Alright... well... where to start?

First, let me ask a question: How good are Wakan's sentences? Are they written by natives or do some of them sound weird? I'll have to ask my Japanese roommate when I see him in a few days, but until then, I'm hoping someone can clear that up for me.

Second, I am currently taking an advanced Japanese course at my college (I know, boo classes, but it's good listening), and this new course was a huge step from last years course. So, I find myself struggling a great deal, and know I can remedy this with some good ol' vocab learning. Basically, I want to take the vocab, get a sentence for it, and throw it in anki. Bam, hopefully my problem will be solved.

So, my third point is another question, really: If Wakan is no good for example sentences, then where do I get good ones from? I tried asking my Japanese roommate for some, but he got tired of that real quick and furthermore, sometimes he couldn't really think of a good one. So I turn to you, O 日本語-philes, won't you help?

I've been using kenkyuusha electronic dictionary for now. It's ok.

I use yahoo.co.jp (great dictionary), excite.co.jp (uses kenkyuusha), and alc.co.jp (dubious translations, but lots of examples). And then if none of them have a sentence I'm comfortable with, I use my electronic dictionary, which uses Genius v.2. And if that doesn't work, I have a Kodansha dictionary that sometimes has good sentences, and the チャレンジ kids' dictionary by Benesse (it's all in Japanese, but has good sentences). Usually I can find decent sentences out of all of those.

I tried using the dictionary at goo.ne.jp, but I don't like it much. It doesn't seem to have much in the way of sentences that I like.

I usually pick 2-3 sentences at a minimum if I can.

I *don't* use EDICT, and I avoid the Tanaka corpus. I have the Tanuki corpus, but I haven't ever used it as a source for sentences.

I use Mycroft and drop all of my search tools into the drop-down search box in Firefox. Makes life a LOT easier.

http://www.google.co.jp

With enough perseverance you can find a great natural sentence with google.

I'm all for Google for most things, but finding a 'natural sentence' when you're just learning the word has got to be one of the hardest things to use it for. How do you -know- it's natural?

@ Ryuujin27 - IIRC, Wakan's sentences come from the Tanaka corpus, which means that it has some mistakes/unnatural sentences.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Alright... well... where to start?

First, let me ask a question: How good are Wakan's sentences? Are they written by natives or do some of them sound weird? I'll have to ask my Japanese roommate when I see him in a few days, but until then, I'm hoping someone can clear that up for me.

Second, I am currently taking an advanced Japanese course at my college (I know, boo classes, but it's good listening), and this new course was a huge step from last years course. So, I find myself struggling a great deal, and know I can remedy this with some good ol' vocab learning. Basically, I want to take the vocab, get a sentence for it, and throw it in anki. Bam, hopefully my problem will be solved.

So, my third point is another question, really: If Wakan is no good for example sentences, then where do I get good ones from? I tried asking my Japanese roommate for some, but he got tired of that real quick and furthermore, sometimes he couldn't really think of a good one. So I turn to you, O 日本語-philes, won't you help?

honestly, the best way to learn vocab is to use it, makes mistakes, and have the teacher correct you. just learn the words the good, ol' fashioned way and try to use them.

Yeah I got a hold of one of my Japanese friends and read him a few of the sentences. He said that some were ok, but some just sounded funny. Oh well, so much for my gold mine of sentences.

I guess I'll have to go searching through dictionaries like everyone said.

Thanks for the recommendation for the yahoo dictionary! I don't know why I've never tried it before.

P.S. - TGWeaver : For some reason I've always found when I do this, it seems to form bad habits for me in Japanese, so that when I do learn the right way, I still use the wrong way that I had originally tried. That's why I started subscribing the Katzumoto's whole "the best Japanese is imitating Japanese" thing. I think he hit the nail dead on.

TGWeaver's method is a good way if you want to have Japanese running away to hide at the sight of you for the rest of their lives. I take it he has never suffered having to communicate with people who have learned a language in this way. I have to deal with such bullshit "english speakers" everyday. Sometimes I can see they're ready to scold me for not understanding their invented bullshit, just cause "that's what the dictionary says the word means".

parasitius Wrote:TGWeaver's method is a good way if you want to have Japanese running away to hide at the sight of you for the rest of their lives. I take it he has never suffered having to communicate with people who have learned a language in this way. I have to deal with such bullshit "english speakers" everyday. Sometimes I can see they're ready to scold me for not understanding their invented bullshit, just cause "that's what the dictionary says the word means".

Oh man, I have a friend like this. He'll get seriously mad if I tell him the word doesn't get used like that and insist the dictionary is right. I wonder if it's because he learned to talk English via this method, too?

Could anybody help me out with yahoo's dictionary? I look up something, and I can't figure out which parts are the example sentences.

http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?enc=UTF-8...=1&dtype=0

for example

首から上の部分。かしら。こうべ。「―を深く下げる」

Those bits at the end in the brackets are the example sentences.

What's with the '-' at the beginning there? I guess that's where the word would go? Jeez, they're lazy.

alyks Wrote:What's with the '-' at the beginning there? I guess that's where the word would go? Jeez, they're lazy.

Pretty much all J-J dictionaries use a dash to indicate where the word goes in the example. This makes more sense when it's actually taking up space on paper.