Category: Learning

First post in a long time

I’m embarrassed to admit I’d forgotten all about this blog (^^;;) until Khatz posted a comment I made long ago on his blog.

I just got a question about how it feels to juggle Japanese and Cantonese, so I’ll try and post a progress report below:

Because I spent a lot of time (several years) trying to get good at Japanese and I’m loath to lose all that, I’ve been spending more time keeping Japanese up to par than learning Cantonese. Given the choice I’d rather watch a Japanese drama than a Cantonese one or listen to Japanese music. I’ve been branching out more and more, but not too far. But recently I’ve been getting more confident that I’m good enough in Japanese that I won’t forget it so easily, even if I stop for a while. I won’t say I have “native” fluency in it or anything ‘cos that’s a lie, but I’m having a harder and harder time coming across vocabulary I don’t know and I don’t remember the last time I heard something in a show/movie I didn’t understand (I need to watch more complex stuff, seriously), so I must be doing something right.

From next month onwards, I’d like to get even more serious with my Cantonese. I’ve worked through most of the example sentences with audio at Cantonese.sheik.uk, and I’m on chapter 10 of Teach Yourself Cantonese. Not bad, but not that good considering I’ve had a year to get that far. However putting pressure on yourself is the surest way to stop enjoying a language, so I’m treating it as a fun journey. I’ll get there when I get there. As long as I can understand what George Lam is singing by 2050, I’m cool 😀

There’s also the issue that there’s far less comprehensible learning material available on the internet in Cantonese than there is in Japanese. Lots of people learn Japanese so the community is really supportive and you can get stuff at all stages. Complete beginner, semi-intermediate, intermediate, advanced, native, it’s all good. At any given time there are thousands of people learning along with you, and many of them have blogs and forums to take part in. Plus Japanese is just Japanese, you know? You don’t have to juggle between Simplified and Traditional or find a video that says “Chinese” and then it turns out to be “Mandarin”, etc.

Whining won’t get me anywhere though, I’ve just got to keep on moving. A year ago everything on RTHK radio was a complete blur, but now I’m starting to get the general idea of some conversations: “Oh, they talking about hospitals”, “Oh, they’re complaining about transportation (I think)”, etc. Hopefully I’ll have something even more exciting to report a year from today.

So that’s it!

 

Slacking off

I’ve been learning Cantonese lately so my Japanese exposure is limited to my SRS, Takamiy’s voice and some music from time to time. Sure enough my Japanese ability has started to fall off. Not so severely that I can’t function but still I’m getting a little rusty after 2 or 3 months. But Cantonese is so much fun! Anyway, I’m striking a compromise from this week going: one day for each language, alternatively. That should do the trick, hopefully. Now back to Pimsleur Cantonese, I’m on lesson 13.

Japanese e-book treasure trove

Remember I posted about Swedish a while back? Yeah, I wasn’t really serious about that. And I’m having second thoughts about the Swedish company anyway, firstly about whether I even want to work for them and secondly about whether it’s worth learning a whole new language for a company I’m not planning to work at for very long. I hear most Swedish people speak excellent English anyway.

So it’s back to my first love: Japanese. Learning Japanese may be time-consuming, but the pay-off is almost immediate in terms of the fun you can have with it: not just anime and manga but also tons of good books, music, movies, dramas, comedies, etc. Today I hit a mini-goldmine of books about learning Japanese. Unlike the results I occasionally get on mininova, these are all uploaded on free file-sharing sites, so no need to worry about seeds. I found them here: Japanese e-books, but since you need to register to see the links (which I recommend you do because they have lots of other great stuff), I’ll just list the results below:

Nihongo Notes
Teach Yourself Beginner’s Script
A Short History of Japan From Samurai to Sony
Japanese Children’s books – Practice reading Hiragana
Remembering the Kanji I, II, III
Remembering the Kana I, II
CultureShock! Japan: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette
Read Real Japanese: All You Need to Enjoy Eight Contemporary Writers
Knuckles in China Land! (it’s a video game, not an e-book)
Guide to Reading & Writing Japanese: Third Edition
Kana de Manga
Kanji Mnemonics – Instruction Manual for Learning Japanese Characters
101 Japanese Idioms
An Introduction to Japanese Syntax, Grammar and Language by Michael Kamermans
Japanamerica
Making Sense of Japanese Grammar

Think we’ll all be experts by the time we’re done wading through this giant pile of books? We can only hope! See you next time!

A much-needed wake up call

Sometimes you get lazy, you know? You let a day slide here, another day slide there, read a few English sites, listen to a little English radio. A little bit won’t hurt, you tell yourself. You even think you’ve gotten far enough and start contemplating learning something else.

Then a Japanese person pops up like jack-in-a-box. 「今度うちで遊びに行かない？」ZOMG, brain freeze! What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to say? Cue me sitting there mouth flapping open like a fish on the beach. Eventually I managed to stammer out a weak 「お邪魔します」and matters are laid to rest, but I have just exposed a fatal flaw in my learning process.

Not enough input yet! In fact, I’m starting to have doubts about the “Enough good input will lead to good output” process, but I don’t have a leg to stand on because I haven’t gotten that much input yet. Sure I’ve been reading a little more, but when it comes to listening, I can’t remember the last time I got out a podcast or even a movie and paid close attention. More importantly, I don’t even enough input for every day scenes. I know a lot of words you might use on a battleship like 発信準備 but what do you say when someone invites you over? I drew a blank.

So I have seen my shortcomings, and I’m going to work on them a lot more from now on. Stammering is uncool in any language!

Learning Swedish?

Have you heard of All Japanese All the Time? You can just check out the site for the details, but basically it’s one man’s tale of how he learned Japanese to fluency (or so he claims) in 18 months just by immersing himself steadily and constantly in the language. This means listening to only Japanese music, watching only J-shows, reading only J-sites, etc. The idea is sound. It’s like Sink or Swim. If someone dropped you in the middle of Timbuktu one day I bet you’d pick up the lingo in a hurry.

So how does that apply to me? Well I was thinking of applying for a job with a certain Swedish organization. There’s no way I’d learn enough Swedish in time to land the job, but afterwards in the time I’m working there (if I decide to apply and if I get the job) I’d be surrounded by Swedish people and materials. It’s a good chance to pick up a language I’d never actually learn left on my own.

With that in mind, I checked out a few resources for learning Swedish. First need to get some textbooks and materials, and then need to find music, books, radio stations, etc to complete the environment. This was all a few days ago now to be honest my desire is waning, but I think I’ll list them here in case I ever do get round to learning it.

Foreign Service Insitute courses – Haven’t tried them yet, heard good things

U-Z Translations site – Massive number of textbooks and materials but you need to sign up first

How to Learn Any Language search results – it’s a forum for language learners

Learn Swedish with Swedish LingQ – Self explanatory title. It looks like a blog with podcasts and other materials for the intermediate learner.