@Zorlee: Congratz! I'm getting closer to 10k

Awesome, dude!

recently was accepted to do an artist's residency on the island of Shodoshima, technically Kagawa-ken, but it is the largest island in the Seto 内海. They pay for housing, studio, materials, food and provide a car for travel. All I need to provide is a plane ticket, which my credit card points will come in handy for...I'll be there for 3 months from mid-may to mid-august, with some time to travel around the country... need to get my int'l driver's liscence!

http://www.npo-artbiotop.org/action/art/...uyoko.html

http://en.air-j.info/result/center_37322 (this one has some nice pictures)

I'm not sure I've really had any milestones, but I've had so many yard pebbles that I can't resist gathering them up in to a mile-pile.

The first is that i am now able to read things away from the computer while still retaining a reasonable level of understanding. I've been reading 赤い指 (thanks to icecream for the recommendation), and although I was having difficulty at the beginning, i now feel like i can understand most of it quite easily. Sometimes I almost feel like I'm reading English in that I forget about the language and just follow the story without thinking about it. I'm really excited about this because, although I'm not there yet, I'm finally starting to feel like a Japanese book could be a suitable alternative to an English one when I just want to relax and read.

I've also started to prefer raw manga to translations because of the way they're written, rather than just because they're in Japanese.

Another thing I've noticed is that I can now read things in Japanese when someone else is listening to the radio in English. When I tried this before it was impossible to concentrate and I ended up just re-reading the same sentence again and again until I gave up.

The final pebble on the heap is that yesterday I finally got round to posting again on Lang-8. I'd tried as a beginner but it was so hard that I quit, and it's been about 1 and a half years since I last posted there. It was so much easier this time and I would have been happy with just that, but I also got comment saying that, despite all the mistakes, and not counting the sentence that didn't make any sense, my writing flowed quite well. I don't think they were just being polite since they only left a comment without any corrections.

@DtCamero: Sounds great. Hope you enjoy it.

I'm heading to 6000 vocabulary words and only 300 sentence cards(mixture of production,sentence and now, just recently, MCD-style cards). This isn't really an achievement but more of a realization. The more farther you get in Japanese, the less impressive it is. I really know now that I really know nothing. Not much in terms of vocabulary, not much in terms of kanji, not much in terms of speaking and not much in general.

Don't get me wrong here, my progress has been well but the more farther you get, the less impressive it gets. Now my new goals are simple: work on building up keigo,speaking,writing and improve my kanji ability further. Anything else is just a side project but nonetheless, it will help.

I finally understand when people say it takes people 10 years to learn a language, that is indeed true. It does take a long while if you want the whole package but I still believe and will keep believing it's possible in 5 years. Hopefully I can prove this to myself by then. If not, move on and keep learning.

ta12121 Wrote:I finally understand when people say it takes people 10 years to learn a language, that is indeed true.

I think you'll be saying this again in a couple more years!

"I finally understand when people say it takes 10 years."
(Two years later)
"Oh wait, now I finally understand why people say it take so long."
(Two years later)
"Now I really understand why people say it takes so long."

Pretty soon tens years will have gone by and then you'll finally actually understand.

(And you are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you'll find
That ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You've missed the starting gun)

I just got a mail from the Japanese embassy here in Oslo and they said I'll get recommended for the MEXT scholarship 2012 - Japanese studies, 1 Year.
WOHO!
The final answer from Japan will come late-May according the embassy, but according to history it'll probably come late June/July...
I hope my chances are good for getting it! I know there's no quota per country, but I was the only Norwegian that got recommended, so I hope that counts for something...

ta12121 Wrote:The more farther you get in Japanese, the less impressive it is.

Speak for yourself (I realize you are). I'm nearly done with Core6k and I've avoided reading Japanese pretty much from around the 3000 mark when I realized it was a bit of a struggle. Now I'm <300 from the end and yesterday I picked up a newspaper article and read 90% of it no sweat. Its the most bizarre feeling being able to pick up stuff that I actually consider "real" Japanese material and read it and understand a lot of it. Then picked up a light novel and read the first few pages and counted the words I didn't know and maybe only struggled on 10% there too. Its such an incredible feat. I've studied Japanese off and on and with mixed degrees of enthusiasm for nearly 8 years and its only been in the last year as I've plodded through the core6k and am nearly done do I see real strides. It may be that you only experience this moment once in your lifetime of studying a language and after that you slowly stop caring until you fail to realize that you are near fluent in the language. But I think if you can stop and step back and look at where you have come from you will always be impressed with what you have accomplished. And should this prove difficult, go talk to beginners in the language and ask them "what are you struggling with now?" It'll give you a decent reality check.

I don't want to be a grammar nazi but I looked this up weeks ago.

It should be further NOT farther . Farther is for distances in real life.

Tzadeck Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:I finally understand when people say it takes people 10 years to learn a language, that is indeed true.

I think you'll be saying this again in a couple more years!

"I finally understand when people say it takes 10 years."
(Two years later)
"Oh wait, now I finally understand why people say it take so long."
(Two years later)
"Now I really understand why people say it takes so long."

Pretty soon tens years will have gone by and then you'll finally actually understand.

(And you are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you'll find
That ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You've missed the starting gun)

You are right on that one, it makes sense because I've been saying those exact words when I started learning Japanese and still to this day. I feel maybe it's because I don't really have as much time as I did before but then again, that doesn't phase me. If it's something I really want to do and keep doing, I'll find the time to make it happen.

vix86 Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:The more farther you get in Japanese, the less impressive it is.

Speak for yourself (I realize you are). I'm nearly done with Core6k and I've avoided reading Japanese pretty much from around the 3000 mark when I realized it was a bit of a struggle. Now I'm <300 from the end and yesterday I picked up a newspaper article and read 90% of it no sweat. Its the most bizarre feeling being able to pick up stuff that I actually consider "real" Japanese material and read it and understand a lot of it. Then picked up a light novel and read the first few pages and counted the words I didn't know and maybe only struggled on 10% there too. Its such an incredible feat. I've studied Japanese off and on and with mixed degrees of enthusiasm for nearly 8 years and its only been in the last year as I've plodded through the core6k and am nearly done do I see real strides. It may be that you only experience this moment once in your lifetime of studying a language and after that you slowly stop caring until you fail to realize that you are near fluent in the language. But I think if you can stop and step back and look at where you have come from you will always be impressed with what you have accomplished. And should this prove difficult, go talk to beginners in the language and ask them "what are you struggling with now?" It'll give you a decent reality check.

Look back at my previous accomplishments? When I think about it, I should give myself more credit but I always feel the more you don't know will be always greater than what you know. Which is true to any extent but I believe this is just a part of learning a language. There isn't a straight line to the finish but rather, ups and downs only.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:I don't want to be a grammar nazi but I looked this up weeks ago.

It should be further NOT farther . Farther is for distances in real life.

I looked backed at the sentence I wrote yesterday. I hate when I make these kinds of basic mistakes...

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:I don't want to be a grammar nazi but I looked this up weeks ago.

It should be further NOT farther . Farther is for distances in real life.

Haha. I like that you mentioned that it should be 'further,' but you failed to mention that he wrote 'more (X)er.' It's not like it would be magically correct if her wrote "further"; it would still be 'more further,' which, to me, is a lot more of a fundamental and obvious mistake.

Also, why get mad about other people not knowing what you apparently didn't know until a few weeks ago? Not to mention the fact that this rule isn't as straightforward as you think it is.

(Incidentally, I didn't make this post to point out a grammar mistake of ta--feel free to make all the grammar mistakes you want. I only mean to make fun of the nature of the criticism of ta's grammar. Next time make your criticism more better.)

I just finished the Basic and Essential sections of Tae Kim today. This is a pretty big accomplishment for me since this was the first thing I jumped into after RTK. It feels good to be done, and my comprehension is getting a lot better, but I still have a long way to go. I feel like my weakest point is vocabulary right now, so I was thinking of going through core2k/6k, perhaps while trying my hand at a subs2srs deck? What do you guys think?

Tzadeck Wrote:

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:I don't want to be a grammar nazi but I looked this up weeks ago.

It should be further NOT farther . Farther is for distances in real life.

Haha. I like that you mentioned that it should be 'further,' but you failed to mention that he wrote 'more (X)er.' It's not like it would be magically correct if her wrote "further"; it would still be 'more further,' which, to me, is a lot more of a fundamental and obvious mistake.

Also, why get mad about other people not knowing what you apparently didn't know until a few weeks ago? Not to mention the fact that this rule isn't as straightforward as you think it is.

(Incidentally, I didn't make this post to point out a grammar mistake of ta--feel free to make all the grammar mistakes you want. I only mean to make fun of the nature of the criticism of ta's grammar. Next time make your criticism more better.)

god you're so annoying. I was irritated at the grammar error. I can't help the fact that I feel irritated.. that's human nature. AND The person who made that mistake was irritated at his error too. so there's no problem. we're both irritated at it and we both know that it should be further than farther. so why are you starting shit? get over yourself.

Oh and I didn't notice that he said "more" farther at the time because all that stood out at the time was the fact that he used used farther incorrectly. I don't read into people's post that deeply or that intensely or read it a million times. I just glanced and notice the word farther so i'm sorry I didn't notice or rather I don't need to be and you need to accept that.

making slow but steady progress in mandarin, despite not having nearly enough time to spend on it. Read through my first manhua with pretty good comprehension. Listening comprehension of raw audio is improving steadily. feels good.

Haha.

Well, at any rate, grammarians disagree about the further/farther thing. Historically you could use either for the usage ta intended, so a lot of grammarians disagree that further would be correct in this situation and farther would not. Both of them are just comparative forms of 'far.' Farther comes from the middle English 'ferthere,' which was just a pronunciation variation of the earlier middle English 'furthere,' which has become further.

In other words, historically they're just two ways of pronouncing the same word, and that was true until fairly recently when some silly people writing style guides decided to distinguish between them.

I won the first prize in a Japanese speech contest conducted by the Japanese embassy. YAY!
And the prize was awesome - a free round-trip ticket to Japan!

Zorlee Wrote:I won the first prize in a Japanese speech contest conducted by the Japanese embassy. YAY!
And the prize was awesome - a free round-trip ticket to Japan!

That contest you were talking about in your thread about pitch accent and Lang-8? You won it? Wow, that's awesome, congratulations!

Also, Hiromi rocks

Yup!
I got a Japanese friend of mine to record the speech, then I worked my ass off to imitate everything he did. Intonation, speed, energy, everything.
And it worked! YAY!

And yeah, Hiromi kicks ass! Have you ever seen her live?

Zorlee Wrote:Yup!
I got a Japanese friend of mine to record the speech, then I worked my ass off to imitate everything he did. Intonation, speed, energy, everything.
And it worked! YAY!

And yeah, Hiromi kicks ass! Have you ever seen her live?

Haha, that's a surefire way to nail down native-likeness You must be unconsciously reciting that speech in your sleep by now.

I only discovered Hiromi recently, only been watching her live performances on youtube. I like her aggressive and catchy playing the most.

Zorlee Wrote:I won the first prize in a Japanese speech contest conducted by the Japanese embassy. YAY!
And the prize was awesome - a free round-trip ticket to Japan!

Awesome!!! When do you go? How long do you get to stay for??

You're really kicking ass this year, it's great to see!!!　おめでとう！！！

TwoMoreCharacters: Yeah, I practiced it so much that I actually had a dream about it! How sick is that? Haha!
Check out this clip:

One of the most beautiful performances I've ever seen.

IceCream: Thank you!!! =)
I get to go whenever I want and stay for as long as I want! Yay! But I don't have that much time / money, so I'll probably stay for 10-14 days sometime in May (in-between finals).
I'll visit my friends in Osaka, and I'll probably visit some friends in Nagoya as well!
I'm SO looking forward to eat Japanese food again

@Zorlee: Thank you so much for introducing this intriguing artist. She's breathtaking O_O

[Edit] She looks like she's... in full ecstacy. すごい。

My pleasure!
I saw her live in Osaka last year! It was amazing!