karanguni: (Default)
Hello all!

How's it going? Even if you haven't done anything, take this post as a chance to:

* Write down some goals for the next two weeks, no matter how small
* Talk about any difficulties you're facing!
* Ask for extra material to work on or recommendations for things to watch, read, or do

I'm going back through old entries and trying to reply where I couldn't before as well.
karanguni: (Default)
Lesson 2 is now up: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yrEzJEJYlzJfhJEayKnzje48Fc9yCJbXLZntf8OrsGQ/edit#

It's mostly going to be beginner level, but the homework goes across all levels.

The lesson begins with a revision quiz. For anyone who has not submitted homework, I'd highly encourage you to do that before the lesson and send it in for marking!

If it's too hard or too easy, let me know and I'll make something else up. Or if you've done other types of homework in your textbooks or study guides and want someone to look that over, I'm happy to help!
karanguni: (Default)
Hi everyone,

Doing some marking, I realise I made a pretty silly error in the grammar conjugation section of Lesson one: I stated:

行くー>行った、行って as an example of conjugating regular verbs that end in ~く. This is my bad - I completely brained on the fact that 行く is an exception, and that REAL REGULAR VERBS of that sort conjugate as いて、いた

書く(かく):書いて、書いた
焼く(やく):焼いて、焼いた

Much like their dakuten inflected cousin:

急ぐ (いそぐ)
急いだ
急いで


My arms hurt from the gym so I haven't fixed it in the doc yet, but there it is.
karanguni: (Default)
Working on lesson two, but been a tad busy ergo the radio silence! Any particular topics people want to see in this upcoming one? Also still open to any work people want reviewed, whether it's the lesson or just materials you've done yourself.
karanguni: (Default)
Hello Japanese study group! If you have any homework (or any other material) you want me to mark/go over, please drop them into the Google drive or link me or PM me for my email - I'll get that done over the weekend. I'll return them zipped and password locked in the drive!
karanguni: (Default)
Hello everyone! The end of the week is here. How is everything going? Q&A is open for anything: questions about the lessons, or about random grammar.

I realise I never quite gave out readings beyond the N2+ article; I'll remedy next week. Had a busy one myself moving my entire personal library out from boxes (!!! books are heavy; don't play around).

Instead, here's a step through of the introduction of the article in question.

This is going to be translation practice for me - please do call out anything you think I've gone wrong or done funny. I'm going to only explain choice parts of the reading/translation, so feel free to also pull up bits and ask questions!

Title: 名前のルール~姓と氏名と本名と~(日本史・古代~江戸時代)
The Rules of Names ~ "Mei" and "Shimyou" and "honmyou" and... (Japanese History from ancient times to the Edo Era)

皆さんの名字は何でしょう?
What is your surname (myouji)? [1]

では、氏は?姓は?
And what about your surname (shi)? Or your surname (mei)?

何だか全部同じ意味なのに、何でこんなに種類があるのかと思うかもしれません。
You might be wondering why so many terms exist when they all mean the same thing. [2]

実はこれ、全て違う意味を持っています。
Truth be told, all three terms have different meanings.

明治以降はこれらが全て統一されたため、ややこしいことになっているようですが、時代劇を見ると「やけに長い名前だな?」と思う事もあるのでは?
Even though the terms "myouji", "shi" and "mei" have become conflated since they were streamlined after the Meiji era, I'm sure that there have been times when you've watched a period drama and thought, "Aren't those really long names?"

今回は、そんなお話をしたいと思います。[3]
I hope to talk about this topic in this article.


Gloss

[1] 皆(みんな)さん でしょう?

Lit: People reading, what might ?

Many Japanese articles will open with a rhetorical device where they address the (plural) audience and ask a question that leads into the topic at hand. That's why you'll notice the use of 皆さん in the plural, even though I've opted to translate the English more naturally into a single person "you".

The でしょう at the end, inflected from です, is a way of coming across as inquisitive as opposed to interrogative. (Read: here)

[2] ~ と思(おも)うかもしれません

Lit: You probably think ~

This is another rhetorical device you'll see in articles a lot. "Might"/かもしれない (read) is often tacked on so that - again - the author doesn't sound like they are simply making statements.

[3] 今回(こんかい)は、そんなお話(はなし)をしたいと思(おも)います。

Lit: This time, I think that I would like to discuss [this topic]

This is a more or less set phrase: most introductions end with a blunt statement that "we are going to go into [X TOPIC]". The ~たいと思います (I think I want to do X") should not be directly translated for that reason. While you could say ~たいです ("I want to do X"), ~と思う is used non-literally to describe an author's intentions.

[4] Literal versus non-literal translations

And, finally, a general thought on translation: translating literally, whether from JP -> EN or EN -> JP, is often awkward and sometimes impossible. Where that is the case, I will usually translate such that the translation reads natively and provide literal translations on the side. I have a whole post I want to write about why this tug of war of compromise leads to retranslations of work over time...
karanguni: (Default)
Hi everyone. Sorry for the spam as I get things organised!

Pinned Masterpost

Is now available here or whenever you click on my journal name. Remember that most things are locked, so if you - lovely stranger reading this - want to study along, ask me for access.

Schedule

Considering the hugeness of each lesson, I'll be making those on a biweekly basis now. I'll try for around 3 posts a week:

Week 1: 15 - 21 Jan

* Lesson 1
* Round Up: round up resources, edits, and comments
* Read-a-long/Q&A: stepping through readings, questions from the week

Week 2: 22 - 28 Jan

* Goals Checkin
* Read-a-long/Q&A
* Homework/Quiz/Half-month Feedback: submit any homework you want marked in this post, and pick up a quiz for yourself. Feedback in general.

Lesson Edits

The lessons have been updated to include clarification on the ー long vowel usage in katakana. I realise I have no resource links for those absolutely just starting out with kana - but please use any of the textbooks or Tae Kim (linked below) to get you started in hiragana and katakana if so. Anytime you feel something is lacking for you to succeed, post an ask!

Resources

Resources Post

Several people have generously uploaded materials of their own and shared them in the comments there. Any new ones can go into the publicly editable Community Uploads.

[personal profile] chagrined's comment also has more stuff: here (textbooks &c.).

Checkin

How are things going for people? I failed epically to meet my personal goals of reading rakugo and kanji, but flipped that around to writing lessons (much more challenging, I've found) and searching out N2+ articles. I'm also beginning to look at this handheld scanner as I look at stuff I only have in bound hard copy and to the future where I'd try to give feedback on work. If at any point y'all want to chip in... /laughs

[personal profile] swan_tower mentioned the phrase お疲れ様でした (お・つか・れ・さまでした), which is indeed a most useful expression! Read about it here and here and here. It's great for group activities and acknowledging effort. And sarcasm.

Questions, as always, can be put in any post.

For anyone who's struggling with grammar forms, I highly recommend Tae Kim as a place to go to to just look something up fast and then to get out. Don't overwhelm yourself! Drink water! Have fun!
karanguni: (Default)
Almost done, but it's so long that I'm going to call it an early night and come back to it tomorrow.
karanguni: (Default)
So, I've been thinking about how to get around to starting language learning posts here with you all. It's been awesome seeing a general interest in getting back up with Japanese, but it is tricky when we are all at different levels of formal/informal education and exposure, have different learning styles, and have no native speaker to reference.

This post is going to be two things: a general braindump, because on weekdays my capacity for critical thinking gets expended in the office trying not to murder people whom I want to send to http://www.lmgtfy.com, and also a general signup to commit to some goals.

Braindump



If years of academic Japanese have taught me anything, it is that critical mass is the most important part of acquisition. This guy over at All Japanese All The Time may sound quacky and weird, but the core of his ideas are right, IMHO: there is a time and place for rote repetition, and often picking up a new language is it.

The trick – I think – is that certain types of rote work better than other types of rote depending on who you are. I was very surprised, when I briefly stayed for more than just a holiday in Japan, to find that rote memorisation of vocabulary (literally going alphabetically)... worked. But that was because I was immediately exposed to usage, and there was a constant feedback active/passive loop.

I'm going to try to provide that exposure, but at the same time rote has got to work for the individual since – short of switching all your internet browsing over to JP – it's hard to get effective reinforcement. Picking a non-English/first-language aid/crutch to make rote effective might be the key here: visual people might go for picture flashcards, audio people might try to memorise a song, textual people a Japanese-to-Japanese definition or reading in general.

That's my meta on "picking stuff up" in general. But there are whole categories of stuff to "pick up" – reading comprehension, listening comprehension, writing fluency, speaking fluency. I'm going to focus almost entirely on reading and listening, with a side-step into writing to reinforce the two and copying spoken Japanese by natives to do the same. I'm nowhere near native, and will not pretend to be: I'm not going to teach or co-learn aspects that I'm not native in. It's fairly important to emphasis the "do not co-learn badness" part here: reinforcing bad and/or plain wrong ideas can be fundamentally terrible for you. Even then, it leaves a lot of stuff to cover, and a lot of ways which it can crossover into more intense practice in the writing/speaking domain.

Goals



So - goals! NYRs! Whatever you want to call what you want to achieve! I'm thinking we do this on a week-by-week basis, because long-term goals are hard to hit: it's easy to overpromise and even easier to underdeliver. Weekly checkins with others = peer pressure = good pressure. Even if a goal is dropped, rolling it over to the next week is easy. Then there can be big picture goals: things you want to achieve that you might not get 100% of the way through but that will guide weekly aims. These can go up to the end of the year.

Here are mine for the upcoming week:

  • Write a post a week with original material catered directly to people's questions or difficulties
  • Work through, by rote, 10 常用漢字 per week including all phrase-words
  • Translate at least half of a rakugo story and publish it here

And my bigger goals:

  • Write a website or flashcard tool or GDocs thing so that people can have printable, submittable worksheets/exercises
  • Get through my kanji book by doing the 10/week minimum by the end of the year
  • Watch at least 12 episodes of something in Japanese with only Japanese subtitles by the end of the year
  • Switch over to only using Japanese-to-Japanese dictionary lookups by March

If you're interested in tagging along – whether you're seeing this post now, or at any time at all while I'm still updating my journal with the tag "Japanese" – leave a comment with yours. Depending on what people jot down, I'll plan for the next post!

Prep



Until the next post, here are some things you can do to get yourself prepared and/or excited.

Physical Study & Practice Materials

Don't even bother typing when you do any exercises – go straight to pen and paper, and then type in response to posts here. Muscle memory is your friend, and it's really nice to write things physically!

Get a nice writing implement while you're at it. Ballpoint and 0.5mm pencil will smudge the least; gel will be smudgier; nibs will be painful. Muji has great pens and Japanese writing supplies if you're lucky enough to live near one. You're going to be writing a lot: enjoy the experience! (I hated coming to America where most writing paper felt like sandpaper. It makes a difference when you're doing repetitive exercises, let's just say that.)

Then get good writing paper.

Cheap: get a notebook, preferably one without any lines, or at least faint ones, or one that's gridded. You want to not feel like you're cramping your kana and kanji. I'm a big fan of nice paper, so I'd be happy to send people notebooks!

Slightly more expensive: find and print grid paper online. Henceforth, we shall call it by its given name: 原稿用紙 genkouyoushi. One PDF source here. Prettier and better ones with kanji grids. Print a whole bunch for your weekly goals!

Expensive: Japanese stationary stores (and some Asian marts) in the US will have 原稿用紙 for sale in tear-off gum pads or in practice notebooks.

Japanese IMEs

I'll write a separate post on getting set up on this because this one is already the length of the moon, but you should get your computer set up to switch cleanly between English and Japanese IME inputs. Google has an IME that introduces crowdsourcing to typing: this is awesome, because suggestions that pop up are going to be the most-used ones. I default keyboard switching on all my systems to something like CMD-SPACE or WINDOWS-SPACE.

Dictionary/Grammar/Practice Books

If you're just starting out, resist the urge to buy anything just yet. I have tens of reference books I've never cracked open beyond an initial gleeful reference.

Books that are really useful in my experience: one good physical introduction-level book if you're just starting out. This can be Genki, Minna no Nihongo, or any equivalent. Make it a goal to go through each chapter. Write on every margin. Use the hell out of it: make it worth your money.

Other useful books are JLPT practice books. Stores like Kinokuniya will often have entire sections dedicated to them. They sometimes come in trilingual or quadrulingual mode, English/Korean/Mandarin/Japanese being the most common. If you have one of the other two (Korean/Mandarin), they provide a interesting triangulation onto certain grammatical or vocabulary contexts, though the quality isn't necessarily always 100%.

I'll grab some PDF'd materials that I'll put up into f-locked posts – those will get you through just about anything else.

For kanji, don't pick up a dictionary unless you plan on using it. I've got some recommendations if you do want one, but in the meantime sites like Jisho.org will get you through just about anything. On the iPhone side of things, imiwa? is an invaluable app.

Audio/Visual

This will be expanded further along, but now is a good time to figure out if you like listening to songs, or anime, or Netflix original series. Shows like 深夜食堂 (shinya shokudou/Midnight Diner) on Netflix have both English and Japanese subtitles in addition to being good introductions to aspects of Japanese culture and types of speech – I highly recommend watching them in English now, and then gradually trying to pick up things from the Japanese subtitles later.

My Old Posts

I did a short-lived and more disorganised equivalent of this last year: if you're starting from the kana or basic grammar level, it might be good to go back through those posts.

If you're interested in More Estorericer Stuff, I once wrote a post on classical Japanese and the opening lines of the Tale of Heike. It's written sort of terribly, but if it interests people I would love to do more of that – gotta keep in practice.
karanguni: (Default)
Assignment:

  • Learn the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs
  • Get familiar with the most common ones
  • Practice hiragana and basic kanji using those


So, I've been wildly derelict in these lessons because life ate me whole, but I'm determined not to go another couple of weeks without. So in the meantime, here's a short lesson!

Transitive versus Intransitive

I'm not a huge fan of going into grammatical details in these posts, but there's no getting around transitivity with Japanese. Here's a PDF that offers an explanation, but the gist of it:

Transitive verbs have a direct object that is acted on. Intransitive verbs have just a subject.

Transitive: (Someone) opened the door - (だれかが)ドアを開けた
Intransitive: The door opened - ドアが開いた

Once you go through a few examples, it's easy to get the hang on. Transitivity indicates some sort of direct action. Intransitivity describes state.

Transitive verbs take the particle を. Intransitive verbs take が (general actions) or に (actions that have directionality)

パンを食べる Eat bread
ペンを買う Buy a pen
人を見る See a person

----------

ドアが開く The door opens
人が見える A person can be seen

スーパーに行く Go to the supermarket
ここに来る Come here

Common Examples

A lot of verbs are innately either solely transitive or solely intransitive.

Transitive: 飲む・食べる・買う. It would be pretty hard to do these without a direct object.
Intransitive: 行く・来る・死ぬ

The worst of the confusion will come from remembering verbs that have distinct transitive and intransitive forms. But fear not! 90% of the time, transitive verbs have an え noise somewhere in there.

Practice: Intransitive・Transitive

開く・開ける
閉まる・閉める
見える (to be visible)・見る(to see) <-- Exception
立つ・立てる (The intransitive form is often use for something like, say, a building)
入る(to enter)・入れる(to insert)
始まる・始める
出る(to leave/exit)・出す(to take out/remove)

Find some more pairs of your own and practice.

Practice: Translate

Try translating these, switching between formal and informal, then negative and non-negative to practice your verb forms.

() indicates a part of speech that doesn't need to be explicitly translated in the Japanese

* The door opened
* I opened the door

彼(かれ) = he
財布(さいふ) = wallet

* He took out (his) wallet

紙(かみ) = paper
私(わたし) = I/me/myself/mine

* I will cut (some) paper

Verb hint: 倒(たお)・?
木(き) = tree

* The tree fell over


* I stood up
karanguni: (Default)
Assignment

  • Get a general sense of how verb conjugation works: stem + modifier
  • Learn the difference between ichidan and godan verbs
  • Drill a lot

And the rest )
karanguni: (Default)
More Japanese stuff for [personal profile] yhlee. Also available as a Google Doc for printing and editing convenience.


Assignments
  • Find something to read that you like - song lyrics, reddit, merchandise packaging... - and post that here in a comment

  • Fill out the vocabulary table

  • Practice reading your kana

  • Attempt a translation if you feel up to it! Post it here, ask questions.



The rest... )
karanguni: (Default)
All righty. I'm throwing together some weekly learn Japanese stuff for [personal profile] yhlee, and I'm posting it here for anyone who wants to play along.

This week's post is about hiragana and katakana. I'm going to focus more on drilling and just getting vocabulary out there than how to memorise the shapes and forms; there are many good resources available on Google for that.

In general, I'm going to try to convey what was useful to me as a learner and the methods I used to help brute-force my way to reading competence.

I'm going to try to keep the kid gloves off and throw in real words, with real difficulty, sooner rather than later. The faster we jump into the hot pan of reading real sentences, the faster we'll get to the kick of getting a mental reward for our efforts - without which learning is kinda hard.

Hiragana, Katakana, and Drilling )

 

A universe of unmapped grief and love
And new master light is beyond
The pleiades and plow and southern stars.

O soaring
Icarus of outworld, burn bright
The traceries of known skymarks,
Slide the highway planets behind
Your clear waxed wings.

Go conquer the everywhere left
Beyond your sad confinement
In a predicted bonehouse,
Witch thrown riddle of flesh
And water.

O soar until nothing
remains but great glittering holes
In the black godspun shirt over your head.

- John Fairfax