Learning Japanese
I've decided to learn Japanese. I found a really interesting website called AJATT (All Japanese All The Time). It's basically this one guy's theory on how to learn a language-- he rejects trad'l classroom learning in favor of 100% immersing yourself even if you're not in the country.
The methods arepretty really radical, but according to him, he learned Japanese fluently or at least proficiently in 18 months. He recommends selling all forms of media (movies/TV) and books in English and replacing them with Japanese ones, eating with chopsticks, even sleeping on the floor on a futon mattress. Basically to become as Japanese as you can. I'm not going to do everything he did obviously. But I do like the general idea of it, that the way children learn a language is not through rote learning of words and letters from books, but in picking up phrases from people around them.
Another interesting point is that he throws the 10,000 number around a lot in terms of milestones of learning. 10,000 hours of listening to the L2 (second language) in TV shows, podcasts, radio shows, original or translated movies, etc. 10,000 hours is also the number tossed around by Malcolm Gladwell in _Outliers_ for the point to reach "prodigy" status. 10,000 means you're serious.
The basic plan is to learn 2046 general use kanji, then learn the 46 hiragana and katakana. This is only learning the characters and their meaning in English, nothing about how to pronounce anything. Very different from when I took Chinese in college. The next step is to do what he calls "sentence mining," meaning finding 10,000 real sentences that real Japanese people say in daily life and learn how to say those. While doing this, you learn the 1000-ish extra kanji. Not exactly for the timid of heart. But the blog author, Khatzumoto, has an atmosphere of crazy fun about all this, that it should be fun and don't do it unless you enjoy it. And it should be fun-- finding new books, music, TV/movies, blogs, websites to read and enjoy. Definitely beats learning dry sentences from a textbook.
Update:
Have learned about 200 kanji so far, using Anki, an electronic flashcard software. I'm planning on buying an iPod Touch soon and buying the app for it just so I can practice the kanji while I'm on the T, bored @ work, or anywhere else. I have Anki set on 25 kanji/day, and I try to review twice a day. So far it's not as hard as I thought it would be, or time-consuming.
I've put Japanese podcasts on my iPod shuffle and listen to them during my commute. I don't understand about 99.9%, but I have picked up a couple words that I asked my roommate. Daisuki means I like a lot. Also found some Jp bands that are somewhat similar to music I like, folk/bluegrass. Need to look more to find it tho. But good to know that it's not all JPop and such.
The methods are
Another interesting point is that he throws the 10,000 number around a lot in terms of milestones of learning. 10,000 hours of listening to the L2 (second language) in TV shows, podcasts, radio shows, original or translated movies, etc. 10,000 hours is also the number tossed around by Malcolm Gladwell in _Outliers_ for the point to reach "prodigy" status. 10,000 means you're serious.
The basic plan is to learn 2046 general use kanji, then learn the 46 hiragana and katakana. This is only learning the characters and their meaning in English, nothing about how to pronounce anything. Very different from when I took Chinese in college. The next step is to do what he calls "sentence mining," meaning finding 10,000 real sentences that real Japanese people say in daily life and learn how to say those. While doing this, you learn the 1000-ish extra kanji. Not exactly for the timid of heart. But the blog author, Khatzumoto, has an atmosphere of crazy fun about all this, that it should be fun and don't do it unless you enjoy it. And it should be fun-- finding new books, music, TV/movies, blogs, websites to read and enjoy. Definitely beats learning dry sentences from a textbook.
Update:
Have learned about 200 kanji so far, using Anki, an electronic flashcard software. I'm planning on buying an iPod Touch soon and buying the app for it just so I can practice the kanji while I'm on the T, bored @ work, or anywhere else. I have Anki set on 25 kanji/day, and I try to review twice a day. So far it's not as hard as I thought it would be, or time-consuming.
I've put Japanese podcasts on my iPod shuffle and listen to them during my commute. I don't understand about 99.9%, but I have picked up a couple words that I asked my roommate. Daisuki means I like a lot. Also found some Jp bands that are somewhat similar to music I like, folk/bluegrass. Need to look more to find it tho. But good to know that it's not all JPop and such.
