Tofugu Comments - Latest Comments in Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

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Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

MK — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:29:38 -0000

We'll call this falling down the stairs to realize what you know --
I had 4 semesters of Japanese in college, which is just enough time to squeeze in the two Genki books. However, my Japanese has fallen out of use, and I find myself restudying things to get back into the swing of it. What's frustrating about this is that there are little things that I forgot without practice amidst a wealth of what I already know, which means 70% of what I reviews is stuff I remember. The encouraging thing is realizing how much I know, however, and I can verify the steps thing in this regard because I recognize things from when I took my first steps towards learning the language. I remember grammar points and tests largely. Things I struggled with ages ago when I learned it is easy to recover now in review. So even as someone who has fallen down some stairs lately, I can guarantee there is a magnificent thing that happens every so often -- my personal favorite being conjugating short forms without having to think about it, very satisfying.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

eDRoaCH — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:59:49 -0000

I read a great book called Mastery by George Leonard that talks about this phenomena. It basically applies to all learning in life, and it is like steps. It's short, I highly recommend it.

Oh and alcohol IS a great tool for most people. We all know it drops some of the barriers between the brain and the mouth, and loosening up is an important factor. Though while you think you are way better, at least some of it has to do with the fact that the native speakers have more of an ability to figure out what you are saying than you give credit for normally.

Now dont think I'm telling everyone to go out and drink!

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

NintendoExpedition — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:05:44 -0000

Funny stuff. I never really thought of it as a staircase with a ninja on top (although a few of my friends have).

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Shinki — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:08:48 -0000

Erm what program is dat?

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

SarahXin — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:40:26 -0000

I love this site, it's so helpful. =] And wow, Immelmann, thanks for your post. I'm a self-taught high schooler (nobody offers Japanese in New Hampshire!! T_T) so it can get really discouraging.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Mike — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:06:17 -0000

Immelmann, thanks a ton for the post. That's some legit advice from an experienced learner. Although this taking steps post is inspiring and all, it really hasn't directly helped me figure out how to learn Japanese more easily. Your post, however, has some really great tips. This Koichi guy did have one piece of advice though, and you agreed with him on it: study. That's definitely something I've got to work on.

I'm actually 1 month into Japan right now. I studied at college for about 8 months before I came over. My number 1 difficulty the whole time I've been here is vocab. I feel like when it comes to speaking I've got the grammar down decently well but vocab just completely limits me from understanding anything. When I'm talking with co-workers we are constantly bringing out our phones to translate words. I love this word association idea, and I'm going to give it a shot. I think if I just get some kind of practice going every day though I'll be in much better shape.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

lily — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 19:07:21 -0000

Hey,
I'm having trouble with kanjii and sentence structure.Along time ago I found this really cool site that helped me understand kanjii and how it makes meanings.Now I forget what the site is and of what I learned.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Mateo — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:20:18 -0000

Hey, Koichi, I love the blog and youtube channel!

I don't study Japanese yet, but I plan to in the future. This "level-up" phenomenon is quite true, I've noticed, with most languages. It's been happnening to me with Spanish. I study nearly every day, but it is only every other week or so that I notice even the slightest improvements. Friends of mine have talked about the same thing with French and Chinese.

Keep up the good work!

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

lonna — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 23:30:53 -0000

Wow you are so right about that! It's the same with drawing. There are these long periods where nothing seems to come out right, then just one day my drawing ability comes back and always better! It's a really weird phenomenon but it defiantly happens in languages too! The main thing is, is just sticking it out!

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Julia — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 02:39:49 -0000

Ah! I completely understand where your going with this. It's funny too because this happened to me today. (not on a large scale mind you but it was still an accomplishment in my book)

This semester I began to take Japanese in college and I'm about a good 3 months ish into it...and because my teacher is evil >:D *but in a good way* We've memorized all of the Hiragana and Katakana now we're focusing mostly on kanji, vocab and sentence structure....Well after all this studying I felt as if I wasn't getting better at all infact I felt all the japanese that I could muster was the sentence that my teacher required me to translate during class when he would call on me...or so I thought >.>

So today I was hanging up my clothes after school and was going over Japanese in my mind and then I started rattling off long sentences about my day, what I did yesterday what I want to do today, eat, what I saw etc etc etc. But it was strange, as if I just climbed up one of those miniscule steps.

Thats just a bit of my experience...now I have to go study some more so I can climb that next step :P

Happy Learning!

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Kelly — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:33:46 -0000

Thanks a lot.
I'll check right a way.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Ben — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:36:04 -0000

Kelly,

Japanese alphabet would first be Hiragana, then Katakana, then if you're brave, dive into Kanji. There are plenty of places to learn these for free. Just memorize the characters and what sound is attached to them. The kanji learning may not be easy to find for free, but you may find something. For audio learning, try Japanesepod101.com's podcast which I believe is free, and you can download their lessons (over 500) and listen any time. Good luck with your study.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Kelly — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:10:51 -0000

I've only just begun learning Japanese. Unfortunately, I can't take Japanese lessons, because they're too expensive. The 'only' languages we can (and have to) learn at school are English, French, German, Dutch (I live in the Netherlands), and if you're on a really high level when it comes to school, Latin and Greek.
I'm trying to learn Japanese from a CD, but it's not really working. And I can't find a (free) way to learn the Japanese 'alfabets'.
I agree about your theory.
It was the same for me learning English.
Not getting anywhere, and then, all of a sudden, another leap forward.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Erin — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 18:43:31 -0000

Tim:

I'm glad you're going to go study Japanese in a few years! It'll be a great experience, A little word of advice, though: the term "jap" is pretty politically incorrect, and I would strongly advise you not to use it.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Tim — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 18:21:34 -0000

omg some off you guyx are really lucky that you learn jap at school i need to learn it with own strength, btw anybody has a good succetion how and where i must learn jap on the web offcourse well that would be a great help, btw i want to learn jap because i'm going to study there in 2012-13 hehe so it'll be handy if i could learn much in these years ^^ all help is welcome!:D

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Aaron — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 13:23:20 -0000

I'm going to go against the grain here and disagree with you. For me, there was no point in time where I noticed a substantial increase in ability. It's been much more consistent and gradual. The way I learn Japanese doesn't even make sense to myself. I don't really have a particular method or style of remembering things. No association, not huge repetition saga's, no massive study sessions. I used to try these things but they are really inefficient time wise. Now I've just given up and decided to just learn things on instinct. Which I believe is the best way to learn any language because think of the way you use your first language.
Do you first construct the sentence in your head? Do you look for associated items to help you remember words? No, you just say it because it's instinct and you know what to do from habit. You're so familiar with things you don't even need to think in order to construct sentences.
I once asked an international student from Laos how he learned the English language and whether he thought about what he was going to say in his first language first then translate it or just say it right out in English. He said originally he'd translate it, but after a while he went straight to English.
I don't know if any of this will make sense to you but immersion is the best way to learn a language. If you don't have an environment to throw yourself into, just use the language at every opportunity you get. Stop thinking in English and start to think in Japanese, it helps you turn things that you used to have to track down from your memory into readily available words and phrases that can be used on instinct.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Kim Ruben — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 17:46:07 -0000

Åh, bare språkkurs alene? Høres jo greit ut, men så er jeg litt skeptisk til sånt (her i Norge) siden man ikke får brukt det så mye ellers, om man ikke såklart, som du nevner, ordner seg en god del japansktalende kontakter via Skype eller noe lignende. Skal sjekke ut det programmet selv om jeg har hatt litt dårlig erfaring med slikt tidligere. Takker for tipsene. Thanks. ありがとうございます

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

~Crow — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 21:07:28 -0000

@ Kim Ruben: [In Norwegian]
UiO har et språkkurs for japansk, om du er interessert. Selvsagt, om du bor i fuckings Finnmark eller på Svalbard skjønner jeg at du er frustrert. Google "talk now japanese" for språkkurs til PC/Mac. De finnes i mange forskjellige nivåer, så det går an å komme ganske langt på bare det. Om du i tillegg laster ned Skype, og henger på steder som dette (samtidig som du får adressene til folk) kan du komme enda lenger, nesten gratis..

[In English]
University of Oslo has a Japanese course, if youre interested. Of course, if you live in fucking Finnmark (way way north) or on Svalbard (...Its an island... In the ocean...), I understand your frustration. Google "talk now Japanese" for language trainers for PC/Mac. They're available in many different levels, so you can get pretty far on them alone. If you also download Skype, and hang around places like this (while getting the adresses of people) you can go even further, almost for free..

I only know a few scattered words in Japanese, as I've only picked up a few things via anime and hentai, surprisingly. BUT! I intend on going there for education later on, be it on my own, or with some course, i dont know.

Step thingie sounds plausible, and i adore the illustration with the ninja illustrating japanese, killing the student with a grammar shuriken of 運命.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Kim Ruben — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 02:29:14 -0000

Seems the most of you have an upper advantage though; Japanese Classes/Courses.

Unfortunately in this northern abandoned part of Norway there's no such thing.
Another problem is I don't have any education so most of those programs, if there were any available, I would not be eligible for them. The last 6 months I've been contacting different schools in both Norway and Japan, as well as the friggin' Embassy of Japan over here :) Trying to figure out what my chances are to actually move to Japan to learn the language and then see where that might take me. However the information received has been sparse and I feel kinda lost in the dark not knowing who to talk to/contact now... I would think though if I manage to find some "cheap" international Japanese Language School in Japan the State Educational Loan Fund might chip in and thar be hope!

Anyways... Self-studdy isn't impossible I guess but I imagine it takes way longer than actually being around Japanese/Japanese speaking people like you say and especially taking a class where you have a plan to follow. Figuring out what books to get for self-study is pretty hard (and expensive) since each one has their own learning style and recommendations rarerly help then unfortunately.

Blargh, enough self-pity... Loving the site and your vids, Koichi, keep on keepin' on!

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Ryan — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:27:57 -0000

hey mathias can you link the program by any chance?

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Nigel — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 23:51:59 -0000

Just wanted to leave my two bits -- as a lot of people have said, the pattern of improvement-frustration-improvement is definitely the case for language learning. I've often wondered why. I find that often when I'm studying Japanese the hardest my ability actually seems to go *down* a bit. I think that our minds need some time to integrate new knowledge and that, in fact, that integration takes energy too. Perhaps that's why there's that time-lag between the work and the improvement; there's an invisible stage we all go through where it all sinks in. If that's the case then that feeling of "magical" improvement is just the slightly delayed result of hard work.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Immelmann — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:26:50 -0000

Thanks, Mathias.. I hadn’t meant to write this much, but I figure that if at least one person benefits from my post, my time will have been worth it.

The method you mentioned sounds pretty similar to Heisig’s! Unfortunately, I use Mac OS most of the time, and even though I have Windows I hate rebooting to use it, so I don’t use software like that too often. The program does sound very good, though! And congrats on learning that many kanji in one sitting. At this rate, you can learn the Joyo kanji in one year! Even if you take it easy and only learn 10 kanji a day, you’ll still be done with the bare minimum in 200 days, which will leave you another 165 days to link the kanji to their various readings. Good luck to both of us :)

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Mathias — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:23:20 -0000

Wow, Immelmann, pretty long comment. :)

Your approach to learning new words / kanji is very interesting.
In fact I just started using a Kanji trainer program that
uses a similar approach.

You start with a grid of 16 kanjis on your screen. On the bottom
there is a phrase, an association like "A man who hoicks his arms because he burns." Based on that association you look for a Kanji that fits and select it (in this case that would be 火), if you clicked the right one, it is locked in. After that you have to pick the translation from a set of 16 possible words / phrases on the right, in that case "fire".

Through the association both meaning and kanji are linked together.
So it's only the usual approach of X means Y, but there is a logical link.
That way I learned these 16 kanji effortlessly in one day.

So remembering words with help of mental images, methaphors, pictures or just any kind of association vastly accelerates the learning process.

Re: Beginning Japanese III: Taking Steps

Jonathan — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 07:19:14 -0000

I'm a pianist, and "falling right into place" happens (to those doubting your Japanese).
What I mean by that is, when I start a new piece, and practice it for a while, it feels like I'll never progress in that piano piece. But then all of a sudden, I'll start playing it and I have no trouble doing it.
Let's just hope its the same for me when I start to learn Japanese lol.