ghinzdra Wrote:BTW didn t you or nestor pass JPLT 1 or 2 with a magnificient score or in a record time ? how many kanjis are you able to read or write ?

Pfft not me. I didn't even study Japanese for 3 months straight this year. I was busy taking over a rival corporation in a high stakes game of espionage, love, murder, and betrayal. And trying to capture kazelee, a cocaine drug lord.

Corodon Wrote:I'd like to nominate Jim Breen as someone who has done a great service for the Japanese learning community. Not only is his site useful in and of itself, his EDICT/JMDICT/KANJIDICT dictionaries power so many other great resources (this site, Rikaichan, JapanesePod101, etc.). Providing the tools that really revolutionized studying Japanese via computers, and doing so free of charge, this guy is about as much of a hero as it gets.

Definitely, very good nomination. None of us would be here today if it weren't for Jim breen.

how about mr. stephen krashen, for the "input hypothesis", which seems to be the basis for the antimoon and ajatt sort of methods?

Tobberoth Wrote:

Corodon Wrote:I'd like to nominate Jim Breen as someone who has done a great service for the Japanese learning community. Not only is his site useful in and of itself, his EDICT/JMDICT/KANJIDICT dictionaries power so many other great resources (this site, Rikaichan, JapanesePod101, etc.). Providing the tools that really revolutionized studying Japanese via computers, and doing so free of charge, this guy is about as much of a hero as it gets.

Definitely, very good nomination. None of us would be here today if it weren't for Jim breen.

Bit of an overstatement, don't you think?

Can I be a Hero too?

Let's see ... Thora: greatest number of years* learning Japanese, yet still not fluent!

If this honour is bestowed on me, then whenever I offer any constructive criticism of the latest extreme language-learning technique, people will be able to refer to it and dismiss me as 'just jealous'. :-) (* I should fess up to a bit of exaggeration, however - there were some periods of 'inactive' learning over the years.)

edit: I should add - this unique feat involved significant risk (of forgetting and of time/financial redundancy) and significant personal sacrifice (of my language advancement for the sake of career and loved ones). [violin interlude] I also feel I play an important role in helping to bolster the self esteem of the less competitively inclined among us. There are probably other reasons I'm worthy of Hero status... imo. :-)

ghinzdra Wrote:

zazen666 Wrote:I have had the last 3 days off, and have watched about 15 hours of 子ずれ狼 in Japanese...does that count for Hall of heroes nomination?

like what ? longest immersion without a break ?
I dont mind adding people but the record must be clear enough to be an objective for somebody else . It s both an acknowledgment and a source of motivation for other people. If I hadn t already did RTK and KO2001 and unfortunately with a much slower pace , I certainely would have gone for blackmacros record. I have been EXTREMELY happy to read that my post about KO2001 gave him motivation in pulling off that feat . And I really hope he ll succeed in passing JPLT1 within 9 months even if it will make my records even more pitiful :lol: When it s about improving yourself , there s nothing better than competition . There s no way I fail if he s able to succeed in december . That s the spirit. Is there something greater than pushing off the limit of someone and him doing the same for you ?

I d like to add immersion things but for those cases you must clearly state what you claim. Otherwise I think it s more like a personal milestone. Try to come up with a general title.


BTW didn t you or nestor pass JPLT 1 or 2 with a magnificient score or in a record time ? how many kanjis are you able to read or write ?

Well. It was supposed to be a joke-guess it wasn't so obvious.
No, I didn't pass the JPLT 1, but I WAS the first person to find and post about KO2001 on these forums, so that has got to be worth something, right?

No it s more like I have hard time to tell what s serious and what s not.... guess I m the serious type.

for a nomination it must be meaningful , successful and you ve got to sweat a bit for it.... without risk or sacrifice heroes aren t heroes.

Krashken came up with a general theory which can be applied to every language .... antimoon is specifically devoted to english language . Khatz is the one who applied this to the japanese language and contributed to expand the fanbase of those theories.Nevertheless as Newton said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants".... so maybe a collective nomination with khatz or a special nomination....
but jim breen is in.

I m still waiting for some JPLT feat......

I learned enough Japanese while in Japan to pick up girls on the train. Any understanding beyond that has been gravy

you know girls are always very sensible to what pick up artists call "social prestige"
Without the sun the moon cannot shine. :lol:

Is this becoming a love-in?

ghinzdra Wrote:No it s more like I have hard time to tell what s serious and what s not.... guess I'm the serious type. [...]

I'm still waiting for some JPLT feat......

Ghinzdra, I'll stop goofing around here - I think it's a wonderful idea to acknowledge contributions (#1) and celebrate accomplishments. I'm afraid I don't understand, however, this focus on record time or record grades (#2). I'm not convinced that it leads to better results for a greater number of people or it even represents how most people approach language learning. It might even give newcomers a skewed sense of what's important.

Is it possible that this is part of the reason folks haven't been quick to self-report their fantastic JPLT feats and massive kanji knowledge? who knows. I have nothing against healthy competition, but my gut tells me it's not as well suited to language acquisition as to other endeavours. my 2 cents.

8784 words in 4 Months (~75/day):



Toward the end of this experiment I had hundreds and hundreds of reviews waiting for me every day. Unless you're studying for a test, I wouldn't recommend it.

IceCream Wrote:my votes go to:
*thermal, nukemarine, magamo, for the quality, depth, and thought put into posts.
* pubbie and bombpersons for uploading and sharing the Subs2SRS decks!!!!
* trueblue for making posts that make us think about things we might not otherwise
* blackmacros for achieving ridiculous amounts in such a short space of time.
they're not all measurable, but things that have made difference to me in the time ive been studying there's loads of others too though...

Thora Wrote:I think it's a wonderful idea to acknowledge contributions (#1) and celebrate accomplishments. I'm afraid I don't understand, however, this focus on record time or record grades (#2).

Personally I think Ice Cream and Thora are on the right track here. Concrete accomplishments are all well and good, but there are a number of people who really contribute to this forum and who deserve a pat on the back- but there's no metric for that sort of contribution.

Anyway I second all of Ice Creams nominations.

EDIT: cb, that's pretty amazing. Were you studying from a JLPT list? If so, can you link me to where I could find it? I'm the sort of crazy person who would do something like that....

I want a trophy for finding Anki. http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=553 . All your repetitions are belong to me

On a more serious note, I developed iAnki if you want to include it. I also nominate zazen666 for finding 2001 Kanji Odyssey which after more of us adopted turned into quite the phenomenon.

Thora Wrote:

ghinzdra Wrote:No it s more like I have hard time to tell what s serious and what s not.... guess I'm the serious type. [...]

I'm still waiting for some JPLT feat......

Ghinzdra, I'll stop goofing around here - I think it's a wonderful idea to acknowledge contributions (#1) and celebrate accomplishments. I'm afraid I don't understand, however, this focus on record time or record grades (#2). I'm not convinced that it leads to better results for a greater number of people or it even represents how most people approach language learning. It might even give newcomers a skewed sense of what's important.

Is it possible that this is part of the reason folks haven't been quick to self-report their fantastic JPLT feats and massive kanji knowledge? who knows. I have nothing against healthy competition, but my gut tells me it's not as well suited to language acquisition as to other endeavours. my 2 cents.

I know that some people have a hard time to relate with this....
a bit too agressive , a bit egoistic , a bit dephased with reality (as you said it can gives a skewed sense of what s important) ...
I Nevertheless i think this category is important
1nd you must know that there is no better way of achieving a result than aiming for something better . It s one of the most well known tactics .And above all thing breaking a record necesserly involves to do more than what you would have normally done . Did you read how michael phelps did what he did ?
2nd Moreover even if you do it for you ,you always look for some kind of recognition in what you do . You can be unaware of it but we are done such a way that we always at least IMAGINE other people .
3rd It can give ideas to other people . Society is about bounds , normality and mediocrity; it always teach you what is impossible , it never prompt you to do something extraordinary .The very first thing to do something extraordinary is to forget all notion about what is possible and impossible .Without heisig how many of us would have thought it was possible to learn this much kanji ?Sometimes just to know there is someone else is enough even if what you plan to do is totally outscaling what he did. When blackmacros reported how he set this record after reading my post about completing KO2001 I think it s enough of a proof that emulation is also an extremely efficient device for improving oneself.And carving this in the stone through record is the embidoment of this philosophy .

Like all device it can be misused but it doesnt make the device useless or harmful for all that ... You just have to use it in a good way.


II As to why there isn t many people in the secund category I think it s a bit early to draw conclusions .
1st : some people are extremely humble , not only are they downscaling their results but to a certain extent they are afraid of public gaze even when it s praise
2nd most people are underestimating themselves : they don t want to brag about what they did because they suppose that someone did better . As precisely I still don t know what have done other people and I m still waiting I ll speak for myself .Though I have passed the 2Kyuu in one year I know there MUST have people who have done better around here . I dont remember who told me he did the same thing without SRS and all this stuff. And blackmacros is aiming for the 1kyuu in 9 months .... (still not in his pocket but I want to believe he ll succeed) .And here and there you keep running in people that tells about the friend of a friend who got the 1kyuu in a year...
same thing for kanjis I have right now according to anki around 2238 kanjis in my deck. But Khatz talked in one of this posts about his progress after 18 months and he mentionned something like more than 4000 kanjis (god only knows how much he know right now.... ).... and there s another guy on this forum who talked about his success to one of the advanced kentei exam and how s planning to take one of the most difficult level . (for those who don t know kentei exam : it tests your knowlege of kanji through 12 levels from mere 80 to up 6000 .... )

As you see I don t have name , I don t have exact figures but I have hints there are some great guys out there.
3rd as I said earlier and in connection with my 2nd point the topic is yesterday old....you can t have results if you dont put some serious effort and time in . And you can t have time if you spend all time hanging around here no matter how great this forum is. Balzac said something about how great things are always a lonely journey . So I think it would n be far fetched to suppose that a few of those guys are working right now. And it would nt be too demanding to wait just a little....


To wrap it up : there is no need whatsoever for you to relate to the 2nd category....Lets just say there are some people who like records , who like competition and it s their way to surpass themselves. It s just a mean , not a goal.

Thora Wrote:Ghinzdra, I'll stop goofing around here - I think it's a wonderful idea to acknowledge contributions (#1) and celebrate accomplishments. I'm afraid I don't understand, however, this focus on record time or record grades (#2). I'm not convinced that it leads to better results for a greater number of people or it even represents how most people approach language learning. It might even give newcomers a skewed sense of what's important.

Is it possible that this is part of the reason folks haven't been quick to self-report their fantastic JPLT feats and massive kanji knowledge? who knows. I have nothing against healthy competition, but my gut tells me it's not as well suited to language acquisition as to other endeavours. my 2 cents.

Maybe because someone has to decide who makes it on the hall of heroes, and not everyone is going to make the cut. Whatever the criteria are, it needs to be something very visible, measurable, and objective for this not to turn real personal, real fast.

The records category can be important. However, it loses oompf if it relates to how much you accomplish in total hours versus number of days the hours are spread against. When someone says they did 2000 kanji in 19 days, they probably took the same number of study hours as one who did 2000 kanji in 120 days.

By putting concepts and accomplishments in hours, it helps extend the idea of learning a foreign language to those of us with limited hours per day to use. Two hours a day for a year is 700 hours. Look at the wall of heroes to see what someone has done with just 100 hours.

Milestones to be sure, but probably not something you want to turn into records since, well, you only get to a milestone once. You can't and shouldn't want to start over again.

Nukemarine Wrote:The records category can be important. However, it loses oompf if it relates to how much you accomplish in total hours versus number of days the hours are spread against. When someone says they did 2000 kanji in 19 days, they probably took the same number of study hours as one who did 2000 kanji in 120 days.

By putting concepts and accomplishments in hours, it helps extend the idea of learning a foreign language to those of us with limited hours per day to use. Two hours a day for a year is 700 hours. Look at the wall of heroes to see what someone has done with just 100 hours.

Milestones to be sure, but probably not something you want to turn into records since, well, you only get to a milestone once. You can't and shouldn't want to start over again.

You made a very good point....
if we talk about mere efficiency then you re defitenely right ....
I think it would also be great to make comparaison between something intensive like what did blackmacros and something more extensive...it would give us a good indication about the process of warming up to a language and the efficiency memorization
But putting a lot of hour is still something worthy of praise and a hint of something else : devotion.
So let s put them both : absolute time and relative time

would you mind to tell us how much hours a day you used during this period blackmacros ?

I think I ll have to add something like
"first found this book or this software" and "outstanding contribution to the forum " otherwise I m gonna get hanged by a screaming crowd .... :lol:

for the latter it would be good to have a vote system .... I know most of the people who are nominated here but still I d like it to be as clear and fair as possible.

Well, when I finished the 2nd KO book in 11 days I worked on average from 9 until 4 to review and add (I treated it as my job basically. Not in the bad sense, but in the sense that Japanese was important enough to me that I wanted to dedicate my 'working hours' to it). 7 hours a day. The first half of the process I probably worked more than that, but the 2nd half I got much better at the process so I worked a bit less. So overall, over 11 days,

KO2001 book 2: 7 * 11 = 77 hours.

I'd like to nominate Alyks for the excellent Movie Method which should get a lot more publicity than it does. I didn't use it when I first learnt to write the kanji, but its helping me a lot now to remember the onyomi post-Heisig.

movie method seems also to be used by a fair amount of people here....
ok he s in.

BTW correct me if I m wrong but is this not an application of memory palace and dominic o brien town/vocabulary method ?

vosmiura Wrote:I want a trophy for finding Anki. http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=553 . All your repetitions are belong to me

On a more serious note, I developed iAnki if you want to include it. I also nominate zazen666 for finding 2001 Kanji Odyssey which after more of us adopted turned into quite the phenomenon.

Yea! Cheers. Believe it or not, I did put some effort to finding that book. it was my unhappiness with the randomness of the AJJATT method of mining sentences that made me begin to look for some existing material. I was all over the net with keywords like "Kanji","frequency", "example sentences" etc trying to find the right deal. AND posting about KO was my very first post on this site (had only been a lurker before), cause I that it looked ideal for what we all wanted to do after RTK. I had to defend the book to a few early critics, and now look at it! So, I nominate myself

Cheers for finding Anki!

and how about a prize for whoever has been SRSing the longest? I have been doing it 2 years now steady, which is amaizing. I dont think I have every done anything daily for two years before (not of real value anyway...)

ok ok I got your message :lol:

I ll create a sub category
so you re in and vosmiura for anki....

even if I dont think that anki will have as much add on as firefox for instance it could become problematic with the growing success of anki if every author of an addon claims something . So I d like to take it slowly...

EDIT: about the longest SRSing thing.... this is exactly what I m talking about....
I m not necessarly against but this is not supposed to become a mexican army with more general than soldier.... : So elaborate a bit about it and drop it again in the topic within 1 month...