Another source for sentences is "The Complete Japanese Verb Guide" compiled by the Hiroo Japanese Center, which introduces over 600 verbs and gives example sentences for all but the 277 suru verbs that it lists at the end.

It gives approx 1556 sentences (unfortunately) in romaji and the English equivalent. It does give the kanji for the verbs however. And for the most part the sentences are straightforward examples that are not too grammatically complex so it should be easy enough to get the kanji right for the remaining words in the sentences. (And it will probably be a good exercise to figure them out.) It is also enlightening, at least for beginners, as to the idiomatic usage of a lot of verbs.

It is probably not the very best of the verb books out there but it is a good cheap reference book source of sentences (Amazon sells it for $12.21) and it has introductory chapters explaining verb conjugation as well as verb conjugation charts for the majority of the verbs introduced.

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...the-person

yorkii Wrote:I personally cannot commit my full life to learning a language like that. there are limits to how much studying I can do before I lose it. By this I mean that I "burn out" or just need to tear myself from it for a brief period of time. A good example is when I went on holiday to Hokkaido with my girlfriend (japanese btw) and just constantly speaking, listening, and reading Japanese for that 1 week trip totally burnt me out to the point where I started to stop speaking coherently after a while. this made me want to speak less.

It's hard to explain exactly what I mean, but there must be some people that understand.

i think "burnt out" is the best expression i can come up with to describe the feeling of beiong surrounded like that...

This happened to me a few times too. It's not nice to feel this way but I think it's a result of undergoing the immersion experience at an age when your brain has stopped developping. If you do manage to battle through it and tell your brain that you're either going to speak Japanese or you won't survive, then I think you improve a lot. The thing is that I think it's too easy for English speakers to find an outlet in Japan, especially in Tokyo, where I was. There are other English speakers who you can seek out, there are films to see, books to read, thousands of Japanese people who want to speak English with you etc. Too much temptation to take it easy when you 'burn out'.

This may sound strange but in some ways, I was a little bit jealous of Japanese speakers who wanted to learn other languages because if they go to another country then they're almost guaranteed zero exposure to Japanese. Whereas, no matter where you go, you find English influences all over the place.

so your saying to burn through the "burn out" in such a way. Is that possible though?

Personally, I think that it's important to enjoy your Japanese experience so I wouldn't take things too far myself but if you really really want to improve then I do believe that 'burning through it' would do a lot for you. One point was that there are a lot of people who go to English speaking countries and they don't have a choice, they have to learn English or they won't survive, simple as that. People that I've met like that tend to be extremely good at English.

This is just my impression of things but once you get past a certain age, you start using a different part of your brain to learn languages. Kids will just learn with the 'natural' part of their brain but when you're an adult you tend to look at things analytically, to memorise, to form patterns and to approach the language learning like you would any other challenge. I think that if you force your brain into a corner and convince it that your survival is dependent upon learning the language then you can gradually transfer your abilities into the more instinctive and less thought-intensive area of your brain. I'm no expert but it seems this way to me.

Is it possible? I think for many people there isn't a choice, so it must be.

I think I may have hijacked the thread, sorry about that. I've been pro the all Japanese all the time philosophy for a while now so I reckon that Khatzumoto's method is pretty good. Context is the key. I disagree with what he says about lessons though. I think lessons can be very valuable in many ways.

Well even the articles linked on the AJATT site say the only way to acquire any substantial vocabulary is by using mostly comprehensible input. The whole immersion thing he set up just seemed to be motivational to me, more then actually helping him learn anything by itself. So if you can keep your motivation up some other way, I don't see the problem with not doing full immersion.

yorkii Wrote:so your saying to burn through the "burn out" in such a way. Is that possible though?

This seems to have been Wzafran's (sp?) experience in his 100 kanji per day experiment. He didn't always do 100 kanji because he had reached an unbreakable limit. That limit, if I understand his posts correctly, seems to have increased enormously to handle the level of input he was constantly trying to achieve.

My own goal, regarding kanji, is to do either a chapter or 20 kanji per day, whichever is fewer. This is a hobby for me, too. Also, I have two jobs and a family to support. The goal is high enough to be difficult but low enough so that I have a chance of succeeding 95 percent of the time, assuming a good-faith commitment.

Hi guys,
I'm new to both RTK and AJATT (which I stumbled upon from this website), but I am pretty convinced it is the way to go. It just makes sense, and this website and AJATT have been great! Anyway, one of the big problems I see people have is finding sentences. Not that there aren't trillions of good sentences out there, but spending time and effort finding them and learning the meanings seems to take a lot out of people. It seems like the last missing resource is a 'social networking' style site where people can share sentences.

I was considering creating a website that would turn this endeavor into a community process, where people could contribute sentences (from native sources of course), catalog and describe them, discuss the translations, rate the translations, and finally have a SRS that they can easily dump sentences into.

Right now I work as a webmaster, and could set something like this up in Ruby on Rails if there seems to be much of an interest for it, hopefully in time for me to finish RTK and be ready to begin the "sentence learning" process (couple of weeks from now).

What do you guys think?
-Daniel

I believe [kana]FABURISU[/kana] mentioned something regarding sentences before, so it might be in the future for Reviewing the Kanji.

I think ファブリス does indeed have some slick improvements in store for us. Hopefully this will include sentences. If not, I think a community site for sentences is a great idea.

danieldesu Wrote:one of the big problems I see people have is finding sentences. It seems like the last missing resource is a 'social networking' style site where people can share sentences.

I have some ideas about this, but the subject needs another thread. I'll write more about it later...

Well, I'm up to roughly 300 sentences now, and I'm having an unexpected problem - my wrist hurts! Quite a bit actually. Since starting AJATT I've been doing a lot more Japanese handwriting, and I guess my joints are just unfamiliar with the motions (not that I do that much handwriting in English these days either, which probably adds to the problem). Anyway, I'm cutting down on the writing, just writing down the sentences that I'm most unfamiliar with, in an effort to not develop carpal tunnel syndrome, but I guess I wanted to make a quick public service announcement - if you don't do much handwriting, start slow, and let your hands get used to it!

Now, to get some ice for my wrist...

I don't mean to alarm you but you might want to stop writing immediately. I was in a similar situation a year or two back, I saw a specialist and he basically said: "Look, if it's hurting, then damage is already being done".

My wrist was basically useless for a month and I was forced to switch hands for a lot of tasks (particularly mousing, because I'm in front of a computer very often it relieves one hand of a lot of work). Missing a hand is debilitating.

A lot of the techniques advocated on the AJATT site are, according to the academics, pedagogically sound.

I like the way he explains what he did but doesn't try to come over as an authority on the best way to learn, rather just talking about the techniques he used.

Perhaps I've not read widely enough, but out of the 4 steps,

Quote:1. Read it in full aloud, with kanji, no furigana.

2. Know the meaning of every word in the sentence.

3. Understand the meaning of the entire sentence

4. Write (copy) out the sentence by hand

step 4. seems the least important. How much practice writing 〜です。〜ます。〜である。does one really need? Practicing handwriting is certainly valid. However the time it takes to write out sentences could probably be better spent.

Also step 2. might be over complicating things, e.g.

私は（どんなことがあっても）君が好きだ。
I'll always like you! (No matter what!)

Why bother breaking expressions like どんなことがあっても down?

That said, the AJATT guy says he's fluent in Japanese and I'm a long way from it. So perhaps he does have a point!

synewave Wrote:Why bother breaking expressions like どんなことがあっても down?

Just to hazard a guess, I would feel like learning each word in this phrase is much like learning the primitives in a kanji, it helps your brain put it back together later when you want to use this phrase, instead of just remembering a bunch of random syllables.

As for the method as a whole, to me it just makes sense! Not to knock how pretty much every second language learner has probably studied in the past (even the AJATT guy), but why would people study grammar or vocabulary or anything that isn't what you want to reproduce and understand in the future (i.e. sentences).

Once I realized how obvious it was that this was the way I should be studying, I almost felt embarrassed by how little time I had spent honestly going through native Japanese sentences and trying to understand them. It just seemed so hard, and I didn't want to spend a lot of time with it when I could be doing easier things. But that is what pushes you to improve, when something feels difficult, it means you are challenging yourself beyond your current capability, and now that I realize learning sentences is the path to fluency, I'm all for it. (sorry for the rant)

Also, as for the sentence-sharing community I mentioned before, I saw the thread fuaburisu mentioned about adding sentence capabilities to this site, but that was quite a while ago... Are there updates on that? I may get too excited and create a sentence sharing site anyways, but I didn't want to step on anyone's toes...

danieldesu Wrote:As for the method as a whole, to me it just makes sense!

Totally agree that authentic text is a lot more exciting!

danieldesu Wrote:I would feel like learning each word in this phrase is much like learning the primitives in a kanji, it helps your brain put it back together later when you want to use this phrase, instead of just remembering a bunch of random syllables.

I see what you are saying. Though as the AJATT guy says,

Quote:I?m not the teacher telling you ?the right way?, I am just telling you ?a good way?.

Personally I'm more into usable chunks than every little が (or whatever). To use an English example, "by the way" - a nice usable chunk, but "by a way" is just wrong. Or which definition of "way" should one use for this phrase?

At the same time, never breaking chunks down, one might not see certain patterns emerging.

Horses for courses.

synewave Wrote:To use an English example, "by the way" - a nice usable chunk, but "by a way" is just wrong. Or which definition of "way" should one use for this phrase?

You may be on to something... I've never thought about the individual words in "by the way", but I use that phrase all the time. Another example is "alot." As a kid, I remember the teacher telling us "alot" was actually two words "a" and "lot," but so many people thought it was one chunk.

Maybe there should be a way of systematizing sentences the way Heisig systematizes the kanji. Begin by learning chunks, like "by the way," then building to bigger sentences.

From Earl Stevick's 'Success with Foreign Languages'.

Quote:5.1 Pronunciation
Ed began by telling me how he worked on pronunciation. Much of what he said was
surprising to me, even though I had watched him for several weeks in his study of
Swahili.

5.1.1 Reading aloud to oneself
A technique that might be disastrous for some works well for others.

?In the first weeks of studying the language,? he began, ?I like to read it out loud,
and get the sound.?
Just where Derek had ended his interview! But this still seemed to me like a violation of the principle that you can not say what you have not heard.
?By ?reading out loud,? do you mean that as soon as you learn how to read it off the page, you . . .?? I asked.
?As soon as I just learn how to pronounce it, yes.?
?And once you can pronounce it off the page, you like to read it aloud??
?Yeah, I like to read it aloud, and I find that this persists even later, that it helps me in my own comprehension of reading anything, to read it aloud, hopefully with proper intonation and everything else. And once I know something about the language, I try to get the whole flow of the sentence. Sometimes I can understand the sentence without knowing all the words, for example.?
?You mean reading aloud, as contrasted with reading silently? There?s something
about that that makes it better?? I asked.
?Exactly! If I study at home, I can?t study by just reading something silently. I?m
not able to do that yet. I have to pronounce everything. I also think it helps you in
memorizing words - memorizing vocabulary - to say things out loud. So that?s one
thing I know I definitely do do.?
?I noticed a few minutes ago. before we began the interview, you were reading
some newspaper stories in Swahili, and you were reading them silently,? I pointed
out.
?I didn?t want to bother you,? Ed explained. ?If you hadn?t been here, my
inclination would have been to read them aloud. I remember, for example, I
recently took the Rumanian test, and when I was given passages to translate, I read
them aloud. I thought I would be able to translate them more easily if I read them
aloud first. ?

Comments
Ed?s practice of reading aloud struck a chord with me. I had always found it very
helpful to link what I was seeing with the things I was doing with my voice and
tongue, and to link both of them with the sounds that came out. One year when I
was in college, I lived in a suite with three occupants and two bedrooms. At the
time, I was beginning the study of Russian. I knew from experience with Latin and
German that I retained things much better if I studied them aloud. I had also
discovered that it was easier to understand the grammatical structure of complicated
sentences if I read them aloud. On this ground, I was allowed to have my own
bedroom. Nevertheless. I know that many people are unlike Ed and me in this
respect.

Backs up AJATT suggestion,

Quote:1. Read it in full aloud, with kanji, no furigana.

The book is available as a free PDF download and has plenty of interesting ideas.

EDIT: sorry for all the question marks, something odd happened when I submitted what looked like perfectly acceptable ' marks...

synewave Wrote:

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blo...tences-how Wrote:1. Read it in full aloud, with kanji, no furigana.

2. Know the meaning of every word in the sentence.

3. Understand the meaning of the entire sentence

4. Write (copy) out the sentence by hand

These steps are a lot like what I've been doing with Assimil. I'm now on lesson 27, and progress seems like it's going nicely. Here's the steps I use with Assimil:
1. Read all the sentences in the lesson along with the audio.

2. Go back to each sentence, read them aloud and then look at the translation. I try to figure out what the individual words mean as best I can without looking at the literal translation. Whatever words I still have trouble with I look to the literal translation, and possibly a dictionary. Once I feel I comprehend the sentence I move on.

3. I go back and reread the text along with the audio a few times. Making sure I understand each sentence well enough.

4. I do the exercises for the lesson, these usually involve a slightly modified version of the sentences you just learned where you guess what it means and a fill in the blank set of exercises. I find the first kind of exercises easy to do right after, the fill in the blank ones I don't find easy until I've gone over the lesson a few times though.

5. Spaced throughout the day I will pick up the book and reread the current lesson, whenever I have free time.

6. The next day, I replay a few of the older lessons and read them before starting todays lesson.

You could also easily add writing and a memory program to this. I hate to keep bringing up Assimil so much in these AJATT discussions, but it's hard to ignore the similarities in the methods.

EDIT: Fixed the quote.

Just to clarify. Those four steps attributed to me in cracky's post are the 4 steps suggested by the AJATT guy on his website.

So I'm thinking of giving this a go....but I have a really stupid question:

When I start digging up sentences, what should I be putting on the cards exactly.

for example, I wanted to find sentences with the word 不安

So I searched google blogs and found these sentences:

今朝、急に不安に襲われた。

友達ながら不安になる。

So what should I put on the back of the cards?

obviously the sentences in hiragana, so I can check my reading.

I was also thinking maybe something like ながら＝though, notwithstanding or 襲われた=was attacked / was seized.

But what should I put to avoid english? the dictionary definitions of the words in japanese: 襲われた= （多く受け身の形で）好ましくないことが、覆いかぶさるようにやってくる

even though I understand the dictionary a lot less than the original sentence? Should I add notes for my definition too?

Add notes for your definition as well, and then find sentences using the vocabulary you didn't know from the sentence.
However, I do try to find super concise dictionary entries, like the one's from sanseido or this elementary school dictionary I bought. This way I have less trouble decomposing the definitions.
For 襲う you get shorter definitions like: （１） 不意に攻める． （２） 受け継ぐ (from sanseido.net)

Basically, try very hard to use J>J as soon as possible, but if its way to much of a hassle use a little English.

johnzep,

I think ultimately the goal will be to go J -> J. It's probably impossible at first without definitions of your definitions on the answer side of the card. For this reason it's probably completely normal to use English in the beginning.

how exactly do you go to j-j....if your japanese equivalent is bad japanese does it reinforce it???? i'd love to see some examples....

You go J-J using Japanese dictionaries, which contain good Japanese. Until you can do that reasonably, using J-E is okay.
Does that answer your question?