Insight | 楽しい日本語 Tanoshii Nihongo

Category Archives: Insight

Are Monolingual Dictionaries Necessary?

Posted on March 5, 2012 by ハヴネス

This is just my two thoughts on a debate that has people arguing on all sides of it. Basically, the question is this: should switching to a monolingual dictionary be a goal to set? I can see why people would think it’s beneficial, but in my personal opinion, I don’t think this should be a goal. For one it’s boring, and for another I don’t think it motivates as well as reading actual books.

There are a number of language learners out there who say, “After X many words, I’m switching to a monolingual dictionary!” I could be wrong, but I’m assuming people want to do this because somehow understanding a dictionary indicates a high level of reading, or maybe because they think it’ll motivate them to memorize whatever number of words they have in mind. I personally don’t think the ability read a dictionary is very indicative of skill, though.

So, here’s why I don’t think that making the switch to a monolingual dictionary should be a priority, although I have no problem with people using them.

1. Dictionaries are tools, not goals. Like all tools, use what’s easy for you and useful at the same time. Sometimes a monolingual dictionary will convey meaning better than an English-Japanese/Japanese-English dictionary will, but most of the time I still use a bilingual dictionary. Use what’s handy to you, and bilingual dictionaries are great tools for a lot of things.

Your goal should be to do what you want in Japanese, whether that’s reading manga, watching j-dorama, or talking with people on the street – it shouldn’t be to read a dictionary, unless you really love dictionaries. So, use your dictionary as a tool for learning new words, but don’t make it a goal, as though it indicates a new level of Japanese.

2. Monolingual dictionaries don’t represent your level. Reading real Japanese as found in books and things is much more representative of your level, and using a bilingual dictionary doesn’t mean that you can’t read Japanese well – it just means that it’s the tool you prefer.

I primarily use a bilingual dictionary for Japanese, unless it’s obvious that the definition covers more than the English equivalent, if there even is an English equivalent. That’s not to say that my Japanese is weak, but I just don’t get the love and desire to switch exclusively to a monolingual dictionary.

On the contrast, my Italian is a bit poor, but I use a monolingual dictionary for Italian. Why? I don’t know. It’s personal preference, I guess.

3. Reading books is a better way to expand your vocabulary. When you take an English class, how does your teacher tell you to increase your vocabulary? Most of the time, he or she will tell you to read. Anything, at that. Just keep reading and the vocabulary will come to you. This is the crux of sentence mining and why it’s a popular way of learning Japanese, or any language for that matter.

Now, some people prefer to expand their vocabulary by looking up one word in the dictionary every day and attempting to use at some point in conversation. This is great, except that it seldom works in the long run. You’re better off exposing yourself to the word as often as possible.

Now, I don’t think it’s bad to use a monolingual dictionary if you’re comfortable with it and feel that you get more out of it than you do with a bilingual dictionary. I just don’t think this should be a priority, or a step in your ultimate goal. Use tools as tools, not as the end-all-be-all.

Categories: Insight | Tags: dictionary, monolingual

Random Musing on Funding Your Language Journey

Posted on February 14, 2012 by ハヴネス

2 Comments

So I find myself in the middle of a financial crisis, just like every other American, and most of the world while I’m at it. Now, I could spend this post going on an don about how Keynesian economics is a total failure, Austrian economics is full of wisdom, and why we should elect Ron Paul, but this is a blog about Japan, and quite frankly, my lack of funds has caused me to slow down in my consumption of Japanese media. Gotta keep sentence mining, you know.

Basically, this post is to introduce everyone to a free, albeit painfully slow, method for making a few extra dollars to fund your journey towards fluency in Japanese, or whatever your goal is. That little trick is a free site called Swagbucks.

Basically, you just use their search engine, watch videos on their site, participate in polls, and random stuff like that in order to earn swag bucks. These are just little points that slowly but surely accumulate over time and you can trade them in for prizes. For example, when you get 5,900 of them, you can trade them in for a $50 gift certificate from Amazon. This means that I can get more stuff for Japanese.

It’s normally pretty slow to accumulate points, but it’s much easier with their referral program. You may have noticed that the link I posted is a referral link. Basically, if you get someone to sign up through your referral, you get some points, and you get a few points every time one of them wins points. You get your link, or you can share it via twitter, facebook, etc. and get people to sign up through your link so you can get points. Just explain that by signing up, not only do they get to win points towards free crap, but it helps you learn Japanese.

I hesitated making this post because I have a feeling it’s going to invite massive amounts of spammers to the comments. Not that Swagbucks is a scam or anything (I’ve used them for a couple of years now), but every morning I wake up and clear out the comments of spammers trying to use this blog to get their precious backlinks. Away, Internet marketers! I don’t care to have your crap littered on this blog!

Anyway, please sign up. It does help people like me and you to get a few extra stuff in Japanese. It promotes more reviews for this blog, too. I hate that this post is basically just a big advertisement, but I’m in a bit of a crunch and appreciate the understanding.

Categories: Insight, Websites

Playing Japanese Games Part 2

Posted on January 23, 2012 by ハヴネス

4 Comments

Part 1 was focused on retro gaming, and now it’s time to figure out how you can play modern games in Japanese. As I said, I don’t like using emulators for moderns games because they’re buggy, slow, and an even bigger pain to configure, so I prefer to actually try and play the games on consoles. Here’s how to get these games.

1. Find games that give you the option to change the language. I’m thinking of games like Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for GameCube, where you can adjust the language. This is a very cheap and good way to get Japanese games, although there aren’t many games like these.

2. Buy a Nintendo DS Lite. These are completely region free, so you can buy Japanese games without having to buy a Japanese system or mod a system you already own. As before, try to play games you’re already familiar with when starting out, but I’d like to recommend a couple anyway.

Pokemon Black/White: This games is great for both beginners and more advanced students. The gameplay is self-explanatory, so even if you haven’t played this particular game in English before, you’ll figure it out quickly. Also, it gives you option to play it with or without kanji, so if you’re not ready for full-blown kanji yet, you can change it to all hiragana.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass/Spirit Tracks: To be totally honest, these are pretty weak games as far as the Zelda franchise is concerned, complete with gimmicky controls. However, these games are excellent for learning/practicing Japanese, as you can tap the kanji you see to get a reading of it! No more scrunched up, hard to read furigana! That feature alone makes these games worth it, although I didn’t care for them as much as other Zelda games. Oh, but I found “Spirit Tracks” to be much better.

3. Mod your system. For me, the cons outweigh the pros here, but modding your system to allow you to play Japanese games, as well as homebrew games, is pretty popular. Now, I’ve only ever done this once, with an old Wii I got, and I didn’t mind it. I’m glad that I didn’t do it on my actual Wii, though, because modding a system means that you can no longer update it.

Modding can also be hugely expensive. I haven’t found a PS3 equivalent of this (and of course not a PS1/PS2 equivalent), but if you want to save money on modding your Wii, there’s a software this guy is selling for much cheaper than the hundreds of dollars you have to spend to have someone else do it for you, and for cheaper than buying a chip. Just ignore the blatant, in-your-face advertising this guy does to try and get you to buy his product.

4. Buy a Japanese Wii/PS3/PS2/PS/etc. This is pretty expensive, but it’s how I like to do it. A tip I’d like to share, however, is don’t buy from Amazon Japan (their shipping will kill you if you live outside of Japan), but buy from a site like PlayAsia. If you live in Japan, go ahead and buy from Amazon Japan, but for those of us who live outside of Japan, that can get expensive very quickly. Granted, anytime you buy a Japanese language game, no matter where it’s from, it will always be a bit more expensive than the English version!

I’d also recommend you stick to a Wii, which PlayAsia is finally offering again (I’ve waited months for them to restock these!), or a PSP. There’s nothing wrong with a PS3, if you really want one, but they’re horribly pricey. XBox 360 isn’t very popular in Japan, so finding good Japanese games for it just isn’t worth it.

Well, I’d say that’s that. It’s much cheaper to just buy manga and anime, but if you really want to play Japanese games, then hopefully I’ve covered all the different ways. Good luck!

Categories: Games, Insight, Products, Websites | Tags: games, video games

Playing Japanese Games Part 1

Posted on January 23, 2012 by ハヴネス

3 Comments

I’m doing a two-part post today about playing Japanese video games. The Japanese love their video games, and a lot of Japanese learners love them, too. Before I go into how to get them, I’d like to point out the pros and cons of playing them, so that you don’t hastily go out and get them only to regret it.

PROS: I highly recommend watching anime, reading manga, and playing video games as a way to get a feel for what real Japanese is like, even if you’re not into sentence mining. Anything you can do to bet away from the sanitized Japanese that your textbook has to offer is a plus. Modern games often have voice acting with captions, so it’s like watching J-Drama with captions.

CONS: The game screens can make reading Japanese a huge pain. This isn’t as much of a problem with some of the newer games as well as games that are all in hiragana, but sometimes reading kanji on a SNES/Sega Genesis/NES/N64/Atari/etc. screen can be a pain.

Also, if you’re a beginner, it’ll be hard to find games at your level. You can either play an overload of Pokemon, as well as some other games for little kids, or you can wait until you feel more comfortable with reading and understanding Japanese.

So, here’s part 1, which focuses on retro gaming! I love retro gaming, and there’s a ton of good games out there. Here’s a few ways to get them in Japanese.

1. Virtual console on the Wii. Even the English version of the Wii has a few Japanese games to download for its virtual console. Wii points cards are $20 each, which really isn’t too bad. This is affordable, and a great way to support Nintendo.

2. Buy a retro gaming system. Head to eBay or look for used game systems. Sometimes these systems can get expensive, but you’ll be able to play any Japanese game you want on your TV. This is my preferred way, since I like to feel like I’m living in my nostalgia, except in Japanese. Then again, I’m a bit of a collector, too.

3. Go download an emulator. This is the easiest way to get your hands on older Japanese video games. Go to a site, like Emulator Zone, and download an emulator for the console you want games for. To get games for your emulator, you need to look for ROMs to load, but there’s a ton of sites for these. I recommend ROM Hustler.

Basically, you get an emulator for the system you want your computer to emulate. Install it and configure it (configuration can be a pain sometimes), and go look for game ROMs that you want to play. It’s easy and cheap. Technically, you’re only supposed to download games you already own, but I tend to make exceptions for these older games because they’re next to impossible to find sometimes.

Now, this offers easily the fastest and cheapest way to get Japanese video games, and there’s a ton of them at your disposal. However, I’d like to make a few suggestions before downloading.

1. Go for older systems. I know there are emulators out there for everything, including the PlayStation on up, but from my experience ROMs for things like PlayStation, GameCube, etc. tend to be buggy and can crash a lot. I’ve had fair luck with N64 emulators, but beyond that you’re better off buying the system instead of trying to set up a working emulator. More on buying systems in part 2.

2. When starting out, try and find games you’re already familiar with instead of downloading a game you’ve never played before. I know, we all want to play those Fire Emblem games that haven’t yet made it to the US, but you should start with something you’re already used to playing. Eventually you can work up to playing games you’ve never heard of.

Well, that’s it for part 1. The next part is focused on modern games as opposed to retro gaming. I decided to do that part separate because consoles are region locked, for the most part, and emulators are buggy for newer systems. Stay tuned!

Categories: Gadgets, Games, Insight, Products | Tags: emulators, video games

Japanese – The Good and the Bad

Posted on December 9, 2011 by ハヴネス

2 Comments

Today was supposed to be a Friday review, but that’s taking a while to get finished, probably due to my penchant for developing writer’s block, and also because I’m just a dirty procrastinator. So, today I’m actually going to write about what I like about the Japanese language and what I dislike about it. Maybe I can generate some conversation in the comments, because I’d love to hear about what my readers like and dislike about Japanese.

I should add a disclaimer in here: I’m not trying to be negative with anything I say. Not loving absolutely everything about a language and/or culture isn’t a bad thing. I’m an American, and I don’t love everything about English or America.

What I Like:

1. Politeness levels is something that a lot of learners dislike. At the very least, the ones I’ve met dislike that the Japanese language makes it seem like not everyone is equal, and we here in the west strive for equality among everyone. True, you must treat your superiors in a more respectful way than, say, your peers, children, etc. However, this also allows you to express yourself more fully, I think.

Think about it this way. If I refer to myself as “ore” that says a lot for my personality, as opposed to referring to myself as “watakushi” – the total opposite. Just the way you refer to yourself tells a lot about you, all the way from your age (in some cases) to gender, and even towards your general attitude. In some situations you can be much more humble just by what you say.

2. Knowing Japanese really opens you up to all sorts of media like anime, video games, books, manga, movies, and TV shows that just don’t make it to America or any other English speaking nation. Unlike some people who have to wait for fansubs or an English walkthrough of certain shows or games, you have access to it right away. You don’t have to wait for it!

This is actually one of the reasons why I started learning in the first place. I’m a Tenchi Muyo fan and really wanted to read the “True Tenchi Novels” and get all the information that the Japanese fans could get. Despite the show’s success in the west, we never got translations of any of the books or games. Sure, we got some manga, but they don’t compare to the novels. The novels were written by the creator himself, and they’re kind of like The Lord of the Rings’ book, The Silmarillion.

3. Knowing the language gives one great insight into the culture, as any language will give you greater insight into the culture in which it’s spoken. Now, you can know a language without having a full grasp in the culture surrounding it, but I don’t think you have have a full grasp on a culture without knowing the language, or at least understanding how it works.

4. Knowing a second language has proven to help build problem solving skills and flexible thinking, and what language could do that for the English speaker better than Japanese? Well, maybe Chinese, or Korean, or any other eastern language, but that’s beside the point. Knowing a second language does wonders for one’s brain because it forces you to think about things differently than you normally do.

What I Dislike:

1. Breaking into casual Japanese! In my own method for Japanese (it changes depending on the language), I did a little traditional study first – just enough to get the fundamentals of grammar down and find some good reference books – so I would feel more prepared when I started learning primarily through immersion. Needless to say, when I first came face-to-face with casual, spoken Japanese, it was a hair yanking experience.

Now, casual Japanese is great once you make its acquaintance, but it can be a real pain beforehand. This might just be because I’m a grammar nazi (I know, linguistically speaking there’s no such thing as grammar, but…) and when participating in casual conversation, the Japanese seem to just throw all their rules right out the window. Let me use this analogy: it’s like someone learning English and then logging into a chat room. Making heads and tails of it is an extraordinary feat at first.

2. Too vague, or too detailed? That is the question. Japanese can be kind of vague sometimes, but all language have that potential. However, when the Japanese aren’t beating around the bush, they’re being way too detailed. Sometimes the way they talk can seem backwards to us English speakers.

3. Nihonjinron, or what makes Japan special, isn’t primarily about language, but it insists the the Japanese language can only be fully grasped by those who are ethnically Japanese. It’s a bit racist, and there are a surprising number of Japanese who buy into this garbage. It’s kind of like American exceptionalism, except for Japan. There’s a number of weird things this philosophy promotes, but to say that one’s ethnicity plays a role in how well someone learns Japanese (as well as providing a convenient excuse for why the Japanese can’t learn other languages) is just bizarre. I mean, it has even less credibility than saying that adults can’t learn language. There’s enough evidence now to prove both these things wrong, yet people still cling to them.

4. Learning Japanese somehow makes one a weebo, or wapanese. Sometimes, when someone’s reasons for learning Japanese began with manga, anime, or some other thing normally associated almost exclusively with “otaku” culture, people assume that you want to be Japanese. I never quite understood this one. I suppose that wanting to learn Finnish in order to read Kalevala then means that one wants to be Finnish, too! Wait, I am part Finnish…

Seriously, as I’ve said many times, there’s no wrong reason to learn a language. Maybe there are some people out there who are unhappy with their ethnicity and want to be Japanese, or maybe they just want to seem like they know Japanese, but undertaking the language for real is something to be proud of and it doesn’t mean that you’re not happy with your ethnicity, whatever it may be.

In Conclusion

So there we go. Japanese is a great language to learn, yet it can be a pain. I’d be very interested to hear what you like or don’t like about the language. You can include cultural points as well.

Categories: Insight, Uncategorized | Tags: Japanese, language, Nihonjinron, otaku, weebo

Learning Sentence Mining with Skyrim!

Posted on November 23, 2011 by ハヴネス

4 Comments

I can’t review Skyrim on this blog, since it’s all about Japanese culture and language, but I think I can tie it in to sentence mining. You see, I’ve been waiting for this game for a long time, and now I’m completely hooked on it and ignoring my regular duties. Long story short, as I was playing it, I realized that learning dragon shouts is kind of like sentence mining!

For those not in the know, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is, obviously, the fifth game in the Elder Scrolls series. Set 200 years after the events of the fourth game, Oblivion, this game takes places in the northern most kingdom of Tamriel, Skyrim. Each game in the series is a piece of history in the fictional world of Tamriel – a gaming world that easily sports one of the deepest and most creative mythologies and lore I’ve ever come across, game or otherwise – and since the Empire of Cyrodil is crumbling, the Nordic folk of Skyrim are on the verge of a decision: to say with the Empire or to leave it hanging.

There’s something else wrong here; the dragons are back, and they kind of wreak havoc everywhere. Luckily, you’re character is Dohvakin, or Dragon Born, and you have the power to harness the capabilities of the dragon language and absorb their souls. So, can you see where I’m going with this? You find these phrases and words in the dragon language (known as dragon shouts) scattered throughout Skyrim. As you collect them, you gain different abilities.

A wealth of sentences!

Isn’t that kind of like sentence mining? Sentence mining is, basically, “mining” books, movies, etc. in search of non-boring sentences. The theory is that if you collect enough, the language then becomes more and more accessible to you, allowing you to understand and express yourself in ways that a textbook could never teach you. I personally have found the sentence mining method incredibly helpful, and I can’t help but think that learning a new construction, new words, and new phrases is like learning a dragon shout. When you learn something new, it gives you a new ability, just like the dragon shouts. You might not be able to sprint, shoot sonic blasts from your mouth, or anything like that, but you’ll be able to understand the language faster and easier than the traditional route.

You see, language is really just a bunch of sentences that we use to convey our feelings, thoughts, intentions, demands, etc. By learning sentences, and understanding how to deconstruct them (you’ll need a book or website for that), the language will come much more naturally to you, and conveying your own thoughts, feelings, etc., will be easier.

So, here’s some good rules for sentence mining. I’ve already given you a few tools, twice, actually, but here’s how to go about collecting sentences.

1. Start small. Long sentences you cannot string together aren’t going to help you and will just be a frustration to the beginner. Little words and phrases are best. It helps if you keep a reference book, or even a cheap textbook by your side to help.

2. Don’t get boring stuff because you think it’s useful to know, and don’t run around grabbing everything in sight. Trust me, when I first started (I heard about it on AJATT), I grabbed just about everything I could, whether it was interesting, useful, or just plain Japanese. If you do this, you’ll get bored very quickly, and it’ll actually stall your progress rather than help it.

Again, think Skyrim. Granted, Dohvakin’s goal isn’t to learn the entire language, but it’s still good advice. He, or she, learns the most interesting parts of the language, the shouts. If you, the player, had to run around, wading through caves with phrases such as, “I’m wearing socks now,” just to get to, “FUS DOS RAH!” you’d get really bored, really fast. Go for the fun stuff and the rest will fall in line.

By the way, I’m not sure if that’s the correct spelling for that particular shout.

3. Don’t be afraid to delete cards or even whole decks. Eventually, it will just be redundant to keep going back to that card that says, 『今日は楽しい日です。』 So once you’ve got it down, just erase it.

4. Again drawing on Skyrim, don’t worry if you feel that it’s taking a while for you to be able to understand more complex concepts. Those little shouts, or sentences, can be used in a number of situations and are exceedingly useful.

5. Don’t let sentence mining become the center of your studies! Granted, if you really enjoy it, then go for it, since I recommend you learn however works best for you, but most of us embarking on this method or a variation of it eventually get bored doing Anki repititions. Here I take a page from Steve Kauffman of LingQ and say that as long as you spend adequate time reading and listening, you should do fine. Don’t worry about reps constantly, because when learning through input, what you read and listen to will trump how well you’ve memorized and collected sentences. Setence mining is a great help, but you don’t have to live and breathe it.

So, I hope that I’ve cleared up this thing called “sentence mining” for you, and hopefully added a few worthwhile tips. Now maybe you’ll see things in a different light when you play Skyrim!

Categories: Insight | Tags: Anki, sentence mining, Skyrim, SRS

Method Bashing

Posted on October 27, 2011 by ハヴネス

No Comments

When starting off on your language-learning journey, and even long after it’s ended, it’s easy to get caught up in methods and what methods work the best. Now, on this site I endorse every method, whether you’re a university student or a self-learner; whether you eat, drink, and sleep textbooks, immerse yourself into the language, or speak your way to fluency. I don’t care because I know that everyone learns differently.

That’s why I hate it when people out there try and make it sound like there’s only one good way to learn. I’ve come across people who look at input methods and say, “Whatever happened to hard work! Is this some new age cult of language learning!” and I’ve come across people who bash on the output method saying, “You know you’re still not good at it!” These people are ignorant, and I don’t use that word often or take it lightly.

You see, there’s a lot of ways to learn a language, and I myself use different methods depending on what my language goals are. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel like you’re working harder than anyone else by using textbooks and taking classes, but there’s also nothing wrong by feeling like you’re learning naturally. It’s not a weird cult, and it’s not a fad that will pass, for people are getting results.

Learning is a process that’s different for everyone. Some people are hands off, some are hands on. Some people need visual cues, others audio. Are any of these wrong?

Sorry for the short post, but I just had to get this one out there because too many people right now are hating on other methods of learning.

Categories: Insight | Tags: Japanese, language, learning, method

Now Bronies Can Learn Japanese, Too!

Posted on October 25, 2011 by ハヴネス

3 Comments

Yesterday and this morning, I found myself helplessly struggling to watch a really odd Japanese movie called パコダテ人, when I got distracted by the Japanese video sharing website, Nico Nico Douga (ニコニコ動画) and typed in “My Little Pony” in English. Why did I do such an odd thing? Someone on the Reviewing the Kanji forums (review coming soon) said that the Japanese were fansubbing the show, which has now become an internet phenomenon. I got myself acquainted with the show and the memes associated with it (be careful, as it’s suprisingly addicting) and decided to check it out next time I was bored.

All I can say is that if you’re at least an intermediate learner, you should be using Nico Nico Douga, and if you’re a brony, this is a great way to indulge your love of the ponies while learning Japanese at the same time. Learning is supposed to be fun, and if it’s fun for you, then excellent!

So, how do you learn Japanese from fansubs of My Little Pony? First of all, any sentence you particularly like, you can plug into your Anki deck. You can’t copy and paste these, so it’ll be a time-consuming task. If I may make a recommendation, Rarity’s sentences (I can’t believe I’m typing these names) are particularly interesting, seeing as how the fansubbers decided to sprinkle some keigo (very formal Japanese) into her dialogue. In case you’re wondering, Applejack didn’t fare too well in the translation.

Another fun way that’s not as time-consuming is to copy and paste the comments. In Nico Nico, the comments fly across the video as it plays just at the time the comment was made. You can also see the comments in a sidebar next to the video and they can be copied and pasted. Just right click and choose コーピする to copy it.

I should note that the comments consist of a lot of slang and grammar is pretty much thrown out the window (it’s the Internet), so it might stump you for a while. At the same time, it’ll probably make you laugh a little inside as you see that the Japanese tend to follow the same memes you do, and have even invented a few of their own.

So good luck little bronies who want to learn Japanese and still watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. You’ll find there’s quite a few episodes already up, so watch to your heart’s content.

Categories: Anime, Insight, Websites | Tags: applejack, bronies, brony, dash, douga, fluttershy, Japanese, my little pony, nico, pinkie pie, rainbow, rarity, spike, twilight

Keep the Water Boiling!

Posted on October 24, 2011 by ハヴネス

3 Comments

Learning anything, let alone a foreign language, is like boiling water. To boil water, you simply set a pot of cold water on something hot and wait until it begins to bubble rapidly. That’s it. It’s not hard at all, and that boiling water can used for cooking a variety of things once it boils, much like how you can use your language acquisition for any number of things once you have it. There’s only one catch: you can’t turn the heat off at any point in time or the water will grow cold and you’ll have to start all over again regardless of how far along you were in the boiling process.

So, if the water is foreign language, then what is the heat? It’s study material and native material you watch, listen to, or read. I’m not going to focus on the study material, as I’ve reviewed all kinds of that on this website, but rather on native material. By native material I mean anything that’s intended for native audiences. Since this particular blog is about Japanese, it means things like anime, manga, Japanese video games, and J-Dorama. That’s what is going to help keep your water from growing cold, because learning a language and never using it is a recipe for disaster.

For example, my grandfather is a native Italian speaker. His parents moved from Italy to America, and neither one of them ever learned to speak English, probably because they thought it was too hard some other myth I’ll touch on in a later post. My grandfather spoke Italian with my great grandparents and English with everyone else while growing up. Now, my great grandparents died and he stopped using Italian completely. Guess what happened? He forgot the whole language! I mean the entire language, and can’t understand anything more than basic phrases. In order to get the hang of Italian again, he’d have to start from scratch.

So, what’s the best way to keep the water boiling? Try and do something for the language every day, as often as you can. Reserve Sundays for an anime marathon, perhaps? Read some manga or a novel every night before you fall asleep, or maybe try playing some Japanese video games. I don’t expect you to abandon English, but I do believe the best advice I can give you is to not let the language grow stale. If you have no one to speak it with, try and write Lang-8 entries ever day, or every other day.

That’s what the Friday Review is for – to keep giving you ideas on how you can keep in touch with Japanese. Native material is always going to trump whatever study tools you use. Study tools teach you the how and why of a language, but they don’t prepare you to actually use it most of the time.

頑張りましょう！

Categories: Insight | Tags: Uncategorized

Ways to Use Anki

Posted on October 13, 2011 by ハヴネス

4 Comments

In my last post, I reviewed Anki, a flashcard srs (spaced repetition system) program that is almost essential for language learning. Now, I’m going to talk about the most common ways to use this flashcard program, as people have come up with ingenious ways to use this program to help them learn that I for one wouldn’t have thought of by myself, but I’m a bit slow I think.

The most obvious way to use flashcards is to memorize facts. When I was in second grade, our teacher was obsessed with using flashcards to teach us math. We would have contests and competitions over these flashcards and who could get the most right or recall the answer fast enough. To share a little secret with you, math and I still don’t get along, despite the flashcards.

When learning a language and being told to make flashcards, most people try to make flashcards in the same way that they use them for mathematics or science, or any other subject. You write out the Japanese word on one side and the English translation on the other, allowing you to quiz yourself. This is kind of how Smart.fm used to work, except it would provide example sentences and a few other exercises to show how the word is used, and it was a spaced repetition system as well, so the frequency of which you saw each card was dependent on how well the software thought you knew it.

This is all well and good, but Khaztumoto introduced me to another way of using flashcards, and that’s what he calls sentence mining. For him, flashcards are the crux of his method of learning, not a supplement. He believes in doing as much in the language, or for the language, as possible, and a good way to remember it all is to mine interesting sentences, since he also believes that if you’re not having fun, then you’re not learning properly and will burn out.

This is how it works. First, you read an interesting manga (or watch an anime, movie, jdrama, or read a book) and as you’re going through, you find sentences that seem good to learn. If you’re a beginner, you start with simple sentences and work your way up to where the whole book or manga seems easy, or at least that’s how I interpret this part of the method.

The reasoning behind this is simple – words without any context and grammar points without context (I added the grammar bit) are meaningless. For example, what would be the point of knowing the English word “like” if you don’t know how to use it. There’s a lot of different ways to use the word, and without example sentences for each of them, such as, “I like to learn languages,” or, “Learning a language is like boiling ramen,” a textbook explanation of the word will probably be lost on you. Looking through a dictionary, there’s a lot of words like this, and you have to see them in a sentence in order to fully grasp how they’re used.

As such, finding interesting sentences is a great way to see how everything comes together in a sentence, and using Anki makes sure that you remember them. As you come to understand how sentences are put together, you can make up your own without a textbook to necessarily teach you how. Definitely check out the site, as Khatzumoto explains in much better than I can.

Finally, someone decided that it would be a good idea to program something that would allow a user who has a movie or anime episode with both English and Japanese subtitles to sentence mine the whole thing, complete with audio and even visual if one so desires, without an epic struggle. Introducing Subs2SRS, which has become a bit popular with people who do the sentence mining thing, for it really shortens the process, and it’s pretty reliable. There’s even pre-made decks on the learn any language wiki!

I really like this software, but it can be very hard to find Japanese closed captions for anime. Finding anime with subtitles in .srt format isn’t too bad, but finding Japanese captions for anime is near impossible sometimes. If you want to do that, here’s a few sites I recommend.

AnimeTranscripts: This place doesn’t actually provide subtitle files, but it does have transcripts, which will help you immensely in your sentence mining mission, regardless of whether you’re using Subs2SRS or just looking for interesting sentences. It’s a website created for Japanese people learning English through anime dubs (the thought scares me), but they also provide some transcripts in Japanese for English speakers wanting to learn Japanese through anime. It’s pretty interesting and even has a forum.

Kitsunekko: This seems to be a popular place for finding subtitles in Japanese, although he has a habit of going down for long periods of time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a lot of anime that I watch, but I definitely recommend you take a look.

Akusento: This particular page I linked to is in English, although the majority of the site is in Russian. There’s some movie subtitles and anime subtitles here, including a few episodes of Rurouni Kenshin.

Project “Modelino”: Another Russian page, but you can view it in English or French as well, and I linked to the English verison. There’s a number of Japanese movies on this page, so it ranks high in my list of places to find Japanese subtitles. I recommend viewing it in FireFox with Rikaichan turned on if you’re unsure of the titles.

D-Addicts: Let’s face it, Japanese dramas can be really hard to come by, so downloading from this site is a good thing, and it also provides Japanese subtitles for some of its shows. So, if you can get a show with both English and Japanese subtitles, Subs2SRS takes care of the rest!

When in doubt, if you’re Japanese is good enough, I recommend going to Google and typing in the name of your anime in Japanese plus “字幕”, or　”じまく”, which means “subtitles”. Sometimes that yields results, too.

So, happy hunting, and have fun sentence mining!

Categories: Insight, Products, Websites | Tags: anime, Anki, j-dorama, Japanese, sentence mining, subs2srs, subtitles

Search This Blog!

Archives