I guess I wasted my time then, but I what said about enjoying reading still holds true. I honestly don't find it that different from reading in English as long as it's within my level, and your Japanese is clearly much better than mine.

activeaero Wrote:my best friends does a bit of porn and is an SM queen so she and her friends have taught me quite well haha.

I laughed out loud when I read this. All the talk of studying had given me quite a geeky image of you, so when I saw this my first thought was of an extreme case of the Charisma Man effect.

Love this thread, couldn't bear to see it die again.


I don't get so much direct discouragement, I guess I'm lucky in that way.
The band I play drums for has recorded a song and we did an English version and a Japanese version, and whenever I play the Japanese version and my parents are within listening distance they always make some remarks. "Why don't you play the English version? I don't like listening to things I can't understand." Even though you can't understand half of the things people say in English songs anyway... It's a small thing, but it bugs me. I guess it's more of a complete lack of outside encouragement.

If this is considered advertising, please tell me and I'll remove it, but here's the link to where you can listen to the (Japanese version, of course) of the song. よろしくお願いします。It's free, I don't make any money from number of hits.

http://www.reverbnation.com/artist/song_...s/10962107

I can't recall really being discouraged by anybody. But then again, if someone tried to discourage me I probably didn't even pay attention. I love Japanese too much to let anybody put me off it. I have gotten the occasional "Why don't you learn French/Spanish instead?". Oh well . I will learn French and Spanish at some point because they are awesome languages too. But Japanese will always be my priority.

And most of the time people are actually intrigued. They curiously peek over my shoulder to see what I am reading or watching. Then they gingerly sit next to me and ask how I am able to learn this mysterious language. I find it pretty cute . And it makes me feel special. Haha.

About not understanding song lyrics...How is listening to J-Rock any different than listening to Pearl Jam then?

I haven't really gotten any discouragement. I haven't been out of the house that much this month either so; I live on an islet (though some call it island), and my closest friends are at least 500 kilometres away from me. My little brother usually joke about it by entering the room asking "you doctor yet?" (reference to Family Guy) and my twin brother doesn't bother. My parents are also fine with it; they think it is a better than spending the time doing nothing...

Necromancy seems to be the trend in this thread so...

Nii87 Wrote:I reckon weeaboos are a real subculture (and embarrassing problem, as we are often associated with them). Personally I think the ones on this forum, by taking language study seriously, should be considered a race apart from weeaboos.

My thoughts exactly right now... People are so quick to play down even the slightest claim to have studied an obscure language. A hongkongese person had a bit of a disagreement with me today and essentially so far since then every time I see kanji/hanzi I hear him saying "don't even pretend like you know anything" in my head. Incredibly depressing, albeit broken English.

Don't do the Core 6000 vocabulary deck because contrary to what people say, it doesn't teach you common everyday words.

What the hell is an autumnal equinox and why do I need to know it, and why are there 20 different ways to say the words "management" and "date/time"?

That's the part of the autumn in which the day and the night are equally long in the entire world. (I had to look up its Norwegian translation to find it out though - Enlgish and their latin loanwords...)

Not that I'm defending the Core anki deck because of that...

Also, 秋分 and 春分 are "common words" according to Jisho.org

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Doing Core 6000 doesn't teach you common everyday words.

So what does?

frony0 Wrote:

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Doing Core 6000 doesn't teach you common everyday words.

So what does?

There's more to this world than shared anki decks y'know?

Stian Wrote:

frony0 Wrote:

qwertyytrewq Wrote:Doing Core 6000 doesn't teach you common everyday words.

So what does?

There's more to this world than shared anki decks y'know?

I know. Just saying, it's not helpful to poke holes in a system without electing an improvement... Even if I assume you mean native reading and vocab mining, that would be near impossible (or at the very least excruciating) for beginners don't you think?

Quote:Even if I assume you mean native reading and vocab mining, that would be near impossible (or at the very least excruciating) for beginners don't you think?

For absolute beginners, yes -- for middling beginners who have a decent grasp of simple sentence structure, I don't think so. I started reading manga when I could hardly even read hiragana, and that was too early (though I was REALLY motivated), but I'm learning Chinese now and I sentence mine and read native materials even though I'm at a pretty low level. I just try to choose my material carefully -- a lot of children's books/magazines and children's TV, as well as material written specifically for second-language learners -- and if I find something difficult I go looking for something else.

Fillanzea Wrote:

Quote:Even if I assume you mean native reading and vocab mining, that would be near impossible (or at the very least excruciating) for beginners don't you think?

For absolute beginners, yes -- for middling beginners who have a decent grasp of simple sentence structure, I don't think so. I started reading manga when I could hardly even read hiragana, and that was too early (though I was REALLY motivated), but I'm learning Chinese now and I sentence mine and read native materials even though I'm at a pretty low level. I just try to choose my material carefully -- a lot of children's books/magazines and children's TV, as well as material written specifically for second-language learners -- and if I find something difficult I go looking for something else.

Fair enough. I've been meaning to take a dive into native material sometime soon anyway. Out of curiosity, where would you say the cutoff point is for "absolute beginner"? (I know 1600 words, I assume it's far less than that )

frony0 Wrote:Fair enough. I've been meaning to take a dive into native material sometime soon anyway. Out of curiosity, where would you say the cutoff point is for "absolute beginner"? (I know 1600 words, I assume it's far less than that )

I think it's way more a matter of grammar than vocabulary, because it's much easier to look up a new vocabulary word than to figure out a grammar point you don't understand. I think if you know basic sentence patterns -- things like nakereba naranai, adjective + ku naru, the different ways to say "but" and "and" and "if" and "when," (not to know the detailed nuances of each one, but to roughly recognize them when they show up), question words, how the particles work (again, just roughly) then you can reasonably expect to start reading easier native material.

I see your point. So far every time I've tried native material I've been heavily discouraged (topical!) by the amount of things I don't understand, but I suppose I should be looking for easier things then.

I'm more than halfway through RTK, preparing the next part of my study and I've found out some interesting things:

I've grabbed the .txt files of a few Light Novels, fed them line by line to WWWJDIC's gloss generator, and here's what I found out:

VOLUME 1 : 4806 words
VOLUME 2 : 2623 new words
VOLUME 3 : 2175 new words
VOLUME 4 : 1529 new words
VOLUME 5 : 1507 new words
VOLUME 6 : 1259 new words
VOLUME 7 : 1102 new words
VOLUME 8 : 824 new words

My idea is to create a set of incremental vocabulary cards sorted by the order in which they appear in the text, so that I can study BEFORE I try to read. I think reading will be less frustrating that way.

This approach isn't perfect though. Problems I've identified:

1. WWWJDIC isn't 100% accurate at identifying the word boundaries;
2. Some entries have a large list of possible meanings;
3. For a beginner (like me) it isn't always obvious what is the proper reading based only on EDICT's entries;
4. A large part of the words/expressions will only show up once or twice throughout the whole book. You'll need them to understand it, but the book itself won't help you transfer the knowledge to long term memory.

Here's the current plan:
1. Collect texts with parallel translations;
2. Create an initial set of cards with the help of WWWJDIC;
3. Correct, simplify and refine the cards created in (2) with the help of the parallel translation;
4. Study revised cards and try to read the text again;

I think this may be more helpful than a random set of cards like core6k. I am a firm believer in learning by exercising with native material, and I want to reduce the time it'd take me to learn the vocabulary I need before I can even get started.

Am open to thoughts/suggestions on the matter.

bloodflow Wrote:4. A large part of the words/expressions will only show up once or twice throughout the whole book. You'll need them to understand it, but the book itself won't help you transfer the knowledge to long term memory.

I would humbly suggest that a word that only shows up once or twice in a given book is likely to not be necessary to understanding it. You're used to understanding every word that you read in your native language, but -- when you read something that has unfamiliar words, you probably have lots of strategies to get around the unfamiliar words besides "look it up in the dictionary." For example, reading Moby Dick, there's lots of places where I find an unfamiliar word and think, "Meh, whaling vocabulary, I don't need to know that," or "Meh, descriptive passage, it's not that important to the overall meaning," or "Well, from the context it sounds like it means THIS, but if I'm wrong it's not that big a deal."

If you are shackled to the ideal of 100% comprehension, it will be a much longer, sloggier time before you can read at a pace that's "reading for enjoyment" and not "language study."

bloodflow Wrote:4. A large part of the words/expressions will only show up once or twice throughout the whole book. You'll need them to understand it, but the book itself won't help you transfer the knowledge to long term memory.

That's not a problem. The learned/read ratio shouldn't be 1 (as in you shouldn't want to learn all the words in a book you read - you shouldn't even want to do that with a book in your native tongue). If you only read one book while you learn 10.000 words, then you're not really learning by reading. You're learning by reading a little bit, and spending most of your time learning without reading.

Which is not necessarily wrong, but sounds like you want to learn by reading (because, frankly, it's more enjoyable to do). If you stick to SRS-ing just the words that you're likely to need again (usually it's easy to guesstimate which ones, as you're reading a book), and the ones that keep popping up again, that's plenty. Learning by reading doesn't need to be an exact science.

With this method, the only purpose of your "extracurricular studying" should be aimed at making reading the specific book you're reading easier (as in more fun). That's all. If a word only shows up once, then learning it WILL NOT help you do that. LEARNING IT WOULD BE POINTLESS, as far as this goal (which should be your only goal) is concerned. When a word shows up more than 3-4 times, then it's easier to learn it, than to keep looking it up, so you should learn it.

bloodflow Wrote:I think this may be more helpful than a random set of cards like core6k. I am a firm believer in learning by exercising with native material, and I want to reduce the time it'd take me to learn the vocabulary I need before I can even get started.

When I learned English, I moved on to using native material exclusively (books, for the most part, and watching Cartoon Network - back when it was funny) very early on. And it worked like a charm. Whenever I pick up German (the other language I want to learn, aside from Japanese), that's exactly what I'll do again.

However, I'm not doing that with Japanese. I'm pretty positive that Japanese is a much more difficult language to learn for Europeans, and therefor one must endure some extra pain before moving on to reading. Sure, you could also learn it just by coasting on fun activities like reading comics and watching TV for a few years (and SRS-ing what you encounter most often), but it would take much, much longer than learning a romance or germanic language.

The pain I'm talking about, is precisely stuff like Tae Kim's Clozed Deleted pre-made deck of 800 sentences (it's actually Nukemarine's deck, with Tae Kim's examples, if I understand correctly), and a couple thousand pre-made sentences like Core2K, or, if you can find one, a J-J pre-made sentence deck of similar size. I do think 6000 sentences would be a bit much. You should use your god-like suspending powers, as you're going through any sentence deck, quite liberally, and move on to the reading method once you're able to read without wanting to eat your keyboard out of frustration.

It's my fault for not being clear. Here's some data.

WORDS THAT SHOW UP ONLY ONCE
==============================
VOL 01: 2394
from VOL 01 to VOL 02: 3433
from VOL 01 to VOL 03: 4132
from VOL 01 to VOL 04: 4596
from VOL 01 to VOL 05: 5055
from VOL 01 to VOL 06: 5409
from VOL 01 to VOL 07: 5714

This means that almost half the words in volume 1 only show up once throughout the entire book. Obviously I can't just skip them and expect to understand much of what is going on. And I can't expect help much help in retaining the words in long term memory from just reading that first novel.

I should point out, however, that these words represent only around 10% of the book. The words with 3 or less occurrences in the first novel (3628) represent almost 20%.

After reading the first 7 volumes:
- There are around 150k words (total), and 15k different words.
- 9350 words will only show up three times or less (for a total of 14291 occurrences).
- 5714 words will show up only once.

That means that if you were to ignore these words you'd be ignoring about 10% of the text. Doesn't seem like a viable plan to me.

When I say "word" here I actually mean "word or phrase with an entry in EDICT". Some words in katakana may not be obvious at first but are actually pretty straightforward and easy to memorize once you read its meaning, like ネックレス (necklace).

Obviously you'll need to learn a lot of these words to understand a text even though they only show up once or twice. The word may actually be quite simple and easy, something like 奥さん, or 特に which shows up once and is never mentioned in subsequent volumes even though those are not particularly uncommon words.

DISCLAIMER
I just made a small messy perl script to process the data from WWWJDIC. It may have errors. I'll update the posts if I notice anything significant.

Stansfield123 Wrote:The learned/read ratio shouldn't be 1 (as in you shouldn't want to learn all the words in a book you read - you shouldn't even want to do that with a book in your native tongue). If you only read one book while you learn 10.000 words, then you're not really learning by reading. You're learning by reading a little bit, and spending most of your time learning without reading.

Which is not necessarily wrong, but sounds like you want to learn by reading (because, frankly, it's more enjoyable to do). If you stick to SRS-ing just the words that you're likely to need again (usually it's easy to guesstimate which ones, as you're reading a book), and the ones that keep popping up again, that's plenty. Learning by reading doesn't need to be an exact science.

That's precisely what I intend to do. I was just compiling data and noticed that -- for a beginner -- the initial barrier is substantially steeper than I had thought: almost half the words in the first novel only show up once.

I want to be able to study just the few words I need to read the next 2 pages or so.A general purpose deck like core2k/6k would mean studying things I wouldn't need.

I want to reduce the SRS to the absolute minimum and memorize by trying to read, but for that I need a deck created specifically for the text I'm reading, and I need to know which words show up often and which don't, which words show up only in this volume, the order in which they appear, and which words will show up again in the following pages and following volumes. That's what I'm working on.

I'll probably start out with short stories and children's fairy tales though and see how it works.

Remember that children's stories often use only hiragana and just like Western fairy tales, they aren't really that thrilling.

Stian Wrote:Remember that children's stories often use only hiragana and just like Western fairy tales, they aren't really that thrilling.

There are some good entry level books out there that can be pretty entertaining.
Tsubasa Bunko and Aoi Tori Bunko both have a pretty big collection of easier novels with furigana on all kanji.
Personally, I'm starting to think that I prefer the Tsubasa Bunko series more, as they tend to do re-prints of popular stories and light novels, whereas Aoi Tori Bunko seems to focus on world classics and original stories that are bit too kiddish for my liking. You are right though, the short stories and children's fairy tales are incredibly boring.
However, I would say if someone is just starting to make the move into native material, manga might be easier to start with, as novels obviously have to have a lot of descriptive passages, whereas with manga, you're just reading dialogue.
Bloodflow, honestly, don't worry so much about gathering data and making word lists. Just jump in, start reading, and have fun. You really don't need to worry about understanding every word, as long as you have a general idea of what's happening. With enough practice, you become able to start guessing unknown word meanings based on context, just like you would in your native language.

If any of you like nonfiction, my favorite reading materials are zukan (picture encyclopedias), and educational manga, because that's what I used to read as a child. I used to have shelves and shelves of these, and the full sized heavy paper zukan volumes in particular, weighed a ton. But I think they're fun.

I still find these to be valuable language materials, because they command a more focused reading and re-reading experience, being focused on facts and information, rather than plot and dialogue. It's good to have a variety.

Here are some examples:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/ひみつの図鑑-ニューワイド学研の...4052034821

http://www.amazon.co.jp/日本の歴史-きのうのあしたは……...4904826132

By the way, I was joking when I said Core 6000 was useless.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:By the way, I was joking when I said Core 6000 was useless.

LOL This cracked me up!!

Incredibly awkward...