Well, I've put all the sentences into anki, and then reviewed them all multiple times by now, and any errors I found I went back and changed it in the google doc.  So there has been at least one check of sorts for every card.  Of course I didn't check them against the book, I just found any mispellings or strange kanji with my own knowledge.

Some of the sentences were overly kanjified, like 出来ます　（できます） but I didn't change them because it would be a lot of work, and also because some people prefer to overly kanjify.  It's an easy enough exercise to edit them yourself using guidance from an EDICT dictionary, their 'usually written with kana alone' advice is pretty good.  Using arabic numberals is more natural these days in written Japanese.  The grammar points are pretty obvious if you read through the book as you add the sentences, and this is the advised method of learning them.  You should go kanji sentence to kana sentence and English.  To learn the grammar, read the book first.

If you want to add more context, go ahead.  Note your revision in the notes part, I think no one is really willing to put in much more effort for this project, so if you want to do something, go ahead.  If you want to put the English in your cards but have it invisible, just add an English field, and then in the display properties make the English field use a white font colour.  Now you won't be able to see the English in the answer unless you highlight it with your mouse.

Cangy,

For set-up, I go Production by doing Audio to Kanji (technically, it's recognition, but production is writing in my head or on paper the sentence). I then go Recognition by going Kanji to Pronouncing it correctly. The english, notes and definitions are there only in case I don't recognize the concept of the sentence.

For correction, yeah, some get corrected as we go along. Now, what you should do is correct your own sentences in Anki and add corrections to the spread. It's just not possible to remerge a deck to take into account changes others have made.

I agree about the grammar points being included in the spreadsheet. I'm in the process of putting together a table of contents which then is a matter of cutting and pasting into the main spreadsheets notes section. This was done in part 1 and 2 by me, but abandoned as annoying during the project. This'll be very important for parts 3 and 4 as verb variants can get confusing going off only by the English translation as the guide.

The Over-kanjifying was a call due to UBJG using only JLPT 3 and 4 kanji. Yeah, うち　and 家　hold different meanings and pronunciations being the best mistake in the kanjifying. However, reading over manga and karaoke and subtitles I notice that there's wiggle room in everything. We don't have the native level intuition to decide when it best to leave as kana. So my thinking is kanjify it so you get the kanji training. As pointed out, it's not too much of a stretch to change it to kana again.

As for the English sentences, yeah, some are wrong or don't carry the concept the sentence too well. I did not think it was a big deal, however, I was not thinking people would be doing English to Japanese flashcards. If you are doing that, yes, make sure the sentences are exactly how you want them. Granted, you should vet each and every sentence prior to putting them in your flashcards.

I just have to say, it's a useful book that has some big drawbacks. In addition, there are problems putting the sentences into a spreadsheet format. Fortunately, that's all done, so now it's either polishing the spreadsheet or the individual vets the sentences for his own desires. For example, I have been shortening my sentences. However, I would not put such changes in the public spreadsheet. If I ever post my audio files, I would have to export my Anki modified sentences though.

Anyway, good luck. Hope you do it faster than I've been going at it.

alyks wrote:

I don't think over kanjified sentences are bad. This is because when I've read sentences that have kana instead of kanji, I've been able to recognize the word anyway.

Problem being that when you eventually write your own sentences, you might put kanji instead of kana which looks really odd to native Japanese.

Tobberoth wrote:

Most of the people on this site are using a method called AJATT which they learned from a guy called Katzumoto who "claims" he learned fluid Japanese just by studying japanese sentences using SRS.

To be fair, he doesn't "claim" to have learned fluid Japanese, he just claims it.

Hey guys, sentance number 144 "信号は緑から黄色に変わります。" Is incorrect.  It should read 信号は青から黄色に変わります。Somebody changed the kanji from blue to green thinking it was a typo in the book, but the original sentance is correct.  In Japan, we call the green traffic lights blue...

Last edited by kerosan41 (2008 September 25, 10:35 pm)

Jarvik7 wrote:

kerosan41 wrote:

Hey guys, sentance number 144 "信号は緑から黄色に変わります。" Is incorrect.  It should read 信号は青から黄色に変わります。Somebody changed the kanji from blue to green thinking it was a typo in the book, but the original sentance is correct.  In Japan, we call the green traffic lights blue...

not quite... 青い means green as well as blue (conceptually they are shades of the same color). So they are still calling the lights green, just with a different word. But yes, saying 緑 is wrong.

not quite... 青い means blue as well as green (conceptually they are shades of the same color). So they are still calling the lights blue, but they intend green.

kerosan41 wrote:

not quite... 青い means blue as well as green (conceptually they are shades of the same color). So they are still calling the lights blue, but they intend green.

Your post makes no sense.

rich_f wrote:

Send some sort of proof of ownership-- like a photo of your book with a piece of paper in the picture with your email address on it.

So we just send a picture that we have the book? where would  i send it to?

Tobberoth wrote:

Jarvik7 wrote:

kerosan41 wrote:

not quite... 青い means blue as well as green (conceptually they are shades of the same color). So they are still calling the lights blue, but they intend green.

Your post makes no sense.

It's true though, they are calling them blue, it's just a different blue which we considers green Since it's wrong to call the lights 緑, we can't say that they are calling them green, because they aren't, they are calling them blue.

Nah, he just copy & pasted my post which did make sense and garbled it a bit. Blue and Green are conceptually the same thing in Japanese. It's not a different green and a different blue. 緑 just defines a certain shade of that color. So just as you wouldn't call a red traffic light maroon in English, you wouldn't call the green light 緑 in Japanese.

If you translate the sentence into English then green is the correct translation because 青 means both blue and green and you as a translator have to infer which they mean because in English we do differentiate between the two base colors. Translation is not a direct word replacement thing, you need to do a lot of thinking as well.

I don't know where people get this 青 means blue but they intend green crap. Maybe they just can't wrap their minds around the concept. Hell, even EDICT/KANJIDIC manage to get the definition right.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2008 October 01, 3:08 pm)

Jarvik7 wrote:

Tobberoth wrote:

Jarvik7 wrote:

Your post makes no sense.

It's true though, they are calling them blue, it's just a different blue which we considers green Since it's wrong to call the lights 緑, we can't say that they are calling them green, because they aren't, they are calling them blue.

Nah, he just copy & pasted my post which did make sense and garbled it a bit. Blue and Green are conceptually the same thing in Japanese. It's not a different green and a different blue. 緑 just defines a certain shade of that color. So just as you wouldn't call a red traffic light maroon in English, you wouldn't call the green light 緑 in Japanese.

If you translate the sentence into English then green is the correct translation because 青 means both blue and green and you as a translator have to infer which they mean because in English we do differentiate between the two base colors. Translation is not a direct word replacement thing, you need to do a lot of thinking as well.

I don't know where people get this 青 means blue but they intend green crap. Maybe they just can't wrap their minds around the concept. Hell, even EDICT/KANJIDIC manage to get the definition right.

You're just agreeing with us. The point is that your first post wasn't as correct as the corrected one. They aren't calling the lights green since as you yourself are saying, blue and green is the same thing in Japanese, midori is the color of plants and vegetables. Since we can't translate 青い as "blue/green, a conceptual mix", we call it "blue" because if you write one blue and one green box, japanese people will call the blue box 青い more often than the green one. Thus, we say they are calling things we consider green "blue", but they obviously intend green for us since traffic lights are obviously green to us. You said "So they are still calling the lights green, just with a different word" but they aren't. They are calling the lights the same color as they call heaven, with the same word. Thus, they call them blue. To us they are green. Therefor "They call them blue, but intend green". We don't mean japanese want to say 緑 but say 青い to be funny or anything, "intends" here just means that their concept isn't the same as ours.

If you want to teach beginners in Japanese how Japanese people talk about traffics lights you can't say "They call them green." You could however say "Japanese consider green a shade of blue, so they call lights 青い which in general translates to blue. They aren't colorblind, they mean/intend/know it's green, but to them it's the same as blue."

Tobberoth wrote:

Therefor "They call them blue, but intend green". We don't mean japanese want to say 緑 but say 青い to be funny or anything, "intends" here just means that their concept isn't the same as ours.

青 means green just as much as it means blue. Why decide to translate it as blue just because there are other words that mean green. (There are other words that mean blue too)

Anyways Japanese don't call them blue but intend green, they call them 青い and intend 青い. You as a translator have to pick the natural word to call it in English since English has no equivalent to the word 青い.

Hmm, I'm starting to get a bit wary of adding too many 私は...ーます　sentences. One thing I learned from my trip to Japan was that casual Japanese is essential. I understand why they teach the politer stuff first, but I found myself wishing I knew the plain stuff, on a very regular basis.

Unfortunately, UBJG doesn't have anything in plain form. I wouldn't mind, but I haven't found a good place to get more casual sentences, so I'm adding these exclusively. I could change them myself in simple sentences, sure, but then I'd run the risk of making a mistake, which I'd then hammer into my brain with Anki.

Hmm.

nickoakden wrote:

Hmm, I'm starting to get a bit wary of adding too many 私は...ーます　sentences. One thing I learned from my trip to Japan was that casual Japanese is essential. I understand why they teach the politer stuff first, but I found myself wishing I knew the plain stuff, on a very regular basis.

Unfortunately, UBJG doesn't have anything in plain form. I wouldn't mind, but I haven't found a good place to get more casual sentences, so I'm adding these exclusively. I could change them myself in simple sentences, sure, but then I'd run the risk of making a mistake, which I'd then hammer into my brain with Anki.

Hmm.

You can't really add too many. Most people, myself included, have the opposite problem. I lived in Japan while studying and even though we started with studying polite form, as soon as we learned casual form, we became extremely good at it since it was the only thing we used outside of the classroom... give it a month and suddenly, it becomes really hard to speak in polite form. We had gotten almost fluent in casual form, without ever training polite form in that way. It took a LONG time for me to learn to speak in polite form even close to as fast and as natural as I speak in casual form. In fact, I'm still much better at casual form.

So don't worry about it, keep training your polite form. When you learn casual form and get more material in it, it will stick right away (the reason it's casual is that it's more simple, it feels easier to talk like that, even if the grammar might be harder as a beginner).