Thora wrote:

alyks wrote:

ahibba wrote:

alyks, you are so confident about your method. I read about it before, but honestly, I didn't understand how it works.

Can you explain why is it better than Heisig? and what should I expect after using it?

Is it for memorizing the readings of kanji, the meanings, or both?

Yeah, I am confident about it. I learned how to write the kanji and onyomi for each kanji at the same time for little extra effort. Read the site.

What to expect after using it? If you start learning Japanese by using the Movie Method to learn on readings, you will "be able to read full blown novels after just 4 months". Read the site.

Yeeeaaaahhh I don't buy it. "Full blown" meaning what, light novels? And "read" meaning what, pronounce the on-yomi you remember? It doesn't mean you understand the compound!

Let's take this as a reminder that there is never a magic bullet solution - smart studying is one thing, but expecting miracles without giving proper time/effort is just ludicrous.

p.s. I like the movie method and all, no disrespect, just think the authors' claims give the wrong idea.

activeaero wrote:

Where did he say he didn't put in any effort or the "proper" amount of time?   How can you even know what the proper amount of time is if you haven't used his method?

You wouldn't be able to understand the grammar of a novel in 4 months, even if you knew all the vocab and readings.  Especially if you're talking a novel for a standard high school graduate.

Consider this example (stolen from Jay Rubin explaining causative verbs, the romaji is his, not mine):
"Now, give this one a try.  It comes from a story by the writer Hoshi Shin'ichi.  A door-to-door salesman has just been told by the lady of the house that, since her husband isn't home, she can't buy the automatic backscratcher he has been trying to sell her today.  He gives up and says, 'De wa, chikai uchi ni, mata o-ukagai sasete itadaku koto ni itashimasho' "

Now, I'll provide the vocab meanings.
de wa: Well then
chikai: (in this example) short
uchi: (in this example) an interval of time
mata: again
ukagau: to visit (humble)
suru: to do
itadaku: to accept, receive (here, to get someone to do) (humble)
itasu: to do (humble)

For this example, Rubin's question is "Who does the ukagai part, the sasete part, the itadaku part?"  And then, for fun, what's a good translation?  Any takers?

Here we seem to have a fairly long sentence, with keigo, adjectivals modifying nominals, a sentence modifying a nominal, a o-stem humble verb, the causative, a receiving verb, and a distal-style consultative.  You don't need to know the terms for any of these, but it does take a while to learn to understand them, doesn't it?  Isn't it more than 4 months?

Last edited by Tzadeck (2009 May 17, 7:20 am)

blackmacros wrote:

Yes but do you need a 100% grasp of the gramamr to get the point? Probably not. Besides which grammar is just as studyable as any other facet of the language. I don't see why you couldn't learn enough to read most material within a few months.

I don't think you need 100% understanding of the grammar to get the point of a sentence, but with a sentence like this even having a clue can be difficult.

I don't think understanding grammar is analogous to learning a series of facts like memorizing kanji meanings or onyomi.  Even if you know all the grammar patterns in a sentence and what they mean, when they are thrown together with many other grammar patterns that you aren't yet familiar with to the point of intuition it can be very hard to parse the entire meaning out (learning a pattern is sort of like putting kanji into your SRS--the fun has really only just begun).  It's like a juggling act in your mind.  This is just from my experience. 

I don't know any way that I could have studied grammar that would have lead me to understand this sentence in four months (provided that I didn't study particularly to understand the sentence).

Not to mention, even if that were possible, there're many other skills besides just grammar needed to read a novel.  Kanji is another one.  Do you think it's possible to get all those skills in just four months?  The claim is ridiculous.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2009 May 17, 7:37 am)

mentat_kgs wrote:

Hi Tzadeck.

That's why memorizing vocabular outside context has limited usage. Vocabulary is not made of only words, it is made o a bit more than that.

And you are only seeing all this trouble because you are trying to *translate* the sentence to English.

If you take off your feets from the solidness of English, it'll take a little while, but you'll notice that is a pretty much straightforward sentence in Japanese. Specially in context.

Hey hey, you're remarking about the wrong things. I purposely included "for fun" in hope that it would be understood that I was only fishing for a translation as a silly friendly challenge.  I don't encourage anyone to translate things into English when actually studying, and I certainly don't do it myself.  I've been studying Japanese for 5 years and understood this just fine upon reading it for the first time a few months ago.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2009 May 17, 7:49 am)

blackmacros wrote:

Plus you don't need to understand every single sentence 100% to read a book. Just because a few sentences here and there are difficult doesn't detract from the fact that you can read the rest of it pretty well.

I have only been studying Japanese for about ~8 weeks and am only about 2 weeks into actually learning vocab/gramamr but I would hazard that the sentence means something like "Oh well I'll come back again soon" or something like that. That may or may not be completely wrong, but it doesn't matter since I'll just be moving on to read the rest of the book. Perhaps the next few sentences will make it more clear, or perhaps I'll come back later after having read the rest of the book and that sentence will be a lot easier to understand.

I'm not denying that either.  Obviously, you can figure that out at least that much just by the context, since I told you the story leading up to that.  The problems is that the context leading up to that sentence--which I gave in English--will also contain a large number of difficult grammar patterns, as well as all the other skills you need to read a novel.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2009 May 17, 8:15 am)

Tzadeck wrote:

Here we seem to have a fairly long sentence, with keigo, adjectivals modifying nominals, a sentence modifying a nominal, a o-stem humble verb, the causative, a receiving verb, and a distal-style consultative.  You don't need to know the terms for any of these, but it does take a while to learn to understand them, doesn't it?  Isn't it more than 4 months?

I've only glanced through Tae Kim briefly as I'm still working through RTK, but aside from keigo & humble form (which have their own chapter near the end), all of those grammar structures are dealt with either in the 'Basics' chapter or early in the 'Essentials' chapter. I have no idea what a "distal-style consultative" means but I assume it's something along the lines of "should...?" or "let's", both of which are also dealt with early on. If I studied for four months and wasn't able to understand that sentence I'd be extremely disappointed.

I think this is a classic case of over-complicating grammar. "Adjectivals modifying a nominal"? "Sentence modifying a nominal"? "Receiving verb"? These are all extremely basic grammar ideas which are made to seem complicated by using sophisticated technical language. I imagine the same applies to "distal style consultative" which, as I said, probably means something elementary like "should....?" Each of these structures can be learned within a matter of days if not hours.

Tobberoth wrote:

Most people can't even do that in 2 years of diligent studies, I really don't think a fancy technique changes that, even if it might change a whole lot.

Most people can't learn how to write all of the Joyo Kanji even after years of study.  I really don't think any fancy technique could change that.......

I didn't see anywhere where he claimed to now be able to read through novels with native like speed and understanding.  I took it as meaning he now as the ability to work his way through reading novels.  If you've got the Joyo Kanji down, along with a good chunk of readings for them, and work hard for 4 months stuffing grammar under your belt it doesn't really seem THAT far fetched does it?

activeaero wrote:

Tobberoth wrote:

Most people can't even do that in 2 years of diligent studies, I really don't think a fancy technique changes that, even if it might change a whole lot.

Most people can't learn how to write all of the Joyo Kanji even after years of study.  I really don't think any fancy technique could change that.......

I didn't see anywhere where he claimed to now be able to read through novels with native like speed and understanding.  I took it as meaning he now as the ability to work his way through reading novels.  If you've got the Joyo Kanji down, along with a good chunk of readings for them, and work hard for 4 months stuffing grammar under your belt it doesn't really seem THAT far fetched does it?

It does to me, have you ever tried reading a random article on wikipedia? It's not so much an issue of kanji or readings, it's the insane amount of vocabulary and general reading comprehension at that. Even if you know the grammar and the words, you might not understand a sentence because you haven't trained reading comprehension enough.

People seem to be jumping from Movie Method to reading novels in this discussion, but what about all the work in between? RTK, Movie Method etc, don't teach any words. Knowing the meaning and on-yomi of 2000 kanji doesn't magically enable you to read books. Not all the words in the Japanese language are 熟語. If you've done the Movie Method and then pick up a novel, I bet you'd be so lost you wouldn't even be able to call it reading. You can't read Japanese without knowing any Japanese.

mentat_kgs wrote:

It takes time to vocabulary reach your mind. When you first find a word is like if you planted a seed on your mind. Time will pass and it will grow and frutify on its own.

Exactly and this is included in what I called "reading comprehension" before. It's not enough to have seen a word and understood it once, one needs a lot of saturation and it needs to really root itself. I often find that new words in my SRS feels foreign... but at the 4-5th review, they feel natural to me, especially if I've seen them "in the wild". It just takes time and exposure.