I sometimes find it easier to make up stories about Kanji to remember how to write them, especially if they look really similar. Here’s how I remember weather-related Kanji that use 雨. Most of them are easy, but I often get the right-hand parts of dew and mist confused.
雨 rain - Basic.
雲 cloud - (Can’t think of one).
雪 snow - Katakana ヨ at the bottom which is like ユ in ゆき.
露 dew - Has 足 at the bottom, you get dew on your feet.
霧 mist - mist is hard to predict, so contains 予. Also because mist is really fine, it has no power… so it has 力 at the bottom right.
霰 hail - Not sure about this one, bottom looks like 昔, hail is an old word?
Does anyone else use systems like this for remembering Kanji?
Two of my favourite things coming together — NLP and decyphering ancient languages.
If you find the talk interesting, try checking out Lost Languages by Andrew Robinson. There’s a whole chapter on the Indus script. Made me feel like Indiana Jones reading it.
I spent yesterday evening hacking up a page to help when learning Korean numbers and counters. It provides a random number and counter combination, and asks the user to fill in the correct answer. It’s still rough around the edges, but it has a few options to customise learning.
Writing something you yourself want to use is always the best motivation for programming projects. I’ve been using it all morning and it’s helping so far!
Had a fascinating talk with a fellow university student on Saturday night. He has been learning Japanese for a while, but a year ago he started full Japanese immersion based on All Japanese All The Time.
The author of the site managed complete native-level fluency within 18 months, all while living in the US. And I think it’s possible.
The site has a lot of useful information, but is kind of spread around so here’s a quick distillation based on what the guy told me, and what I’ve read on the site.
Becoming fluent at a language requires raw hours, nothing else.
Immerse yourself 100% in the language.
Change everything you consume to the language you’re learning - news, books, music, films, TV, friends, social networking.
Listen/watch to things even if you don’t understand, you need raw exposure to the language.
Only do stuff that is fun. If it’s not fun, drop it and move onto something else. Volume of input material is the key.
That’s about it. It’s obvious when you think about it, but the way the guy explained it to me and how it’s presented on the site makes a very strong point. The passion and conviction of the explanation is extremely infectious.
I’ve got 6 months in which to get my Japanese up to a sufficient level to be able to take part in laboratory discussions in technical Japanese, so fluency is really my short-term priority. I still need to be reading about research but if I follow the rules I can just read about it in Japanese and kill 2 birds with one stone.
I’ve added a few sites to my Google Reader for a bit of Japanese every day. Using Rikaichan at the same time and noting down new words in Anki seems pretty effective so far. I’d welcome any recommendations of other interesting Japanese-language sites.
With Japanese classes starting today and this semester looking like it’ll be mostly Japanese and only a little natural language processing, this blog will probably turn into mostly Japanese-language related posts.
I’m trying to learn French again. Here’s how I’m studying.
Web Comics
I came across one of these via Twitter, and from there a whole bunch of others. They’re all cute, funny and introduced to me a lot of naughty words I won’t get from my textbooks. I went through most of the backlog of them and learned loads. I’ve got them added to my RSS reader too. In order of awesomeness:
This is nothing new, I’ve been using Twitter to practice Korean for over a year now. I made another account for French and it’s helping a little bit. Although people are less forthcoming with corrections. I think that says something for national character if anything ;)
Workbook
I’m using Grammaire Progressive du Français - Niveau intermédiaire and I can’t recommend it enough. I studied French in school for 6 or so years so it’s more for revision than learning fresh. But it’s helping me understand stuff I just guessed at for so long. The difference between que/qui for example, is summarised in a page and then there are exercises to practice with. If you do get it, make sure to get the answer book too, it’s usually sold separately.
Lang-8
Along with Twitter, for me this has become a core tool for learning a language. I write a diary entry and within a day there’s usually at least one correction. People point out where you made mistakes in an easy-to-read way, and then it’s your job to go and learn from it. I usually try to look up the grammar points behind why I made a mistake. It’s more self-driven than having a teacher but it’s good for practicing your writing skills nonetheless.
Interesting words learned so far:
tu pues = you stink
chelou = weird
mdr = mort de rire = lol
faire gaffe = pay attention
les conneries = bull-poop
What next?
More of the same I guess. I’m going to look for a conversation partner so I can put some of this to good use. I’m more interested in being able to speak and show off than just read/write well.
