Hey all you followers of the AJATT Method. Khazumoto's site too brought me here. I'm about 600 through RTK1, and have been listening/watching japanese television through keyholetv and tvuplayer. I was wondering one thing though. He says to watch everything without subtitles, but I was thinking that since Jdoramas are so short (average about 11 episodes), that I should watch them once with subtitles to get down the whole story and such, and then later on watch them without, and really pay attention to the spoken language. Do you think this would be beneficial or detrimental to my learning? Given that I have almost no basic knowledge of the language with the exception of the 600 or so Kanji and up to lesson 10 in Pimsleur's, with some basic grammar and vocabulary study on the side (really I know nothing I just started on the 18th of this month). But I am a quick learner and hope to not rush, but coast through this process, like a nice lexus going over a rocky road.

Definitely watch them with subtitles to understand the story, if you're a beginner. Watch them without the first time and see what you catch, then watch the second time to fully understand the story and characters, then never use them again.

You could even try using the Japanese subtitles if you are confident. Better still, watch a Western movie that you know well, one you can still remember what they say, and watch it repeatedly in Japanese. Then you'll have a better chance of guessing the meaning.

phauna Wrote:Definitely watch them with subtitles to understand the story, if you're a beginner. Watch them without the first time and see what you catch, then watch the second time to fully understand the story and characters, then never use them again.

You could even try using the Japanese subtitles if you are confident. Better still, watch a Western movie that you know well, one you can still remember what they say, and watch it repeatedly in Japanese. Then you'll have a better chance of guessing the meaning.

Ya that was exactly what I was thinking, I didn't want to say a second time cause it miiiight be too much, but If its worth it i totally will. I am in the process of watching Samurai Champloo over again without subtitles. I still understand everything that is going on, but I dont understand much of what is being said. But I do understand a few words every now and then which makes me extremely happy! And also I notice some of the things in the art that I might have missed before because I was reading the subtitles, even though right now I'm only learning "teme" and "chotto" and "matte" it is still reaaaaallly exciting to even know that I'm understanding that much. And every word that I begin to understand is just 1 step closer to understanding the sentence.

I personally think it is not tremendously useful to watch something first with subtitles and then without. You have to understand that subtittling not the same as translation. They are trying to make the story as interesting as possible, whilst being roughly accurate to the Japanese. My Japanese is quite good, so when I do watch something with both I can see just how much liberty they take with the Japanese. It's a lot.

If you are still going through RTK1, my advice is consider your time now until you finish it, pre actual real Japanese study. Listening is unrelated to kanji, but you aren
t really in a position to learn new words yet, since you should be learning the kanji as part of the process. So basically my advice is to watch them with subtitles (and enjoy the show) once and rather than watch them again without subtitles, study RTK.

I actually came really far before I touched kanji, and looking back it would have been way faster to go the kanji (rtk1) route from the start. Now when I learn a new word, it is usually made up of kanji I already know the reading for and it makes sense. It's a whole lot easier to remember and the meaning can be understood more completely.

I know what you mean thermal. I'm just trying not to burn myself out on kanji everyday. And with school coming up I think that the number of kanji that I am studying now daily (around 50-75 a day) is the most I'm gonna be able to handle along with school and life and whatnot. But my plans are to definitely finish RTK1 before diving into any study that's heavy in kanji. I think the only study I'm going to be able to do is basic stuff with grammar and vocabulary written in kata, just because I don't want to learn the readings of some while still doing RTK1 and get them mixed up or anything. I already learned 猫　犬　私　etc. which is pretty basic so I know its not gonna mess it up or anything lol.

If you are learning 50-75 a day, then the remaining 1500 will take about 2 months to finish before you can start serious study. At this point you can get stuck into AJATT (kanji odyssy is the path I have taken), although it will take about another month before you have reviewed RTK1 enough to be confident with 90+% of them.

If you want extra stuff to do before then, here are some ideas.

- Study grammar. The rules are largely independant from kanji, with most grammar being hiragana. You can give yourself a head start here. A dictionary of basic Japanese grammar or tae kim would be good.

- Do some graded listening. I think you can improve your listening before you finish RTK1, but anime is about the hardest medium to understand. Drama is much easier if you want something real, but if your level is not so high, I would get something graded to be a bit difficult for you. There is a thread in the Learning Resources forum with listening material. If you can't find anything, then I would recommend "Japanese Graded Readers" (http://www.thejapanshop.com/home.php?cat=344). It has 4 short stories in Japanese with complete furigana. It also includes a CD with 2 or 3 of the stories in audio form. Level 4 is the hardest and 1 is the easiest. If you want more practice, listen to Japanese on the train/bus etc.

- Work on pronunciation. Get some audio with someone saying the different Japanese sounds. a i u e o, ka ki ku ke ko, etc and shadow it. I don't know if you are in Japan, but most foriegners here sound really bad and it's because they say the basic sounds with an English inflection. Your pronunciation will kick ass if you can get on the right track from the start. Once you have the basic sounds down, try shadowing some real Japanese. Either something graded or real, see what you can cope with.

thermal Wrote:If you are learning 50-75 a day, then the remaining 1500 will take about 2 months to finish before you can start serious study. At this point you can get stuck into AJATT (kanji odyssy is the path I have taken), although it will take about another month before you have reviewed RTK1 enough to be confident with 90+% of them.

No. Serious study reinforces kanji.

Well Heisig states in the introduction that combining his methods with traditional methods for learning Kanji is detrimental on the whole. Considering that RTK1 is not in order of commonality, studying almost any Japanese will involve dealing with lots of characters that are not learnt yet. I can't see how these characters can be dealt with without breaking from the Heisig method.

You could just learn them phonetically, but I don't think this is so useful as the Kanji are quite useful in understanding the meaning and in particular distingushing similiar words.

Can you elaborate on what serious study can be done before finishing RTK1?

My mistake. I misread what you said. But Snispilbor started massive sentence mining before finishing RTK, maybe he can enlighten us.

This video is hilarious and instructive:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=_rQFfRN6qmA

thermal Wrote:- Work on pronunciation. Get some audio with someone saying the different Japanese sounds. a i u e o, ka ki ku ke ko, etc and shadow it. I don't know if you are in Japan, but most foriegners here sound really bad and it's because they say the basic sounds with an English inflection. Your pronunciation will kick ass if you can get on the right track from the start. Once you have the basic sounds down, try shadowing some real Japanese. Either something graded or real, see what you can cope with.

This. If your mothertongue sounds very different from Japanese (English for example) it's a great idea to train pronounciation of the basic phonology a LOT. Some languages (my own, Swedish, for example) has a pretty similar style, which means we don't really have to work as much on pronounciation to sound ok (although I've met several swedes with horrible japanese pronounciation of course) but English has some very specific sounds which differ greatly from Japanese. I recommend training the vowel sounds and the r/l sound specifically, if you're an English speaker.

thermal Wrote:I personally think it is not tremendously useful to watch something first with subtitles and then without. You have to understand that subtittling not the same as translation. They are trying to make the story as interesting as possible, whilst being roughly accurate to the Japanese. My Japanese is quite good, so when I do watch something with both I can see just how much liberty they take with the Japanese. It's a lot.

Most Japanese videos come with two sets of subtitles, one that quotes the dub and one that's a real sub. The dub is just as you say, a loose translation, and takes whatever liberties it takes to return a profit. The dub for [i]Whisper of the Heart[i] / [kana]mimi wo sumaseba[/kana] changed the dialogue to the point where the ending was different!

However subs are often much closer to the original than dubs.

In fact one good thing about fansubs (even though they infringe copyright) is that they are much more literal translations than you'll get in anything you buy in the shop.

I have tried just listening without subs and like I mentioned once before I have trouble picking up the phonemes. I'm nearly 50 years old so maybe my hearing is starting to go, just like my vision has gotten blurrier. I'd love Japanese subs but English translations is the best I'm likely to get from most DVDs I find.

In some cases they are, particulary the more fan based ones (especially if done by a native Japanese speaker). More proffesional outfits like dattebayo take a lot of liberty. The common way I notice it is when they switch the order of the sentences to make it sound better in English. Often the last thing said in the Japanese is the first thing said in English.

And really, this is their job. They are not making subs for people who are studying Japanese. They are making them for people who can't understand any Japanese.

Picking out the phonemes is defitely hard for anime. Doubly so if you don't know the grammar of the sentences that these unknown words are appearing. It can become very hard to seperate the words from the grammar. Again, drama is much easier IMO.

To continue on my soap box..

I think trying to learn Japanese watching something subbed is about the worst kind of practice you can do. Depending on the student, it can even be detrimental.

You need to seperate Japanese and English in your mind as much as possible. When you are speaking Japanese you should never say an English word. Even to the extent of saying um. This in my mind is critical in attaining a high level. I have never met a Japanese person who has natural sounding English and intersperses their Japanese with English.

English is a necessary crutch to learning Japanese. But it should be used as liberally as possible. As soon as possible I think using a J - J dictionary is the way to go. The one exception is grammar.

If you watch Japanese programs subbed there is a decent chance you are going to tightly couple Japanese and English in your mind, when in reality they are different beasts. Eventually studying Japanese you realise that true translation is impossible. You realise that りんご is not the Japanese word for apple. りんごはりんごだぞ! You don't think "there is an apple and the Japanese word for apple is りんご." It's kind of hard to explain, but its quite an experience when you reach this level.

Sorry I'm pretty tired and rambling a bit..

I've been reading a book recently about this very topic. I always thought that you should only study in the language you are learning(i.e. total immersion) I thought you had to have a japanese brain and and english brain and they shouldn't mix(at least when you were at the level you were able to do so). However this book taught me a lot. According to the book, studies show that 1st and 2nd languages aren't stored in separate parts of the brain(there is at least some overlap, most likely a lot). They come from the same place and are linked together. They found that in bilinguals, 1 language doesn't get shut off when you use the other. I know AJATT says use japanese as much as possible and many people think that you shouldn't use your 1st language when learning a 2nd, I haven't found anything ever that supports that this is a better way. In fact everyone I know that speaks japanese and english fluently learned by using english-japanese dictionaries. I'm not saying AJATT is wrong, but I don't think people should be so quick to jump the gun and assume that he's right about everything he does.

Chandler, it is not AJATT.
I guess you are a bit confused. That is not the question. The question is a much simpler one.

Translation is a heavy job.

When you study "japanese only" you are not putting english aside, you are putting translation aside.

Chandlerhimself Wrote:They found that in bilinguals, 1 language doesn't get shut off when you use the other. I know AJATT says use japanese as much as possible and many people think that you shouldn't use your 1st language when learning a 2nd, I haven't found anything ever that supports that this is a better way. In fact everyone I know that speaks japanese and english fluently learned by using english-japanese dictionaries. I'm not saying AJATT is wrong, but I don't think people should be so quick to jump the gun and assume that he's right about everything he does.

It's not that English is bad (though it can be if you assume Japanese is the same), it's rather that using Japanese exclusively and not using English offers so much more when learning.

Chandlerhimself Wrote:I know AJATT says use japanese as much as possible and many people think that you shouldn't use your 1st language when learning a 2nd, I haven't found anything ever that supports that this is a better way. In fact everyone I know that speaks japanese and english fluently learned by using english-japanese dictionaries. I'm not saying AJATT is wrong, but I don't think people should be so quick to jump the gun and assume that he's right about everything he does.

It's sort of a fad these days to "put down" translation, even though we've been using it for thousands of years to learn languages. IMO, it's only bad when you feel you are stopping yourself in the middle of speaking, reading, etc. to translate. And even this is an acceptable phase for learners to go through. It's the guys that stay at that stage who need to try to wean themselves. And incidentally, the best cure for this is conversation with a native.

Like I say, it's a fad, as is whining about the evils of textbooks and teachers. Take the stuff that you find useful from the method, and try not to listen to the whiners.

Translation and English have their place and I agree sometimes the whole total immersion thing is taken too far, but there are good reasons behind it and you can't dismiss them out of hand.

L1 of students is really useful when the students are starting out. I personally believe that students should just knuckle down when they start, learn the basic grammar and vocab in L1. Later on as you advance, L1 is still really useful for learning grammar. I see no need to funnel explanations through the students knowledge of L2 and leave them with an incomplete understanding.

However, this is about the extent of it's usefulness IMO.

I am teaching English in Japan and I see which students progress and which students don't. The ones who don't intersperse their English with Japanese, don't mutter translations, improve so much faster than the rest. Included in this are complete beginners so it isn't like you need to go through a phase of translating things to yourself.

I have also experienced this myself. A particularly poignant example, I once went to a festival and used Japanese for about 8 hours. At the end I bumped in a foreigner I knew and we started chatting. Responses like "そうだね" would come into my head and I would translate them into English and then respond. This was how much my brain was in Japanese mode at the time.

This mode is what we need to develop and any combining of L1 and L2 hinders it. Sometimes it is worth it, but should be avoided as much as possible. This mode gets stronger and stronger until Japanese and English become completely seperate beasts. Maybe they come from the same area of the brain, but from my experience and from watching my students there is definitely such a thing as having them tightly or loosely coupled.

This is why moving to J-J dictionaries can be a really positive step (aside from the fact that they introduce more Japanese input). Using a J-E dictionary you get into the situation where you are speaking Japanese and then thinking about the definitions in English to choose which word to use. It's just not optimal.

No offense, but I disagree with your idea. I think we are in similar situations, we are both learning japanese and living in japan as english teachers. In my experience almost every student is doing some translation at some point. The better students just have to do it so rarely people don't notice. Also if someone isn't speaking you don't know if they are translating or not. I don't use English when I speak Japanese, but I could if I wanted to, it's just a personal preference(I think most people choose not to do this). I just think time spent looking up words in a J-J dictionary could be better spent doing more cards.

Ok so I'm almost finished rtk1 and going to start sentences soon. What I'm a bit confused about is what to do with sentence mining from movies and books etc without a translation provided. Do you try and figure out what it means yourself? What happens if you deduce an incorrect meaning?

Or do you only put in sentences where you are absolutely sure of the meaning? But in that case how do you ever get started without knowing anything, because the sentences are basically how you are learning to comprehend Japanese to start with?

Paludis Wrote:Ok so I'm almost finished rtk1 and going to start sentences soon. What I'm a bit confused about is what to do with sentence mining from movies and books etc without a translation provided. Do you try and figure out what it means yourself? What happens if you deduce an incorrect meaning?

Or do you only put in sentences where you are absolutely sure of the meaning? But in that case how do you ever get started without knowing anything, because the sentences are basically how you are learning to comprehend Japanese to start with?

i use rikaichan, just type the sentence into google or something to get a readable text and translate away. rikaichan works wonders when you're using an english yet japanesy translation to help you in the beginning, see what I'm talking about with Khatzu example sentences here: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...ter-pack-1.

For example here's one of my sentences from KO and it's 'translation':
あの山は火山だ
That mountain [as-for] volcano [decl.]

Paludis Wrote:Ok so I'm almost finished rtk1 and going to start sentences soon. What I'm a bit confused about is what to do with sentence mining from movies and books etc without a translation provided. Do you try and figure out what it means yourself? What happens if you deduce an incorrect meaning?

Or do you only put in sentences where you are absolutely sure of the meaning? But in that case how do you ever get started without knowing anything, because the sentences are basically how you are learning to comprehend Japanese to start with?

First, you'll note that Khatzumoto posted that his first sets of sentences came from a book "All About Particles". What you can do is something similar using pre-mined sentences from books such as All About Particles, Tae Kim's site (my recommendation as it's free and open source), Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar, Japanese for Everyone, etc. The idea (at least to me) is you get a basic grounding in Japanese vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar, etc.

During this time, you find your own way of doing the reviews. I like Audio to Writing and Written to Pronunciation. Included are definitions (Japanese to English) of any word I do not know or only recently learned. This should not be a large list, otherwise there's too much info in the sentence.

When you get to mining Movies or Books, follow a similar pattern. Look for a sentence you see has a new word in it, or the concept doesn't jump out at you. Define the words (hopefully using a Japanese to Japanese dictionary) and see if the concept makes sense now. If you like that sentence (it's new, it has a new idea, you like it), put it in the SRS with the definitions. In addition, maybe put where you got it for concept help.

You need to learn grammar using your first language before you try sentences, IMHO. So read through a textbook or something. Or Tae Kim's guide to Japanese on the web. Cut and paste all those sentences as you read through it.

Paludis Wrote:Do you try and figure out what it means yourself? What happens if you deduce an incorrect meaning?

Or do you only put in sentences where you are absolutely sure of the meaning?

When you start Khatz suggests using sentences that do have a translation. This ensures (hopefully) that you don't deduce an incorrect meaning etc. Look for a japanese<->english dictionary with plenty of example sentences. Then start moving to pure Japanese as soon as possible, you'll be able to deduce correct meanings by context/dictionary lookups.

If at all in doubt about the meaning of a sentence, I suggest throwing it out. Later when you've learnt more about the language you probably will be able to pick up a similar sentence. If for whatever reason you're hellbent on learning the sentence now, ask a native speaker.

Since I already knew japanese pretty well before starting with the sentence method (I use it to learn vocabulary now, not grammar) I can't speak for Japanese, but I started learning korean using the method now and it's working fine.

I do just like Katzumoto did, but with japanese. So I get a basic korean sentence (I know 0 korean so I use sentences like "where is the toilet" and "i'm studying" etc) and then I write the pronounciation using latin characters and I write every korean word's meaning in japanese (using japanese to learn korean is perfect, the sentence structure and overall grammar is almost identical). I haven't even done it for a week, but it's working great! I've already been able to make simple creative output although it takes me a LONG time to say even a simple sentence.

I get my sentences from my girlfriend right now, once I know the basics I'll start mining my own.