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Looking For People To Learn Japanese through VNs


rainsismyfav

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Have I added you to the skype group? You can get feedback there. add "rains90"

 

I can answer your questions there. I can't answer your questions soon as I have to go to sleep etc. But I'll see what I can do later.

 

Thanks for the interest.

 

You can maybe catch up with the beginners group? I think the pacing is fairly slow.

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Hi everyone. I casually decided to give Aeru's "Learn Japanese in 2 years guide" a shot at the beginning of last December. I finished Heisig's RTK about 3 weeks ago and I've been reading slowly through Tae Kim's grammar guide since then. I'm only up to "Honorific and Humble forms" in the "Special Expressions" part of his guide but I decided to start trying to read some VNs (with ITH and Translation Aggregator) to drill in some grammar before I forget most of what I learnt in "Basic and Essential Grammar". As such, I decided to give Koikishi Purely Kiss a go after seeing this thread. Though the starting group is already 2 weeks in so I'm probably too late the party T.T

 

Here are a few lines near the beginning of the game and my extremely clumsy attempt at trying to make some sense out of it. I was hoping someone could help explain the sentences below.

 

要「オレだって何十回も見てる。だから白で合ってるよ」

But I saw it 10 times more (clearly?) than you. So it was white that met/hit.

「絶対、黒だよ!」

It was definitely black!

要「白!」

White!

自分の意見をぶつけ合う俺達。

Our opinions clashed

結局どちらも引かなかったので、ただ疲れただけだった。

Because we both continued to argue, we became tired.

要「せっかく2人いるからできると思ったのに、どうしてうまくいかないんだろ……」

Despite thinking “Coming out (growing up?) from 2 precious people”, I wonder how things went so badly (ended up so badly?)

「………」

要「ねえってば。オレの話、聞いてる?」

Hey. Are you listening to my story?

「あの人、何してるのかな……?」

I wonder what that person is doing.

最初に気づいたのはあの子だった。

As for (noticing from the beginning), she used to be that little girl/he used to be that kid?

(Inside museum)

展示物に目もくれず、大事そうに鞄を抱えて人気のない方に進んでいく大人の男。

Display Items / [target] / eye / not giving(from receiver's point of view)/ , carrying a bag towards seemingly valuable items

An adult male went in the direction where there was no people.

要「……悪者だ」

... A bad person/scoundrel/thief.

 

As for the sentences I'm particularly confused about:

自分の意見をぶつけ合う俺達。

Our opinions clashed

 

Not sure how to break this sentence down.

"自分の意見" = my/her opinion,

"ぶつけ合う" = knock ideas against each other,

"俺達" = us

I'm guessing the verb "ぶつけ合う" acts on the noun "自分の意見" but I'm not sure how the resulting clause modifies 俺達.

 

結局どちらも引かなかったので、ただ疲れただけだった。

Because we both continued to argue, we became tired.

 

ただ: ordinary/usual (not sure what meaning it's meant to take)

疲れた: to get worn out

だけ: only/just (not sure if right)

だった: past tense for a state-of-being. So "結局どちらも引かなかったので、ただ疲れただけ" is a state-of-being?

 

 

展示物に目もくれず、大事そうに鞄を抱えて人気のない方に進んでいく大人の男。

Display Items / [target] / eye / not giving(from receiver's point of view)/ , carrying a bag towards seemingly valuable items

An adult male went in the direction where there was no people.

 

Not sure how to parse this sentence either.

展示物に目もくれず、: Not giving the display items a glance,

大事そうに鞄を抱えて: carrying a bag towards seemingly valuable items. This clause ends in the te-form and I'm not sure how that modifies the next clause.

人気のない方に進んでいく大人の男 : adult male went in the direction where there was no people.

 

I'm not sure if I should continue doing this because I have no feedback on where I'm misreading things. Maybe I should try reading a VN that has translated scripts so I can compare?

Uhh. I've only read the first one, and I'm hoping to do something for myself, and we try not to stress on details, but I will tell you this much. The whole "Black" and "White" conversation is about a black and white knight. I remember correctly for that part, the talk was something which knight came first in an attack in some TV show (or was it an anime?) or something.

I'm not too good myself, but we're not too far, and we're pretty slow. I haven't even gone through the entire Remembering the Kanji book either (I stopped after a while. I got a bit busy.) I also didn't go through much of Tae Kim's grammar book either... but yeah. If you've got that much done, you can probably catch up to us fairly easily... I think. If you want more explaining, it can be done in the skype chat.

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I tried to write some comments in your message.  It seems some of my comments ended up inside the spoiler tags, and some outside.  Oh well!

 

Hi everyone. I casually decided to give Aeru's "Learn Japanese in 2 years guide" a shot at the beginning of last December. I finished Heisig's RTK about 3 weeks ago and I've been reading slowly through Tae Kim's grammar guide since then. I'm only up to "Honorific and Humble forms" in the "Special Expressions" part of his guide but I decided to start trying to read some VNs (with ITH and Translation Aggregator) to drill in some grammar before I forget most of what I learnt in "Basic and Essential Grammar". As such, I decided to give Koikishi Purely Kiss a go after seeing this thread. Though the starting group is already 2 weeks in so I'm probably too late the party T.T

 

Here are a few lines near the beginning of the game and my extremely clumsy attempt at trying to make some sense out of it. I was hoping someone could help explain the sentences below.

 


要「オレだって何十回も見てる。だから白で合ってるよ」
But I saw it 10 times more (clearly?) than you. So it was white that met/hit.
Nanjuu isn't just 10 times, but tens of times (nan = how many or in this case + mo = however many)

Au has several meanings, one of which is "be correct".

「絶対、黒だよ!」
It was definitely black!

要「白!」
White!

自分の意見をぶつけ合う俺達。
Our opinions clashed

結局どちらも引かなかったので、ただ疲れただけだった。
Because we both continued to argue, we became tired.
There is a specific word that means Continue, but it is not here.  Instead, the sentence is more like  "Ultimately, neither one of us would pull back, so it just tired us out." (Don't forget "tada" + "dake" which is like English "just")

要「せっかく2人いるからできると思ったのに、どうしてうまくいかないんだろ……」
Despite thinking “Coming out (growing up?) from 2 precious people”, I wonder how things went so badly (ended up so badly?)
Here, dekiru = can, and kara = since.  "[Even though] I thought we would be able to do this since there are two people here, so why isn't it going well?

「………」

要「ねえってば。オレの話、聞いてる?」
Hey. Are you listening to my story?

「あの人、何してるのかな……?」
I wonder what that person is doing.

最初に気づいたのはあの子だった。
As for (noticing from the beginning), she used to be that little girl/he used to be that kid?
What I noticed at the outset was that girl -> The first thing I noticed was that kid/girl.

(Inside museum)
展示物に目もくれず、大事そうに鞄を抱えて人気のない方に進んでいく大人の男。
Display Items / [target] / eye / not giving(from receiver's point of view)/ , carrying a bag towards seemingly valuable items
An adult male went in the direction where there was no people.
"Me mo kurezu" probably means "without looking at" or ignoring.  The Daijisou ni is an adverb phrase and its target is the carrying, not the bag.  So, carefully carrying a bag, an adult male etc. etc.

要「……悪者だ」
... A bad person/scoundrel/thief.

 

As for the sentences I'm particularly confused about:

自分の意見をぶつけ合う俺達。
Our opinions clashed

 

Not sure how to break this sentence down.

"自分の意見" = my/her opinion,

"ぶつけ合う" = knock ideas against each other,

"俺達" = us

I'm guessing the verb "ぶつけ合う" acts on the noun "自分の意見" but I'm not sure how the resulting clause modifies 俺達.

This sentence structure does not exist in English.  Because you can't say in English "Our clashing opinions us."  Instead it becomes "We, whose opinions clashed."  But since that's a sentence fragment, I think "Our opinions clashed" is better English.

 

 

結局どちらも引かなかったので、ただ疲れただけだった。
Because we both continued to argue, we became tired.

 

ただ: ordinary/usual (not sure what meaning it's meant to take)

疲れた: to get worn out

だけ: only/just (not sure if right)

だった: past tense for a state-of-being. So "結局どちらも引かなかったので、ただ疲れただけ" is a state-of-being?

Not sure what you mean, I believe "dake" belongs to the noun class and hence is followed by "datta", but in doesn't really add to the English meaning.

 

展示物に目もくれず、大事そうに鞄を抱えて人気のない方に進んでいく大人の男。
Display Items / [target] / eye / not giving(from receiver's point of view)/ , carrying a bag towards seemingly valuable items
An adult male went in the direction where there was no people.

 

Not sure how to parse this sentence either.

展示物に目もくれず、: Not giving the display items a glance,

大事そうに鞄を抱えて: carrying a bag towards seemingly valuable items. This clause ends in the te-form and I'm not sure how that modifies the next clause.

人気のない方に進んでいく大人の男 : adult male went in the direction where there was no people.

The -te verb doesn't modify, it connects.  Like "and" or "-ing" does in English.

 

I'm not sure if I should continue doing this because I have no feedback on where I'm misreading things. Maybe I should try reading a VN that has translated scripts so I can compare?

 

You should have some feedback, in that you know whether or not what you're reading make sense, and furthermore, you can probably assign a level of confidence to each thing you read.

I would not recommend reading a VN translation unless it was specifically prepared for learning.  Such translations have often undergone editing, re-wording, and whatever else might make it hard to follow.

Instead, I would simply recommend reading simpler material first and building your way up.

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@zoom909: Thanks for taking the time to give me some feedback :) It was very helpful.

 

@rain: I'm curious at what the group is like so I just added you.

 

@seventhfonist425: I get the feeling that finishing RTK only helps in the long term as you come across new vocab since it's easier to associate a meaning to kanji you are vaguely familiar with. Don't think it helps much with remembering readings though. So the main skill required for making sense out of what you read is grammar. probably.

 
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I would love to give this a shot.   I understand it's quite late now but you will be starting up again summer so do not mind joining late to get familiar with how the group works and such.  I searched for you on Skype so give me a shout.

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I would love to give this a shot. I understand it's quite late now but you will be starting up again summer so do not mind joining late to get familiar with how the group works and such. I searched for you on Skype so give me a shout.

Just keep in mind that this idea is fairly new, so there are plenty of things here and there that need to be worked out. So far, I'm getting more comfortable with the whole thing myself.

We're gonna be curious about how much you know, and I believe you may be expected to do some catch up work. Koikishi... is honestly a bit hard for my near beginner level, but it's more comfortable to read than children's books, just because it feels, well, baby-ish.

Anyways, I've started my own reading (Your Diary, which I honestly think is better for my level) on the side when there is extra time after I've reached the set deadline early. So things on the side can also go on.

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Just keep in mind that this idea is fairly new, so there are plenty of things here and there that need to be worked out. So far, I'm getting more comfortable with the whole thing myself.

We're gonna be curious about how much you know, and I believe you may be expected to do some catch up work. Koikishi... is honestly a bit hard for my near beginner level, but it's more comfortable to read than children's books, just because it feels, well, baby-ish.

Anyways, I've started my own reading (Your Diary, which I honestly think is better for my level) on the side when there is extra time after I've reached the set deadline early. So things on the side can also go on.

 

You make some good points and for me total beginner.. I know some very basic characters like vowels but that is about it at this time.

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@slamerz @molitar

 

Add me on skype pls. "rains90" should be Jersey City, NJ. I will add you to the beginners rooms. I don't expect you two to be able to catch up with the current progress on KoiKishi. But I do suggest that you still try it or at least try another VN on your own. I'm mainly adding you then for discussion with others. Sharing/Asking for resources and questions. etc. At the moment there are other people that are in the process of learning hira/kata as well.

 

 

 

@everyone else new who might be reading this:

 

I'm capping people for the beginners level. Meaning I will not add you to the beginner's room due to its shear size. You can still add me on skype, and talk to me about learning japanese. If you still want to join the beginner's room, I'll have to put you on a waitlist.

 

Intermediate room is still open and we're reading Kono Oozora.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...

Status update:

 

I can't believe that it's already almost 6 months since I started this post. This is a status update on what transpired over the few months. Short-story is that both beginner and intermediate groups have splintered in terms of activities.

 

First and foremost the status of the groups.

 

This post would mainly be just from my point of view. I had gotten a job just a month after we had started the groups. And so I personally fell off with the activities.

 

Intermediate room:

I was technically the moderator of the room. I set the deadlines and try to foster discussion. We had good pacing with Kono Oozora even with my slow pacing. The participants in this room were too good (equal if not infinitely better than me). My pacing lagged way behind them, and I think it lost steam from then on. When I dropped out as moderator, the participants splintered off to VNs of their own interests. In retrospect, I think this was the best way for the group to run. If everyone is capable in reading on their own, there is no reason to stick to a common VN; there are a lot more benefits to the contrary. The topics that are brought up from each person's individual reading were interesting and can actually foster discussions about the language.

 

Beginner's room:

There were quite a ton of hiccups in the beginning in deciding a common VN. Eventually hey settled on KoiKishi and had *some* progress (?). Eventually it had also splintered to participants reading VNs of their interest. They had created a brilliant Google-worksheet that stemmed from the idea of piratepad --- or shared writing mini-blogs.

 

 

"The aim is to foster discussion with people asking questions as they read through the VN, and with others trying to help clarify."

I think that the structure and approach were bound to fail. I'm not the one to say what positive or negative things that people might have gotten from the experience (like uhh.. friends?). And needless to say, I'll let the participants post their feedback on their own. I am most interested in what they think worked, and what they think failed.

 

Random stuff that I don't know why it's numbered

1. Intermediate group went on to help the beginners.

2. There is tremendous skill gap between the beginners. Making it hard to pace and coordinate VNs.

3. The VN voting system for beginners was not ideal in my opinion, as the beginners have less clue about which VNs are suitable for their level.

4. The project requires dedicated moderators, imo.

5. There is a natural inclination to splinter into VNs of own interest. Entropy in action.

6. I'm not sure how useful the discussions were, and I hope to get feedback on these.

 

Personally, it was my intent to teach people How to learn Japanese, rather than just teaching them Japanese. I think I was partly successful in helping some of the beginners (I hope). For the groups, it was my intent to have them share information with each other and help guide each other to a plethora of resources for self-studying, and for them to motivate each other. The main idea I wanted them to get is that, self-learning Japanese is POSSIBLE. You do not need high-school or college classes to get started. You just need, Time, Motivation, and Resources.

 

For the intermediate group: thank you very much for supporting others, answering questions when I couldn't and just your overall presence.

To the participants of the beginner group: Thank you very much for sticking it for this long! You guys were very active in chat (off-topic or on-topic) and helped keep the room alive.

 

Again, You guys really are the only ones who can really critique the approach. Feedbacks are always appreciated for the future!

 

 

 

 

Participants roll: Pm me if I had missed you.

 

Intermediate room: Bolverk, Mephisto, and Chronopolis. You guys were BEASTS! It's an honor to have you participate. Thanks a lot for helping the others.

 

Beginner's room: Phonist; Zephy, Hoshi, Nam and their friends; Kud-The-Ushio-Sage and his friends; Dada; Mac; Gareth; and Dizzy for participating on the Google-spreadsheet logs.

 

To my friends: Shiningbolt for moderating when I had dropped-off. Kael for participating.

 

This won't happen without you guys and I hoped you gain something of value (like I said... friends? wink wink) throughout the past few months.

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Beginner's room: Phonist; Zephy, Hoshi, Nam and their friends; Kud-The-Ushio-Sage and his friends; Mac; Gareth; and Dizzy for participating on the Google-spreadsheet logs.

Wat. couldn't you have just jumped into the group and looked up everybody's names? Though, I will admit the number itself is sort of uhh, high. And Dizzy was in from the very beginning, pretty sure. But yeah, the whole group thing is pretty great. Change my Japanese approach, and really, most importantly, offered friends who were capable of explaining things you just didn't get. One of the most reassuring points of the whole thing.

 

I'm POSITIVE I improved from when I first started. Though, I think everyone moving at their own pace is a given, so everyone separating to do their own thing was sorta bound to happen. I think just having the place around to ask questions is the best possible resource. Having other people around to direct you, tell you tips, things like that, really helps with the whole "overwhelming" aspect of it.

 

Intermediate room: Bolverk, Mephisto, and Chronopolis. You guys were BEASTS! It's an honor to have you participate. Thanks a lot for helping the others.

 

Wat. Intermediate room was THAT small?

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Wow, thread revival. 

 

I know this has been repeated ad nauseum but what I can definitely say after 6 months is that dict crawling + learning grammar = profit.

 

Thanks to Rains for starting the group. Admittedly, the Koikishi deadlines were hard to sustain given everyone has differing schedules and interests but I certainly think it helped me in the beginning. After all, alone, I may very well have thought "this is too hard", gave up and tried to go through Genki and losing motivation halfway through. Learning with VNs definitely kept the experience interesting and having a group of others doing the same thing cleared away my mental impression of Japanese as an impregnable fortress.

 

So yeah, a group of fellow japanese learners is a great motivational boost and a nice place to work together on sentences we don't understand. On that note, many thanks to Chronopolis for answering so many our noob questions.

 

This is hoshi btw.

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Wow, thread revival. 

 

I know this has been repeated ad nauseum but what I can definitely say after 6 months is that dict crawling + learning grammar = profit.

 

Thanks to Rains for starting the group. Admittedly, the Koikishi deadlines were hard to sustain given everyone has differing schedules and interests but I certainly think it helped me in the beginning. After all, alone, I may very well have thought "this is too hard", gave up and tried to go through Genki and losing motivation halfway through. Learning with VNs definitely kept the experience interesting and having a group of others doing the same thing cleared away my mental impression of Japanese as an impregnable fortress.

 

So yeah, a group of fellow japanese learners is a great motivational boost and a nice place to work together on sentences we don't understand. On that note, many thanks to Chronopolis for answering so many our noob questions.

 

This is hoshi btw.

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  • 1 month later...

So how is this progressing?  Got it worked out pretty much?  Did you start a beginners room again?

You wanna join too? We'll mostly be around to answer questions and concerns. Since, like in the latest post by Rains, we all separated to the stuff we wanted to read. There's a few people in there that, I don't even know, despite being around for a good portion of the group's existence. So if you're joining and willing to be at least somewhat active, I'm sure it'll be fine.

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I'm interested but what did you all work out?  Did you find VN's that were appropriate for beginners to start learning with or how did the approach for beginners go?  What kind of lesson learning did you all come up with?  I'm interested but I am also a total newbie when it comes to Japanese.  I tried learning on my own a while back but when you have nobody to speak it or write it with it makes it hard to practice.

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I'm interested but what did you all work out?  Did you find VN's that were appropriate for beginners to start learning with or how did the approach for beginners go?  What kind of lesson learning did you all come up with?  I'm interested but I am also a total newbie when it comes to Japanese.  I tried learning on my own a while back but when you have nobody to speak it or write it with it makes it hard to practice.

1. What was worked out: Uhh... it was pretty simple. We had a system at first, but everyone had their own priorities, needs, and wants at the time, so it became the simple "read whatever you wanna read." We extended that by having logs for everyone (well, assuming you made one, of your own volition, of course.)

 

2. Appropriate for beginners/approach? You could generally tell if a VN is too difficult. Rule of thumb (exceptions to every rule, of course), if it's a supernatural setting, Fate Stay Night being a big one, it was too hard. There are some that may SEEM easy, despite lacking the supernatural. (I'm looking at you, Grisaia.) Like the ones I started out with, I can vouch for as fairly easy. (There's also threads on this site that already answer that, so you can also look in those as well.) Approach for beginners... hmm, I'd say it varies. Some people decided to take more time, to, well, study up on grammar, and never really got to do too much reading, others just kinda went poof. 

 

3. Lesson learning? Nope. Well, Rains did do some videos, but there weren't that many, and he got busy with real life. A lot of it is self-done. Like, you decide if you're up for reading (with people starting with literally only knowledge on hiragana vs. people who started with a fairly strong ground.)

 

While there are no lessons, a lot of things, people can either tell you, direct you in the right direction to figure out grammar or something, or at the very least, offer resources. We don't actually practice speaking or writing, which is admittedly bad, but to get good at just, say reading a VN, it's not quite as important. (Not saying it's not, but I think you can get away without it, to a certain extent.)

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