All Japanese All the time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.