It's not as bad as I make it out to be.. It's just that I guess I like things that are incredibly linear and this just..isn't. I don't even know if it's possible to make it linear. But, I go through 2001KO and the words are of course made up of things that 2001KO hasn't introduced yet. So then I open up UBGB and I guess they just expect that you know a bunch of kanji already, and I looked at the very first sentence and it's got gakusei, which doesn't even pop up till like 200 something in kanji odyssey.. So I dunno if I'm just gonna start learning compounds randomly as they come up in UBGB, whether I should mess around with 2001KO, or what the hell to do, heh.

Now comes the time where you actually learn the language. I think, sometimes, on this site we confuse studying RTK for studying Japanese. RTK can be used to help study Japanese, but if RTK is the only thing you're doing then you're going to be lost. I think what throws us off is that RTK is extremely powerful, and it has made learning the writing/rough meanings of the kanji extremely easy. What this boils down to unfortunately is that a person who only knows RTK really only knows the Jeopardy version of the kanji; trivia. It can be useful depending on further studying, but itself it is not inherently useful.

To move further I would pair RTK2 with something like Kanji in Context or real Japanese text. Heck, do all 3 and plow along. The only way to learn some of the stuff is just constant exposure, and constant reading practice. Choose a 少年 manga you think you're gonna like, and try to slog through it. If you're finding it too difficult then you might need to go back and study grammar.

Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to start reading real Japanese text until you've finished intermediate level. There are just so many varied forms of the grammar that, without that intermediate experience, it's real tough to untangle.

Shibo wrote:

I like things that are incredibly linear and this just..isn't. I don't even know if it's possible to make it linear.

I've been having pretty good luck with a "linearization strategy" I've developed for sentence mining.

Normally, when you add a word to your lexicon, you do it by adding a bunch of example sentences using that word to your SRS.  If an example sentence has other words also new, you have to decide whether to add that sentence, which will force you to recursively add the new words too; or skip it, and have fewer example sentences.  If you always add every sentence you can, the new vocabulary would go up exponentially and become unmanageable.  If you only use sentences which don't add other new words, it severely cripples your ability to add a new word at all.

The short circuit I came up with is like this.  You add the new sentences, even though they contain new words, but don't immediately recursively add those new words yet.  Then, you see if the unfamiliar words REALLY prevent you from passing the card.  If they still do so after a few days, THEN recursively add those new words one by one until the card is passable.  But, it turns out, your mind can learn faster than you give it credit for.

EXAMPLE

I wanted to add the word 陣地 because it's used in FF6.  But the usual sentence sources provide very few example sentences.  One of those sentences also had the word 砲兵 which obviously I'd never seen before.  But I did know words like 兵士 and 兵器, so the 兵 kanji is easy, and the meaning of 砲 is perfectly captured by the Heisig keyword.  So if 砲兵 consists of 4 components- two meanings and two readings- then I already had 3 out of the 4.  So I added the 砲兵 sentence without adding any other 砲兵 sentences.  Sure enough, the word presented no difficulty, the card was passed with no trouble.

Hypothetically, if 砲兵 had given me troubles, after it gave me trouble for a few days I'd go ahead and add some more example sentences just for 砲兵.  But it didn't turn out to be necessary.

Of course, it starts hard because you know so few compounds.  Initially, pretty much every example sentence has unfamiliar compounds.  But it slowly gets better.  At about 9000 cards (of which only about 6000 are actually sentences), now I rarely have to recursively add another compound to add a target one.

Last edited by snispilbor (2008 July 05, 10:39 pm)

Nukemarine wrote:

Instead of doing 15 kanji a day, now you'll do 15 new sentences a day. Hold off on Kanji.Odyssey for now. UBJG should take you a good 3 months to get through. If you need further explanations on what's in UBJG, I recommend Tae Kim's website as it's pretty good at cutting to the chase. After UBJG, KO will feel a lot easier.

So you just pick up random compounds from the UBJG sentences, as they come up?
The grammar doesn't seem like it'll be an issue. I guess I was just looking for a systematic *something* that doesn't appear to exist. I've got one sentence in anki, and a bunch of very basic kanji with readings and example compounds from the first few pages of KO so far. I guess I just need a big enough base of kanji and compounds that eventually I'll be able to add example sentences with just one new thing and a bunch of other familiar ones.

Kanji Odyssey does get easier with time, but in your case it would probably be better to postpone the books for a little while as has been suggested by others.  I would suggest drilling the JLPT 4 and JLPT 3 vocab lists for at least a week or two to get a feel for common vocabulary before jumping into KO.  I agree that a textbook as a supplement is always a good idea; this is particularly true if you are having problems with the KO sentence grammar.

I haven't used UBJG so I don't know if there is an order you should follow with it.  Generally, I would advise against picking up random words unless they are very basic.  But if they are all words around the same basic level as "gakusei", then there shouldnt be a problem.

BTW, I think you will find that KO IS actually quite linear once you have used it for a while, which is one of the reasons I like it.  Without a source like KO, the sentence method is far too open-ended for me to recommend it.  The end result of KO is to be able to understand the sentences and vocab in the book and therefore be prepared to read most of the high frequency kanji that you will come into contact within context later on.  Right now, you are probably just frustrated by the pace at which KO introduces new vocab, but much of the vocab does repeat throughout the series making it easier as time goes on, and you should also be able to learn any new vocab by looking at the English translation sentence.

Last edited by Dragg (2008 July 06, 12:39 pm)

Mcjon01 wrote:

As far as I can tell, the vocabulary in UBJG is essentially a JLPT 4/3 wordlist, it's just presented in the context of an introduction to grammar.

Oh, thats good.  In that case, its probably everything needed to get prepped for something like KO.

Thanks for all the words of encouragement, folks. JLPT 3 and 4 vocab is pretty much exactly what I need at this point. I mean, I know pretty much all of it in kana. I just need to be able to regognize/produce it with kanji inserted where it belongs. It seems like all the tools are there in front of me, I just need to stop stressing and do the work. It's been only six days since I finished RTK. My daily reviews have gone from 140 to 110, and so I'm slowly but surely finding a bit more free time to work on my new stuff. Tonight's plan is to do 10 RTK3 kanji (I'm gonna do that every sunday night) and then 15 UBGB sentences.

BTW, Nuke, where are you finding these sentences being pronounced for your production cards?

Shibo wrote:

BTW, Nuke, where are you finding these sentences being pronounced for your production cards?

Due to a recent AJATT post, a few of us are using a Text to Speech program to read out kanji sentences into sound files. Then we attach the sound files to our cards in Anki. Works pretty good.

Now for production I have Anki display the Kana version of the sentence and play the audio. With that, I try to write down the sentence in kanji. More difficult, but it tests your listening comprehension as well as all the other items.

Yeah, no, most of the Kanji have a variety of readings. Kun-yomi  (訓読み) readings are native Japanese words and usually used by themselves, on-yomi (音読み) readings are based off the Chinese sounds and usually used in Kanji compounds, where multiple Kanji are used together to form new words in the way you expected.

大阪 uses one of the 'big' kanji's kun-readings, おお, which you might be familiar with from 大きい. 大学 uses one of it's on-readings, だい.

When Hiragana is combined with Kanji to form a word it's (often, and is here) because Japanese conjugations are done 'outside' of the kanji. 食べる is a verb, 古い is an adjective. So the 'ふる' part of 'ふるい' is inside the 古, the 'い' part, which conjugates and is presently in the simple present tense, is outside of it. So if you conjugated it to the past tense it'd become 古かった (read ふるかった) for example. Only the い changes, and it's all that's outside the kanji. The conjugating part of a word is never within the kanji; for reasons that become apparent, eh?
食べ物 combines the words (not kanji) for 'eat' and 'thing' (ala food). It dropped the 'る' part (the part that conjugates) to get it's stem, which is also a kindof noun form (more or less..), and put them together. For whatever reason, the べ part of 食べる is outside the kanji despite not conjugating (it happens sometimes), so it's in the middle of the word. The same is true when it conjugates normally. 食べた、食べます、食べない、 etc.

You can get a crash course on all this from, for example, Tae Kim's guide found at http://www.guidetojapanese.org/ if it isn't explained in UBJG (I wouldn't know).

Thanks. Actually, I'd just made the connection after I submitted that post. It's funny, I've known all these verbs and their conjugation patterns for however long, but the connection between the -eru/-iru verbs and the okurigana had never managed to slap me upside the head, and nothing I'd read had explicitly stated it (what happens when you learn most of your conjugations patterns outside of a book). It wasn't until I submitted that "For whatever reason..." that I went "Oh, wait. THAT'S the reason, isn't it." I was coming in to alter it when you beat me to the punch!

Thanks for the correction!

furrykef wrote:

I can explain this: -eru and -iru verbs are always written with the last two syllables as okurigana (that's the name for the kana that are attached after a kanji), hence "taberu" is 食べる rather than 食る.

Thank you so much for this and for all of your post in general. I'm studying through a beginner's textbook now that I finished RTK1, but for whatever reason it didn't mention that -ru verbs have two syllables as okurigana. I was having a lot of trouble when writing by hand, because how was I supposed to guess the okurigana, and ended up having to look it up all the time, which was annoying and time consuming. Also, this is bound to make conjugating verbs that end in -ru easier, because now I have a method for knowing if they are -u verbs or -ru verbs, and even though there are these 2 syllable verbs like 着る, it's still a lot less to memorize. Now, I think my only okurigana related problem is adjectives like 忙しい who also have double okurigana. Oh well, I guess I'll have to grow used to them. Again, thank you so much for your post!

Last edited by Jonathan (2008 July 07, 10:20 am)

Nukemarine wrote:

Due to a recent AJATT post, a few of us are using a Text to Speech program to read out kanji sentences into sound files. Then we attach the sound files to our cards in Anki. Works pretty good.

Now for production I have Anki display the Kana version of the sentence and play the audio. With that, I try to write down the sentence in kanji. More difficult, but it tests your listening comprehension as well as all the other items.

This sounds amazing. I'd definitely like to give it a try. I can see myself having a great deal of fun with this study method. I do have another question. How do you guys handle new vocab? Do you make a separate card with english on one side, and a little mp3 on the other? Or do you put the word in kana or kanji  on one side and use a picture instead of an english word? I know I've heard people say they just learn the word in context with the new sentence, but hell.. If the sentence is "I'm going to the mall to buy a new wallet" and you didn't know the word wallet, how are you gonna remember you're not going to the mall to buy a new belt, etc?