Language Journey: A Real Life Dynasty

[sabotai]

こんいちは und Willkommen to my Language dynasty

Earlier in the week....

Adult Sabotai: Sab! What are you doing?
Young Sabotai: Playing Dragon Age: Origins!
Adult Sabotai: How long have you been playing?
Young Sabotai: *looks at clock* About 3 hours.
Adult Sabotai: And what did you do before that?
Young Sabotai: Played Modern Warfare 2 for a few hours.
Adult Sabotai: Have you worked on your languages today?
Young Sabotai: I did the SRS....
Adult Sabotai: That took like 5 minutes! You only had 35 items! You call that work?
Young Sabotai: But these games just came out!
Adult Sabotai: Do you want to learn these languages or not?
Young Adult: I do...but...
Adult Sabotai: That's it, Sab! For now on, no video games until after you've gotten your work done.
Young Sabotai: WAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!
Adult Sabotai: I don't want to hear it. You want to learn these languages but you keep getting distracted by games and other nonsense. It's time to get serious again.
Young Sabotai: FINE!
Adult Sabotai: Well, ok. I mean, if you don't want to learn these languages, I might as well just throw out all of these books and CDs.
Young Sabotai: NO! I'll work on it, I swear!!



In a thread yesterday in Off-Topic about learning a second language, I preached about how much of a time commitment language learning is and yet, I don't follow my own advice. (Who does? :) ). A year ago, I started a dynasty on learning German to keep myself honest and motivated. Again, I turn to the dynasty forum to get back on track.

The Story So Far...

I have been learning German for awhile now. The first year or so was spent using Rosetta Stone, and I would do a new lesson or two at a time, and review a few lessons before hand. I was spending about 2-3 hours a week on it. A year of that made me realize I was doing something wrong. Especially when I was literally on the verge of falling asleep in mid lesson, rushing as fast as I could through them.

That is when I went searching the net for products, methods, message forums, etc. I started reading about learning languages in general. I started to try a lot of different products. Pimsluer (audio lessons), Michel Thomas (audio lessons), Assimil (book + audio), Linguaphone (book + audio), and many others.

The thing about every language learning product is that they seem like they are working at first. After awhile, if you start getting bored, it's time to move on. Boring = no motivation. And I'm someone who likes to mix things up a bit after awhile. Here's a quick run through of some of the lessons I've tried.

Rosetta Stone - Software. Here's how it works. You are shown 4 images, each with a target language word, phrase or sentence. That happens 10 times. There are several ways to test you. See and hear the sentence and match it to the image, see it and match it, hear it and match it. See it for a few seconds, then match it with the phrase invisible...some others. You get 10 lessons per Unit, about 10 units per level. So about 100 lessons total per level. All 3 levels will cost you $500. I found it fine at first, but b-o-r-i-n-g after awhile. I used Version 2, 2 levels, $300+. Now they have Version 3 (which I have heard is better), but now 3 levels for a lot of languages and $500+. That's a lot of money. I don't recommend it.

However, two things. It does have a writing test. You are shown the image and have to type out the phrase that goes to it. Not a fan. But they also have a way to test your pronunciation. You speak the phrase and it tests how well you pronounce it. Now, in Version 2, this didn't work all that well. Maybe I just had a crappy mic. I'm sure it's improved in Version 3, but I'm not spending $500 to find out.

Pimsluer - Nice at first, but doesn't teach a lot of vocab. Geared towards tourists. You learn common phrases used in restaurants, on the street (Where is the museum? How do I get to the X? etc.). Good for pronunciation practice. Expensive - not worth the cost.

Michel Thomas - I really like these. You start with simple, common words and build up from there. It's a "building blocks" type of program. The Beginner series is good, the Advanced is great. The German version of the Advance course was mostly verb conjugation, something you definitely need to go over. The sooner the better, so the second ("Advanced") course is perfect timing. Relatively inexpensive. (About $50-$70 per course, Pimsluer is around $200 per level). There's a few other Thomas course (Language Builder and one other), but those aren't very good.

Assimil - A dual-language book plus audio CDs of the target language lines. You get around 100 lessons (Chinese and Japanese are in two parts of 50 lessons each). All of the target language lines are spoken on the CDs. This series is great, IMO, and I'll rundown how I use it later. They are also very cheap for what you get (on Amazon). Even if you don't end up using this course as a teaching method, you get lots of target language audio to listen to, and lots of sentences to SRS (I'll explain SRS later).

Linguaphone - Unfortunately, Linguaphone went the "all audio" route awhile ago and their current line of products are just crap, IMO. If you are able to find an old version of Linguaphone, one that uses several books plus audio, then good. You will get a book full of the target language, a book explaining the meanings of the target languge. A book of written exercises and a book of speaking exercises. The target language audio + course book follows a narrative. In the German one I found, it's a German family that has been living abroad and is returning to Germany. You'll cover a lot of "touristy" type stuff as well as every day language. In the study booklet, you'll get explainations of what is said (not a word-for-wrod translation...close to it, but more explaining what is meant). Also a list of new vocab words in each lesson.

But, as I said, Linguaphone abandoned this method and went all audio. You can only find the good stuff on ebay, and they can be expensive (and also the audio will be on records or tapes). If you look hard enough, you can find old language products on websites.

FSI - These were made by the military to teach languages to soldiers. They are public domain, full of drills, and pretty old by now. But they are free, some people like them, I don't.....but hey, free. Might as well take a look.

Fluenz - I have not tried this, but it's worth mentioning since it's gaining popularity. It's expensive, about $500 for 3 levels of Spanish, $350 for 2 levels of French, Italian and Mandarin. You can sample a lesson on their website to see how it works. I see more and more people saying how much they like it, but the downside is they only offer it for Spanish, French, Italian and Manderin right now.

Based on my own experience with RS, the general consensus on RS from others I've read, plus the positive things I've seen about Fluenz, if you REALLY want to go with the expensive software route, I would recommend Fluenz over RS.

(I included the price for the two software options if you planned on getting all of the levels provided. That's because buying them seperately will add hundreds to the final cost.)

That covers (I think) all of the "language courses" I have tried. IMO, can't go wrong with Assimil. Michel Thomas to suppliment it if you'd like.

Next time....I'll explain the specifics of what I've done with German so far, what I did wrong, what I did right, and the beginnings of my study in Japanese.

[sabotai]

First Year of German

As said, my first year of German was me sporadically using Rosetta Stone, slowly getting bored out of my mind with it. I started reading through a book called Hammer's German Grammar and Usage. A very, very thorough book. Also, very, very dry, wordy and boring. I eventually got sick of it and put it to the side.

I then picked up 1001 Pitfall of German. It's a very good grammar book, explains things simply and gives simple, straightforward example sentences. I ended up reading through this book twice.

I had also listened through the first half of Pimsleur German Level 1. It starts off good, but then fizzles. After a dozen lessons, it feels like I am making no progress at all. Only a few new words are introduced in each lesson. At that pace, I would have only had a vocabulary of 300 words learned from this course at the end of the ejnd of three levels (which I don't think is too far off the actual number).

I also started with Michel Thomas German Beginner. These audio lessons were much more interactive. Couldn't use them in the car like with Pimsleur, they required too much attention.

My Second Year - First Half

This is when I started a dynasty (a year ago). In the first couple of months of the second year (the time span that the dynasty covers), I finished reading the grammar book (first pass), I finished up with Michel Thomas audio lessons for both Beginner and Advanced as well as Language Builder (waste of time), and also finished up the first level of Pimsleur.

I also began Linguaphone German. I ended up dropping it when I was about halfway through. That was a mistake.

The next couple of months (say, months 3-5 or Year 2), I started creating vocab lists. I would put the meaning of words on one side of a flash card, and the translations on the other side. I would take them to work and look at them at several points. At the end of the day, the cards were put aside....eventually finding their way to the trash. I wasted months with this since now I go back to the lists I wrote out in the old dynasty, and can't remember most of the words there. This was before I found out about SRS.

My Second Year - Second Half

6 months ago, I discovered two things that have made all of the difference in the world to my learning of German. 6 months ago, my ability with German after about a year and half was embarrassingly bad, even if I didn't realize it at the time. That was when I found about SRS and The Sentence Method.

What's an SRS?

SRS stands for Spaced Repetition Software. It's a flash card program that will space out how often you see a card based on how you score it. I use Anki. A score of 1 will mean I will see the card again at the end of the review session. A score of 2, 3 or 4 will depend on when I see the card, and how I've scored it previously. If it's the first time I see the card (or the first time since scoring it a 1), a 2 will mean I will see it tomorrow. 3 will be 3-5 days. 4 will be 6-8 days. The second time I see it, it could be 2 = 3-4 days, 3 = 6-10 days, 4 = 12-16 days. The time for each score will change based on previous results. Eventually, you'll get cards that you won't see for 6 months or longer.

The point is cards you score highly on will get pushed back. Cards you score poorly on, you will see often. Seems simple and obvious, but since the program keeps track of all of the cards, you don't have to. It's one thing to try to manage 30-50 physical flash cards, it's another to try to manage thousands.

I started off using a program called Stackz. It is a commercial product with some bells and whistles. I eventually started using Anki, a freeware program. Much more simple, yet powerful enough for SRS purposes. There's also SuperMemo (commercial - tons of features - mostly overkill) and Mnemosyne (free), and probably several others. I have not used either of those.

What is The Sentence Method?

(Warning - I don't know if my description here is the "correct" description, but this is how I use sentences to learn vocab, grammar, etc. so that's what I call it. I'm sure there are better, more academic descriptions out there of The Sentence Method)

The Sentence Method is really simple. Instead of using Word - Translation with flash cards or an SRS, you write out a full phrase or sentence on one side with the translation on the other. Why is this better? The first reason is obvious: context. You get to see how the word is used. Two words that have the same exact literal translation could you used in two different ways. If all you do is learn by vocabulary translation, you will use words incorrectly, and will have to depend on immersion to fix your usage. So skip over that part. See how the word is used when you learn the meaning.

The second reason to use sentences is to constantly reinforce grammar. Not only are you learning the meaning of the word and how it's used, you are learning where the word goes in the sentence, and the overall grammer of the sentence.

But the sentence method doesn't stop there. The point is to transition to monolingual flash cards as soon as possible. You have a sentence in the target language on one side, and definitions/explanations in the target language on the other side. Here's an example:

Front: "Ich möchte gern diese drei Kostüme anprobieren"
Back: "anprobieren - etwas anziehen"

I inputted this sentence when the word "anprobieren" came up in a book. I didn't know what it meant and went looking for sample sentences. I use Deutsches Wörterbuch / German Dictionary (http://de.thefreedictionary.com/) to find my sentences and definitions. This specific sentence, I don't remember if I got it from the dictionary or vocab book, but the definition comes from that site.

The full definition is "etwas anziehen, um zu sehen, ob es die richtige Größe hat (und einem gefällt)" but since the only reason to try something on (for me) would be to see if it fit or not, I only included the first part. I try to keep my cards as short and to the point as I can.

Next time....My progress over the last 6 months and the start of Japanese.

[sabotai]

The Past 6 Months...

The last post of my last dynasty concluded with me giving a description of the sentence method and me saying that I had begun studying Spanish and Japanese along with my German.

I started up with Assimil Spanish and began Remembering the Kanji 1 for Japanese. After a few months, I decided to stop with the Spanish. In the end, 3 languages was 1 too many.

"Isn't 2 languages at once 1 too many?" I hear you say. The short answer is no. The longer answer is that many people study more than 1 language at once. I'm 32, started this at 30, and I want to learn more than just 1 second language. I want to learn several. In order to do that, I don't have a choice to put it simply.

In fact, I would say learning 3 at once would not have been 1 too many if it weren't for my other free time projects. If all I did was come home from work, and not fill my free time with other things, yes, I'd have the time to do Spanish as well. But since I am working on a few things right now, I only have time for 2. Yes, I barely have a social life, and I'm fine with that. :)

You'd be surprised how many people effectively study more than 1 language at a time.

So 6 months ago, I inputted all of the example sentences from 1001 Pitfalls In German into Anki (my SRS program). This ended up being the best thing I have done so far to learn German. It ended up being about 950 sentences. 950 sentences demonstrating every grammatical point the book brought up.

6 months ago, I opened up Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen (German version of the first Harry Potter book). I was lost instantly - after a year and half of studying German, I could not follow Harry Potter. At all.

After spending months SRSing the example sentences from 1001 Pitfalls, I could now look at German sentences, and even if I didn't know the words, I understond the structure of the sentences. I knew which words were verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. I know what tense the verbs were in. I knew the general idea of what was going on because I was instantly recognizing the grammar.

This is why I believe learning grammar early is important. It gives people a map to understanding the structure of a language. Even if you don't understand the meaning of the words in the sentence, knowing the grammer will let you know if it's talking about the past, present or future. If it's talking about a conditional. You'll know the types of the words (verb, noun, adjective, etc.) since you'll see the structure of the sentence and know where types of words are supposed to be.

I suck at explaining things, as you probably just became aware of if you weren't already. But the best analogy I can think of is that grammar gives you a trail map as you go on your hike through a language.

When I look at a sentence in a language I don't know, I just see random words with random letters in a random order. And that's how German was to me, for the most part, until 6 months ago (if, again, I didn't know any of the words....except nouns. All nouns are captialzied in German so I could spot them easily. :) ).

During that time, I also went back and forth trying to read dual-language books, using other systems, but for the most part, the vast majority of my German study has been me working on my listening by watching German movies, German TV, listening to German audio, and inputting, learning and reviewing German sentences.

6 months ago, I also started Remembering The Kanji 1. This is a book that teaches you how to recognize the 2000+ jouyou Kanji (those classified as "common use"). Kanji are the characters in Japanese that are taken from Chinese, and they are intimidating at first.

Remembering The Kanji uses a system to remember Kanji. The idea is that you learn a Kanji by connecting it with an English keyword (usually close to ints meaning), and creating a story around that word. When a Kanji is a combination of two previous Kanji that you have come acrossed, you create a story involving those english keywords as well.

An example would be 嵐 - the keyword for this Kanji is STORM. The story for this kanji would be something like "On top of a mountain, fast winds indicate a storm is coming." That's because the Kanji with the keyword mountain - 山 - and winds - 風 - make up the Kanji for storm. It's not just simply coming up with a story and moving on. It's using images to remember the kanji as well. So you come up with that story, and then try to imagine the story. Picture it in your mind. Try to attach that image you create from the story to the keyword and kanji.

It may sound silly, but it's a very effective way to become familiar with the Kanji. Sometimes the keyword isn't the definition of the kanji, mainly because it has to use a different keyword for each Kanji. But it's a great way to take the scariness of Kanji away. You end up knowing how to write them (that's part of the system - drawing them), what many of them mean individually and being able to recognize them.

Next time....Where I am and where I am going.

[Neuqua]

Good read.

Question, is there a particular reason you're interested in learning so many languages? And what was your reasoning in deciding on German and Japanese? Just curious, I have an itch to try to learn another language as well but have been too lazy to make the commitment.

[sabotai]

The Story Right Now...

For the last month, I have been writing down in a notebook everything I did that day in German and Japanese. The little bit I wrote at the start of this dynasty shows just how much I have not been doing. I have way too many entries that just read "German: SRS - Japanese: SRS". So I start this to organize my thoughts, map out my plans, and report on my daily activities.

German

I describe myself as Intermediate, because as I go through Mastering German Vocabulary (I'll get to that in a minute), I would say I instantly know about 40% of the words, I recognize but can't think of the meaning for about 25-30%, and the rest are new to me. So as many as 70% of a section, I'll recognize or know them instantly.

However, my listening still sucks. I'm still definitely a Beginner when it comes to listening comprehension. Last week, I watched an episode of Stromberg (Germany's version of The Office), and barely understood any of it. They talked so fast to my ears. I was abloe to pick up words here and there, but they just talked too fast.

So, I ordered some DVDs from Germany that I should get tomorrow. A show called Der letzte Zeuge, starring Ulrich Mühe who was in The Lives of Others. I ordered the first 3 seasons. Cost me a bit, a lot in shipping. I'll get back to this in a minute as a reason why I am switching focus to Japanese.

So, here is my plan for German.

1 - Mastering German Vocabulary - I go through 2 sections (or just 1 if it's a large section), looking up words on a German dictionary website. Sometimes they are filled with all kinds of examples, sometimes not. But I get at least one from the book. I input 2 sentences per word, only 1 if I have to, as many as 5 for common words with a few uses. I aim for 35-50 sentences, which generally means about 20 words added. But considering that I am also getting new words from the examples I take, I am probably getting 25-30 new words per day with this.

Doing the SRS takes 15-20 minutes. Adding the sentences takes around 20-30 minutes. If I miss a day or two, then not only do the reviews add up, I forget the words I added the last time.

2 - Assimil - I used this to help with listening. I listen to a lesson or two, and compare what I think I'm hearing with what is written. Sometimes I'll get a word or two I don't know. I'm in the mid 20s of the lessons, and I know about 95% of the words in each lesson. I don't use this the way I normally would use Assimil. I might get into more "study" with this when I get to lesson 50 or higher - when I get a good amount of words I don't know - but for now, I just use it for listening practice.

This takes me 15-30 minutes, depending on how many lessons I do.

3 - Der letzte Zeuge - Watch and listen. It didn't say on the product page, but I am hoping these have German subtitles. I will use these similar to how I would use Assimil. Watch a scene w/out subtitles, watch with subitles, look up meaning of what I don't know, watch scene with subtitles, watch without subtitles.

That seems like it would take awhile, and since I'm not focusing on German, I probably won't be doing it every day....unless I really like the show. Then I probably will.

Japanese

As I said, I have been using Remembering the Kanji for the last 6 months...but that's a bit wrong. I used it for awhile, and then I not do the SRS for awhile, it would pile up, I would catch up, then let it go for awhile....I got up to about Kanji 300 before that months-long loop of me not doing the SRS and then trying to catch up.

A month ago, I scrapped it all and started over. I did the first 200 fairly quickly since I remembered them well. The next 100 or so took a bit of time.

The way I was doing it, I would learn the Kanji, put them into an SRS and then move on. Perhaps I don't have a good memory, perhaps I don't do the system as well as others, but I learned that "learning" the Kanji a few times made them stick.

So, what I did was I start learning the Kanji in 50 Kanji chunks. That night, I would input them into Anki. The next day, I would do the reviews for those due plus do the new batch of 50 - giving the new batch of 50 a score that would make me see it again the next day regardless of if I got it right or not. That night, I would again "learn" the batch of 50 Kanji (do the whole spiel of imagining the stories, etc.). Next day, do the SRS as I normally would - giving the new Kanji the correct score. That night, do the whole spiel for that batch of Kanji again, making 3 straight nights doing Heisig's method on the same batch of 50.

Next day, do the SRS. That night, move on to the next 50 and input them into Anki and repeat.

I have found that I am remembering them all much, much better now. The idea is to just do them once, but...I gotta do what works. Doing two full reviews the 2 days after learning them has imporved my ability with Kanji by a lot.

Here is my Japanese game plan:

1) Remembering The Kanji - Reviewing the Kanji can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes, depending on the number of Kanji due for review. The second reason for doing the same batch of 50 3 days straight is because it spaces out how often Kanji are added. If I did 50 per day, they would probably pile up quickly. During the period where I was letting the SRS go for days at a time, sometimes I'd spend 60+ minutes reviewing around 200 Kanji....that killed my motivation.

I am right now at Kanji 475 of the book, and scheduled to do 476-525 tonight. If I keep the pace up, I should be finished with the book in about 3 months.

2) Japanese in Mangaland - These books give a good overview of the Japanese language. The premise is a lesson talks about either a point of grammar or word usage and then gives several manga (comic) examples. The examples come from real manga, but for copyright issues, the drawings had to be redone. The lessons are done well. Simple, straight forward explanations. Good examples both in the lesson and in the manga. It's not some "gimmick" product like a lot of "teach through comics" or other type of "fun" products. 30 lessons in the first book, 15 in each of the other 2.

What I like to do is thoroughly read a lesson one day, and then spend the next two or three days copying the Japanese that appears in the lesson by hand. This gives me practice writing in Japanese and (since most of the writing is in hiragana), reinforces pronunciation of the hiragana.

I will also start inputting the Japanese in these books into Anki at some point.

3) Japanesepod101 - Still evaluating this site, but it seems good. I signed up with 1 year of the basic plan ($60), and I'm already sick of them trying to push other products and subscription upgrades AT REDUCED PRICES!, but you can download the lessons so I don't have to spend more time on the website than I have too.

I just started using this yesterday and like the lessons so far. They are about 10 minutes long each. They will teach several new words per lesson and use them, along with previously taught words, in a conversation (well, they do the conversation first and then break it down) What I plan to do is listen to 2 on the way to work, 2 on the way home and then 1 more when I get home. Then I'll look over the lesson notes PDF and add the new words and sentences to Anki.

And to see where they end up, I listened to a few of the Upper Intermediate lessons, and they are filled with Japanese. They also have an all Japanese podcast, so it goes from A mostly English, explaining the Japanese, beginner lessons all the way to nothing but Japanese.

Two things that makes me really like these lessons and willing to look past the advertising is that 1) They explain usage in current day Japan - not just give translation or meanings, but explain how a word, term, phrase is used and 2) The conversation they have at the beginning of each lesson is at "normal" speed...meaning fast. Most lessons like Pimsleur and Assimil start you off with slow audio. Assimil does speed up, but at least by lessons in the 20s and 30s they are still not to natural speed.

If you sign up for the premium package, which is too expensive for me, you can get audio files of just the conversation. Instead, I'll just take the regular lesson and figure out how to edit them so I just have the conversations for when I want to practice.

Each lesson is about 10 minutes, so 5 a day would probably be about 60 minutes, but 40 or so will be done in the car during the day.

They also have different lessons for different types and levels. They have a series called "Survival Phrases" which is geared towards tourists, a "Newbie" series for someone who is completely new and a "Beginner" series for new people as well, but they are a bit more ahead of the Newbie series.

What I do is 2 Survival Phrases lesson a day, 2 Newbie lessons and 1 Beginner lesson. Currently there are 80 Survival Phrases lessons, 130 Newbie lessons and about 300 Beginner lessons. Doing 5 a day will take a little over 3 months. As I finish the Survival Phrases and Newbie lessons, I'll up the Beginner lessons.


So why are you switching focus to Japanese?

To put it simply, I just have so much more in Japanese. Because of the Japanese "geek" culture in the US, there is a ton of material here to use. Tons of anime are available, tons of movies, tons of websites dedicated to Japanese. Meanwhile, there are some German movies available, no TV shows, and in order to get some, I have to order them from Germany which makes them expensive.

So if I am going to try to immerse myself in a language, Japanese is practically my only choice of the two.

I'm still going to keep at it with German just to maintain what I know, try to work on my listening as best I can, and work on my "technical" knowledge of the language.

I am also going to immerse myself in Japanese. I am going to have Japanese playing in the background "24/7". Anytime I am not actually watching TV (which is most of the time), I'll have a Japanese DVD playing. I'll start listening to Japanese music (any recommendations?). I am going to, to the best of my ability, have Japanese surrounding me as much as possible.

[sabotai]

Good read.

Question, is there a particular reason you're interested in learning so many languages? And what was your reasoning in deciding on German and Japanese? Just curious, I have an itch to try to learn another language as well but have been too lazy to make the commitment.

No particular reason as to why I want to learn multiple languages. One reason would is that I tend to like foreign movies, and not relying on subtitles would be great. Reading books in their original languages would be nice too.

It started off as me just wanting to learn 1 language, German. Just as something to do to "improve myself". It wasn't until about a year ago when I started really learning about languages and how to learn them did I become interested in being Multilingual (Polyglot). That's when I started using German as my "guinea pig" language to test out lots of products and methods.

I chose German at first because I already had a foundation in it. I took it in high school so I remembered the pronunciation, remembered the grammar.....thought I remembered the grammar, and thought it would be easier for me than other languages. Also, I have a few branches of my family tree coming from Germany, so if I can find any stuff from Germany on my ancestors, it'd be nice to understand it.

Japanese because I'm a huge geek that likes anime, Japanese movies, and want the challenge and "mystic" or learning an entirely different writing system. The huge amount of available material for learning Japanese pushed it to the top of my list.

[sabotai]

11-24-2009 Update

Felt pretty sick yesterday and today was not too much better. I only did the SRS with German but I did manage to get all of my Japanese in.

Got the DVDs for Der letzte Zeuge but unfortunately, no German subtitles. Still got several more hours of German for my ears. I also got the Film book for The Lives of Others, which includes the script for the movie. I read through several pages of the script, and understood most of it. Difference is when I watch the movie, I don't understand nearly as much.

With Anki, you can have an audio file by a side of the card, so what I'm thinking of doing is finding out how to rip the audio from the DVD, and then editing it so I can have one of dialog with the line written being the answer. After awhile, I'll go to 2 lines of dialog and then 3. After doing 3 lines of natural-paced dialog, I should be able to keep up with most movies and tv shows. We'll see.

I also plan to do the same with my Japanese DVDs and especially the Japanesepod101 lessons. They're already in MP3 format so I don't need to worry about ripping and converting. I can load them and start cutting them up right away.

So anyway, here I am with Japanese: Tonight was to be my 3rd night with Knaji #476-#514. Only 39 in the last batch since I moved on to the 3rd part of Heisig's book where he only gives you the Kanji and the keywoords, no more help with the stories. So I had to start making my own and it's harder than I thought it would be. Lesson 19 was the last lesson of Part 2 and had 33 Kanji. Lesson 20 was the first of Part three and only had 6 (to ease you into making your own stories). I've been having a bit of trouble with them so I'm adding a 4th night of reviewing the stories (which will be tomorrow night), just to get them better cemented.

Finished Japanesepod101 Survival Phrases #7 and #8 today, Newbie #8 and #9 (they either lost one or mislabeled them because there is no #6) and Beginner #4. A good amount of cross over with the Beginner and Newbie lessons, which has been good review.

Still have to read Japanese in Managaland. I'll probably be in bed the rest of the night so I might get several chapters done. Reread chapters 4 and 5 last night.

[sabotai]

11-26-2009

Spent a few hours yesterday messing with audacity and creating sound files for words and phrases. Took awhile, but I'll get faster with it the more I use it. Created about 50 anki cards from sounds I took from the Survival Phrases podcasts on Jpod101. I have the sound be the "front", and the "back" is the phrase written in Japanese. No romanji or english. How I plan to use these is that I'll listen to the sound and repeat it a few times, then show the Japanese text and do the same, play the sound and repeat. No real "score" for this. The score I give will depend on how long I want to wait before I see (hear) it again.

At some point, what I might do is listen to the sound, write out in Japanese what I thought I heard, and then show the answer. But that won't be for awhile. Right now, I'm just using these to train my ears, get better at pronunciation and to help reinforce hiragana pronunciation while also possibly learning the pronunciation of some Kanji.

Also today I start in with a new batch of Kanji. I now have just over 500 "done", with 1500 to go. It's already getting to the point where I will see something written in Japanese and I will recognize a lot of the Kanji used. And often I'll see a Kanji that I have not gotten to yet in RTK, but recognize the parts used to make it.

On the German side, I did a few Assimil lessons yesterday, but that was it (aside from SRS). I'm going to put the Mastering German Vocabulary book aside for a few days and start taking my words from a book called 501 German Verbs, just so that I get a lot of verbs into my vocabulary. In looking through the book, I already have about half of the verbs in there known, so I probably have around 250 verbs in there to learn. I would say verbs is one of my weak points with German, not having come acrossed even some of the more basic verbs, so I am going to work on that.

501 German Words - In this book, it gives one verb per page, and shows how to conjugate the verb in all forms. I'm a bit torn on how I feel about this book. At first, you're like "holy crap, this is awesome", but then when you learn how to conjugate verbs just through reading a grammar book and, in the my case, going through Michel Thomas' Advanced German, it seems like a waste. On the other hand, if you take the book, randomly pick verbs, and write out sentences using many of the conjugations, it helps to reinforce how to conjugate that verb (and verbs in general).

I guess overall, I would not recommend this book, but it has its uses.

Another similar book I have is Berlitz German Verbs Handbook. It doesn't show the conjugation of as many verbs, but it lists a ton of prefix+verb forms in the base form and their meanings. This book is better as a "verb dictionary" than 501 German Verbs, but it's still more on the side "sell books by 'wowing' beginners". But, if you really wanted a book that specifically had a larging listing of verbs, get the Berlitz book over the 501 German Verbs.

501 German Verbs doesn't show a lot of prefix+verb words. It has mostly standard verbs in it. After I get through 501 German Verbs, I may then use the Berlitz book to add a lot of prefix+verb to my SRS.

Verb prefixes - In German, they use prefixes to change the meaning of a lot of verbs. There are three kinds, inseperable prefixes (the prefix is always attachted to the verb), seperable prefixes (the prefix is sperated from the verb in some tenses) and then the kind where sometimes the verb is seperated and sometimes not.

An example would be something like "I want to go out", where 'out' in German would be a prefix. "Ich möchte ausgehen". But sometimes, the 'aus' will be seperated from the verb and placed elsewhere in the sentence depending on the tense. "Ich gehe heute aus" - I am going out today.

[sabotai]

Current Progress

Japanese
Japanesepod101.com
Survival Phrase : Finished up to S1 (Season 1) - Episode 16
Newbie : Finished up to S1 - Episode 19*
Beginner: Finished up to S1 - Episode 8

A few Newbie lessons were either mislabeled or lost. There doesn't appear to be a lesson #6, #16 or #17, and that's why I am 3 ahead of Survival Phrases.

So far, all three have mainly been set phrases with some grammar and word lists. Although a few of the more recent ones have been teaching more language than stuff out of a phrase book. The last beginner lesson dealt with adjectives refering to people. Each lesson comes with vocabulary. Some include an extra list of words. For example, one lesson that taught about restaurants also listed how they say "1 person", "2 people",..."5 people". One listed the months, etc.

The only bad thing about it is the one main host is a bit.....way over the top sometimes.

Remembering the Kanji
Tonight, finished my third night of Kanji #515-#561. Tomorrow night, I begin a new batch. Hopefully this time I'll get to my "50 kanji every 3 days" goal. The last batch fell several kanji short of 50.

Japanese in Mangaland
Read chapter 10 last night. I've been going at a pace of reading a chapter every other day on average. Generally speaking, the first two (Jpod101 and RtK) are far more important than reading this, but I try to keep up. At the pace I am going with the first two, I will done Jpod101 Survival Phrases, Newbie and Beginner series at the end of February, and I will also be getting done Remeber The Kanji 1 around the same time. Since there are only 60 lessons total in Japanese in Mangaland 1, 2 and 3, doing 1 every other day, or more accurately, 2 every 3 days, will get me done the series at the end fo February. I want to keep that goal in mind for all three parts of my daily study.

So at the end of February, I will have completed all three parts. I should then really be done learning all I need to learn to be a "Beginner" in Japanese, and ready to move on to "Intermediate". I may take a week or two to quickly go over everything I had learned. Give the 3 Japanese in Mangaland books a quick reread, read through the Lessons Notes for all of the Jpod101 podcasts (only a page or two long each) before jumping into the next phase. I plan to move on to Jpod101's Intermediate podcasts, so that resource will stay in the rotation. I may or may not do Remebering the Kanji 2 and 3. 2 is on how to remember to pronounce the Kanji, but I think it might be better to just learn that through the podcasts, audiobooks that I have the text to, sentences from other sources, etc. 3 is an extra 1000+ Kanji that are "common", but not apart of the Jouyou Kanji list (the kanji that all Japanese school kids are taught). Again, I might just learn these through context from other sources. I will probably be sick of learning Kanji by the end of February anyway.

I also plan to start SRSing sentences for Japanese soon (maybe this week), but I am going to start off slow. Only a handful of sentences added a day, and at first they will probably be just one or a few words long.

German
SRS - I have added 77 German sentences using the verbs from 501 Germen Verbs. Not much to really report here. Just adding about 30 a day.

Assimil - Finished Lesson #28. Unfortunately, this has gone mostly neglected, but it doesn't take much time to do these. I know 90% of what is in each lesson, at least, so I can usually do 2-3 lessons in a 30 minute window. But I have only beeing doing them a few days a week. There are exacly 100 lessons in this book, so I have 71 to go, and that includes a grammar lesson every 7th lesson. I just skip those, so I really only have ~60 lessons to go. Just finding 10-15 minutes to do 1 lesson a day should not be a problem.

I did get around to ripping the audio for The Lives Of Others. I need to start cutting that up and making Anki cards for it.

Breaking down the time

Japanesepod101.com podcasts: 10-15 minutes per lesson (usually closer to 10 than 15), 5 lessons a day. ~60 minutes per day
Remembering the Kanji: SRS reviews: ~30 minutes (depends on how many, but generally 30 minutes for around 50-60 reviews). Learning/reviewing the batch of 50: ~60 minutes the first night, ~45 minutes the next two nights.
Japanese in Mangaland: ~15-20 minutes. Each lesson is only a few pages of "theory" and a few pages of manga examples. I could just read right through it in a few minutes, but I try to really internalize what it's each lesson, and I end up spending a few minutes studying each page.

Total per day: ~2 1/2 to 3 hours, which is my goal for each day. 2-3 good hours, using a few different resources, a day should get my a good beginner knowledge of Japanese in a few months.

German SRS - ~ 30 minutes to review, ~60 minutes to add around 50 items. Since I have only been adding 20-30 per day, it's more like 30-40 minutes.
Assimil German - ~10-15 minutes per lesson.

Total Time per day: ~30 minutes - 1 hour or more. 1 hour a day maintaining/building my German is my goal and I'm falling short of that most days.

4 hours a day? Aren't you worried about buring out?

Yes, I am, but that's why I am splitting that 4 hours up by using several different resources. Just as I am getting done listening to the hour of podcasts, I lay in bed and read Japanese in Mangaland, and then after that review the Kanji stories or learn new ones or do an Assimil German lesson. Constantly moving from one thing to another keeps me from buring out...so far. If I did 3 hours of Japanese using only one resource, I have no doubt I'd be sick of it already. I also split everything up through the day, I don't spend 4 straight hours doing it.

[sabotai]

Current Progress
Japanesepod101.com
Survival Phrases: Completed up to S1-E22
Newbie: Completed up to S1-E25
Beginner: Completed up to S1-E11

Remembering the Kanji
Tonight is my third night of review for Kanji #562-#612.

Japanese In Mangaland 1
Read up to chapter 11

Lost a day because I went out last night. Got back to work today.


Two things for today's update. 1) I'm changing how I'm going to review the Japanesepod101 lessons and 2) I'm going to conduct a bit of an experiment with Assimil and 3 languages throughout 2010.

1) I've said enough about how great SRS is with reviewing. The problem is, if I used Anki to review everything, eventually, and quickly, all I would be doing is SRSing, and that would get very tiresome, not to mention, it will grind my progress to a halt.

With other languages, I suffer from not enough content to learn from. With Japanese, I probably have too much. I'm tempted to start picking vocab and sentences from everywhere to SRS, but if I did that, I would get bogged down in SRS reps.

So, instead of SRSing stuff from the Japanesepod101 lessons, what I am going to do is thoroughly cut them down to 1 or 2 minutes long. These are set up as podcasts, so there is a lot of banter between the two (or more) people giving the lesson, a lot of repetition, etc. I figure what I could try to do is cut them down to where I just have the main phrases and lesson points for each podcast and listen through them regularly. Maybe even set up an SRS-like schedule for listening to my created files. For example, listen to my review audio on Day 1, day 2, day 4, day 9, day 19 and if on Day 19 I have trouble with the lesson, basically start over by listening to it again the next day, then 2 days, then 4 days, etc.

What I am trying to avoid here is SRS burn out, especially in light of something I have decided to try for 2010. I am going to try and keep my Anki use at a minimum for Japanese.

2) My Assimil Experiment

The best single product out there for language learning, IMO, in both content and price is Assimil. You can get them for a little over $30 on Amazon and it is a bargin. I've already described how Assimil is set up so I'll get right into it.

But even though I think it's great and recommend it when I can, I have yet to use an Assimil course from start to finish. When I got the German one, I was already beyond the Beginner level (in reading), so I never bothered to use it the way it was intended. As for Spanish, I used it for a little while, getting about a third of the way through it. But I stopped when it was "one language too many". However, I looked through it the other day and I still retained a good amount of the early lessons despite not reading any Spanish for months.

So, I am conducting the "Great Assimil Experiment" in 2010. French, Spanish and Italian. I will complete these Assimil courses, along with SRSing the sentences w/ audio (the reason I'm trying to limit Japanese SRSing) to see just how good I get at the languages.

The schedule will go like this. On January 1st, I will begin French With Ease. I will spend about 15-20 minutes on a lesson, and then input the sentences into Anki and begin the SRS review of them the following day. Before hand, I'll cut up several lessons (and do so every weekend to stay ahead) so that I have the audio of each line available when I put the sentences into Anki. Jan. 2 will be lesson 2, put sentences in for the next day, rinse and repeat until I get to lesson #113. Every 7th lesson is a grammar review, and while I will read them, each day I will do a 'real' lesson, and there are 16 grammar reviews in French With Ease so that means there are really 97 lessons.

Every 4th month, I start a new Assimil course. Jan 1st, French. May 1st, Spanish, September 1st, Italian. When I finish Assimil French in April, I will spend the rest of the month doing the SRS, reviewing, etc. When May 1st starts, though, I will keep SRSing the French sentences. If I stopped doing that, I will probably forget a lot of what I learned if I let it sit unused for 8 months, so I'll still review and SRS through the year, and try to find ways to use French when I can.

One thing that will help quite a lot, though, is that these three languages share a lot of vocabulary. I fi was doing this with Russian, Manderin and Arabic, that would be crazy. But I was looking through the Italian book and recognized several Spanish words. Spelled exaclty the same with the same exact meaning (but almost definitley pronounced differently).

Vocabulary similarity:
French and Italian have an 85% similarity
Spanish and French have an 80% similarity
Spanish and Italian have an 80% similarity

Not only do they sahre a lot of vocab, but a lot of grammar as well. I think the similarities between the languages will help some with learning them back-to-back-to-back.

2b) So where does this leave German?

I'm still definitely Intermediate with regards to reading, and probably a Beginner everywhere else, but the actual process of learning German has become a bit useless now. When I SRS Kanji, sometimes it takes a dozen or more times seeing it before a specific Kanji card will start making its way to being "1 month" or "3 months" away from seeing it again. With German, I'm learning the words much, much faster.

Case in point, I left my Mastering Vocabulary deck sit for awhile. Granted, I have not added anything to it since I started doing the 501 Verb book, but I left it for over a week. This afternoon I loaded it up and had a grand total of 16 items due for review. IOW, I have pretty learned the vast majority of what is in that deck. And even the Verbs deck is become known quickly. I missed yesterday, but I added a bunch in the days before, so I should have had a ton of reviews due. But I only had 20 today, which tells me that I am learnign the verbs pretty quickly.

It's time to really test my German. It's time to put the "Learn German" stuff to the side and start actually using it. I have Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen, the first book in the Harry Potter series in German. This book is now my German learning resource. I do not have the English version, nor have I read it. When I get to words I do not know, a monolingual German dictionary will be where I look first. I'll only use a German-English dictionary if I have to.

I also will not be making any vocab lists or SRS items for this. Unless I think I really need to or should make sure I learn a specific word, I'll let the repeated use of the word in the book itself be my review for it.

This ends yet another insanely long update post. Til I write my next novel, またね

[sabotai]

When I started this, I meant to update every day, but I started keeping a daily log elsewhere. I'm going to try to make weekly updates, but we'll see. Anyway, here's my progress

Current Progress
Japanesepod101.com
Survival Phrases: Completed up to S1-E30 - Stopped
Newbie: Completed up to S2-E19
Beginner: Completed up to S1-E19

Remembering the Kanji
Tonight is my third night of review for Kanji #675-#726.

Japanese In Mangaland 1
Read up to chapter 18

Japanese Sentence Patterns
Studied up to Pattern 8


Japanesepod101.com

I stopped doing the Survival Phrases. It was a decent series, but it is mainly tourist type phrases and I got tired of hearing "this is beyond the scope of this lesson, but just remember...". They also didn't build off each other and reinforce/review previous topics and phrases. I might return to them later.

Newbie Season 1 had 30 episodes, so I have done almost 50 Newbie podcasts. I am also up to almost 20 Beginner episodes. I was doing 5 podcasts a day, but the Newbie lessons quickly went from 10-15 minutes long to 15-25 minutes long, so I only do 4 now. 3 Newbie lessons and 1 Beginner lesson a day. These are pretty good, but I think I may be doing them a bit too quickly. I'm starting to "fall behind". After I finish Newbie Season 2 (tomorrow - 25 episodes in Season 2), I'm going to stop for a few days (maybe up to a week) and review the first two seasons as well as the first 20 or so Beginner lessons.

Remembering The Kanji

Still going with this, but there was a week where I didn't do more, so I am a bit behind my pace. Although, I do keep picking up a kanji here and there from my other resources, so as I go, I'm seeing this part of my workload as the least important. So when time is short, this is the one that I usually let go. I am about 1/3rd of the way through this.

Japanese in Mangaland

The first several chapters were general things you would see in most "beginner" books. Numbers, days of the week, etc. Now it's starting to get to real grammar and usage.

Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication

This is a book I've had for a bit and I started using last week. It's a grammar book that presents word order and usage in a different way. Instead of doing a chapter on each gramatical topic like most grammar books do, it shows you how to actually say and write what you want to express, and explains the grammar points. The first chapter is "Describing People and Things", second is "Describing the Existance of Animate and Inanimate Objects", third is "Making Comparisons", etc. The first pattern of chapter one shows you how to say what your name is and your profession, and also explains the word order and the difference between the particle は and が when used in this way.

It then goes on to other "patterns", building on previous ones. It also provides several examples and exercises per pattern. This is a far more enjoyable way (and seems like a more...'natural' way) of learning grammar.


German

The whole plan with Harry Potter didn't happen. I did read a few pages and understood most of it, but I changed up (again). I bought a product called Teach Yourself Improve Your German. So far, I've only done part of the first lesson. This is aimed at intermediate students, so the dialog on the CDs are spoken at natural speed (which is what I need). If you read the table of contents, it would seem like beginner topics, but the dialogs are long, use more advanced vocab and more complex sentence sturctures. The book also doesn't translate, but does gives a small vocab table for the dialog for the most advanced words. So even though chapter one is about "describing yourself and asking about others", it expands on what you should know as an intermediate student (as in, does not provide explainations for beginner topics for the most part) and is filled with German that is mostly not translated. Seems pretty good so far.

[sabotai]

Testing out my patchwork German (corrections welcome)

Guten Tag! Mein Name ist Sabotai. Ich bin 32 (zweiunddriezig) Jahre alt, und ich mag Fremdsprachen zu lernen. Ich lerne gegenwärtig Deutsch und Japanisch. Deutsch für ein paar Jarhe und Japanisch für ein Monat. Ich fange auch Franzörsisch bald an.

Ich liebe deutsche Filme. Ich mag "Das Leben Der Anderen" am meisten. Kürzlich sah ich "Die Welle". Es war sehr gut. Ich mag auch Japanisch Filme und Anime. Ich spiele das Klavier gelegentlich, aber ich bin nicht gut. Ich lese sehr oft. Zur Zeit lese ich "Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen". Ich lese auch viele Sachbücher.


And a short Japanese introduction.

初めまして。私はサボタイです。宜しくお願いします。

[sabotai]

Beginning of 2010 Status Report

Japanese

Japanesepod101 - Complete up to Newbie Season 3, Episode 6
Assimil Japanese - Completed Lesson 5
Japanese in Mangaland - Completed the first book
Japanese Sentence Patterns - Pattern 13
Remembering the Kanji - Completed up to Kanji #775.

Lots of resources. When I watch/listen to Japanese, I'm starting to pick up words here and there that I know. It's a pretty good confidence booster.

I paused Remembering the Kanji for now. I was getting bored with it, and decided to move on. I got a little over 1/3rd of the Jouyou Kanji (a list of ~2000 Kanji that are "common use"), am not "scared" of kanji anymore and am picking them up at a reasonable rate now from my other sources, so stopping for now seems doable. When I get through Assimil Japanese and Japanesepod101 Beginner seasons, I may go back to it to help grab the kanji that I didn't come across in either of those. I started up Assimil Japanese when I decided to stop RtK.

Finished the first book for Japanese in Mangaland. Very general grammar subjects and vocab, but I ignored the vocab for now. After I get a bit of the way through Japanese Sentence Patterns, I'll go back and take the vocab from the vocab tables in the book and use them in sentences from JiM and JSP. There are two more books in the JiM series, but I'm pausing now to focus on JSP. JiM 2 is labled as "Beginner-Intermediate" and 3 is "Intermediate". I read through some of the first chapter of the second book, and it does make a noticable leap in difficulty. I'll probably start it up in a few weeks.

All in all, I'm pretty happy about my progress in Japanese. I started about a month and a half ago (the kanji several months ago) and I am much further now than I was in the same timeframe with German.

German

Teach Yourself Improve Your German: On Chapter 1
Teach Yourself German Conversation: Finished Conversation 1
Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen: Read 4 pages

My German has come along a little since I started this thread in November. 2 things that are still blocking my progress. 1) My fear of making mistakes. 2) I still obsess a bit over understanding every single word.

As far as making mistakes...the only way to get over that is to force myself to use the language and make mistakes.

As far as understanding everything I hear and read, I try to think about movies and TV shows that I watch in English. I try to pay attention to how much English I really hear and understand, and I've found that I infer and guess at the words I hear more times than I realize. I'll miss half of what someone is saying and still be able to understand them by guessing and infering. Right now, my German is close, but just not quite good enough to guess at the words I miss. Part of the reason it's not there yet is because I don't allow myslef to guess. I need to start just watching and paying attention instead of listening and waiting for the words I do understand....if that makes any sense...

One good confidence booster, though, is reading German message boards and being able to follow what is being said.

French

Assimil French: Start today

When I started Spanish several months ago, it turned out 3 languages at once took up too much time. However, I'm confident that my German no longer needs daily, hour or more long active study (something I haven't really done with German in awhile, but I still notice improvement with it). It just needs me to listen, read, write (and whenever possible) speak it when I get the chance. I happen to use TY products right now to do that, but not daily.

Anyway, I have changed my gameplan for Assimil again. No longer do I plan to use SRS for the sentences. Instead, I am just going to regularly review the previous lessons (review the lesson I did the day before, 4 days before and 10 days before....or something like that) as I go through it.

Auf wiedersehen. じゃまた