掲示板 Forums - Study Organization

I feel your pain. ^^ It's very difficult to find a good way to pick up new vocabulary. And kanji is easier to learn if you've already seen vocabulary it's used in. I was using the Kentei and JLPT schedules to pick more up, but the Kentei schedules always felt a bit iffy about the usefulness of the vocab, since it always felt a little thrown together and I never knew how common all the words were in actual usage (and kanji choice).

I don't think I've seen any vocab-based games, though I'm sure they're out there... I'm just not sure what they would have at a level useful to a non-advanced Japanese student. I may look around for one, actually. My Japanese Coach has a lot, but is frustrating beyond words to use. Hopefully they will release an Intermediate edition as they have for other languages, and that will be less annoying. xP I may find some time in the near future to swing by Kinokuniya and see if I can hunt up affordable study options there.

One thing I will say is that the kanji games can actually be good for picking up vocabulary, since they include kanji compounds often used in actual sentences or even paragraphs - even if it is only three or four per character. I've loaded up all the compounds drilled in Kakitori-kun 一年 and part of those in 二年 into a custom list (there's a lot, so maybe I should have broken it down more, at least until we can set schedules for lists?), which is currently private but I could make public, to pick up the additional vocabulary I didn't already know.

I would say, take something you want to use/read anyway, and start loading up vocabulary from that into a list. Some of it will probably be specialized terms, but a lot of it will be common ones. I did that with my craft stuff (though I haven't loaded most of it up here yet), and I can read just about all of it without looking anything up - and a lot of the special terms are special uses of normal terms, so it makes it easier to learn those terms as well (通す as "to let pass" or "to let (someone) through" as opposed to "to string (a bead)", for example).

Radicals are easy enough to learn if you use that vector on kanji quizzes and are strict with making sure that you identify it before you choose the answer, though I wish we had a fill-in-the-blank option for that.

I've never figured out a good way to really work on grammar outside of a classroom situation (or other situation that provides feedback). I really don't know how to go about doing it, especially learning it in the first place.

Ach. Colloquialism. To be able to learn that more easily... I look forward to culture class at least half in hopes that colloquialism and pop culture references aren't so lost to me most of the time. ^^;;

I believe you were the one who recommended それいけ！ to me, right? (love it, by the way, and I've picked up a few things from it) Start with that, or with any of your other games (Kanken's 読み１ comes to mind, with its paragraphs of simple sentences). Look up all the vocab you don't know, look up grammar things you don't understand, and hopefully it will help. I imagine you already do, but make sure you're actually paying close attention to all of it and actually catch everything, instead of just getting the gist, and understand why they said things the way they did. Just seeing it all used correctly (while actually recognizing all the pieces - that's important) will help you start applying it correctly on your own, because it will echo with your subconscious and feel right. It'll take a while and goes really slow at the beginning when you have to look every other word up, but it's helped me in the past.

Unfortunately, it's difficult for me to think of ways to study effectively that would apply to you, since I'm at a more intermediate level, and most of my efforts at this moment are on learning kanji and kanji readings (I have to know all the elementary school kanji by the end of term, and I think I only know how to write about 350 at this point... and I'll be taking organic chemistry and physics at the same time as the advanced Japanese class. I think I may be screwed). A really long post for not having anything useful. Sorry! Hopefully someone else is somewhat successfully going through the self-study thing and can help you out more.

それいけ！アンパンマン, a game that's a sort of interactive episode of アンパンマン. She suggested it after I mentioned that I was grabbing a copy of Doragana at the request of my younger sister, who wants to brush up on kana before retaking first year Japanese, and that I would probably grab アンパンマンと　あそぼ　あいうえお　きょうしつ while I was at it. (Speaking of, my sister only uses the Doragana one, but my friends' 20 month daughter adores Anpanman's musical intruments game, so I guess it's not a total waste. ^^;)

I keep meaning to grab a copy of the first volume of Dragonball at Kinokuniya, but I never get around to it. I figure 6 bucks isn't too bad (even if it's only 350円 in Japan xD).

[s]But DiffEqu was so easy...[/s] Ignore that. ^^;; It's not the difficulty I'm worried about, it's just the time involved. And I'm just now getting around to physics (haven't taken it since high school), so I have no way of assessing how much work that will be, so I'm assuming the worst.

It teaches kana, she just doesn't like the approach they take. My sister's what got me into it, since I just hadn't thought of taking Japanese until she asked me to take it with her. My best friend actually minored in it, but she can be frustrating because she remembers what she picked up in Japan much better than what she learned in class, so she has a somewhat flaky understanding of how things work in the language. (No dear, けっこうです is not rude or abrupt, it's perfectly polite - where did you get that from?) I sometimes get the feeling she spent all her time around rough-talking guys when she wasn't with the other 外人, but it's probably because she's always watching shounen anime so that's what's being reinforced. e.e;;

As for manga, luckily I live near a Kinokuniya and a bunch of other stores that carry Japanese and other Asian books, so I have access to plenty of raw manga, just not the funds. I chose Dragonball due to a good knowledge of the plot and the fact that the one I glanced at a couple months ago I could kinda sorta read. Though now that I know more, I might be able to read some of the others too (the first time I glanced through Detective Conan, I ran scared). I should probably do the smart thing and grab them from the library, but I don't want to have to deal with keeping track of library books on top of everything else.

As for bad words, there is this site: http://koukeisha.net/nihongo-bin/ I swear to god some of the things on there don't even seem like insults (well, based off the English translation)! And then there are some pretty nasty words as well (such as くたばれ, like from this one song that says くたばれ人間ども ！I think it's Smile by The Pillows)

The organization? Bleh! I haven't really gotten a chance since I just flew up to my boyfriends house, and we've been staying at his lake house instead of the normal one. So that leaves his mother with the excuse of constantly kicking us outside to go swimming (I'm like 14 soooo...) all the time. Not only that, but she keeps trying to wake us up early too.

See I have these two separate things I want to do with my life: become a website designer and learn Japanese, then probably German since I happen to be part German myself. So recently I've been taking a look at Javascript and PHP so I can figure out how the heck I plan on doing AJAX. It's all confusing but oh well.

Today I figured I'd pick out some new Kanji I don't already know and get to learning them. I'll probably do that with Vocab too, then I need to review my kana (I can't read outloud worth crap, but in my head I do pretty good). Perhaps I'll watch this one movie "My Neighbor Totoro." I had a chance back at my house but then Youtube started screwing up and I couldn't. ;_;

The problem with how I'm doing things stems off the fact that I'm teaching myself- though I do have a teacher that gives me lessons, which I haven't gotten too far into. I don't like him too much because when I miss a few questions, I get from him: "Kori-san, you have made some careless errors while doing my lesson. Please correct them and send them to me in another mail. Dewa mata, *name*"

Everything I've learned so far probably came off of two years of screwing around with the language and not getting too serious. But I suppose, thanks to that, I have a giant repository of Japanese learning websites at my disposal. >:]

Oh, one final thing for... Cathy? (Sorry, I forget if it's Cathy or Cassie ;] ) I would be so grateful if you could make those lists public. I'm thinking I'll take some vocabulary words from それいけ！, LOZ Phantom Hourglass (which has this amazing feature in it, look [url=http://kotaku.com/273050/phantom-hourglass-kanji-function-in-action]here[/url]), this Cinnamaroll game I have, and 問題な日本語, and make a list too. :O

LOL, don't overdo yourself just because I say I want something. If the list isn't on the site, you could email it to me instead and I'll make the renshuu list. Seems fair enough eh? :D

I don't really find it annoying. I like to watch the same part over and over again so that I actually comprehend the words and get a feel of the way the sentences are formed. It's really the only way I get practice with listening as I'm not even old enough yet to visit Japan. :( That and music.

And actually, I'm beginning to teach my friend basic Japanese now so I am in reality getting some review in. Starting out with stuff like the purposes of the three "alphabets" in Japanese and their different groups and how they're used. (I almost typed sued there XD)

Did you actually go through the list of some of those words? Some of them seemed terribly vulgar. Like the page where you have to be 18+ to access it? The words on that part look awful! D:

Are some of those really profanities? I hear some of those words uttered by children when caught in a game of tag. Some are just...weird. And R18 too.

Yeah. Really weird, sometimes gross too. And I wondered about gaijin. How the heck is that degrading? Unless your a really annoying or really bad foreigner, I don't think it's bad. In here we just use the english term.

Another thing, do you know about S and M? I hear that a lot. What's the big fuss about that?

Wow. I'd never heard of anything like that before. Are there any other words like that? XD

And as for my study organization~ I finally got back into a decent schedule. :] I'm studying a vocabulary list a day (about like 10 words), a kanji list a week (10 kanji), and with grammar, I just talk to people. I actually got myself a book, Minna no Nihongo (with the english translation notes). I like it so far, but I have to practically teach myself. Maybe it's just good review? LOL

I also have this blog I update daily (it's private, sorry) in which I put everything new that I learn from my friends and people on renshuu. Good way to incorperate it into my brain. XD

Generally avoid using あなた in your sentences. It can come off kind of... how did sensei put it? Rude, abrupt, something like that. Use it if you need it, but generally it's implied since you're talking to them. (If you're asking a question, it's generall understood that the subject is them.) Similarly, there's generally no need for 私, since that's also understood.

私で wouldn't be right; that's asking them if they'd use you to take a picture. xD You'd use で for the カメラ, if you needed to specify what kind of camera you were using. If you wanted to put 私 in there, I would say 私の写真. くれる is perfect, though, since it makes it a polite request.

I would say すみません、写真を撮ってくれませんか and perhaps turn the camera toward yourself and gesture appropriately so it's clear you're not asking to take a picture [i]with[/i] them.

Minna no Nihongo seems like the kind of book that requires an actual teacher in order to learn anything. I'm fine with that though. I like teaching myself things. :] My overall goal is to take Kanken 1 someday. But this year I want to be done with Kanken 10!

And yeah, あなた is a contraction of あの方(あのかた) I believe. That's why it seems so rude. But generally speaking, you're probably NEVER going to need to use it. People do have names, and you can ask people for their names like お名前は? ;]

I found this dictionary of 四字熟語 today. Since I'm already working on this dictionary project for myself, I figured it'd be another thing I could add. The project is another key factor in my study organization- it'll help out a lot when I finish it up. :D