We're lucky to have some Japanese members. Hopefully you'll tell some friends in case you get too worn out here...

Maybe I should find a Japanese site about learning English and Canada. It might be amusing to hear Japanese explaining strange Canadian culture to other Japanese. =]

"Those damn Canadians, they're so insular! They hate foreigners! I taught Japanese there for two years and didn't make any friends!"

Tobberoth Wrote:(Of course, you're all more than welcome )

Much more than welcome, your contribution to the forum is like gold to us! And the level of English proficiency that you display is very motivating.

Also, magamo, thank you so much for that explanation about SRS in Japanese. I'm definitely mining it and re-using it with my Japanese friends.

[but please don't mine my posts, for you own good ]

harhol Wrote:"Those damn Canadians, they're so insular! They hate foreigners! I taught Japanese there for two years and didn't make any friends!"

爆笑

This reminds me of someone last year attempting to study by mining Japanese text from 2ch. I'd say the English level on this forum is a lot more "real-life" than the Japanese on 2ch though.

@Thora: I know a hundred or so current/former 留学生 studying/who studied in Canada. There isn't really much interesting in the way of culture shock unfortunately. Mostly just stuff about how everyone is poorly dressed (major issue among the girls I know, they want to go clothes shopping but everything is ugly & poor quality to them), store clerks are impolite, no wearing slippers in the bathroom, people kissing in public, it's goddamn cold (-50C winters in Edmonton yay), it's もったいないぐらい広い etc. If you want to take a look for yourself just search mixi for people with public nikki.

First:
Broken English never stopped me posting on this forum.

Second:
Magamo was only being a nice member and welcoming a new member.
I guess by no means he had the intention to let us out of the conversation, because afterall, we can understand japanese, or at least some of us, at least in some degree.

Third:
You are crazy to be mining English from here. This forum's English quality is quite good, but is populated by lots of people that don't have English as first language. (I sometimes think that lately native kids write worse English than mine's, but wth!)

Raise you hand if English is not your first language.

o/

mentat_kgs Wrote:Raise you hand if English is not your first language.

My first language was baby-speak but I started learning English soon after.

magamo Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:one might wonder why such people visit a forum such as this though. (Of course, you're all more than welcome )

The reason why I'm here? That's because I stumbled on the subs2srs thread.

I came across AJATT a year or so ago when I was looking for a good English learning method and was truly impressed by his Japanese. Of course, it looked too good to be true; I thought his Japanese posts had been written by his Japanese accomplice trying to sell bogus language learning software.

But it doesn't seem to be selling anything, and I was like "Hmm... This guy's suffering from serious superiority complex. But if this SRS thing is 1/10 efficient as advertised, still it might be worth trying." So I gave it a shot and started SRSing. I think I've been mining English sentences for about 7 months. Actually I had mined tons of sentences from posts on this forum before I finally made my first post in here.

Considering my English was next to nothing, I think SRS worked wonders. But I wanted it to be more fun and take advantage of videos. Then came the subs2srs. Of course, I could just download it and ignore this forum. But hey, sentences I've picked up from this forum keep popping up in my SRS, and people who wrote them are having a hard time finding Japanese subtitles. How can I ignore them? I can transcribe Japanese shows and it'll help them a lot. I know other people who might be able to help them too. I just couldn't shut my eyes to the people who helped me and are having trouble.

Anyway, I think posting on this forum is better than lurking. After all, I'm learning English.

Thora Wrote:4th Japanese member: Jarvik (sort of wink)

Yeah, his knowledge of the Japanese language is amazing.

if that's the case, would you mind passing along some japanese forums you visit? are there any similar forums dedicated to learning english?

Thora Wrote:We're lucky to have some Japanese members. Hopefully you'll tell some friends in case you get too worn out here...

Maybe I should find a Japanese site about learning English and Canada. It might be amusing to hear Japanese explaining strange Canadian culture to other Japanese. =]

There probably has been quite a number of Japanese onlookers lately from the smart.fm
website. The majority of users there are Japanese studying English. The English Feedback/英語でのフィードバック forum seems to be dominated by RTKers and there are dozens of Remembering the Kanji lists.

OW yeah magano, can you share more of your experience learning English?
Can you point other forums you visited (if they are in Japanese, it is even better)?

I wonder how many Japanese people use Anki. The Japanese translation is annoyingly incomplete.

Nukemarine Wrote:Ahibba, don't confuse what we do with RTK (writing with recognition being an English keyword) with what the Japanese school system teaches (writing, pronunciation, use in words, etc).

I'm not talking about RTK. There are many people who have learned writing the kanji + pronunciation + compounds etc. in few months - 2 years.

Nukemarine Wrote:Only reason I'm saying this is your post seemed a bit arrogant (also I said such things in the past and regret them now in hindsight).

I'm not saying that gaijin are superior to nihonjin. But in any culture/language, there are many foreigners who surpass the natives.

I know many Indians who speak English with greater eloquence than the British.

bodhisamaya Wrote:most of the active users are not native speakers.

How did you know that?

mentat_kgs Wrote:Raise you hand if English is not your first language

I forgot my first language, but it was definitely not English.

ahibba Wrote:

bodhisamaya Wrote:most of the active users are not native speakers.

How did you know that?

http://forum.koohii.com/userlist.php?use...rch=Submit

Tobberoth Wrote:How cool, at least 3 people on this forum has Japanese as their first language... one might wonder why such people visit a forum such as this though. (Of course, you're all more than welcome )

Isn't it great! Masaman first and now two more native speakers. Yay

@mentat - I know what you mean. Many non-native English speakers write better English than many native speakers. The expression is often somehow more ...elegant? But it would be a pity if saying that ever discouraged anyone with less than perfect English from participating. Seems like forums can be good way to practice.

@ jarvik. Sounds like you should encourage them to try a different Canadian city. haha. I was kind of imagining posts like harhol's example or something like: "I read an article and Canadians have an identity complex so one must never ever mention the U.S.A." or "Canadians have a deep cultural tradition of politeness as a result of centuries of conflict with the indigenous peoples, so one can never tell what a Canadian is really thinking." I cringe a wee bit thinking of Japanese lurkers in some of the threads on this forum

I have to say, each time I'm reminded that RTK's members are from countries literally spanning the globe, I'm kind of in awe of what Fabrice has created. It's every continent, isn't it (any Africans?) I'd best stop here before this gets any more off topic and ...and I start getting weepy sentimental...

bodhisamaya Wrote:

ahibba Wrote:

bodhisamaya Wrote:most of the active users are not native speakers.

How did you know that?

http://forum.koohii.com/userlist.php?use...rch=Submit

Tobberoth sure has a lot of posts in less than a year!

I'm also impressed that Magamo has such good English for only using an SRS for 7 months! I wouldn't have guessed he or she wasn't a native speaker of English (as many others assumed).

Wow. Another point for SRS systems.

When I left Arkansas at 旧, I kind of had to re-learn English conversation. Though correct English grammar was taught in school, it was never used in everyday conversation by anyone I knew. When I talk to people back home on the phone now, I can't believe I ever sounded like that. But I did. It is like a second language.

ahibba Wrote:But in any culture/language, there are many foreigners who surpass the natives.

I know many Indians who speak English with greater eloquence than the British.

Passion and motivation for a language can certainly lead to a higher level than even native speakers of that language. As long as people stick with it they can get farther than they imagine!

People from India have a pretty big advantage though it's practically their first language for a lot of them. I wish I had that advantage in English from a young age ...but then again I think learning a foreign language is a great joy in life, something we don't get to love and appreciate when it's our native tongue.

ahibba Wrote:There are many people who have learned writing the kanji + pronunciation + compounds etc. in few months [...]

Again, please expand. How? For what purpose? How do you know? I attended a Japanese cram school for mostly Chinese and Korean students preparing to take Japanese University entrance exams. Even they couldn't do it in a few months. I'm genuinely interested.

Thora Wrote:@mentat - I know what you mean. Many non-native English speakers write better English than many native speakers. The expression is often somehow more ...elegant? But it would be a pity if saying that ever discouraged anyone with less than perfect English from participating. Seems like forums can be good way to practice.

I really wasn't discouraging people to participate. I actualy was doing the oposite. I want more and more people from everywhere here. They just shouldn't put sentences from here into their SRSs ^_^.

I was just agreeing with you about the quality. I know you weren't discouraging people.

I had wondered before if by complimenting exceptionally good language skills, I might inadvertently be making someone who's still less fluent a bit intimidated or self-conscious. It was just my way of trying to prevent that.

TGWeaver Wrote:if that's the case, would you mind passing along some japanese forums you visit? are there any similar forums dedicated to learning english?

mentat_kgs Wrote:OW yeah magano, can you share more of your experience learning English?
Can you point other forums you visited (if they are in Japanese, it is even better)?

I briefly explained the site and gave the link to the site in this thread (See post #214-). If you watch anime, you might be interested in the forum.

About 2ch, there is a board for English learners. But most threads are, um, not quite useful to serious learners. It could be interesting if you want to learn colloquial Japanese. Also, there is Chat in English Thread on the board. The thread is filled with trolls just like typical anonymous *chan, but I've seen several foreigners in the thread.

I knew several other Japanese language sites, but I deleted all bookmarks from my browser since I started adopting the AJATT method...

As for mining from forums, I know it's not the ideal sources of good grammar. But I think it's better to pick what I want to understand and say. I don't see mined sentences as "golden reference" that can't be wrong. I can fix my grammar later by reading and listening to lots of English. If a usage I learned is wrong, then it should be used less frequent than the correct one, and I'll know it. Also, I often look in a dictionary or google the phrase before I create a new card to see if it's correct.

Heh I don't think SRS'ing our sentences has done any significant harm mate. I had assumed you were a native English speaker! ;-)

I can only hope my Japanese progresses as well as your English clearly has!

EDIT: Also [related to the discussion a few pages back about the numbers I had put forward]- I had completely forgotten to take into account reviews.

But for RtK1+Kana+KO Books 1 + 2 the schedule has you going at a pace of around 100 cards/day. Which means you'll end up with a dail review close to 1000 cards am I right? I can do 200 reviews in around an hour generally, so 1000 cards would be around 5 hours of reviewing.

Initially that might seem impossible (and I sure as hell wouldn't *want* to do that). But lets take the numbers Nukemarine put forward about the Language Defence Institute; 12 hours study a day. That leaves 7 hours to continue adding material which is, I think, sufficient to keep going at that pace.

And yes, I know- that would be tough, it would be gruelling, it would *not* be fun. It would be possible, though, imo.

Also note: I'm not saying passing JLPT1 in 3 months is possible. I'm just saying following the schedule I laid out would be possible. I'm still not really sure whether that would cover enough content to pass the test or not though.

As a native speaker of English, I think the quality of English on these boards is very good. I haven't seen any other forums that even come close to 'correct' English as RvTK.

Magamo: your English is amazing for only 7months with an SRS. You inspire me to stop wasting my time on English boards like this

Magamo: I find it hard to believe when you say "I'm studying English". Judging from you writing, your just like a native speaker to me. I'm kind of curious as to what exactly it is you don't know yet.