RECENT TOPICS » View all
- Anyone Studying the Other Languages of Japan?
- Doing Anki Reps while listening to music?
- Learning Chinese by watching TV - A blogger's experience
- Benny Lewis Fluent in Japanese in 3 months?
- Second Book Club Nomination Thread
- August 2014 Book Club - Intermediate: 「Go」 by 金城 一紀
- Resource for common phrases?
How do you learn?
Index » General discussion
- « Previous
- 1
- Next »
For words I just throw them in Mnemosyne and learn them when they come up. I don't usually add more than a few (maximum of 20~25) new words at a time... So I pretty much just read them out loud, check translation... and press 0/1 until I 'know' them and rate them 2... Then the next day the same happens until I really learned the words.
Probably not the most efficient way, but it's how I've been doing it since I started last year... so... Yeah, I'm used to that 
Some words that just don't stick I try to connect to something ("Hey, it sounds like ---, so this must mean ---" or, now I'm finally into RTK, I use the kanji ('this word uses this kanji ---, *makes connection*, so reading is --- and meaning is ---')
For sentences, I usually add sentences I could understand already, but has 1 or 2 new kanji, or 1 or 2 new words... Or a new grammar point. I use Anki for sentences and just review them until I understand them (minimum time span between reviews = 15 minutes), that's usually pretty fast, the second time I see them I usually remember what it was.
Kanji are the only thing I 'learn' before adding, basically.
For me this works... I wouldn't know how do to it in any different way as well. I imagine that it would be the same, essentially... You just drill them *before* adding, instead of after... I guess that would be the only difference?
Words I found in manga/games/anime and looked up, then added, I usually remember those much easier and don't even have to really 'learn' them in the first place. If I see them, I'll immediately think "Oh, that was from D.Gray-man!" or something, and make the link to the meaning
Savara: I use www.sanseido.net, which is very concise and therefore a lot easier to use. I still use English as well at the moment, but I also always read the Japanese definition and the Japanese definition is the only one I insert into an SRS. I want to break off English rapidly, but am too scared to go cold turkey (outright laziness, largely), and plan to wean myself. The goal is to make Japanese self-sustaining, which, achieved, is an incredibly powerful thing. It also just gets the meaning much deeper, explaining Japanese with Japanese. These are really simplistic examples that would not cause any difficulties anyway, but for instance, explaining to yourself that a 「電車」 is a 「電力でレールの上を走る乗り物」 or that a 「大勢」 is a 「多くの人」 is completely, completely invaluable reinforcement and you learn even more words and grammar on the way.
As for missing the details, I really don't think you need to worry about that at all. The reason being that, in my opinion (I've said this on the site somewhere else I think), a word (or whole expression) can never be defined by it's definition, only by it's usage. Somewhat contrary to what I said above, try looking up the definition of any English word in the dictionary, and seeing if it REALLY let's you understand how you should be using it. It doesn't. English is useful for a general idea at first, in the same way that describing 'sorrowful' as 'quite sad' is useful, but the actual meaning, the nuance, the situations where it finds common use.. none of these can just be described to you. The TRUE meaning of the word sorrowful is only found in it's use by the people who use it. I'm sure you'll agree that most of the Japanese words you're comfortable with only bare passing resemblance to the English words associated with them in their usage (sugoi, anyone? Wakaru? Takai? Hiroi? Every other word?). You didn't learn any English expressions or words by having them explained to you, not really - at your youngest, there were no words to explain them to you WITH.
So recap: the details are only found in use, so you'll never miss them by listening to how they're used - on the contrary, it's the only place you'll ever find them.
tomusan: Everything I said above, but specifically: The purpose is to let your Japanese feed your Japanese, because one of the minds most POWERFUL tools is it's associative power. Memorizing that 「電気」 is electricity and 「電力」 is electric power/wattage is nice, but memorizing that 「電力」 is [電気の力」 is FANTASTIC. As for wanting to know an English equivalents in general, as above, that's fine and all, but words in another language don't typically have true equivalents anyway. Only vague synonyms, with an even lower level of equality in use than synonyms within English have. Even the loaned OK (and, indeed, most other loaned words) doesn't actually mean what the English OK means. Nothing *does*.
nest0r: I still primarily think in English (sadly), so when I'm reading Japanese there's an English track going on the very back of my head, but it's (usually) not a translation. It's usually a commentary running something like "Oh right" and "Used here I think that means..". Even that I try to cut off as much as possible. Beyond that, I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. I translate as little as possible (when I do, it's generally pidgin, the same kind of english that pops into my head when trying to remember kanji I've already dropped the story for, more like flashes of meaning and half-words), and an SRS (along with natural encounters) is my memorization. I don't stare at a word and run it through my head over and over and over when I first encounter it or anything. It's more like my SRS 'first reminder' of a word I didn't actually know yet. I failed. Oops! Quick review, and back into the queue! I mean, memorization isn't this thing that has to take especially concerted effort. I memorize things accidentally all the time. I've memorized how to play Halo by playing it, not by staring at the B button and whispering "B means PUNCH B means PUNCH" over and over again. There is a brief 'memorization' phase at the start, if you want to call it that, but it's so identical to my reviews (the goal of which is also memorization?) that I don't feel a need to distinguish the two artificially.
I'm just really confused by what you're asking. Why would someone need to translate a sentence into English to either understand the meaning or be able to put it into an SRS? Isn't the whole idea of learning a language NOT to need to do that? Maybe we ARE having some clash of semantics
Thumbs up to tokyostyle XD and a wish of seriously good luck to your post-RTK work, nest0r! Kicking it in to high gear!
Actually posting to quickly apologize for making the base assumption in my post that English was Savara's native language. I believe it's come to my attention that would actually be Dutch? That makes some of my comments aimed toward you specifically comically less applicable, but I hope you understand what I was trying to say regardless
Ideally, if you don't understand a word in the definition you can look it up as well and enter definitions of those too. If you're really committed (like the AJATT guy), you can just keep tunneling like that until you get it. Personally, I utilize English dictionaries (commonly rikaichan to save time, actually, but I'm careful to only pop up words I genuinely don't know) to help me understand definitions if I can't get them after tunneling once or twice, and plan to until I have enough of a foundation that I don't have to tunnel too deeply, because I don't have that level of obsessive drive. So I do sometimes use definitions that I might not understand upfront, but I make sure I do understand them (at least through English assistance, and at least roughly) before entering them. Even if you have to use English a step or two down in your (mental, not SRS) definition, you still have a Japanese route in between the two (provided you don't just mentally substitute the Japanese definition with the English assistance wholesale), which I personally find useful. Describe the one with the other and you're learning two things at once The definition describes the word, and the word the definition...
So, in that example of ここ, I'd make sure I understood the definition sentences even if I had to resort to English, while still making sure to note the reading of the words so I can read the definition to myself in Japanese (at least at the time I enter it in). I don't sweat it if I can't remember the exact readings or anything in a DEFINITION during review later, because as in an above post, the definition isn't what you're reviewing in that particular card - it's just assistance. Though, I have been known to grab a particularly interesting definition and use THAT as a NEW card...
Actually, I love your example, because just scanning through those example definitions you posted was (as typical) enlightening for me on how the Japanese explain things, while also seeing them use Japanese to explain the word in a very similar way to how it was originally explained to me in English, which handily reinforces the word (not that koko needs a lot reinforcement!). I think it really illustrates the point of the whole exercise.
Since I drill sentences and not words, though, I wouldn't put every single definition down there like that. I'd only plug in the definition(s) appropriate to it's use in the particular sentence, both to save space and just for.. rationality. Since the word is koko, they're pretty much all apt no matter what sentence you're dealing with, so I'd just pick one or two definitions on preference. I find 話し手に近いところをさす語 (word indicating locations near the speaker) interesting, and I might put it in simply for an interesting circumstantial review, but 自分のいる所 (place one exists) is very to-the-point
And, yeah, exactly what you said. It's hard to ever forget a word like toriniku when you know how it's composed, and hard to ever forget that 鳥 and 肉 have those two (among other..) readings as well. That sort of wonderful cross-associating double-memorization is the benefit of kanji in general, and this whole thing is just another piece that helps put it all together in a very similar way.
Oh, just for the record, 電力でレールの上を走る乗り物 is like "An electric powered vehicle run along rails" (lit: electric power by rail-top along run vehicle). I mention this only because that specific sentence is what actually first let me realize that normally intransitive verbs like run and swim can use を with whatever it is you're running on/swimming in/flying through/etc. I had no idea before that, and think it's worth pointing out! Power to the dictionary
I wish I could ever write a post shorter than a novel! Curse my verbiage!
Anyway, good luck, and as always, adapt to what suits you. If you find it's useful to define your definitions with English on the same card or something, all the more power to you, it's just not what I do.
- « Previous
- 1
- Next »