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Learn Japanese Together: Super Challenge 2013


Tay

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That's a very nice idea indeed. I'd join in, but I already started on my own path to the moons, so i'd rather follow it. Plus I don't think I have the time to follow 25 kanjis/day. Well for the first few days/weeks it would be ok but when you launch Anki and find out you have 200 reviews to do today... well that happened to me a month or two ago when I started learning kanjis the same way and that was my first give-up :P/>

I got back at a slow pace, 5 kanji/day, working the grammar and vocab in parrallel...

Although I'd happily share some of the resources I found lurking on the net here and there (mostly /a/ I must admit, you'd be surprised by the amount of useful resources you can find hidden between the crap):

-Those are plug-ins for respectively firefox and google chrome, once installed when you go over a japanese word on your browser it let you see a dictionary definition:

http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jipdnfibhldikgcjhfnomkfpcebammhp

-You can also install google IME in order to write kanas and kanjis easily on the web:

http://www.google.com/intl/ja/ime/

-Reading practice stuff:

http://nihongo-dekimasu.blogspot.com/2008/10/japanese-childrenbooks-practice-reading.html ->children books

http://chokochoko.wordpress.com/the-great-library/ ->Texts classified in JLPT levels

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0Agk2IH0ZXhn7dDNmSW1BVFU5dVgyOHkzWjU4b2l2dkE ->Various games/LNs/VNs list with beginner/medium/advanced level

http://kitsunekko.net/subtitles/japanese/ -> Japanese subs for lots of animes

And if required I should have somewhere various grammar websites recommendations, but Tae Kim is already very good.

You should add a link to the how-to Translation Aggregator plus ITH/Mecab/Jparser, it's very useful for VNs and subbed animes.

Oh, and I found you the Love Hina raw scans :P/> http://www.j-comi.jp/book/comic/1

Woot Japanese subtitles. Thanks Down!! Will be a HUGE help.

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Wow, great idea! I especially like the idea of starting with kanji first then hiragana & katakana. I started the hira and katakana first and now I find it very hard to get myself to actively learn kanji OTL

Allow me to share some rescources:

  • http://japaneseclass.jp/ - "a web application to help you learn Japanese Language like playing RPG game, earn EXP, gain Level, and get Ranked." I've never tried it before but I asked some of my other friends and they say it's helpful.
  • http://www.renshuu.org/ - works well with japaneseclass
  • http://jisho.org/ - online dictionary, lets you look up kanji by radicals
  • http://tangorin.com/ - another online dictionary; even uses the kanji in a sentence!

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Wow, interesting thread. It looks like in a little while there will be several more people to talk about games in Japanese with. Maybe even some more translators.

Wish I could say something really helpful, but I can't...I didn't know squat about the psychology of learning, and I'm not a power learner for sure. I didn't even use the internet at first. All I did was to find some textbooks at a used bookstore near the university where I live. I just went through them as if I were taking a class. Plus I truly did it in my spare time. I only learned when I felt like learning (which is more often than you might think, I get interested in stuff that way). If I try to learn on my PC I always get distracted, since everything else is a click away...and I have a fondness for books & libraries and bookstores for some reason...

Well, if somebody is interested in learning in a less demanding, old-fashioned book-oriented way, I can tell you what I did, I still basically remember.

Otherwise, I'll get out of the way and just let y'all get on with it. Good luck!

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Wow, interesting thread. It looks like in a little while there will be several more people to talk about games in Japanese with. Maybe even some more translators.

Wish I could say something really helpful, but I can't...I didn't know squat about the psychology of learning, and I'm not a power learner for sure. I didn't even use the internet at first. All I did was to find some textbooks at a used bookstore near the university where I live. I just went through them as if I were taking a class. Plus I truly did it in my spare time. I only learned when I felt like learning (which is more often than you might think, I get interested in stuff that way). If I try to learn on my PC I always get distracted, since everything else is a click away...and I have a fondness for books & libraries and bookstores for some reason...

Well, if somebody is interested in learning in a less demanding, old-fashioned book-oriented way, I can tell you what I did, I still basically remember.

Otherwise, I'll get out of the way and just let y'all get on with it. Good luck!

I, for one, would love to hear what you did and what worked for you.

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Wow, great idea! I especially like the idea of starting with kanji first then hiragana & katakana. I started the hira and katakana first and now I find it very hard to get myself to actively learn kanji OTL

Allow me to share some rescources:

  • http://japaneseclass.jp/ - "a web application to help you learn Japanese Language like playing RPG game, earn EXP, gain Level, and get Ranked." I've never tried it before but I asked some of my other friends and they say it's helpful.
  • http://www.renshuu.org/ - works well with japaneseclass
  • http://jisho.org/ - online dictionary, lets you look up kanji by radicals
  • http://tangorin.com/ - another online dictionary; even uses the kanji in a sentence!

:o Thx for linking the Japaneseclass thing.. I might actually have used something like that, or maybe exactly that before a long time ago but entirely forgot about it for whatever reason.. automated systems like that are the best for lazy people like me. XD

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Very nice thread, Tay! (etc. etc.) I think I'll be joining too. I had started RTK1 4th ed. last year, using kanji.koohii.com for the reviews, but ended up stopping with the new kanji due to various circumstances (though I still do the reviews every day). I was going at a rather slow pace since I didn't want to get overwhelmed with 200 reviews in a single day, and was at almost 900 kanji.

Plus this'll help me remember to check this forum more often too :\

Anyway, one thing I had been wondering about is, just how necessary is the study of grammar? I ask because to be honest I'm really iffy on the idea of studying grammar, and also because I learned english just fine through videogames/internet/etc. without ever touching grammar. Though considering how different japanese is, I don't know exactly what to think here. Thoughts?

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Hm, honestly japanese grammar is not very complicated, but the way of thinking and constructing sentences is so much different from western language I don't see how you can understand a single sentence without going through grammar.

I don't know shit about english grammar too, but that's because the sentence construction and way of thinking is very similar to my native tongue. Just try translating a japanese sentence with a random word-for-word translator, i don't think you will be able to figure out what the hell it means, which wouldn't be the case with, say, french to english.

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Pretty tired right now, so I apologize in advance for any random comparisons.

Grammar is PARAMOUNT if you're hoping to ever read/write/speak a language. It's the only way you'll make sense of who is doing what to whom under which circumstances. Without it, a language is just a confusing sequence of verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives. Grammar is the cytoskeleton of your linguistic cell. Without it, you have to rely on something else (like a computer program) to ever get meaning out of the figures.

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Pretty tired right now, so I apologize in advance for any random comparisons.

Grammar is PARAMOUNT if you're hoping to ever read/write/speak a language. It's the only way you'll make sense of who is doing what to whom under which circumstances. Without it, a language is just a confusing sequence of verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives. Grammar is the cytoskeleton of your linguistic cell. Without it, you have to rely on something else (like a computer program) to ever get meaning out of the figures.

Yeah, I think you misunderstood my question.

I'm not asking if grammar is necessary to speak a language; I know that it is. I'm asking if the best way to learn it is through studying, instead of just like, immersion (since that's how I learned all the english I know).

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Well, said immersion is gonna be tough if you don't have at least a solid knowledge of the basics and essentials of the grammar. Of course reading stuff is the best way to get an understanding of the language, but first you'll have to be able to know at least what the hell is going on in the sentence because it's not intuitive for a foreigner.

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Yeah, I think you misunderstood my question.

I'm not asking if grammar is necessary to speak a language; I know that it is. I'm asking if the best way to learn it is through studying, instead of just like, immersion (since that's how I learned all the english I know).

You're totally right, I misread your first post (plus my answer was very bizzarre). Sorry for that -- was very tired. This is a great topic, worthy of discussion, and a major debate among language learners. I'm planning on making a post about both sides of the argument, and supplying my own personal example with how I learned Russian, but I haven't had a chance to do so yet.

The short version is that I essentially learned Russian through immersion -- had some grammar background before I left, but not a lot -- and it made all the difference. Being thrown into a foreign country with hardly a lick of vocab is a scary experience, but it makes for a great incentive to start learning. I found both immersion and study to be crucial, but (to be honest), immersion didn't do much for me until I had a good grasp of vocab and grammar. Other than that, I was just learning how the language sounds when spoken by native speakers. There are Japanese learning methods out there (like All Japanese all the time, or AJATT) which promote early immersion and are certainly attractive to me. I think immersion makes an EXCELLENT addition to any study regimen, but for me -- and, this is just my experience-- immersion only did so much without a solid foundation.

In this program, once I've hit the grammar stage, I will start making serious bounds to increase my auditory exposure to the language. My first priority, however, will be a foundation and a focus on reading/writing written Japanese.

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I, for one, would love to hear what you did and what worked for you.

Okay, well...it's gonna be a little long :-)

1. I started with a textbook series called "Learn Japanese". Got 3 volumes of it cheaply, at a used bookstore. (Eventually I found #4 which showed up at a different used store later) By now I'm betting it's out of print. In any case, you can probably substitute some other textbook that follows the same flow. Basically they start each chapter off with either a conversation or a short essay which incorporates the grammar and vocabulary they're about to teach you. Then comes a bunch of grammar points and vocabulary list. Then comes an enormous number of example sentences showing you how the grammar points are applied. That was the thing I liked about this particular text the best. I know repetition doesn't sound exciting, but I really got a lot out of those examples. I didn't rush to get through them. When I was reading them, I thought not only about the grammar but also about how they would sound if spoken, and what each sentence means. So that was good. By the way, the writing system was introduced very gradually. They introduced the kana right away, but they gave me plenty of time to learn them (which I learned separately by flashcards and simply writing 'em out several times) before they switched from alphabet over to all kana. Then after a while, the kanji started showing up a little at a time, and usually just one reading at a time.

2. I made a bunch of kanji and kanji-vocabulary flashcards (3x5 index cards) based on info I found on the internet. I wrote the flashcards myself. I made about 300 kanji cards. I did not try to learn them "cold". I used only the most common readings (based on words I already recognized). If the reading involved okurigana, I wrote the okurigana on the card, too. Then I made vocabulary cards. The purpose of those cards was to learn the new words together with the kanji or kana that are normally used to write them. The source of the words was JLPT practice vocabulary. I made flashcards for all the words of level 4 and level 3. For level 2, I had to switch to JFC (Japanese flashcard program) because there were way too many words at that point. I eventually went back and did level 1, but that was later.

3. During the same time as #2, I worked on grammar. I looked around at several different books. I found a wonderful book called "Teach Yourself Japanese." I felt I really understood how everything fit together, grammar-wise, after reading this. And not only were the grammar explanations great, the dialogues were great, too. They covered people of varying ages and genders in both formal and casual situations (iimportant since Japanese changes a lot based on that stuff). I read the whole book through slowly (it's dense!) and then I would check it again a little later at odd moments, and make sure I hadn't forgotten anything. After that I tackled the Japan Times Dictionary of Japanese Grammar. It's a reference book, so I didn't read it cover to cover. I glanced through and read the parts that were "interesting", the parts that I weren't familiar with. I'm still reviewing this book occasionally.

4. During the same time as #2 and #3, I started to have fun trying to read stuff. For manga, I chose stuff with furigana and lots of semi-everyday life stuff. And I made sure to get an ELECTRONIC dictionary so that I could read manga at a reasonable speed. First I found some of Kimagure Orange Road at a used bookstore. Then I bought things like ToLoveRu, Nagasarete Airantou, Mahou Sensei Negima...um, well, you know. Seems like the first manga I was able to get through entirely and understand was Aqua Vol 1 (there's an anime called Aria, which I think is wonderful by the way). For VNs, of course I needed to set up AGTH and MeCab so that I could mouse over kanji compounds. And at first, I found the narrative too hard to understand. So I still had some fun reading ONLY the dialog, and just clicking past the narration. And I played Dream Club on the 360, and that was all dialog anyway. And that taught me another useful skill by necessity: looking up a kanji by Radical, Stroke Count, and Shapes. Again, I remember the first VN I was able to understand everything was good ol' Mirai no Kimi to Subete no Uta ni.

5. I tried several Kanji books, but they all seemed to have the same shortcoming. I finally realized that the best way for me to learn kanji was to identify the same character as used in many different compounds. That helps me keep all those freakin homophones straight. Sadly, most kanji books would show like 2, 3 compounds per char. Finally, I found the book I wanted. It's the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary. I got a used one online and it has a long list of vocabulary compounds for each character. For the ON reading. For the KUN reading. For the irregular readings. I'm going to use this book and a little flashcard applet to finish learning kanji.

OK, I'm tired of typing now :-)

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hmm. Strangely enough there is no one that do the same as me? D:

Well grammar and writting is impossible to learn by yourself; had to buy a book

But for Kanjis. i have an annotation book+Digital dictionary.

When i don't know what kanji is, i write down in my annotation book and write the kanji 10 times.

If i forgot i do the same process again...

Example:

羽(はね)=羽[10x]...

(i let the pronunciation only in kana, since i wanna learn what is it in japanese, not in my languague.

Well to reach here first i've learned the basic kanjis called "教育漢字"(きょういくかんじ/education kanji) there are 1000 in total more or less. But most of them use the same radical then after some time it gets easier to remember... hmmm after 300 or so...

Btw, used the same process:

日(ひ)=日[10x]...

At start is pretty bad to remember, but in matter of time you'll get used.

(Writting is easier to remember/learn something, than reading imo)

edit: one important thing

First grade: 80 kanjis

Second grade: 160

Third grade: 200

Fourth grade: 200

Fifth grade: 185

Sixth grade 181

Even japaneses have difficulties with kanji don't worry. ^^;

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hmm. Strangely enough there is no one that do the same as me? D:

Well grammar and writting is impossible to learn by yourself; had to buy a book

But for Kanjis. i have an annotation book+Digital dictionary.

When i don't know what kanji is, i write down in my annotation book and write the kanji 10 times.

If i forgot i do the same process again...

Example:

羽(はね)=羽[10x]...

(i let the pronunciation only in kana, since i wanna learn what is it in japanese, not in my languague.

Well to reach here first i've learned the basic kanjis called "教育漢字"(きょういくかんじ/education kanji) there are 1000 in total more or less. But most of them use the same radical then after some time it gets easier to remember... hmmm after 300 or so...

Btw, used the same process:

日(ひ)=日[10x]...

At start is pretty bad to remember, but in matter of time you'll get used.

(Writting is easier to remember/learn something, than reading imo)

edit: one important thing

First grade: 80 kanjis

Second grade: 160

Third grade: 200

Fourth grade: 200

Fifth grade: 185

Sixth grade 181

Even japaneses have difficulties with kanji don't worry. ^^;

Thats seems like a good system SakuraFreak, how far into it are you? You complete the 1000 kanji?

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Thats seems like a good system SakuraFreak, how far into it are you? You complete the 1000 kanji?

I really don't know where i am.. But hmmm

hmmm probably 80% of it?

After 300~350 i've lost the path a little, since after it i've started to learn only kanjis commonly used in texts.

(Used to learn 10 kanjis per day, revising on monday all that ive learned in a week)

took like 1 month and half for it.

After you learn 200~500 you'll be able to read a lot of texts, then...

After it praticed reading> bought games/book for children. It uses a lot of simple kanjis and simple to understand.

then increasing the difficult>increasing>increasing>

After more 5 months i was able reading/writting in japanese.

This was 2 years ago. when i had will to learn ^^; Nowdays i just learn one or another because lazy;

like 1~5 kanjis per week lol.

but well since i'll try EJU(Examination for Japanese University ), this method is better in my opnion

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I'd like to join but I cant give a specific date on when to start, will post again soon.

Also, I'm using an Excellent (and cheap too, Free app, $1.99 for N4 and greater Kanji) alternative app for iOS "Kanji Study on Apple Store". Its a Flashcard app with additional info pages that contain the stroke, order, Different Readings, sample usage, etc. The good thing about it is it works with ALL iOS devices (i'm using it on my old iPhone 2G).

BTW mirrors for learning the kanji 5th ed ebook

Vol 1. LINK

Vol 2. LINK

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I'd like to join but I cant give a specific date on when to start, will post again soon.

Also, I'm using an Excellent (and cheap too, Free app, $1.99 for N4 and greater Kanji) alternative app for iOS "Kanji Study on Apple Store". Its a Flashcard app with additional info pages that contain the stroke, order, Different Readings, sample usage, etc. The good thing about it is it works with ALL iOS devices (i'm using it on my old iPhone 2G).

BTW mirrors for learning the kanji 5th ed ebook

Vol 1. LINK

Vol 2. LINK

Thanks for adding mirrors!!

Also that iOS app is awesome. just bought it for my wifes ipad for when were out. Thanks

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I'd like to join but I cant give a specific date on when to start, will post again soon.

Also, I'm using an Excellent (and cheap too, Free app, $1.99 for N4 and greater Kanji) alternative app for iOS "Kanji Study on Apple Store". Its a Flashcard app with additional info pages that contain the stroke, order, Different Readings, sample usage, etc. The good thing about it is it works with ALL iOS devices (i'm using it on my old iPhone 2G).

BTW mirrors for learning the kanji 5th ed ebook

Vol 1. LINK

Vol 2. LINK

vol 2 links to "[neregate.com] Winter 2012-2013 Anime Chart v3.png"

o_O

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Well to reach here first i've learned the basic kanjis called "教育漢字"(きょういくかんじ/education kanji) there are 1000 in total more or less. But most of them use the same radical then after some time it gets easier to remember... hmmm after 300 or so...

教育漢字 @ 1st and 2nd grade = JLPT N5. I actually started going through the 教育漢字 but it was a little too out of context for me, the same for RTK

iknow.jp - A learning site I use to use. It's subscription based, but it is a good site

NHK also has Japanese lessons, but I've never tried them, so I cannot speak for it's usefulness.

Mediafire folder with some of my Japanese resources, the password for every file is "fuwa", not much right now, but I will be adding more later. At the moment it consists of the 1st and 2nd year 教育漢字 for anki, and a grammar cheat sheet.

I'll help out, but my Japanese is more speaking/listening then reading/writing (that is not to say that I can't read/write at all)

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Mediafire folder with some of my Japanese resources, the password for every file is "fuwa", not much right now, but I will be adding more later. At the moment it consists of the 1st and 2nd year 教育漢字 for anki, and a grammar cheat sheet.

This is great, especially the grammar sheet. I made my own grammar sheet out of Tae Kim's guide after reading it but wasn't satisfied with it, this is really helpful.

Thanks.

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This is great, especially the grammar sheet. I made my own grammar sheet out of Tae Kim's guide after reading it but wasn't satisfied with it, this is really helpful.

Thanks.

the sheet is incomplete though... I stopped all work on it about 3 months ago I think I could start again.

I know for a fact that I didn't put some of the aux. verbs that could be added after the て form on the sheet (ex. 頂戴), and there are quite a lot of conjugations and particle rules that are still missing as well.

It's a good thing there are only a small handful of irregular verbs in Japanese.

But seriously, can we have a Japanese forum?

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