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+--- Thread: Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here (/thread-3362.html)
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - zurisu - 2013-08-28
Today, after about 4 months, I finally got my lazy butt through the entirety of Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide. I've been making my own Anki deck of it as I went, and the final count is 258 cards. =D Yay, I'm so happy I don't have to add to it anymore! (At least, not until I decide to tackle more advanced grammar. But I think this will do for now...) *collapses on floor*
[Also, mods, I'm on pace to finish Core6k in a few weeks; do you think it would be alright if I made an "I Just Finished Core6k" thread, like the RTK ones? I'm surprised we don't have one (I think) since Core is such a popular method here. ..and should I put it here in General Discussion?]
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - tashippy - 2013-08-28
zurisu Wrote:an "I Just Finished Core6k" thread, like the RTK ones? I'm surprised we don't have one (I think) since Core is such a popular method here. ..and should I put it here in General Discussion?]Hmmm. Not a bad idea. I doubt the mods would have a problem with that (not that I can speak for them). Since it is a motivational thread and not a thread about a certain motivational site why not?
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - tashippy - 2013-08-28
Oh and congrats on finishing. How many new cars did you do per day? Ah sorry this is the wrong thread for that question. If only there were a just finished core thread.
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - gaiaslastlaugh - 2013-08-28
tashippy Wrote:Why the hell not indeed. Go for it.zurisu Wrote:an "I Just Finished Core6k" thread, like the RTK ones? I'm surprised we don't have one (I think) since Core is such a popular method here. ..and should I put it here in General Discussion?]Hmmm. Not a bad idea. I doubt the mods would have a problem with that (not that I can speak for them). Since it is a motivational thread and not a thread about a certain motivational site why not?
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - zurisu - 2013-08-28
tashippy Wrote:Oh and congrats on finishing. How many new cars did you do per day? Ah sorry this is the wrong thread for that question. If only there were a just finished core thread.Well I can't make the thread yet because I haven't finished Core6k
My post was about finishing Tae Kim's grammar guide. But I'm adding 50 cards/day right now in Core in order to give myself the birthday present of finishing (on Sept 17th) ^_^So if someone else who's already notched that achievement wants to make the thread first, that's fine with me! =D
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - Haych - 2013-09-26
Previously, on Longposts with Haych...
Haych Wrote:So today I just passed the 10,000 mark in vocab...Update time. I finished today at 13,220 vocab. Here's a graph because a picture tells a thousand words (unfortunately not japanese words tho, or this journey could have been over much sooner).
and if this rate continues, I expect I will only add 3200 more before having covered every common term in EDICT.
![[Image: graff.png]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27712969/graff.png)
So turns out my initial estimate was remarkably good, although it looks like there was a bit of a bump in the middle, and you can see a slight acceleration in progress at the end. Overall, since the 9k point, I only kept 43% of the cards. That's 5780 I didn't keep. The equivalent of an extra core6k in deletions.
Think about that for a minute. That's almost 6,000 extra discrete words that you don't have to study if you pay at least minimal attention to kanji, at least as much as I did. And they are common ones too- the list I was studying from is the complete edict 'common word' list, duplicate-checked with core6k, with all of the katakana terms removed, for those who don't know. I think that number is pretty amazing. It's definitely not something I expected when I started studying from the deck.
The thing that enabled me to get effective enough at guessing the meaning/reading of vocab happened basically by fluke. The way anki presented the new words in the coreplus vocab deck was arranged in the gojuuon (a,k,s,t,n,h,m,y,r,w) order according to the most common on-yomi of the first kanji in the word. Not necessarily the actual reading because for example stuff like 受験 would be right next to 受ける. Now I don't really know how that happened, or if its just the anki default, but that ended up being immensely helpful. By seeing multiple words using the same kanji, I'd rapidly see all the ways a kanji tends to be used: its readings and the sort of meanings that it takes, and I'd quickly be able to extrapolate and form connections. Like for example, I picked up pretty quickly that when 楽 refers to music or drama it is read がく as in 楽器 and when it means enjoyment it is read らく as in 楽天的. Stuff like that. That was what enabled me to toss out a bunch of cards. If a kanji was regular enough in its usage, then all it might take is one card to get down the meaning and reading, and then all the other cards using it would be superfluous, because who needs recognition cards for stuff you can already recognize?
Now I want to soapbox for a bit, because once again, I think there's something to be learned from this. Now I know the forum seemed quite taken with the sentiment in that 'polyglots versus polynots' video. And I know that since I did more than 6,000 vocab I am a poly-not anki-addict and I should feel bad because my methods are old fashioned classroom-style and unnatural yadda yadda yadda. But give me a bit of benefit of the doubt. I think there's an argument here.
First off, I agree with that guy that collocations are a big deal. They basically are templates for the way a word should be used. Since a lot of communication ends up being imitation of structures like that, learning those is sure to be a huge step. But Japanese is different, because in addition to learning how words are used in the context of a collocation, you are also able to learn how kanji are used in the context of a word. So there's an extra layer there. Kanji, not words, are the most abstracted semantic unit. Now, you couldn't learn all there is to know just by studying the kanji in isolation, just like you couldn't learn all there is to know about sentences by studying just vocab. But if you pay a decent amount of attention to the building blocks of a language, you can construct an understanding of a text from a bottom-up approach, and save yourself time. This is why we study grammar. Because, while the most conservative approach would require you to have seen all of the words, collocations, and idioms used before in a similar context for you to be able to understand, this is also the most time-consuming.
So we all know you can't learn everything just studying the basic semantic units (a bottom-up approach), and it can be painful to try to understand complete texts before you're acquainted with the basics (a top-down approach), most of us go for something around the middle-ground. But, I'd argue that, because of the kanji in Japanese, studying vocab does have a bit of a that balance, because of the way you can transfer knowledge from one vocab and apply it to another. In a way, it gives you some of that big-picture knowledge that is the strength of a top-down approach. Thus, for this reason, I want to say that spending a bit of extra time with vocab in this language as opposed to others is much more beneficial.
I'd say there's no reason we should be guilting people for going above 6,000 words from a frequency list. To sketch out some calculations, let's say there are at least around 2,000 kanji that people agree are used often enough that you should know them. Assuming they occur with even probability, that would let you see each kanji around 3-6 times. Since kanji are used in multiple ways, and you're going to have to get used to all of them to do the guesswork that I talk about, the coverage here is looking pretty skimpy. Its a bad estimate, I know, since some kanji have more readings / meanings than others and some occur more often, but it is a good thing to think about because it show the numbers we are dealing with.
At this point, you may call into question the utility of all the 2,000+ jouyou kanji, but I tend to disagree. For numbers of that scale, if someone says those 2,000 are general-use kanji, or the common words edict list has around 20,000 entries, I believe them when they say that those are the kind of common-knowledge stuff that most native speakers are aware of. It mostly comes down to a feel for the numbers. Because, before I came back here, I was studying french. Reading through 3 books, I ended up accumulating about 10,000 words before I felt like I was getting to a comfortable point with reading. As everyone knows, that language has a lot of true cognates with English. Thus, it only makes sense that for Japanese, I'd probably need that many or more. That experience also made me more receptive to adding lots of pre-made vocab. For my first book in French, I would go through underlining all the words I was unsure about, and looking them up once to understand the sentence. Then I would go back later and add them all to a tab-separated notepad file by hand for import to anki. Sometimes I'd just be writing down words and definitions for like an hour or more, and that's just adding-- I'd have to study them later too. I had to do this consistently every few days adding the unknown words I'd encountered during that time for a few months before unknown words started popping up less often and reading was more comfortable. It was kinda painful at times, and it made reading a whole lot less enjoyable, so with Japanese I wanted to get all that work out of the way ASAP.
In the polyglots vs polynots video, the guy discussed how you're basically learning specialized vocabulary beyond a point, with stuff like bird names, and specialized vocab isn't something you should study. While I still haven't seen a term pop up for 'shoelaces' (though I just looked it up-- 靴紐 or 靴の紐. くつ+ひも.. logical enough), I think there is a lot of 'specialized' vocab that is just in the awareness of the general public. Doing my 13,000 words, I basically never once thought 'this seems like a really rare term and there's a good chance natives don't even know it'. But I did come across words that I think other language learners would think are specialized. Like today I looked up 近視 on wikipedia and it came up with the sentence:
近視（きんし）は、屈折異常のひとつで、眼球内に入ってきた平行光線が、調節力を働かせていない状態で、網膜上の正しい位置ではなく、もっと手前に焦点を結んでしまう状態。
Two words stuck out at me that I had recently added: 屈折 - refraction, and 網膜 - retina. I think if fellow language learners saw me studying those, their thoughts would be like "what are you trying to read? physics / biology texts?" But my understanding of the mundane sentence above hinges on those two terms, and I find this happens all the time. Stuff that seems specialized shows up all the time in articles and literature just because its part of the collective conscience of a language.
And yes, I did end up studying some bird names. I enjoyed stuff like that though. Any time it was clear I had a name of an actual thing, I grabbed a nice picture for it off google images. It was nice to be able to get to know the sights of Japan, even though I'm not there. Now I know what birds like 雀 , 雲雀 , 目白 look like, among others. I learned plants too, like 白樺 , 楠 , 荻 , 萩 and flowers like 花王 , 水仙 , 椿 , and then cultural stuff like 達磨 , 風鈴 , 爆竹 , 仏壇 , etc. I'm sure all of this stuff shows up often enough in literature or poetry to make it worthwhile learning. I basically think google images for stuff you can see, and alc.co.jp for anything else is the way to do it. Adding material from those to your vocab cards makes them much more memorable.
Anyways, I want to wrap this up cuz its going on too long. I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that I want to encourage people to be ambitious with their SRSing because I know how it pays off, but also that you might have to take it a little farther than you might expect. I think some people tend to associate SRS work with a beginner level-- as in, its something to get away from ASAP, and I don't really think that's fair. However, it looks like we have a good core10k deck now, which I am happy about. Hopefully more people start taking that route. If you want to take my route on the other hand, just look for the 'edict' tag in the coreplus deck. I know by now I sort of sound like an anki disciple. What can I say, I think its a good system. I'm pretty much subscribed for life. But I promise that after this, I won't be measuring my progress in Japanese with anki goals anymore. I'm pretty much done with pre-made decks (except for 2 small ones for slang and idioms, because those look fun and interesting). After this I'm going to be implementing my knowledge in practical ways- you know, reading writing speaking- stuff that actual normal people care about. Although its hard to say what my level is at now, before attempting more intensive reading / writing, I'll be honest about where I get to in the near future. I will say now-- this definitely feels like a critical step.
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - Hirakana - 2013-09-26
Haych, what was the name of the deck you used? I want it. :p
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - ktcgx - 2013-09-26
Haych, is this your deck?
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/194665997
Because yours sounds really awesome and useful, and I would really like to use it...
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - Haych - 2013-09-26
ktcgx Wrote:Haych, is this your deck?Yep, that's it. Its a pretty good deck, but it has some funny idiosyncrasies, like having two definition fields. I think they are just from 2 different dictionary files. I'm pretty sure one of them is just an older and crappier version-- and it looks like the same one the program 'wakan' uses.
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/194665997
Because yours sounds really awesome and useful, and I would really like to use it...
Note that the whole core6k is included in there and its tagged 'CORE', so if you're already done that you can just search that tag and delete all those cards. I used nukemarine's deck for core so that's what I did.
I unsuspended the JLPT terms, then I did edict. I just deleted the remaining cards today. There was around 1,500 left over. They didn't look that useful-- it looked like there was a lot of weird things from RTK2. The "edict" tag is by far the biggest part of the deck.
I'd also recommend deleting the katakana terms. That was like 6,000 words, and I think studying loanwords by recognition is kinda dumb. If you sort by vocab in the browser, they all line up after the hiragana terms, and before the kanji. You can just delete em all like that.
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - pmnox - 2013-09-26
4000 words from Core 2k/6k/10k deck xD
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - hirata - 2013-09-26
Haych Wrote:LongpostCongratulations on your achievement, Haych. Your write-up was very encouraging to read.
I'm a few days away from finishing Core 6k. Planning to do 10k. Probably won't do the EDICT cards as I believe they're vocab-only and I'm more of a "sentence card" guy, but pmnox's Filtered Tanuki Deck will hopefully be a decent supplement.
With the convenient Anki decks available now, and the build-up of encouraging posts like yours and mezbup's, I think we'll see a lot more vocabulary "power levelers" popping up in the future.
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - Haych - 2013-09-27
Thanks, hirata. That sounds like a good plan. I think you should go into it with the same mindset for deleting cards that seem unnecessary. It would be interesting to see how much of that deck could be culled out by the end.
And meezbup's post was a big inspiration for me too. I liked how he made explicit reference to the timeframe and number of cards / day you would have to do. I think the idea of a deadline for a project like this is pretty important. Its good encouragement for people to get moving and avoid becoming a sort of post-rtk drifter. I used a rate similar to his for the most part (40 new/day, ~500 old/day, ~85% retention, <7 sec/card). Bigger projects are much more accessible if you keep up a good pace.
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - Hirakana - 2013-09-27
I've been drifting between study methods and so I thought I was still at a pretty noob level but I just picked up キノの旅 and I can understand like 70% of it! So happy!
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - pmnox - 2013-09-27
pmnox Wrote:4000 words from Core 2k/6k/10k deck xD4200 words xD
At this rate I'll be able to finish Core 6k within next 10 days.
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - zurisu - 2013-09-27
Hirakana Wrote:I've been drifting between study methods and so I thought I was still at a pretty noob level but I just picked up キノの旅 and I can understand like 70% of it! So happy!Awesome job, Hirakana! I myself need to try out some light novels as well ^_^ I've just been sticking to manga so far.
pmnox Wrote:Holy boondollars, slow down!!!!!pmnox Wrote:4000 words from Core 2k/6k/10k deck xD4200 words xD
At this rate I'll be able to finish Core 6k within next 10 days.
(Just kidding!) Don't give yourself burn-out, though O_O
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - ryanjmack - 2013-09-27
Hirakana Wrote:I've been drifting between study methods and so I thought I was still at a pretty noob level but I just picked up キノの旅 and I can understand like 70% of it! So happy!That's awesome, I can't wait to start getting in to more native materials. Would you recommend キノの旅? I'm trying to get a little list together of books/manga I want to buy in the near future. If you don't mind me asking how far are you in your studies to be able to comprehend ~70% of it?
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - pmnox - 2013-09-28
zurisu Wrote:Thanks.Hirakana Wrote:I've been drifting between study methods and so I thought I was still at a pretty noob level but I just picked up キノの旅 and I can understand like 70% of it! So happy!Awesome job, Hirakana! I myself need to try out some light novels as well ^_^ I've just been sticking to manga so far.
pmnox Wrote:Holy boondollars, slow down!!!!!pmnox Wrote:4000 words from Core 2k/6k/10k deck xD4200 words xD
At this rate I'll be able to finish Core 6k within next 10 days.
(Just kidding!) Don't give yourself burn-out, though O_O
My number of daily reviews jumped to 830 today. xD
4400 / 6000 xD
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - Hirakana - 2013-09-28
ryanjmack Wrote:I haven't read much of it yet, but it's quite an easy first LN if you haven't read much before. Which I haven't :pHirakana Wrote:I've been drifting between study methods and so I thought I was still at a pretty noob level but I just picked up キノの旅 and I can understand like 70% of it! So happy!That's awesome, I can't wait to start getting in to more native materials. Would you recommend キノの旅? I'm trying to get a little list together of books/manga I want to buy in the near future. If you don't mind me asking how far are you in your studies to be able to comprehend ~70% of it?
I am a special case (I think) as I've spent almost a year TRYING to learn Japanese on and off by sentences, textbooks, core, tae kim etc. but not actually sticking to anything and picking up a bit here and a bit there like some kind of Japanese Learning Service-Person if you catch my meaning...
I am now concentrating on reading and Core and I hope this time the dreaded burn-out doesn't hit me yet again....
If you are consistent you can surpass what I've done in a "year's" worth of study easily! Never take a break, keep going and stick to your method! That's my advice!
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - Codexus - 2013-09-28
From zero to reading a light novel in a year isn't bad at all. I know this forum has threads about "fluency in 3 months" and similar stories that can make you have unrealistic expectations, but don't underestimate what you have achieved!
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - ryanjmack - 2013-09-28
Hirakana Wrote:I haven't read much of it yet, but it's quite an easy first LN if you haven't read much before. Which I haven't :pThanks for the advice! I'll probably end up buying キノの旅 sometime in the next couple weeks (I have some よつばと on the way now). Either way your reading some native materials now and that's a big motivation boost. I don't think you'll burn out, keep up the good work!
I am a special case (I think) as I've spent almost a year TRYING to learn Japanese on and off by sentences, textbooks, core, tae kim etc. but not actually sticking to anything and picking up a bit here and a bit there like some kind of Japanese Learning Service-Person if you catch my meaning...
I am now concentrating on reading and Core and I hope this time the dreaded burn-out doesn't hit me yet again....
If you are consistent you can surpass what I've done in a "year's" worth of study easily! Never take a break, keep going and stick to your method! That's my advice!
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - HonyakuJoshua - 2013-09-28
I passed a translation test with one of the best companies in the USA
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - Pauline - 2013-10-02
I have just come home after having spent a month in Japan. During this trip, I have managed to:
* Get around Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto by subway (using the same Pasmo/IC card in all three cities; possible since March 2013).
* Find anti-itch/insect bite medicine (the insects seemed to like me).
* Buy a lot of books (mostly manga).
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - ktcgx - 2013-10-02
Pauline Wrote:* Find anti-itch/insect bite medicine (the insects seemed to like me).I highly recommend rubbing witch hazel on the bites... Too late for you now, but for next time you come/ get bitten. It'll take the itch right away.
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - Splatted - 2013-10-02
HonyakuJoshua Wrote:I passed a translation test with one of the best companies in the USACongratulations!
Post Your Recent Milestone Achievement Here - tashippy - 2013-10-02
Wow, nice work honyakujoshua. What kind of translating will you be doing? Do you know yet?