Every language is difficult; every language is easy.
I spent my entire lifetime acquiring my current proficiency in English, but I never put any conscious effort into it.
Category Archives: Operating the Noodle
language and photography
Language and photography have a certain structural similarity. Both are based on logical and scientific laws and principles; but neither is a science.
In photography, you have your laws of focus and exposure, the laws governing how your sensor or film responds to light, the optical laws governing what angle your lens sees and how it draws the image. In language, you have laws and principles as well; parts of speech, conjugations and inflections, and all the rest of the grammar.
But just as a master photographer goes into the field and creates his art without once thinking about exposure, hyperfocal distance, and so on, and simply doing this automatically; and just as he might even have trouble explaining how it all works; a person fluent in a language doesn’t think about where to put the particle or how to inflect the verb. In fact the better they are at the language, often enough the worse they are at explaining it, which is why a native speaker isn’t always the best teacher.
So in both cases, when one is a beginner it is important to master the logical principles; but as one matures, it is a serious error to continue to treat the study as a science instead of an art.
fitness and language
I’m a bit out of shape right now. Well – ok – I’m rather a lot out of shape. Last year I was doing reasonably well with my running, but now I’m back to plodding.
So how did this sad situation come about? Simple – I took a bit of a break.
There is nothing as evil in the occasionally Sisyphean pursuit of physical fitness as the “bit of a break”. The problem is it starts out as just a short while but as one continues to think “wow I just don’t have time today either” that hiatus just gets longer and longer and the next thing you know it’s two weeks later and you’re fat and slow. A couple of those episodes over the course of a winter (usually precipitated by a holiday or some such) and a year’s worth of work can be undone.
This is pretty similar to the situation one can get into with one’s L2. Sometimes things get pretty crazy in life, no denying that, can’t be helped. That’s just how things go sometimes. But when a language is still on its wobbly infant legs, to leave it alone for any length of time will mean the loss of far more time than you will ever save. To go into a sort of maintenance mode is not a problem for a reasonable time, but at all costs resist that temptation for the “bit of a break”.
what are your japanese goals this year?
This is a typical new year’s post, typically late.
I was thinking of this issue a few days ago in an attempt to provide a little guidance to my efforts. Wandering is perfectly fine mind you; constant contact, as Khatzumoto says, is more important than regimented progress. Too much of that though and I end up just watching anime and calling it study!
So with Japanese, unlike most languages where your two fields of study are essentially the grammar and vocabulary, you have an additional field in the kanji. Truth be told, I find it almost a little puzzling how for some people the kanji are a dreaded obstacle more than anything else. In fact I suspect if it weren’t for the kanji I’d probably have picked a different language. I find them utterly fascinating.
At the same time, they are just as much of a challenge as you’d think. In essence, it’s as if you were going to a school or a workplace with 2000 colleagues and had to remember each of their faces and first and last names.
1) So for this year, I intend to go through Heisig with my trusty Kanji LS Touch loaded up and memorize the writings and meanings of all the general use kanji. I’d also like to get a start on the readings, but most of that will probably come from –
2) the vocabulary, in which I would like to master the 3700-odd words from what used to be the JLPT 2. I can see already that that’s going to require a fair bit of SRS work with sentences/phrases in addition to the regular use of Japanese Flip which I’ve been doing up till now. Then,
3) in terms of grammar I don’t really have a set goal as such, other than I do want to finish my Japanese For Everyone text, which ought to take me to the point that I can hold a reasonable conversation.
Looking at it laid out like that and comparing it to my achievements up till now, this does look awfully optimistic. However I am definitely much more seriously into Japanese study now since late last year than I’ve ever been before. So while this represents what I would like to accomplish, it is certainly more of a direction than a destination. The important thing is simply to stick with it every single day.
I guess you could say that about pretty much anything you’d like to achieve.
So if you’re studying Japanese as well, where do you see yourself at the end of the year?
RTK list for Kanji LS
Balancing my interest in the kanji etymology with my desire to learn them as fast as possible, I finally broke down and ordered Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji, like everyone else already has. I still want to study Henshall’s book but I’ll do that afterwards as it will make an excellent introduction to etymology study; it will do that a fair bit better than it will help learn them in the first place, I think.
Naturally the first thing I did was try to find a pre-compiled list that I could import in order to study the kanji in Kanji LS in the same order as the book. Despite the long odds of this, someone has in fact already done this 🙂 So thanks to user “exxel” on the Reviewing the Kanji forum for his excellent work. Download the list here.
Incidentally, exxel has intelligently put the whole list in one file, using the range selection capability of Kanji LS; I should’ve done the same thing but never thought of it. If I am very bored one day I’ll redo my lists into one.
GRJC files for Kanji LS Touch
Bit of a specialized interest here. This is for people who are learning kanji using Kanji LS Touch and who would like to follow the order in the excellent text, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters by Kenneth G. Henshall.
With the new functionality in Kanji LS Touch that allows you to import your own sets of kanji, this becomes possible. But it’s still a lot of work to get that many kanji in a row. I’ve now done this for you, dividing the book into sets of 34 characters (yes, this is the same set size that KingKanji uses; this is not a coincidence 😉 ). These files can be found at http://willowroot.ca/grjc/. this link.
I hope this is useful to at least one other person!
Lan'dorien's Mysterious Journey 