The basic path I took was to look up common and easily definable words in the J-J dictionary, and kind of keep a mental list of words that often appear in definitions. 行為・行動・様・こと・感じ取る・etc etc.

Sometimes it's good, like Khatz suggests, to look up the words you already know. Try not to learn too much at once. Move at a comfortable pace and keep things interesting.

Most importantly, if a definition is long and 80%+ of words you don't know, skip it and move onto something else. You can always come back later. There's no rush. This particularly applies to animals and plants. No reason to learn those monolingually in the beginning.

Just jump in, forget textbooks. Tae Kim would be a good reference though

mmhorii wrote:

Sometimes it's good to make up definitions for the words you already know.

What does that even mean?

well 百獣の王 is an obvious hint (if you ever heard anyone use that to describe the animal). before I read that I was thinking of cheetah or tiger because I thought of similar to cats and BIG.

for me those kinds of words pictures are sufficient. and if you want to anki the word/grammar in that passage, you can... but I wouldn't use it to learn that the word means ___

Last edited by howtwosavealif3 (2013 February 01, 8:45 am)

I thought it was a tiger until 雄はたてがみがある。 then it became rather obvious .

I think working towards having less and less L1 on your cards in order to dive further and further into the language is a good goal, but just because you're using English definitions to words it doesn't mean that you can't learn the way you describe. SRS is a tool, one part of it all, and if everything you do for learning outside of it would be in Japanese, then I'd say using another language just to give yourself definitions to words doesn't have that much of an impact on the outcome. Whether the back of your cards have Japanese definitions, English ones, or pictures, you'll get the most important thing down—learning what the item means so that you'll understand it next time you come across it.

Personally I do think vocabulary is probably the biggest aspect as I place understanding before outputting, and what limits my comprehension is unknown words far more than unfamiliar grammar and structure. But it's not solely studying words that took me there, it's a familiarity with the patterns of the language from a lot of time put into listening and reading. While RTK + Core2k is really just a very basic amount of words, plus the few sentences that I personally found to be kind of unvaried and stiff, if that makes any sense.

It was ages ago I read the j-lup page, but if the suggestion is that it should take only 1000 SRS'd sentences regardless of anything else you do then I'd say that's a pretty shallow goal. Some people can burn through 1000 sentences in a very short time period by doing only that and I'd reckon it could be very troublesome and even discouraging to exclusively use monolingual definitions right afterwards.

Others could be taking the SRSing much slower, but learning primarily through repetition by being very exposed to the language, and using SRS to review from that. Reaching the 1000 mark by doing that wouldn't have to mean that you and someone who did half of Core2k are at the same level.

sethg wrote:

mmhorii wrote:

Sometimes it's good to make up definitions for the words you already know.

What does that even mean?

I was being intentionally ambiguous. There were two things I was trying to say:

1. Creating your own dictionary definition first before looking up the dictionary entry is a good test of your language ability.

2. Marketers, politicians, and anyone who wants to control others using words may modify word meanings to suit their agendas. Let’s take Khatzumoto as an example. What does it mean to be “fluent”? What does it mean to be a “native” Japanese speaker? Khatzumoto lists himself as a native Japanese speaker on RhinoSpike.com. I respect Khatzumoto, but his definition of “native” and my definition of “native” are completely different. Nevertheless, he has the right to assign his own meaning to words, and that's the beauty of language--it's participatory, it's constantly evolving, and it's community-driven.

mmhorii wrote:

I was being intentionally ambiguous. There were two things I was trying to say:

1. Creating your own dictionary definition first before looking up the dictionary entry is a good test of your language ability.

2. Marketers, politicians, and anyone who wants to control others using words may modify word meanings to suit their agendas. Let’s take Khatzumoto as an example. What does it mean to be “fluent”? What does it mean to be a “native” Japanese speaker? Khatzumoto lists himself as a native Japanese speaker on RhinoSpike.com. I respect Khatzumoto, but his definition of “native” and my definition of “native” are completely different. Nevertheless, he has the right to assign his own meaning to words, and that's the beauty of language--it's participatory, it's constantly evolving, and it's community-driven.

I think "creating your own dictionary definitions" sounds like a bad idea unless you've spent a significant amount of time learning real ones. Just sounds like a way to get used to using words inappropriately. And as for people modifying word meanings, well, of course this happens, but I think you need to learn the rules before you break them. The question was about becoming monolingual.

If Gorilla sticks to dictionary definitions made by native professionals, then I'm fairly sure he'll be able to figure out when a word's meaning is being stretched.

I have to agree with the idea of looking up plant and animal names in a J-E dictionary more often than not being more productive than looking them up in a J-J dictionary. Often the J-J definition of these things seems to be a description, almost like a mini-encyclopedia entry that already assumes passing familiarity with what's being described. For example, let's look at the dictionary entry for lion given above. Now, granted lion in Japanese is ライオン, but assuming I couldn't figure that out and needed to look it up, a lot of the info in that definition, such as tail length and fur color, aren't necessarily particularly useful to me if I just want to know for sure specifically what animal is being talked about. In this case, a J-E dictionary is simply the quickest way to understand these terms. That being said, it is often interesting, once you know what plant/animal is being talked about, to go back and see how it is described in Japanese. In fact, if I came across an animal or plant I had no familiarity at all with in my native language, English, I'd probably look at an encyclopedia entry with more detailed explanations and pictures before I'd check a brief dictionary entry.

On the other hand, sometimes a J-J dictionary will give definitions that aren't given in a J-E dictionary. For example, there is a definition of 読む that means "to count" that is given in my J-J dictionary but not my J-E dictionary, and I have encountered it in reading before.

Overall, I don't want to understate the importance of a good J-J dictionary as a great reference, but if you find there are words that are more comprehensible through the J-E definition rather than purely using a J-J dictionary, it's not the end of the world, and the J-E sentence examples are often quite useful.

Last edited by patriconia (2013 February 01, 7:00 pm)

Gorilla wrote:

My ultimate goal is to reach that in the near future, and purchase a mono Japanese dictionary. Right now it feels really frustrating to have to use monolingual dictionaries

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl … dictionary

^- This dictionary, it's cumbersome, but I love it.

Edit:
Also as already mentioned, this seems to help, http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl … ctionaries

Last edited by Daichi (2013 February 01, 9:00 pm)

the complaint about definitions Abt animals and plants are sorta dumb because the dictionary is doing what it's supposed to do. The english deinition for the animal is just gonna be as descriptive or useless or whatever. what do u expect ? I suggest google imaging bc it might even a plant or animal that you don't know bc Japanese people love their plants. Pictures are more clear than definitions for these kind of nouns in general. A picture is a thousand words. After all the thing tha u care most abt the animal is what it looks like right? At least thats what i care abt. And maybe if you care abot what it eats or where it lives then u can read Abt it on the Japanese wiki..

Google image is helpful in othe ways. I can't explain it well but for one example I google imaged futeki no emi bc the Japanese definition wasn't cutting it for me. I understood the definition fine I just wanted to see a concrete example what would be qualified to be described as that. There's more examples I can't think of any off the top of my head. I jus wanted to promote google image for language learning

Last edited by howtwosavealif3 (2013 June 05, 9:36 pm)

There's no harm in using J-E dictionaries for concrete, internationally prevalent, language independent concepts. There is no ambiguity in remembering 馬 as horse.

For anything else, J-E dictionaries tend to be inaccurate or easily misunderstood.

dizmox wrote:

There's no harm in using J-E dictionaries for concrete, internationally prevalent, language independent concepts. There is no ambiguity in remembering 馬 as horse.

For anything else, J-E dictionaries tend to be inaccurate or easily misunderstood.

No.

How useful a J-J or J-E dictionary is will vary widely based on a whole lot of factors, not just whether or not the word is a language independent concept. Sometimes you will grasp the meaning of the word in the context you're looking for more quickly and deeply with a J-J dictionary, and sometimes with a J-E dictionary.

In fact, in my old school I had a copy of the Kenkyusha New Japanese-English dictionary (the full big edition that costs about $400) on my desk and it was by far the best dictionary I ever used for understanding Japanese words.  I also have 広辞苑 (J-J), 明鏡国語 (J-J) Progressive (J-E) and a few others on my electric dictionary, and had the paper version of 広辞苑, but Kenkyusha was usually the best.