogues and its fun. Also it gives you opportunity to learn words that you'd normaly won't learn from books. Hahaha.

HJHFATT

2009-02-04T23:23:00.001-02:00

HJHFATT stands for half japanese, half french all the time.

I just happened to get southpark completely dubbed in French and I'm simply too curious to not enjoy it.

I plan to start it half time tomorrow.

Kanji statistics

The 2917 seen cards in this deck contain:

1863 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1676 of 1945 (86.2%).
Jinmeiyou: 41 of 287 (14.3%).
146 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
Grade 4: 198 of 200 (99.0%).
Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
JuniorHS: 673 of 939 (71.7%).

Hehe, nice way to ruin your new year's resolutions. ^_^

Back in the year

2009-01-29T17:40:00.008-02:00

Yo, the new year finally starts for me. I already had some fun, but from today on I'll be serious.

Then, I'm setting some goals:

1st: Putting all the joyo in my anki cards. There about ~250 kanji that are still not there. I want to finish it in 2 months, so I'll need about ~5 kanji/day. Sounds it will be easy.

2nd: Fix my writing. I'm doing recognition only. It makes wonders for reading comprehension, but I need to work on my handwriting. I'm able to write with the IME, but I want more than that. My plan at this point is simply start copying the harder sentences during my anki reviews. After some more experimentation, I'll decide something better.

3rd: Fluency. I think I'm doing good on this one. I'm breezing trough my 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 novel, reading the slashdot.jp daily, acompaining the headlines from 読売新聞 and TBS and a few more blogs, like the awesome http://nihongodaybyday.blogspot.com/

Well, that's it.

Vacations, more or less.

2009-01-16T18:23:00.003-02:00

No, this is not a post to excuse myself for not using a SRS again. I'm still using it daily. I have not skipped a review since my last post. I'm just adding fewer cards.

5 days ago, my Haruhi Suzumiya novels arrived, and I'm reading the first volume. I'm doing 3-4 pages and watching/listening only 1 houre of japanese for day only. I'm only adding sentences for the words I want to know really baddly, so it means only 4-5 new sentences/day.

The great thing is: I'm doing fine!
I can read these novels without much effort, for laizure. And I'm loving them. The plot is really nice and all, but these novels have something that really impressed me:
The ultra long sentences it cointains. It is one thing that until now I ignored and I'm still not used to it, so it is gonna be great training.

Short pause and reacceleration

2009-01-05T15:49:00.002-02:00

The listening the news project is somewhat halted. I'll go back to it soon enough.

I did not reviewed my sentences and RTK decks for 3 days. The following day, I had 500+ sentences to review, mainly from the mass adds from the hollydays. The RTK review was very small and it is back on track. The sentences review is probably gonna be back on track today. For 6 days I only added 3 sentences.

But I did not stopped with the fun stuff. I started a new experiment. I got Code Geass again, now with subtitles. It was not on purpose. It is harder to find raw series as soon as they get out of fashion.

So I started to watch them with the subs.

For my admiration the lyrics translation is not that great. There is even a mounstruous transcription mistake. Also I've seen many other mistakes in the series.

Well, what am I doing with subbed anime? I'm watching it slowly. I let it go while I get 100% of understanding. When I hear something I cannot figure out, I go back 10 secs and read the subs. Then I go back and hear it again. Most of the times I get that "click" and figure out the meaning of the word that I could not understand. Then I go back again and listen to it one more time.

Because of that, I can say that I understood 100% of the first 5 episode of Code Geass season 1. Yeah, it is cheatting. But hey, it gives me motivation!

The audio is also in the mp3. Only today I listened to episodes 1 to 5 two more times each.

Back online, for a few days

2008-12-28T15:00:00.000-02:00

I'm back online, just until january 10th. My sentences deck suffered a lot from it, but it might have been for the good. I also could not listen to the day's news and it was boring to hear old stuff, so I had to fallback to good and old anime.

My anki stats are here:

The 2661 seen cards in this deck contain:

1748 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1594 of 1945 (82.0%).
Jinmeiyou: 33 of 287 (11.5%).
121 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
Grade 4: 198 of 200 (99.0%).
Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
Grade 6: 180 of 181 (99.4%).
JuniorHS: 591 of 939 (62.9%).

I know I'll have to throw some sentences out. I already threw some, so my kanji count will drop again.

Christmas offline time

2008-12-25T20:11:00.001-02:00

Ehe, christmas is only letting me connect to the internet a few hours a day, not everyday, only with a slow connection. I even feel like I'm turning into a normal person.

No more news podcasts until january. But I'm not worried (anymore). I have some books to read and offline dictionaries (including one from the DS wich is pretty neat).

I'm also rewatching old favorite anime.

My sentence habits changed and so I was compelled to write them here. I'm doing this, just for a few days: I go to my anki unseen kanji list, select randomly a kanji, and then put it in the dictionary. After that I chose 2-3 words, preferably words that I already knew from listening, very simple words that contain the kanji meaning or words that I really wanned to know.

I did that yesterday and today. The result is that my joyo % jumped a bit wich is quite motivating.

The 2581 seen cards in this deck contain:

1687 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1542 of 1945 (79.3%).
Jinmeiyou: 33 of 287 (11.5%).
112 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
Grade 3: 200 of 200 (100.0%).
Grade 4: 198 of 200 (99.0%).
Grade 5: 185 of 185 (100.0%).
Grade 6: 168 of 181 (92.8%).
JuniorHS: 551 of 939 (58.7%).

Isn't it great to see all these 100% ?

The News + The crisis

2008-12-19T13:40:00.001-02:00

The crisis is affecting my vocabulary. Lately my vocabulary needs are turning to financial/preocupation related words. This is ruining my joyo count rate! These words keep using always the same kanjis time after time!

Joyo count:

The 2494 seen cards in this deck contain:

1630 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1496 of 1945 (76.9%).
Jinmeiyou: 31 of 287 (10.8%).
103 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 159 of 160 (99.4%).
Grade 3: 196 of 200 (98.0%).
Grade 4: 186 of 200 (93.0%).
Grade 5: 174 of 185 (94.1%).
Grade 6: 167 of 181 (92.3%).
JuniorHS: 534 of 939 (56.9%).

I should stop reading finantial news. It is also affecting my resolve.

Btw, tks for the comments. I started this blog so no one would doubt me when I speak about the timeframes. When I started explaining AJATT to my pals, they tought it was one more of these methods that promiss to teach you without effort.

As you realize, AJATT is all about effort.

Reading the News (2)

2008-12-13T18:05:00.000-02:00

I'm far from understanding the news by audio sources. I'm doing it 2-3hours/day during weekdays. But it seems I need to listen to it more.

But I'm managing to get close to 100% understanding in from written material. Yes, it takes a while, I need the dictionary for it, but it is working.

And thanks to the news, my joyo count is raising quickly without extra effort again.

Reading and listening to the news is convincing me that the major obstacle of learning languages is vocabulary. It is simply a huge task. Way too many words. Grammar is not simple, but it fits for itself as you start to acquire more and more vocabulary.

Learning a vocabulary of 10.000 words, 30 words/day, takes a lot of time. And during that time, you'll have plenty of time to practice the other aspects of the language.

Lastly, the joyo count for today:

The 2465 seen cards in this deck contain:

1615 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1482 of 1945 (76.2%).
Jinmeiyou: 31 of 287 (10.8%).
102 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 159 of 160 (99.4%).
Grade 3: 196 of 200 (98.0%).
Grade 4: 186 of 200 (93.0%).
Grade 5: 172 of 185 (93.0%).
Grade 6: 165 of 181 (91.2%).
JuniorHS: 524 of 939 (55.8%).

Why reading the news?

2008-12-04T14:48:00.000-02:00

Over the last month I grew overconfident of japanese.

I'm already understanding a lot from anime/manga and that somehow made me think my japanese was already actually good.

The news put me in my place again. I'm just a beginner. I have tons to learn. And I cannot let my pace down in this critical time.

That was the first reason. The second reason is:
It is easier to come from nothing to being bad at something. Somehow languages look like creating a Diablo character (diablo the computer game). Going from lvl 1 to 10 is quick. Going from lvl 80 to 81 is a long way.

In anime, I'm already in 80%. It is hard to fight for every new 1% of understanding. And it is not that much motivating.

In the news, I'm lvl 1.

Starting from the beginning is painful, but everything is new. So everything I see will be contributing for my japanese.
Even if I only understand 10%, I like to think that these 10% are much more useful than the 80% from the anime.

The 80% from anime is pure confort. And confort is a dangerous thing.

I don't know if I made myself clear, but that's what I want to believe.

Btw, Phauna, thanks for the link for the kids news, it will be very useful.

Started reading the news

2008-12-03T23:02:00.000-02:00

Yesterday I started hearing the news from yomiuri online podcasts.

Most of it sounds like gibberish. I can notice the sentence patterns, but there is so much unknown vocabulary that generaly I choke right with the first sentence.

I also created a policy of reading at least 1 article/day.

Today's lucky one was

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/atmoney/news/20081204-OYT1T00051.htm?from=top

I might've understood about 10% of it _after_ going trought it with the dictionary. Yup. It was sad. But watching anime isn't doing much for me anymore. I can already understand most of it.

Anki statistics in my first day of reading the news:

The 2326 seen cards in this deck contain:

1515 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1401 of 1945 (72.0%).
Jinmeiyou: 29 of 287 (10.1%).
85 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 159 of 160 (99.4%).
Grade 3: 193 of 200 (96.5%).
Grade 4: 183 of 200 (91.5%).
Grade 5: 166 of 185 (89.7%).
Grade 6: 156 of 181 (86.2%).
JuniorHS: 464 of 939 (49.4%).

Anki statistics

2008-11-27T22:56:00.000-02:00

Today I finaly got to 70% of joyo! Hurray!

10 more kanji/day and in 60 days, I'll be done.

Kanji statistics

The 2260 seen cards in this deck contain:

1463 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1361 of 1945 (70.0%).
Jinmeiyou: 27 of 287 (9.4%).
75 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 159 of 160 (99.4%).
Grade 3: 193 of 200 (96.5%).
Grade 4: 180 of 200 (90.0%).
Grade 5: 165 of 185 (89.2%).
Grade 6: 153 of 181 (84.5%).
JuniorHS: 431 of 939 (45.9%).

AJATT youtube videos and Success in listening

2008-11-21T16:16:00.001-02:00

I'll comment about this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J34i9lr94pI&feature=related

Somewhere in this video, Katz talks about 4 levels of listening.
Here they are:

1) You pick up the sounds that exist in the language and the sounds that don't exist in the language. You cannot understand anything. Everything sucks.

2) You can sometimes pick up a few words. It feels great to hear the words you know. And later on, to learn what the words you heard really mean while reading. It sucks because you cannot understand complete sentences.

3) You can sometimes pick up whole sentences, not only words. Sentences from the beginning to the end. It sucks because you need so much effort to understand so little.

4) The situation has changed. Sometimes you cannot understand a word or a setence. You are getting used to understand more than you dont understand. It sucks because you still don't have the complete understanding. You turned yourself into a spoiled brat.

My comment: What I wanned to say is what Katz already said. It sucks all the time. If you stop because it sucks, well, you'll stop sucking, but you'll stop learning. All you have to do is hang on. It'll work out by itself while if continue doing your parallel studies.

And, for the records, I wanned to register that I finaly feel like I achieved the lvl 4.
I watched the episode 07 of nodame yesterday and I think I understood about 95% of it.
There is still so much that I can't understand, but I'm already more used to understand than to not understand.

7 minutes of complete understanding.

2008-11-07T13:22:00.001-02:00

Yesterday, I was watching the 5th episode of Nodame Cantabile Pari Hen for the first time.

At about ~10mins, I got pissed off because there was this word I could not understand. Then I noticed: Hey, taking the OP off, it is about ~7mins of real japanese that I could understand!

Hurray! AJATT is paying off.

Anki status (2): 65%!

2008-11-05T21:42:00.000-02:00

Just for the records, the current anki statistics:

The 2092 seen cards in this deck contain:

1350 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1265 of 1945 (65.0%).
Jinmeiyou: 23 of 287 (8.0%).
62 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 79 of 80 (98.8%).
Grade 2: 159 of 160 (99.4%).
Grade 3: 189 of 200 (94.5%).
Grade 4: 172 of 200 (86.0%).
Grade 5: 159 of 185 (85.9%).
Grade 6: 135 of 181 (74.6%).
JuniorHS: 372 of 939 (39.6%).

Maybe I could pass the 6th grade now!

All Japanese All the time.

2008-10-26T23:59:00.001-02:00

Yesterday I went AJATT, i.e. All Japanese All the Time.

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/

I ripped the audio o Tiger & Dragon and I'm listening it continuously, from waking up to going to sleep. I plan to do it for 3 months, and then measure the results.

http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Tiger_&_Dragon

My current stage is: I can sometimes catch complete sentences while listening japanese.

Anki status

2008-10-22T03:45:00.001-02:00

Just for the sake of recods.

Kanji statistics

The 1896 seen cards in this deck contain:

1259 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1185 of 1945 (60.9%).
Jinmeiyou: 21 of 287 (7.3%).
53 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 79 of 80 (98.8%).
Grade 2: 157 of 160 (98.1%).
Grade 3: 183 of 200 (91.5%).
Grade 4: 163 of 200 (81.5%).
Grade 5: 147 of 185 (79.5%).
Grade 6: 126 of 181 (69.6%).
JuniorHS: 330 of 939 (35.1%).

The cautious reader might have noticed that the amount of sentences actualy is smaller. The reason is that I had some problems with anki and with some sentences. Some I lost by accident, some I deliberatedly threw away.

First dream with japanese

2008-10-09T20:06:00.001-03:00

I usualy don't remember my dreams. I don't even remember the one I had this night. But it was in japanese, for certain.

Yesterday I had done a lot of anki repetitions before watching the 4th episode of heroes, and I ended up having a heroes related dream, in japanese.

I wish I could remember more.

Went monolingual

2008-10-02T01:44:00.001-03:00

Well, just for the sake of records. Today is the day I really went monolingual. I tried and failed a few times, but now it is for good.

I did about ~10 sentences from a list of sentences that should cover all 能力試験2級 points.

These are my current anki statistics:

The 1921 seen cards in this deck contain:

1116 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 1065 of 1945 (54.8%).
Jinmeiyou: 16 of 287 (5.6%).
35 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 79 of 80 (98.8%).
Grade 2: 154 of 160 (96.3%).
Grade 3: 172 of 200 (86.0%).
Grade 4: 148 of 200 (74.0%).
Grade 5: 138 of 185 (74.6%).
Grade 6: 112 of 181 (61.9%).
JuniorHS: 262 of 939 (27.9%).

EDIT: The sentences list covers 2級 grammar points, not 4級.

The Lang-8 experiment

2008-09-28T18:20:00.000-03:00

Today I wanted to try something new. So today, while doing my daily random clicking, I waited for such a chance. Then some Lang-8 spam arrived: "the site got a face lift".

It was already nice, but no it is a bit more usable. It is practicaly the same, but with some anoying bugs resolved.

Then I felt like I should try it. I already had an account for a long time. I already helped some members, but I had never, ever written anything in japanese. Remembering my wicked feelings from the beginning of this post, I did it.

Here it is:

皆さん、よろしくお願いします。

２３歳です。
ブラジル人で、ブラジルに住んでいます。

日本語を学びて始めたの時からもう六ヶ月過ごしました。
まだ初心者ですね。
日本語はちょっと難しいですが、とても面白いですよ。
漢字もうまいですね。

興味はペルソナとかファイナル・ファんタジとかＲＰＧゲムです。
今ペルソナ４の為で勉強します。

明日為に成ること、不可能じゃないけど。
来年留学生で日本へ行きたいんですが。

頼むぞう。

It started with what was kindoff a lie, but hey, it is too late to change it now. I'll have to bear with it.
Now I'll wait patiently for the results. Next week I'll post the corrected version here. Wish me luck.

Answering questions

2008-09-24T16:59:00.000-03:00

Kris stated: Thanks for this post and your blog, please keep posting as you seem to be where I am at my Japanese studies and it is encouraging for me to read about your progress.

Thank you! I'll do my best!

Kris asked: You mentioned in the previous post that the Tae Kim sentence pack had mistakes. Are you using them anyway?

The sentences were great, but they had mistakes. So I'm not using them anymore. It was sad to throw away that many sentences, but I think it was the right decision.

Alyks asked: What I'm curious about is how you deal with sentences you have no clue how they work?

Specially during the beggining, I saw many many sentences which I did not knew the meaning and had only a loose translation.
Hey, I dont know. I allways have a little of clue, and I work on that.
In the beggining the sentences were small and simple, and soon they got bigger.
Everyday I meet an old sentence that had a meaning that was much more complex than I tought it was. Even for the simplest sentences. I guess this is my japanese evolving.
Anyway, this also happends to me with my both portuguese and english.

Phauna stated: Anki is not a substitute for a textbook, it just makes revision of the textbook more efficient.

I seem to be doing fine without doing grammar drills. A friend presented me to Minna no Nihongo. BTW, the book is really well made. I learned so much just by reading the preface, but the book itself is not meant for AJATTers. It has allmost no kanji at first and even at the end of volume 2 it still only uses very few kanji.
Also, it takes too long to intruduce grammar points and usage of particles (as you are supposed to be studying kanji and kana, etc).

To design a textbook like Minna no Nihongo, one should make it kanji heavy from the beggining.

I guess in the end I could not make phauna's claim invalid. I just know it can be done without textbooks. I'm not saying my way of doing it is better, just that the textbooks avaliable are bad.

But one thing I totaly agree with: After you have acquired the grammar sense by reading, knowing the rules helps you a lot.

Phauna stated: I'm not sure lyrics are a good source, they are kind of unnatural language.

I agree. But they are so easy to remember that I could not ignore them!

Alyks asked: That's awesome! How many sentences do you do a day?

Thank you! I do as many as I need to get tired of it!
I'm with 1485 sentences today, I had 1082 14 days ago. This gives me about 28 sentences/day.
My goal now is Finishing the Joyo, as I am with 50.5% I think I will need at least 2.000 more sentences to do it. So I plan to be done in 2-3 months.

BTW, my most recent stats:

The 1485 seen cards in this deck contain:

1030 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 982 of 1945 (50.5%).
Jinmeiyou: 15 of 287 (5.2%).
33 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 79 of 80 (98.8%).
Grade 2: 154 of 160 (96.3%).
Grade 3: 161 of 200 (80.5%).
Grade 4: 138 of 200 (69.0%).
Grade 5: 120 of 185 (64.9%).
Grade 6: 100 of 181 (55.2%).
JuniorHS: 230 of 939 (24.5%).

Dont think twice before throwing a sentence away

2008-09-24T16:55:00.000-03:00

Any sentence will do, but only if you throw away the bad ones.
They'll take your time and energy. They will take away your will.

If you are having too much trouble to memorize a piece of vocabular, throw it away.

If are dubious about an aspect of the sentence, throw it away.

If you think it is too long, throw it away.

If you think it is now worthful, throw it away.

Don't worry about the kanji count. Just do your best allways, that it will rise again.

Sentences: any will do fine

2008-09-24T16:41:00.000-03:00

When I first started with this thing of sentences, I was very worried on how to find them. It looked that it would be so much of a hasle.

Now I know. Any sentence is fine.

The problem is you. You have to understand what you are mining, but not completely. You must know your strenghts and weakness. You gotta check yourself every week and know where you are strong and where you need to work on. And use your strenghts to help your weakness.

That is the beauty of RTK. Not knowing kanji was a serious weakness. Ignoring it was even worse. RTK made of my weakness my strenght and now I use my kanji power to guide my vocabulary, my grammar understanding, my pronuntiation.

So, in my last self avaluation, I got a low score on particles. Reading trough RevTK forums. (kanji.koohii.com) I found out that some guys are working on a book called All About Particles. Google books has the first chapter of it and I fell in love with the book instantly.
It was made for AJATTers (just ignore the romanji).
It ilustrates the use of "all" the particles used in japanese trought sentence examples, full of kanji, providing hiragana transliteration and a loose english translation.
So, I ordered the book: http://www.betterworld.com/list.aspx?SearchTerm=all+about+particles

I have not written yet on "loose translations", but they rock. That's one of the reasons I like yahoo japans dictionary so much. Loose translations are a way for you to get the "feeling" of a sentence without translating every element of the original sentence. So, for properly understand the original sentence, you'll have to resort on reflecting over the original one.

Raw Anime and Doramas

2008-09-24T16:31:00.000-03:00

Yai, before this posts, I'll do some bragging.

I read the first two chapters of One Piece and Claymore without recurring to the dictionary.

And the preface and first chapter of http://www.geocities.jp/niwasaburoo/

Hurray!!!

Now on raw anime. For 2 weeks already I'm watching only raw Anime and Doramas. That means, audio in japanese with no subtitles at all. There are some dialogues I understand 100%. There are some that I cant understand even 10%. But it is getting better!

At first I could not understand the most basic things. Those things that I knew I could understand reading, I could not while listening. But everyday practice helps a lot.
I AM getting better at this!
I rewatched some old chapters and I noticed I could understand more and more, everytime I watched them again!

What I took from this is: Watching subbed anime is good for getting used to the sounds of japanese, but will help you little to understand it. It is not worth as "study time".

So, I'm making a promisse here: I wont ever, ever again watch japanese media with subs.
Well, taking off when I'm watching it with friends, of course.

JLPT

2008-09-10T13:49:00.001-03:00

I'm interested in doing JLPT next year. But I wanna go straight to lvl 2. I should be doing it this year, but I'm a bit lazy and I'm a bit scared of it.

This are the stats that anki gives to me:

Kanji statistics

The 1082 seen cards in this deck contain:

849 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 807 of 1945 (41.5%).
Jinmeiyou: 13 of 287 (4.5%).
29 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

Grade 1: 73 of 80 (91.3%).
Grade 2: 151 of 160 (94.4%).
Grade 3: 142 of 200 (71.0%).
Grade 4: 119 of 200 (59.5%).
Grade 5: 78 of 185 (42.2%).
Grade 6: 73 of 181 (40.3%).
JuniorHS: 171 of 939 (18.2%).

I'm searching for past tests for JLPT but I only found this page: http://www.mlcjapanese.co.jp/LevelCheck/PT/01.htm

If I follow it, I'd pass lvl 3 for sure and would only get 40-50% in lvl 2. The passing mark of lvl 2 is 60%. That is making me wonder if I'm just being a chicken.

The 40-50% mark looked too close to the 41.5% mark of anki to be a lie. I'll redo this test in a month to see if I get a better score.

Anime sentences, the final bout.

2008-09-10T13:35:00.000-03:00

Hello,

I've done some more sentence mining from lyrics. They have a great thing about them. They are "free". They were already memorized. They are nice to repeat - as long you like the song.

But they are few and they are skinny.

Same for anime sentences. They are too skinny. By skinny I say: Short, few kanji, hard to know how to write, etc.

But that lead me to another way of doing the sentences. What I'm doing now:
When I hear a new word, I put it in Yahoo和英辞書 and mine sentences for it.
Then I do the repetitions.
If I find a word that I'm not confortable with, I put it in Yahoo和英辞書 again and I get some more sentences.
I do that until I'm tired.

It is working fine. I already told why I like Yahoo dict sentences, but I'll say it again. They are thick, they are heavy, they have the exact amount of kanji, the have the exact amount of new words, a certain degree of irony and a lot of culture.

First impressions on extracting sentenes from anime.

2008-08-15T18:56:00.000-03:00

Yesterday I started mining sentences from anime karaoke openings. It was very fun.

It was very easy to pick the animes to check the openings. I already had a few favorites of myself, but it would not bother to check for some more. One thing is that anime fans are usualy not quiet people, well, at least not quiet in the internet. They like to discuss what is the best of any category of anything that has a thing to do to anime. And they have built various lists of top anime openings.

I already had Macross Frontier. Today I got three more: Chobits, Oruchuban Ebichu and Ouran High School Host Club.

My first impression on lyrics, and one thing a friend also commented with me is that they are partly nonsense. So here is my balance of sentences, for now:

Macross frontier: 14 sentences.
Chobits: 5 sentences.
Oruchuban Ebichu: 5 sentences.
Ouran: 15 sentences, but most from the ending, not the opening.

Macross has many many songs. I only collected sentences from only one, the first opening. But for the other three I pretty much exausted them.

This raises a problem. Tought sentences from openings are valid and mining them is fun, they are few. Gladly I have a hundred more series to check out!

Answers + about learning the readings of kanji from the sentences

2008-08-14T18:46:00.000-03:00

Yo, folks. This post is for a few answers from commentaries.

The link for the yahoo dictionary is http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/
Beware. It was 4 search options. The one you are looking for when you search for sentences is 和英, that is, japanese -> english.

About the number of sentences, counting only the sentences I kept in the SRS, I have 232 sentences. The tae kim pack had about 800 sentences and I already had gone trought 60% of them.

About on how to learn the readings, I believe there are now 2 choices.

1) Learn it from the sentences, and doing rote memorization for the readings.

2) Learn it from the sentences, but use some kind of mnemonic for the readings.

I'm tending to pick the number 2 because the success of RTK.
The method I plan to use is the DrMovie method. Or better said, a variation of it,
because I already did RTK and because I know a lot of japanese already from previous studies.

I'm already adding places for the readings I already know. From that little I've noticed that:

1) Adding a very familiar place for a familiar reading makes that place very strong.

2) Recognizing a learnt word from a sentence while watching anime/doramas makes that word really hard to forget.

3) For familiar words relearnt in the sentences is very easy to put the readings in their respective places.

So, operationaly speaking, these 3 things make mining sentences from anime scripts a nice option.

Now, alyks pointed me this post:
http://blog.feedmejapanese.com/2008/07/08/collecting-sentences-or-learning-japanese/

The sentences from yahoo are awesome, they are very rich, but they are not familiar, and they are not fun. They have no context.

There is one more thing I noticed while watching Macross Frontier. The series is great but there is an special point about it. It has many songs. And fansubbers are getting crazy lately and putting karaoke subtitles in everyone of them.

So, my next try on mining sentences will be on these karaoke subtitles.

The dr movie method.

2008-08-12T17:08:00.000-03:00

RevTK forums are a great resource for the japanese learner. Not only for its site review the kanji, but for the people that frequent it.

This week some guy with the handle alyks came up with a method called Mr Movie Method. He used it to go trought RTK and the on yomi simultaneously at a 50 kanji/day pace. Quite impressive.

Here is his blog:
http://drmoviemethod.blogspot.com/

I intend to use it for the on yomi while doing the sentences.

Tae Kim's japanese grammar

2008-08-12T17:03:00.001-03:00

If you are living on planet earth and have been trying to study japanese trought the internet, you must've already checked Tae Kim's guide to japanese grammar. It is very comprehensible, with great examples, and with a nice coverage.

So last week I got a pack of sentences from Tae Kim's guide and imported to anki. There were about 800 sentences. It made me see that these would do great good to my japanese. And the were very easy to read. Why 'were'? Because the pack had a few mistakes and I got afraid of picking something wrong in such a crucial stage that is the beggining so I trew them off my SRS. Too bad. The sentences were great.

One week has passed.

2008-08-03T15:34:00.000-03:00

Yo,
It's been one week since I started doing sentences. I have not done it yesterday and before yesterday for lazyness reasons, but I did it today.

And I'm still reviewing about 90 kanjis /day from RTK.

The things I have to remark for now are:

Kanjis in RTK from the sentences stick better than superglue. Transfering the kanjis from RTK to sentences reduces RTK review workload.
Well connected sentences are much more enjoyable. I mean, pack of sentences about the same subect. Not only in the sense that it is more fun to dig them, but the japanese you learn from them is better and it gets inside of your mind with less effort.
I discarded from the SRS the most boring sentences.

So for the next week, I'll try to follow a novel.

The power of RTK

2008-07-29T19:11:00.000-03:00

Beware, after finishing RTK you won't be able to read any japanese at all.

RTK is not impressive to japanese people. They will tell you that "jyozu desu ne" crap and laught at you behind your back for not being able to read what you write.

But you'll feel the power of RTK while learning japanese. And you'll have the confidence boost of having dominated the 2042 kanji beforehand.

I had the experience of studying japanese without doing RTK before. Over that I'll just say today I enjoy to be able to study japanese with good input, instead of crappy textbook input.

About me

2008-07-29T17:31:00.001-03:00

I'm 23 yo, learning japanese for ~4 years already, but until recently with little success.

That's it, until april/17th/2008, when I found out about a blog called "All japanese all the time". It gave me a boost of confidence and everything changed.

In april/18th/2008 I started to go trought Mr Heisig's Remembering the Kanji book, as Kaztumoto sugested. In july/19th/2008, I finished it. Only 3 months.

I skipped the kanas, wich I already knew.

Since july/27/2008 I'm doing sentences.

I notice improvement in my japanese daily.

The first steps into real japanese

2008-07-29T15:09:00.000-03:00

Yo,

Last sunday I started doing sentences.

I still have some trouble with katakana, but carefuly following the rules of writing kanji to write katakana makes them easier to remember.

At first I opened the first chapter of "luck stealer" manga. I found it reaaally hard to read. The lack of kanji and the excess of slang made me realize reading what would be "hard texts" for those that did not have done Heisig would be more apropriated for me.

So I forgot it for a few moments and started to browse trought dictionaries. I first checked out sanseido, then yahoo. And I was lost. So I decided: The first thing I have to get used with is dictionaries.

I started to pick random sentences from the interface of the dictionaries, started with the options in the search field.
The next few hours made me realize how great yahoo japan japanese to english (eiwa) dictionary is. It gives little definition to the words, but it does provide a LOT of sentences.

So I started to put these on my SRS (now I'm using anki). If there was a word I did not knew (pretty much everyone by until now), Id search for it in the dictionary and put more sentences with it.

After putting 70 sentences, I started to drill them. I did some during the sunday. And some during the monday. I'm impressed on how my japanese sense improved just from these 2 days.

I feel like kanji is something totaly different from what I was thinking of it.

Finishing the sentences, I decided to try something different. I went to JLPT 4 vocabulary list and choose 2 words that I tought would be very useful: ageru (raise) and iu (say). I did ageru first. yahoo dictionary presented me about ~50 sentences for it. I choose some simple ones first, than I would only chose sentences that had at least 2 kanji I could not read. After that I did the same with iu, but with iu there were much more sentences to add.

I got reallly impressed on how interesting were this sentences. They are adult sentences (I mean adult japanese, not erotic japanese), with a lot of kanjis and heavy gramatical structures, with a lot of vocabulary. But they are somehow interconnected.

I plan to drill them starting today. Wish me luck.

How to learn the kanji in 3.5 months

2008-07-29T15:07:00.001-03:00

I recorded my progress trought Remembering the Kanji, by James Heisig in this thread in Review the Kanji forums:

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=1495&p=1