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Mar. 9th, 2018 09:29 pmCurrent status of learning Japanese: progress is being made! I have hiragana down pretty well; I have katakana somewhat down, but it's a lot slower ("this letter is ... re. This letter is ... ma? No, su" levels of slow) and more error-prone. But I do have a few sentences, and I can recognize a handful of kanji -- 私 and 名前 and 何 and 元気, though with the last I can never remember which order the two go in.
I'm using two main apps (not counting the ones for kana and for kanji), and they've both been cracking me up.
#
Duolingo is mostly in "hiragana with occasional individual words" rather than sentences. Some words are sticking, mostly ones I was already familiar with (watashi, arigatō, sayōnara, and 1-10) or have something to hang them on (neko already had cat associations, inu has dog associations because shiba inu), but the rest just aren't sticking at all.
But, uh.
Occasionally it gives me super hard stuff, like manga, which translates to ... manga. And emoji translates as emoji. Who knew?!? ^_^
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Memrise seems to be sticking better, and also has sentences and stuff. (私の名前は……です! Watashi no namae wa ... desu. "My name is..." Except I don't know how I'd transcribe isabeau. イザボ maybe?) And it's mostly sticking, except for some of the kanji. I'm totally hopeless at, uhhh, *looks it up* 調子 "condition", which I can recognize but not generate, and can not remember the pronunciation, chōshi, to save my life; 乾杯 "cheers" I can reliably remember the second bit with the up arrows, but the first I just randomly flail at the available kanji options until it says I'm right. And for the kanji, they don't give the option of using hiragana instead -- 私 (watashi, I/me) is always 私 and never わたし, just like marina is always winter and never Christmas.
But I digress.
So, okay: with languages like Japanese that have different lettering systems, they have "translation" of letters, e.g. "き" to "ki (hiragana)". (And I am very glad for the (hiragana) even though sometimes I do things like stare at "me (hiragana)" and wonder why "私" isn't one of the options...)
Now, each item has three (sometimes four) associated objects: English written version, Japanese written version, and Japanese audio (sometimes also video). And there are lots of options for how they drill you: a) translate from English to Japanese; b) translate from Japanese to English; c) given Japanese audio/video, select or transcribe the correct Japanese text; d) given Japanese audio/video, select the correct English translation; e) given Japanese text, select the correct Japanese audio; f) given English text, select the correct Japanese audio. Basically, all permutations of English/Japanese/audio.
In the context of actual words, like いいえ "no", this is all very useful. Ditto sentences.
In the context of the letters, option f is *really fucking hilarious* to me.
I mean. Drilling that や is "yo" is useful. Drilling that "yo" is よ, also useful. Drilling that "yo" sounds like "yo" ... um ... not so much.
I'm using two main apps (not counting the ones for kana and for kanji), and they've both been cracking me up.
#
Duolingo is mostly in "hiragana with occasional individual words" rather than sentences. Some words are sticking, mostly ones I was already familiar with (watashi, arigatō, sayōnara, and 1-10) or have something to hang them on (neko already had cat associations, inu has dog associations because shiba inu), but the rest just aren't sticking at all.
But, uh.
Occasionally it gives me super hard stuff, like manga, which translates to ... manga. And emoji translates as emoji. Who knew?!? ^_^
#
Memrise seems to be sticking better, and also has sentences and stuff. (私の名前は……です! Watashi no namae wa ... desu. "My name is..." Except I don't know how I'd transcribe isabeau. イザボ maybe?) And it's mostly sticking, except for some of the kanji. I'm totally hopeless at, uhhh, *looks it up* 調子 "condition", which I can recognize but not generate, and can not remember the pronunciation, chōshi, to save my life; 乾杯 "cheers" I can reliably remember the second bit with the up arrows, but the first I just randomly flail at the available kanji options until it says I'm right. And for the kanji, they don't give the option of using hiragana instead -- 私 (watashi, I/me) is always 私 and never わたし, just like marina is always winter and never Christmas.
But I digress.
So, okay: with languages like Japanese that have different lettering systems, they have "translation" of letters, e.g. "き" to "ki (hiragana)". (And I am very glad for the (hiragana) even though sometimes I do things like stare at "me (hiragana)" and wonder why "私" isn't one of the options...)
Now, each item has three (sometimes four) associated objects: English written version, Japanese written version, and Japanese audio (sometimes also video). And there are lots of options for how they drill you: a) translate from English to Japanese; b) translate from Japanese to English; c) given Japanese audio/video, select or transcribe the correct Japanese text; d) given Japanese audio/video, select the correct English translation; e) given Japanese text, select the correct Japanese audio; f) given English text, select the correct Japanese audio. Basically, all permutations of English/Japanese/audio.
In the context of actual words, like いいえ "no", this is all very useful. Ditto sentences.
In the context of the letters, option f is *really fucking hilarious* to me.
I mean. Drilling that や is "yo" is useful. Drilling that "yo" is よ, also useful. Drilling that "yo" sounds like "yo" ... um ... not so much.