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Japanese from scratch TAC 2015 東亜

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dampingwire
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4467 days ago

1185 posts - 1513 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian*, French
Studies: Japanese

 
 Message 1017 of 1702
24 July 2013 at 11:25pm | IP Logged 
kraemder wrote:
A lot of words I seem to mix up the syllables when I go to reproduce
them. This one word that I'm studying at the moment that's giving me issues is 株. I
keep saying ぶか instead of かぶ.


Oddly enough I too stumbled over that word (and a bunch of others). I've now come
across 株価 (かぶか), which I don't usually mess up, so that one is a "hook" for the
other one.

I've not found a general method for vocabulary. Right now I'm throwing the N3
vocabulary at myself on memrise and seeing what sticks, The ones that keep coming up a
few weeks after I've planted all the words will be the ones I need to concentrate on
and I guess those will be the ones where I actively look for good mems (or create
some).

I can definitely relate to the whole "those words are all the same" feeling. In fact my
tutor and I had a little laugh tonight about 家事 and 火事, for example.

It's a wonder they can keep them all straight in their heads :-)

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kraemder
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1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 1018 of 1702
24 July 2013 at 11:38pm | IP Logged 
g-bod wrote:
But I do love how borrowings from English take on a life of their own in Japanese! So we have words like コンビニ, パソコン, リストラ, インフラ. And it's not just English, if you think about where words like ピーマン come from.

Anyway, as far as the history of Japanese writing goes, I think it's important to consider that before kanji were imported from China there was no literacy in Japan. The kana developed later using kanji as a basis.

Chinese characters might not be the easiest system to get to grips with, but it must have felt pretty groundbreaking when it first arrived on the shores of Japan. The fact that a lot of mainly scholarly vocabulary was imported at the same time as kanji was adopted makes a lot of sense - as all scholarly books imported from China would have been in Chinese. I guess Chinese had a similar role in the far east to Latin in Europe?


heh I'm going to have to add インフラ to my SRS.. didn't know that one. yeah I feel like China was to the far east what Rome was to Europe. And yeah of course they're going to import tons of vocabulary. According to Wiki, 60% of Japanese vocabulary is 漢語.. comes from Chinese. Maybe I'm off in thinking that since it's not a tonal language that meant Japanese kind of got screwed. Then again, in terms of normal spoken vocabulary, per wiki, it's only 18% 漢語. Possibly because of all the homonyms?
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kraemder
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 Message 1019 of 1702
24 July 2013 at 11:59pm | IP Logged 
It's been a while since I checked it... per wiki, 26% of English vocabulary comes from Germanic roots, 29% from Latin, and 29% from French. (6% from Greek, and another 6% misc). But I think the new vocabulary fit better with English just simply because neither is a tonal language. Anyway, if you're curious about English, here's the wiki (it's a pretty short entry):



Latin influence on English

Edited by kraemder on 25 July 2013 at 12:00am

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g-bod
Diglot
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 Message 1020 of 1702
25 July 2013 at 12:15am | IP Logged 
kraemder wrote:
But I think the new vocabulary fit better with English just simply because neither is a tonal language.


Or maybe it's because you're so used to English you use those French and Latin loanwords without even noticing it!

I don't think the tonal side of things really makes much of a difference. There is a big difference between spoken and written Chinese too. Since Chinese characters show meaning as well as sound it becomes much easier to abbreviate things in written text than spoken language. This is why Japanese newspapers are so tough compared to novels or essays - everything is abbreviated in newspaper language because the use of kanji allows messages to be conveyed using far fewer characters. The only thing is that in order to realise this benefit you have to spend years learning the characters first...
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kujichagulia
Senior Member
Japan
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1031 posts - 1571 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Portuguese

 
 Message 1021 of 1702
25 July 2013 at 1:37am | IP Logged 
@g-bod - good point about there being no literacy in Japan before kanji arrived. I forgot about that all-too-important point. バカね、俺。しょうがないね。
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kraemder
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Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 1022 of 1702
01 August 2013 at 9:02am | IP Logged 
I'm back on rosetta stone. Unfortunately only with access to Level 1 (of 3 levels) content. And the games and chat room. I just did a few games with another learner (lost). I don't play them too often, I'm not sure how often she does. There's this picarri game where you listen to the audio and then tap the picture that matches the sentence and the pictures are a mess. I have zero problems understanding the japanese but I need to get better at organizing my pictures. I've only played the game twice though. We also did another game where we describe a basic picture.. I was having issues and thinking in Spanish. Studying multiple languages is a pain. I had some Spanish speakers call me at work today so that is probably why my brain is in Spanish mode so to speak.

So for this month my pledge is to watch anime without subtitles. I think I've been good at watching them with subtitles and still listening to the Japanese but I've heard from other learners that it's generally better w/o subs and so that's what I'm doing for this month. I am enjoying the challenge that goes with it - I like testing myself to see how much I understand. Next month I can go back and watch the same stuff with subs but this month I'm going to refuse to do that. But there is a ton of anime with japanese subs available online that I can go use rikai on which would be ok . If I am feeling that I'm not understanding something and it's driving me crazy.

Other that that.. I've read some more AJATT posts and they're motivating as usual so I'm looking for ways to keep Japanese fun. Doing millions of SRS reps isn't really fun. Doing new vocabulary is generally a lot more fun than reviewing vocabulary that I've forgotten because I've grown bored of it. I'm trying to think of a compromise for that since you really need to review stuff etc. to not forget it. I'll have to keep thinking on it.
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kraemder
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Speaks: English*
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 Message 1023 of 1702
02 August 2013 at 11:42pm | IP Logged 
OK I'm suddenly feeling motivated to study kanji. I posted about the website before,
kanji damage, and I want to try out his method of adding the kanji sound to your
story as if it were another radical or primitive.

Also I'm a little less stressed out over work and other stuff and I can really feel
the difference when it comes to reviews. I unfortunately can't just get rid of SRS.
It would hurt my learning too much. There's a lot of reviews waiting for me right
now, about 900. Kind of stinks.

Oh I'm going to go pick up a nano SIM card converter. I have both an iPhone and an
android phone atm and can't make up my mind on which to keep. Well so I'm keeping
both of them. If this thing works. I understand there's a risk of it getting stuck
and breaking your phone. Then it would just be a mini tablet. So maybe not the best
idea but I'm gonna try it.
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kraemder
Senior Member
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1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 1024 of 1702
03 August 2013 at 8:34am | IP Logged 
この変なコンバーターは成功だった。ちょっ と不簡単(a new word I made up)でも、iphoneもnexus4も使えるよ。残念ながら 、これは全部だ。ちょっとリンゴの「エル」 を飲んじゃたんだ。

They say that drinking helps loosen your tongue when speaking foreign languages but I am finding that while this may be true, I just mix up all my foreign languages. Anyway, this converter works but it's kind of a pain to use. It takes a few minutes of fumbling with it to get my nano sim to go into my nexus 4 which normally takes a micro sim. Gonna start work on a new kanji deck tomorrow where I'll learn one chinese sound to go with the most common 2000 kanji or whatever. I think I'll be very proud when I achieve that accomplishment. Knowing the meaning was awesome, but knowing the most common sound is gonna be really useful.


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