006 - Learning Japanese - from Katakana to grammar and vocab
Status
I have more than a passing familiarity with Hiragana and Katakana now. It took me two weeks longer than expected, but I also didn't put in as much effort as I had originally anticipated.
The frequency list I found at wiktionary required a better grasp of grammar than what I currently have, so I haven't been able to leverage that very well.
I've been switching the language in Monster Hunter World back and forth between English and Japanese. Interestingly this feels like it has been better Katakana practice, but not really helpful otherwise.
I've been playing the Kanji no Owari game on Android for practice, too.
Since I haven't had time to sit down in front of the Genki books, I've been repeating phrases and vocabulary from the 80/20 Japanese book, to practice grammar, but I haven't been studying or drilling these, just practicing when I remember them. (Yay for PDF!)
Notes
80/20 Book
Vocabulary
There were some sample sentences that I started permuting to make new sentences. I'm repeating the material here so I can review it later.
わたしのくるまはあかいです。
| ひらがな | 漢字 | meaning |
|---|---|---|
| です | verb to be | |
| わたし | 私 | first person singular pronoun (我) |
| ひと | 人 | person/human (人) |
| くるま | 車 | car (车) |
| みどり | 緑 | green (绿色) |
| くろい | 黒い | black (黑色) |
| しろい | 白い | white (白色) |
| あかい | 赤い | red (红色) |
| *あおい | 青い | blue (蓝色) |
| *きろい | ? | yellow (黄色) |
Grammar
の - This is a sort of copula much like 的 in Chinese it can be used to attach adjectives to objects or indicate ownership.
は - Particle denoting the subject. Particles follow words to indicate things like parts of speech.
Genki Book
I'm finding the romaji in the book to be really distracting. I hope they don't keep it up.
Greetings
| Greeting | time of day | formality |
|---|---|---|
| おはよう | morning | informal |
| おはようございます | morning | polite |
| こんにちは | afternoon | |
| こんばんは | evening | |
| *おやすみ | night | |
| *おやすみなさい | night | polite |
*Technically not a greeting, generally said before bed. (我想跟"晚安"差不多一样)。
Practice
With just the one pattern, and all the greetings being so rigid, I generated quite a few nonsensical sentences. For example, I prefixed random greetings to random permutations of that above sentence and came up with stuff like "Good morning, my human is green!" おはよう,わたしのひとはみどりです! I continue to periodically write out the hiragana/katakana charts (because I can just scribble a character here and there while I'm doing work) and I'm pretending that Monster Hunter is Japanese practice, because it's pretty awesome.
Plans
Because I'm behind, I plan to take a picture of a page of the Genki book with me each day to review/practice what's on it when I can. I'll continue to recite random sentences while driving to try and work on my flow of speech. But I don't have a good way to test that my pronunciation is actually correct. Maybe I'll record and playback my voice saying phrases from shows on Netflix or something. I'm also thinking that Monday needs to be my status update day for Japanese study so that I don't slip on these updates again.
Consequences
If I slip further behind in my imaginary schedule then I'll start planning out the explicit content that I need to cover each day. I hope it doesn't come to this, but maybe it needs to.
Feedback
I'm making these notes as I read the text book. If you spot any mistakes, please leave a comment. Even if the seven day window for editing has closed.
References:
- Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese I, Second Edition, 2011.
- 80/20 Japanese by Richard Webb
Previous Post(s) in the Series:
So what happened to your Chinese? You posted a single time and then dropped the topic. Perhaps you need some help and encouragement?
Well, in the post I had asked for feedback on ideas, didn't get any, so I'm still learning it, but just not posting about it.
Edit: no, that's not really accurate, I got some feedback, and I appreciated the time people took to reply, but it didn't really start the dialog I had hoped it would.
This is an unfortunate situation we have with Steemit: no language learning tags or ways to find fellow language learners/teachers.
If I had known that you needed help, I could have used my 40+ years of language teaching expertise to help you. I only found you because I did a specific search using keywords and outside tools that most people don't even know exist.
Your reply to my comment has inspired me to make a specific post about this problem. Jiayou, jiayou! is all I can say for the time being.
https://steemit.com/cn/@wentong-syhhae/steemit-language-lovers-unite-steemit
Good job, keep it up ★＼(^o^)／★
Minor mistakes have been made:
Greetings
Should be
こんにちは can be used all day (if I remember correctly … I personally remember it as the shorthand everyone unknowingly uses for このにちはどうですか which means "How is this day?" – which is probably very wrong)
And おやすみ is (from what I remember) more of a "Good night" when you're going to bed.
For listening practice I'd recommend listening to Japanese songs for children. In our Japanese class we sang かえるのうた (frog's song)
As always, take everything I say about Japanese with a grain of salt. My Japanese lessons have been a while in the past now.
Thank you!
So the first part, should be い not う, but isn't it still ご you have a が in there?
I wasn't sure about this, as in English you might say this to someone as a good bye at the end of the night.
Ha, nice video link.
Uh yeah, it's おはようございます – happens to the best.
Don't know how much おやすみ applies to "Good night" as in "Good night, Vienna" and such.
Thinking about it in German it makes sense, too, as in a good bye, even though the primary use of German good night is "You're going to bed? Good night" (which sort of is what the German "Good night, Vienna" leads to, too – don't know whether it's the same thing, or different things in English).
I have never heard おやすみ as "Good bye, have a good night, whatever you'll be doing in it" in Japanese (or any other language) though.
Snarky comment: Good bye isn't a greeting though, is it?
It's not. It is a salutation, but I chose to call it a greeting, instead. But what do I call the rest of the stuff in the table such that the description still fits? I guess I could have moved it to a new table, but then it would get lonely.
Monster Hunter sounds like great practice haha. Are you also doing speaking and listening at the same time?
I like how Japanese characters look.
Not so much on the simultaneous speaking/listening... and no speaking during monster hunter, though I suppose the PS4 does have the whole voice thing while playing...
Sneaky Ninja Attack! You have been defended with a 4.45% vote... I was summoned by @not-a-bird! I have done their bidding and now I will vanish...Whoosh