Japanese Week 1 Update
1 week down! What a week too. I’ve already learned Hiragana and Katakana pretty well. I can write them and read them pretty much with ease now. I actually have an advantage reading Japanese in that I already can read Chinese. Many Chinese characters carry over to Japanese. Yesterday I was peeking at an advanced Japanese text and was able to actually understand it, although I can’t say it. For Kanji, there won’t be that much work for me to do other than learning some minor differences in writing traditional Chinese characters compared to the Japanese characters, and then of course the pronunciation and grammar associated with it. Lucky me, eh? 
In a previous post I said that my goal was to reach fluency in Japanese in a year. I think that goal is too far off – a year is tough to plan for. I’m instead going to split my goals up into shorter goals.
First month goals:
1) Complete the “guide to japanese” and insert all main points into Anki.
2) Create a “Japanese Cheat Sheet”
3) Learn 1 song in Japanese
4) Insert most common 1000 words into Anki with as many audio files as I can.
If you think of it on a daily basis (as you should), that’s only 35 words a day. That’s really not that bad.
This doesn’t mean that I will have all of the Japanese grammar completely memorized; however I will have learned all of the main grammar points. This does not mean that I will already have 1000 wrods memorized, but I will have learned all of them; I will probably have a good portion memorized though.
1) My Anki:
I tried Mnemosyne, but Anki has quite a few more features and their interface is better. I would try supermemo, except that it is not free, and I want to work with as many free resources as I can.
At the moment I’ve only been using Anki for review about 30 minutes a day, and have been spending about 1 hour a day on material and method prep. It’s important to get things set up as well as possible in the beginning, but also not to waste too much time away from the actual learning process so I’m moving on to 1 hour a day of Anki review, and 1 hour of material prep a day.
Material preparation includes learning grammar and new words, then inputing them into Anki. This portion of my studies will be heavily weighted toward grammar, as the more grammar I learn, the more I can utilize my vocabulary.
My Anki is separated into 3 decks for Japanese:
a) Basic Pronunciation: Hiragana / Katakana with Romanizations.
b) Grammar: I’m going through a grammar book called: “标准日本语” (Standard Japanese) as well as the website “Guide to Japanese” to find Grammar points to input into my Anki. The sentences I build using the grammar all use basic vocabulary words, like “student”, and “book” right now. Only use words you know as to focus on the grammar.
My card lists for grammar include the original sentence as the question, then pronunciation + tips to help me understand the sentence in the answer (in Chinese). I’m not just putting the grammar point in Anki, instead I’m creating a sentence that uses that grammar point, which is far more benefitial.
I believe that I could learn Japanese without the grammar book that I have, but I want to compare the resources so I can give a recommendation in the future. At the moment I’m learning a little toward the online resources
c) Vocabulary: A list of most frequently used Japanese words. I’m only doing Kanji / Hiragana to hiragana / meaning, and hiragana to Kanji / meaning. It’s better to stick to being able to pronounce and understand, rather than be able to translate. This is also to reduce confusion, as one word may have many English translations and visa-versa.
There are some words that have multiple meanings and are simply difficult to understand without context. I’m using Jisho for this. This site is awesome. You can find meanings of words, kanji, and sentences here.
Out of a common word list, you can pick and choose the words you want to learn first. You don’t have to start with the particle for indirect objects, instead you should probably start with “I”, “American (or insert nationality)”, and “to be”.
2) Listening:
Listening is extremely important, especially in the beginning. You need to train your ears and your mind to grasp the sounds. I have my mp4 player filled with Anime, Japanese music, and Japanese audio dialogues/monologues to be listened to on my way to work everyday (45 minutes each way). The audio came with the book that I have, and it doesn’t have any Chinese speech – it’s purely in Japanese.
At the moment I can only pick out a few words that I know when they speak, such as “right now”, “to be”, “but”, “this/there/here/that/over there”, “student” etc. I’m only using the textbook for grammar, as I don’t think I need to learn how to say “science and history” before I can say “mom and dad”, so I don’t think I’ll be able to understand full dialogues for a while. This is a major problem with textbooks – they don’t create their vocabulary lists based on any kind of heirarchy of relevance; they simply assume that you are going to go through all of the books, so all vocabulary will be picked up eventually.
I woke up this morning with a Japanese song stuck in my head: Prisoner of Love by 宇多田光 (Utada Hikaru). I also had some Japanese words stuck in my head, although I have no idea what they mean and was in a rush to get to work so I didn’t look them up. I expect this to happen often.
Native Speaker:
I haven’t found a native speaker yet to help me create a cheat sheet and work on my pronunciation. This is an important part of the learning process which I find that many language learners seem to neglect. If you don’t ever speak with a native, then you really can’t qualify your own language skills.
Blogging
I haven’t started blogging in Japanese yet. I have already learned how to write in Japanese on the computer (took me a whopping 5 minutes!), but as my Japanese knowledge is really hurting I’ve decided to hold off for a few more days. I may start blogging soon and focus instead on talking myself through grammar rules. I haven’t quite decided yet.
Time
So far it’s taken a lot of time to prepare materials to input into Anki. Supposedly you are learning the materials during this process, but it still feels like quite a chore. This is why it’s important to find good materials to work from, so you have to spend less time searching online and can spend more time actually with the material. I plan on streamlining this process soon (or outsourcing it? )
When I was learning Chinese, my time was free. I was in school. Now I’m employed fulltime and don’t have as much free time. I really have to maximize efficiency and make time whenever I can. I mine for materials during lunch and email them to myself for use at home. I anki in the morning just after waking up and a bit before bed. I listen to Japanese on the subway in the morning and evening on the way to and from work. I listen to Japanese music while I work and at home.
Although time is an issue, I still believe that I can reach my goals. As long as I stay focused, don’t miss many days, and stay attentive during my review sessions, I should be able to progress quickly. This is where a blog and a native speaker are most important: they can quickly qualify your progress for you, within a matter of minutes or even seconds.
Related posts:
- Japanese Day 1 and New Language Learning Methods
- Frustrating phases in language learning – How to focus your efforts
- How to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn: The Spaced Repetition System
- How to Learn a Language Part 3: Early Game
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