I may have expressed myself incorrectly, I'm sorry. I talked about learning sentences, but that's not the point. What I meant is that I don't think it's useful to go and start memorizing a list of words out of context.
What matters is context. Sentences are just the best example of a context, but a picture of a dog with your parent telling you it's called "dog" is the same thing (and note that the kid is not focusing on the writing or pronunciation of the word, but only on its meaning. The rest is automatic). So maybe we are agreeing at least in part: they are not words fallen out of nowhere, they come to you attached to some kind of environment.
Even when you look up a word in your own language, you do it because you encountered it somewhere and want to figure out what the meaning of the sentence is. So the source is context. I don't think one would go, open up a dictionary, and start learning random words and their pronunciations.

Apart from that, I swear I haven't learned grammar or pronunciation rules before starting to talk in my mother language. I know 5-year-olds who can speak rather perfectly, albeit with a limited vocabulary. And to add more, most of the words I know in English, too, were learned totally from reading (a lot) without a vocabulary. The same goes for grammar, which I can't figure (sorry if this shows).

liosama Wrote:Learn words, learn grammar structure, and then read books, let your brain put it together. That is how the brain functions.

Our brain has evolved to its actual state in a hunting-gathering tribal environment, hundreds of thousands of years before the inventions of writing or grammar.

nac_est Wrote:This is the wrong part, to my eyes. First of all, one shouldn't learn words, but sentences made of words. Memorizing single vocabulary like a set of information (writing="...", pronunciation="...", pitch="...", etc.) is something only a computer should do!

I never said anything to the contrary. By learning sentences made of words, you're still learning words, and I think the words' pronunciation should be learned as well. Moreover, if you're learning sentences, shouldn't you be learning how to pronounce those sentences? Whether we phrase it in terms of pronouncing words or pronouncing sentences, the problem is the same.

nac_est Wrote:Second, since 99% of Japanese speakers (the Japanese themselves), who speak it to some level of perfection, learn it by ear, isn't it silly for us 1% foreigners to learn it via a different route? Doesn't that make it certain that we'll speak it differently then?
On a side note, I'm convinced that a comparison between Japanese kids and adult foreign learners should be done. There's no such thing as a "language sponge" imho. Let's face it, kids are more... stupid when they are little. They are disadvantaged, not the contrary.

A child's mind does not work the same way that an adult's mind does. By your argument, somebody who was cut off from society and has not spoken a language at all during his childhood should be able to learn a language faster than a child would. In fact, such people have been encountered, and they have not been able to acquire language at all! They can eventually be trained to communicate in Tarzan-like terms, but they can never actually learn a human language. So I wouldn't underestimate a child's ability to pick up language!

albion Wrote:I don't have the NHK dictionary, but do own the 新明解/Shinmeikai one. At the back of it is a list of 99 rules governing the standard Tokyo accent (although I've never gotten around to getting through them yet). Does the NHK one have something similar?

It does have a large appendix that is supposed to be comprehensive, but I don't know what all is in the appendix because I can't read it. It does have a list of how suffixes (including ○○漢字) change the pitch. I also just found the section that shows how pitches are used with counters. It seems each counter has its own pitch pattern, which is usually regular across all numbers (e.g. always flat, or always accented on the second-to-last mora), but there are a few irregular ones, too. It's a bit more complicated than I hoped... but, since it's a dictionary, there are probably more counters there than I'll actually use. I also just found a table that shows how words are pronounced in various regions... I wonder why that's in there.

albion Wrote:I think learning rules (along side other means and not as the sole method) would help out, personally. It'd be easier to work out the accent of things you read without any audio if you have some guidelines in the back of your head. And with time you should get used to it, so you're not exactly sitting there for a couple of minutes every sentence trying to work out if you're supposed to use a high or low pitch.

That's pretty much what I'm thinking.

liosama Wrote:Perfect example. When i saw misete i said in my head MI-se-te, why? because it made SENSE that way. I didn't need to check up a rule script in my memory anywhere. It just intuitively felt that that is the way one pronounces MI-se-te.

You probably get a lot more audio input than I'll be getting. I plan to use audio heavily in my lessons, but I won't be getting much feedback from watching anime or Japanese TV or anything because, well, I don't watch them.

- Kef

English is hideously complicated in many ways, in a way that Japanese simply isn't, consequently the following arguments may not apply; I suspect, however, that they do.

(To be fair, while I currently consider Japanese to be relatively simple, the politeness system may provide a source of unanticipated complexity once I move past the basics of keigo.)

To see the failure of learning language purely from exposure without conscious learning of rules, view a native speaker of English's writing. Some things to keep an eye out for (some specific errors, some exemplars):

"tow the line"
"At Thanksgiving we ate many turkey's"
"Its mine!"
"Every dog has it's day"
"intensive purposes"
"Same difference"
"Could care less" (sometimes has an ending associated with it that makes it reasonable if overdone, like "could care less but it'd be too much effort")
"could of"

Or any of the mistakes on this page.

~J

"Same difference" isn't an error, it's just an informal idiom. It's an oxymoron, but I think that's the point of the expression.

And Japanese is hideously complex too, just not in the same ways. Counter words come to mind.

- Kef

woodwojr Wrote:"intensive purposes"
"tow the line"

Native speakers who have never seen the relevant expression in writing make this type of mistake as well.

woodwojr Wrote:"At Thanksgiving we ate many turkey's"
"Its mine!"
"Every dog has it's day"
"could of"

Native speakers often make this type of mistake in writing when they aren't being careful.

woodwojr Wrote:"Same difference"
"Could care less"

These are actual expressions.

If these are the errors you have seen made by learners who learn "by ear", I think you have actually improved my confidence in such methods.

He was listing the mistakes of native speakers, not language learners.
Not that it especially matters, the argument was pretty weak.
And yeah, Japanese is pretty complex as well. I'd say it's approximately as complicated as 'a human language'.

"I could care less" is considered an error because it doesn't make sense. "I could care less" suggests you do care. The expression should be "I couldn't care less", meaning "It would not be possible to care less than I do." But native speakers say it both ways, for whatever reason.

- Kef

nac_est Wrote:. So maybe we are agreeing at least in part: they are not words fallen out of nowhere, they come to you attached to some kind of environment.

No no I misunderstood you, I agree with you in all aspects^.

nac_est Wrote:

liosama Wrote:Learn words, learn grammar structure, and then read books, let your brain put it together. That is how the brain functions.

Our brain has evolved to its actual state in a hunting-gathering tribal environment, hundreds of thousands of years before the inventions of writing or grammar.

That doesn't change the fact that that is how our brain functions? That being said this is too complex a topic for me to even argue over, my major is no where near neuroscience, so I really have no say whatsoever.

Same goes for me, and I have also hijacked this thread too much. I apologize! 以上

liosama Wrote:

nac_est Wrote:. So maybe we are agreeing at least in part: they are not words fallen out of nowhere, they come to you attached to some kind of environment.

No no I misunderstood you, I agree with you in all aspects^.

nac_est Wrote:

liosama Wrote:Learn words, learn grammar structure, and then read books, let your brain put it together. That is how the brain functions.

Our brain has evolved to its actual state in a hunting-gathering tribal environment, hundreds of thousands of years before the inventions of writing or grammar.

That doesn't change the fact that that is how our brain functions? That being said this is too complex a topic for me to even argue over, my major is no where near neuroscience, so I really have no say whatsoever.

I think it's far too simple to say that the brain functions in a way that makes any one "method" the "right" one. After all, people have been acquiring new languages for centuries, often with wildly varied methods. Outside of actual scientific fora, where people with degrees can argue about the exact physical processes of foreign language acquisition, it's probably best just to say that the human brain has a knack for language, and to let people exploit that knack how they will.

Hmm.. kind of an interesting discussion.

Side point - Standard Japanese is more correctly referred to as

標準語　- ひょうじゅんご　- hyoujungo

rather than Tokyo-ben.

liosama Wrote:

nac_est Wrote:This is the wrong part, to my eyes. First of all, one shouldn't learn words, but sentences made of words. Memorizing single vocabulary like a set of information (writing="...", pronunciation="...", pitch="...", etc.) is something only a computer should do!

Another AJATT victim I see :|. Learn words, learn grammar structure, and then read books, let your brain put it together. That is how the brain functions. It cannot be more simple than that.

What? Care to elaborate?

furrykef Wrote:"I could care less" is considered an error because it doesn't make sense. "I could care less" suggests you do care. The expression should be "I couldn't care less", meaning "It would not be possible to care less than I do." But native speakers say it both ways, for whatever reason.

I probably shouldn't even respond to this since it is off topic, but I can't let this stand as is.
"I could care less" is sarcasm. Not that idioms need to make sense.

Let's not troll.

I guess it was made clear that pitch is an advantageous thing to have in any dictonary.

But we diverge on the usage of this information. My friend who studies ancient greek finds it very useful. For him it is the only way, I believe. He says it works very well, specially for greek that he descrives as a well behaved language.

He allmost even convinced me to put it in my SRS. I would, if it were not such a huge hassle. Well, if I find a nice dictionary with it, I will.

But I do not intend to replace the doramas and anime. They are probably more valuable for practice, tought not as valuable during the introduction of new words.

And please, calm down, folks.

wabisabi Wrote:Side point - Standard Japanese is more correctly referred to as

標準語　- ひょうじゅんご　- hyoujungo

Actually, spoken standard Japanese is called 共通語. 標準語 is the standard written language.

furrykef Wrote:You probably get a lot more audio input than I'll be getting. I plan to use audio heavily in my lessons, but I won't be getting much feedback from watching anime or Japanese TV or anything because, well, I don't watch them.

Sooo, I'm gonna go ahead and say it. Why don't you just try watching Japanese TV?

mystes Wrote:I probably shouldn't even respond to this since it is off topic, but I can't let this stand as is.
"I could care less" is sarcasm. Not that idioms need to make sense.

However, it's never said with a sarcastic intonation, nor does it really fit in with how sarcasm is usually used. A good sarcastic expression would be something one would say under ordinary circumstances, only in this case you're using it with the opposite meaning. For instance, "Well that's just GREAT!" is a perfectly ordinary phrase that people say all the time; it can either be sarcastic or not depending on context and intonation. But nobody ever says "I could care less" except with this supposed "sarcastic" meaning.

Mcjon01 Wrote:Sooo, I'm gonna go ahead and say it. Why don't you just try watching Japanese TV?

Because I see little point in watching something I won't understand even 1% of. I have a hard enough time watching TV in Spanish, and I've studied that language for years. (Granted, I'd obviously understand Spanish TV a lot better if I had more practice with the spoken language.)

- Kef

QuackingShoe Wrote:He was listing the mistakes of native speakers, not language learners.

Thank you.

Quote:Not that it especially matters, the argument was pretty weak.

Why do you say that? We've got a number of examples of people who learn the language as "by-ear" as possible, and who learn it wrong, and horribly wrong at that. I'm not sure what the equivalent kind of error would be in Japanese, but consider what happens when you make the above errors in English: you come across as, regardless of whether it's true in general or not, an individual of sub-par education. That's certainly not the kind of Japanese I want to be speaking or writing.

Quote:And yeah, Japanese is pretty complex as well. I'd say it's approximately as complicated as 'a human language'.

Are you really trying to make the assertion that all human languages are equally complex?

The difficult thing about Japanese counters is that they're numerous and frequently irregular, but irregularity is hardly a distinguishing characteristic of the language--indeed, if anything, regularity is.

~J

furrykef Wrote:Because I see little point in watching something I won't understand even 1% of. I have a hard enough time watching TV in Spanish, and I've studied that language for years.

You've got to start sometime. You can listen to little sound snippets until you're old and gray, but until you jump in and start listening to real Japanese speech at full speed, it's always going to be beyond your reach.
You don't just someday magically transition from audio samples to full-on Japanese. That's not how it works.

woodwojr Wrote:Are you really trying to make the assertion that all human languages are equally complex?

Actually, that's a very common assertion in linguistics. It's pretty difficult to prove one way or the other. It does seem to be a general tendency that there are tradeoffs involved, though. For instance, simpler syntax tends to result in a more complex morphology, and vice-versa.

JimmySeal Wrote:You've got to start sometime. You can listen to little sound snippets until you're old and gray, but until you jump in and start listening to real Japanese speech at full speed, it's always going to be beyond your reach.
You don't just someday magically transition from audio samples to full-on Japanese. That's not how it works.

Yes, but I don't think "sometime" is "now". As I said, I can't even understand 1% of anything in Japanese. I can understand much, much more than 1% of something in Spanish. So I'm going to have it a lot easier trying to watch something in Spanish than watching something in Japanese. I don't think there's anything wrong with building up your skills before trying to watch things.

- Kef

furrykef Wrote:A child's mind does not work the same way that an adult's mind does. By your argument, somebody who was cut off from society and has not spoken a language at all during his childhood should be able to learn a language faster than a child would. In fact, such people have been encountered, and they have not been able to acquire language at all! They can eventually be trained to communicate in Tarzan-like terms, but they can never actually learn a human language. So I wouldn't underestimate a child's ability to pick up language!

I don't buy your argument. Most of the "Feral Children" cases are completely fabricated. On top of that, these are children that have often been abandoned by their parents due to mental defects, like retardation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_children or google anything on feral children.

furrykef Wrote:Because I see little point in watching something I won't understand even 1% of. I have a hard enough time watching TV in Spanish, and I've studied that language for years. (Granted, I'd obviously understand Spanish TV a lot better if I had more practice with the spoken language.)

At the expense of being 'another AJATT victim':
Isn't real Japanese too hard for beginners?
Also speaking from personal experience, I've gone from that '1%' range to around 85% in about a year, and seriously doubt I would have done it if I hadn't listened to a lot of real Japanese.

That 1% is something you can build upon. Even just hearing the rhythm of the language helps, and maybe it'll help you gain a proper pitch accent.

Exactly. It's never too soon to start. Whatever you may say about children's alleged superior language learning skills, adults can, and should, learn languages in a manner similar to the way children do. That's the way humans are designed to learn languages, and children don't start off with grammar guides and language tapes.

You're putting the cart way out in front of the horse by attempting to memorize how to say Japanese before you've even heard it properly.

They also don't start with dictionaries, SRS systems, or anything of the sort. I'd like to see somebody truly learn a foreign language the way a child does, with no external help, just listening to and reading the target language. I heard of somebody doing such an experiment, and having some success, but he had to put a loooot of hard work into it. Children don't... they just DO it, without thinking about it.

- Kef

furrykef Wrote:They also don't start with dictionaries, SRS systems, or anything of the sort. I'd like to see somebody truly learn a foreign language the way a child does, with no external help, just listening to and reading the target language. I heard of somebody doing such an experiment, and having some success, but he had to put a loooot of hard work into it. Children don't... they just DO it, without thinking about it.

In addition, there are other ways it can be easier to learn a language as an adult, such as greater knowledge about the world. It can be a lot easier to learn a word for a concept you are familiar with than to have to learn the concept in the first place.