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Japanese and vocabulary issues | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| berabero89 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4439 days ago 101 posts - 137 votes  Speaks: English, Amharic* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 1 of 4 24 September 2015 at 8:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I wasn't exactly sure where my post fit in, so I've decided to put it here...
I've been learning Japanese on and off for a few years now. While I was in high school, I would begin learning in summer, then stop when the school year started. I have much better time management skills now, so I decided to start learning again. I went through the first volume of Assimil in about a week and a half for review (I'd already gone through it twice because of the times I had studied during the summers), and began the second volume. I'm at lesson 72 right now, and I'm wondering if I should just stop once and for all. While I find the grammatical structures pretty intuitive, I can't seem to retain vocabulary beyond basic words at all (especially Chinese words) unless I repeat them over and over again through brute force. At this rate, I know I could learn Japanese if I really wanted to, but it will take a long time, and I'll most likely have to go through Assimil's second volume twice, and maybe learn from 2 or 3 other beginner's courses. There's a ton of other languages I'd like to learn that I know won't pose as big a difficulty for me (phonology seems to play a big role in my retention). I've posted on this subject before, but the best I could get was do scriptorium (which worked a little bit, but not enough to merit doing it), or just keep on studying. My motivation to learn the language is all but dead, and the only reason I'm still studying is really because I hope this is just temporary and because I don't want all the time I've invested to have been for nothing. So if anyone could offer advice or their own experience, I would appreciate it. Thank you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4462 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 2 of 4 24 September 2015 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | ||
Have you tried Memrise or Anki? Or is that what you mean by brute force? When I started out I decide to start learning vocabulary "by ear" and mainly using the kana rather than kanji. Well it turns out that Japanese is chock full of homophones so じゅうたい might mean 渋滞 (traffic congestion) or 重体 (seriously ill). Eventually I found that if I started to learn vocab through kanji then it was easier for things to stick in my head. Oddly enough it's the katakana words that give me the most trouble. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4569 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 3 of 4 25 September 2015 at 9:05am | IP Logged | ||
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After I learned the kana, got through Heisig's Remembering the Kanji and read through Tae Kim's grammar guide I started learning vocabulary through the Core 6000 Anki deck (if you're downloading it make sure that the version you're getting includes the Core 2000 subset). Each flashcard in the deck is dedicated to a single word, but they all come with a sentence for context so ideally you're supposed to test your understanding of the sentence as a whole. The cards also have two directions (kana-kanji and kanji-kana), so you can test both your reading comprehension of normal Japanese writing and comprehension purely on pronunciation (the decks also include audio files).
I also dove into native materials pretty early, initially mostly sticking to stuff I had read or watched in translation previously. Seeing words "out in the wild" did help cement them in my memory. Since you don't really have any motivation to learn the language I take it that there probably aren't any Japanese media you'd be interested in enough to jump straight into the original. Still, if you'd be willing to consider it, here's a good thread with some manga recommendations that take into account the needs of learners. Personally I'd very much recommend Yotsubato!, since it has both pretty simple language and content that wouldn't be too boring for an adult. If you'd be more interested in non-fictional reading it's hard to beat NHK's easy news. Overall vocabulary acquisition is probably the most time-consuming aspect of learning any language, and also one where progress tends to be the hardest to notice. So if you don't find a reason to learn Japanese in addition to sunk costs then I'm afraid that it might never really become rewarding. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3339 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 4 of 4 25 September 2015 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||
This is the problem you have to fix first. If you're not motivated to learn Japanese, then there's no amount of techniques that will help you. OTOH, if you are motivated but are frustrated from lack of results, it's a different story. My advice in that case is not to limit yourself to one type of material (Assimil is fine but don't *just* use that. Do things that you enjoy with the language. Watch JDramas if you like those, or Anime. In my case I like news, you can go to NHK website and hear a lot of Japanese news for example. (They have pretty close text transcripts so you can read along as well). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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