Tag: AJATT

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!

 

Back from an SRS break

Even before Khatz at AJATT put up this post, I was already on an extended break from my SRS. Meaning I was still doing my reps every morning but I hadn’t added anything in weeks. Somehow it just got tedious and unfun so I ditched it for a while. But now I’m back! And over the past 3 days I’ve plundered over 100 sentences from Japanese wikipedia, using the tried and tested “articles on subjects I like” method! This time I read up on my favorite and unfavorite pro-wrestlers from about 10-15 years ago when I used to watch wrestling, people like Bret Hart and Mr. Perfect and Shawn Michaels, etc. Good times, good times. As usual the writing is blander and less opinionated than the English equivalents, but still interesting to read. Next week I might read a bit about legends of Japanese pro-wrestling, like Rikidozan and stuff.

That’s all for today!

Why backsliding is dangerous

That week I took off took a bigger toll on me than I had expected. You see, when you work behind a computer everyday, you kinda get into a groove, you know? First this site, then that site, then let’s see what X site has to say, and I mustn’t forget Dear Abby, and while I’m at it gotta check that site… force of habit is stronger than you think. Before I went AJATT I had a large number of English blogs and news sites I used to visit every morning before settling down to work. I thought I had them conquered, but in just one week they took over my computer again! And to be honest, I’m not sure I want to stop… but I must persevere!

I found a direct download site for Raw Manga so I’ve been downloading like crazy the last couple of days, but apart from flipping through a few ones, I haven’t really settled down to read anything. Kenritsu Chikyuu Boueigun (Prefectural Earth Defence Force) looks the most interesting so far. I’ve always been more interested in older manga that in the newer, posher stuff anyway. It seems to me like manga back then contained less “fluff” and “eye wash” than manga today, but that’s probably just me.

A further word on SRS

I just read one of the newer AJATT posts about sentence-entering in the SRS. I have to say, I don’t agree at all with his suggestion. And it’s fine not to agree. It’s the AJATT “approach” not a school of martial arts or anything, so I feel free to take what works and disregard the rest. The point made in the article is that excessively long sentences are not good for SRS entry and should thus be edited into shorter, more consumable forms. Come on, that’s just ridiculous. Is he trolling or something?

Long sentences are part and parcel of Japanese writing anywhere. If you choose to run away from them in your SRS you will only meet them again elsewhere, in real writing where they don’t pull any punches. Furthermore, if you come across a sentence you feel is too unwieldy for your current stage of learning, just don’t include it in your collection. Why emasculate it, thereby destroying its authenticity and power? If the writer meant to write「現代社会は『準備社会』だ。」then that’s exactly what he would have written, not「中村によると、我々の現代社会は『準備社会』だ。」, right? In short, this is one piece of advice I will be merrily ignoring as I go on my way towards Japanese fluency. Perhaps for easily-intimidated beginners it might be a good way to get started, but it just doesn’t work for me.

A word about SRS

SRS stands for Spaced Repetition System. I know what it is and why it’s useful for learning languages, so I don’t see the need
to go on about it. This blog is all about me, remember? But for anyone who wants to know more, I’ll link the AllJapaneseAlltheTime (AJATT) website post on the subject: What is an SRS?

I started the SRS thing around 1st May, planning to enter about 50 sentences a day so that I could hit the magical 10,000 mark (or close to it) by the end of 2008. Some days have been rough (i.e. I have been lazy) and some days have been awesome, hitting the goal and more. Yesterday I had my personal best of 77 sentences in 8 hours, made up almost entirely of sentences ripped from Dragonball wikis. To paraphrase Khatzumoto of AJATT, just because it’s fun doesn’t mean you’re not learning. When it’s something you want to read badly enough, no Great Wall of Kanji can keep you away.

The SRS system I’m currently using is Khatzumemo. I like it’s because it’s simple, it’s online and the interface isn’t cluttered. I hate cluttered stuff, and these buttons and functions and whizzbangs and doodads. All I want is a place to keep my sentences and the chance to review them at the right time. Having said that, it has a major drawback in that you can’t input audio sentences…(or can you, I haven’t tried) or pictures into it. For that purpose I’ve installed Anki on my laptop, but I haven’t gotten round to testing it yet. Also Khatzumemo seems to limit reps to 100 a day, regardless of how many you have left undone in your backlog. It’s also a bit annoying when you have a delay between clicking on your mark and moving on the next sentence. I’d rather have the statistical information be optional so I can access it when/if I want to, instead of forcing me to look at it every single time.

A picture speaks a thousand words, so here’s a screenshot of the current state of my sentence collection. 907 sentences in 7 weeks isn’t half bad, eh? Click to enlarge.

How do I pick which sentences to add to my SRS? Anything goes, really. With over 9000 words left to go before I hit my goal, I’m not particularly picky about getting “just the right” sort of sentence. I don’t even think there’s any such thing as “just the right” sentence. My criteria is simple: it should be grammatical Japanese. It should be natural Japanese, or as natural-feeling as I can tell. The kanji should be correct. For preference it shouldn’t be too long, but super-long sentences are also part of Japanese writing so I include them on occasion. It helps if I find the subject matter interesting (witness all the DB sentences) so that I can stand to read them over and over again as I learn.

When I come across a word/phrase/expression I don’t know, I look it up in two dictionaries simultaneously. First the Sanseido Web Dictionary, which has definitions in fairly simple Japanese, and then in Jim Breen’s WWWDJIC, which is English-Japanese. I check with the English meanings just to make sure I’m not getting confused by the J-definition, and also because Sanseido occasionally has unhelpful entries like this:
げきど 1 ［激怒］= 激しく怒ること.
It’s fine for me when I already know the meanings of the two separate kanji, but when I don’t it can get pretty annoying.

So that’s it for my SRS doings. In the mornings I do all my reps, and then I spend the rest of the day surfing the net for new entries to add while listening to music on the internet. My retention rate is 98.13%, 1927 reps done. I’m a bit Dragonballed-out today after yesterday’s marathon session, so I’m going to cut back on that today and spend the time going through Mainichi Daily’s game article archive. And that’s all for today!