Author Archives: taekk

Till now and beyond…

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Till now

I started writing the Guide to Japanese grammar… oh I don’t even really remember it was so long ago. Maybe about 6 years ago? I took me about 3 or 4 years to gradually cover most of the topics I considered most important. After that, I set up the forum, originally to discuss how to improve the guide but it turned into a great place to seriously discuss anything about Japanese. There are some great regular members and the general atmosphere of the forum is friendly and focused, just the way I like it. Around that time, I started getting offers for translations and thanks to the amazing work from many volunteers, the guide is available to some degree in 10 different languages.

I also started the blog on 3yen which has become the blog you’re reading right now, and started learning Mandarin about 2 years ago. All of this was done in my spare time while pursuing a career in software (primarily web) development. So where do I plan to go from here?

The Guide

The guide hasn’t been updated since September of 2006 and that’s because besides some minor topics that I still want to cover (such as 〜たまえ or 〜てから）, the only major piece is to finish the practice exercises. However, while certainly useful, they can be produced by anyone and are no more than basic drills anyway. The other major piece, Kansai dialect, is a huge topic that I’d just rather not go into right now. I still do want to do the conjugation tables though but laziness and tedium is the major issue.

The Textbook?

I’ve always wanted to publish something but I have no idea how to go about it and putting stuff online is so much more accessible anyway. Especially since you can print it out yourself for a lot less money. (Well maybe not, how much is it to print 237 pages at Kinkos?)

However, a textbook is a different story because printing and binding several copies is not very convenient. And having a rough printout may not a big deal for yourself but you want a nice printed copy for others. In addition, while audio can be more easily integrated online, physical distribution has the advantage in that you don’t have to download potentially large amounts of data.

Writing a complete textbook for Japanese including vocabulary usage, grammar, and reading material has been a pet project of mine for a very long time. However, my vision of the textbook changed gradually in the process of writing this blog and interacting with readers in the comments. So far, I haven’t even finished the first chapter and progress is slow because it’s really hard. That’s because my vision of the ideal Japanese textbook facilitates learning by doing and learning how to teach yourself.

No Japanese textbook can ever be complete

Virtually every Japanese textbook I know of has a critical flaw. It tells you exactly what to learn and there is no discovery. This works great in most classes such as algebra where you can take a class and once you’ve passed, you can reasonably claim that you know algebra. However with languages, you need hundreds of hours of reading, writing, and conversation practice. You also have to memorize thousands of words. In essence, you have to learn a different version of everything you already learned in your lifetime. So it’s pretty presumptuous of textbooks to think they can tell you to learn this and that and you’re done at the end of the book. No language textbook can teach you everything you need to know.

As a result, the expectation ends up being, “You can learn some stuff in class but you’ll have to go to Japan to learn how to speak Japanese for real.” This is unfortunate because it’s not true and I know because I passed into the highest level of Japanese for my study abroad without setting a foot in Japan. All you need is somebody who can speak Japanese you can practice with on a regular basis. Here’s what you would need to do and how a great textbook can help.

Learn how to learn

Teaching somebody how to learn Japanese is relatively easy. Somewhere in the textbook, it should teach you how to use dictionaries and the new technologies available. Dictionaries have come a long way since the days of looking up each Kanji by guessing the radical and than guessing which readings are used in the compound before you can finally find the word. (In fact, I can’t even imagine how people learned with this method.) The textbook should also teach you how to learn Kanji because again, no class can ever cover every Kanji you need to know. At some point, you have to start learning them yourself.

It should also give you some advice and resources on how to find a Japanese language partner so that you can practice your conversational skills. Technology has given us options even if there are no Japanese speakers in your area. This can also help the teacher in finding conversation partners for the class by providing suggestions such as matching up with a Japanese class learning English via sites like Mixxer.

Think for yourself

The hard part is helping the learner to discover and explore the language. I plan to approach this in two ways. The first is by exploring key concepts in different contexts by continually expanding dialogues and readings throughout the book. In this way, the learner can learn by example how the core concepts are applied to express many different ideas.

The second is by suggesting exercises that require the learner to be creative. In my experience, the majority of workbook exercises tell you exactly what to do in the example. This type of exercise is virtually useless because you never have to actually think for yourself.

For example, this type of exercise might look familiar:

Conjugate to 「たい」 form.
Ex) ケーキを食べたい。

１）公園に＿＿＿（行く）。

But what about this instead?

旅行でどんなところに行きたいですか？どうして？そこで何をしたいですか？

You know why students hate these kinds of open-ended questions? Because you have to think and thinking is hard. But the biggest benefit to having a teacher is so that you can experiment and have somebody to guide you to the right path. Grading the first type of exercise is a complete waste of the teacher’s time which can be spent in far more productive activities. Teachers should be helping you select the most natural words and grammar to express your thoughts correctly. They should not be telling you what to say and how.

To cover conversation skills, you might have the following exercise.

In your next conversation session, discuss what you and your language partner would like to do on the weekend. Submit a summary of your conversation to the teacher.

In summary, the textbook will force students to learn how to read by reading (duh) material that continues to expand while incorporating old material in new ways. It will also force students to express their own thoughts in writing (with the guidance of a teacher) and also to apply their lessons in real conversations.

Other Projects

There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in terms of software, learning methodologies, and communities for learning Japanese. So I feel my best contribution to learning Japanese is to continue to write material that is helpful to Japanese learners. This, of course, means that I will continuing to write in this blog but I’d also like to expend more resources to create a truly great textbook the likes of which has never been seen. It might take a long (long, long, long) time but I hope it’s becomes something truly valuable to Japanese learners even more so than the original Grammar Guide. Now that’s something I would like to get published.

I’ll also continue to study Chinese of course. Not only for my personal enjoyment but also because it helps keep things in perspective and is a great reminder of how hard learning a language is when you’re not used to it.

What do you think?

JapanesePod coming soon?

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Head over to Japanesepod.com and you’ll see a page saying “Coming Soon”. I’m really stoked about this because I’ve been a long time fan of ChinesePod. JapanesePod, not to be confused with JapanesePod101 which was started independently, is by the same company that brought you the original ChinesePod.

I’ve always preferred ChinesePod over JapanesePod101 because the lessons and dialogues seem more focused and serious. The fact that ChinesePod also has much harder difficultly levels in the Upper-Intermediate and Advanced lessons furthers that impression. Actually, to be honest, I think JapanesePod101 itself is fine, I just never liked Peter as a host personally. What’s up with his corny greeting 「相変わらず、絶好調です」 and his bad jokes? Ugh. This is just my personal opinion so don’t read anything into it regarding the general quality of the show.

Praxis, the company behind the site is currently hiring for the show. Man, I’d love to be the Lead Teacher and you even get to work in Shanghai!! Teach Japanese and learn Chinese, that would be awesome! Alas, I don’t have a Masters in Linguistics, Education, or Japanese. o(T^T)o

Only time will tell whether JapanesePod will be better or worse than JapanesePod101. But nobody says you can’t use both and when it comes to language resources, the more the merrier I say. I can’t wait to see what kind of people will lead the show. I must try not to be too jealous. And yes, I did sign up for email updates.

CJK in Ubuntu 8.04

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Encouraged by your comments about getting CJK input to work in Linux, I decided to give it another shot over the weekend. I was pleasantly surprised at the much improved support since my last attempt (ver 7.10). Check out this SCIM documentation and compare the instructions for 8.04 vs 7.10. In the newest version, everything is done via the Language Support menu in a few clicks. In prior versions, you had to manually install packages and edit config files by hand. Pretty much where I failed last time.

So I have to give Ubuntu credit here. It really is turning into a fully-featured and intuitive OS with every new release. Now they just have to do something about the default fonts. I wished I saved a screenshot but the Japanese fonts out of the box really are horrendous. The kana and kanji don’t even line up properly! So unless you want to punish your eyes, you still need to download Microsoft fonts as described here. If the fonts are freely downloadable, you would think including them in the distro would be the easiest thing in the world. Maybe there are distribution issues or the developers don’t know enough about Japanese to see how bad the fonts currently are.

So I’m using all three OSs now! Here’s my current setup:
Dell Inspiron 530: Windows XP Home and Ubuntu 8.04 dual boot
Panasonic Let’s Note Light W5: Windows XP Professional (Japanese)
MacBook Pro (Loaned from work): OS X 10.5

By the way, the mouse precision and acceleration is horrible in OS X. I just stick to the trackpad because the mouse feels like it’s moving through molasses.

Which OS do you like?

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This post has almost nothing to do with Chinese, Japanese, or Korean but hey, it’s called “Tae Kim’s Blog” remember? I can write whatever I want, Ha Ha!

OS X

I requested and recently finally got a Macbook Pro for my work laptop and so far I’m really liking it! I especially like the fact that I can automatically rotate all my Suzumiya Haruhi wallpapers every hour.

I just wish uTorrent and Notepad++ were available for OS X. I suppose I can just use vim for general text editing. I haven’t used XCode extensively yet but at first glance, it looks like it has a ways to go before it can compete as an IDE.

Linux

I tried Ubuntu briefly and it was nice and all but I refuse to use an OS that has such poor multilingual support and ugly Asian fonts. I guess there are not many Linux users who need to use English and another CJK language at the same time. Vote for my “Better Multilingual support and CJK fonts” idea on Ubuntu brainstorm if you’re in the same boat as me.

In any case, until I can just add the languages in a menu, have an input editor that doesn’t drive me insane, and fonts that don’t make my eyes bleed, I’m not switching.

Windows

Windows 2000 was my favorite version and I reluctantly switched to XP when my newer computers didn’t have compatible drivers. XP is not glamorous but it certainly does everything I need especially with Google Pinyin. My favorite Windows-only apps include: uTorrent, Notepad++, WinSCP, K-Lite Codec Pack, WinRAR, ImgBurn, and DVD Shrink. I recently bought a Dell desktop with XP while they were still offering the option and so it will be my main OS for many more years.

I haven’t tried Vista yet and have no plans to unless my work requires it. I refuse to use an OS that requires at least 1gb of ram and 40gb of hard disk space on my current systems. I mean you can’t even use more than 2gb of ram with 32-bit Windows!! (And I hear 64-bit is a whole another can of worms.)

Which OS are you currently using and any thought of switching? According to Google Analytics, 86% of you use Windows, 8% Mac, and 5% Linux. Among Windows users, 78% use XP while 19% use Vista.



Run Forr^H^H^H^H メロス！

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I’ve known about 青空文庫 for quite a while but never really had the time to look over it. It’s a large collection of free Japanese text online. The only problem is most of these writings are quite old (old enough for the copyright to expire) and to put it politely, a bit… dry.

However, I finally took some time to read a story called 「走れメロス」 by the famous author: 太宰治. You can find the version updated to modern Japanese （新字新仮名） here and also read it directly online here.

I don’t want to give too much away but 「走れメロス」 is a rather touching story about loyalty and trust. It is required reading for most Japanese students (in middle school I believe) so it’s certainly good stuff to know for cultural reasons as well. Here’s the first few lines to get you started.

メロスは激怒した。必ず、かの邪智暴虐（じゃちぼうぎゃく）の王を除かなければならぬと決意した。メロスには政治がわからぬ。メロスは、村の牧人である。笛を吹き、羊と遊んで暮して来た。けれども邪悪に対しては、人一倍に敏感であった。

かの: I haven’t run into this word before but it is apparently used to refer to something or someone else similar to 「その」. See here for more details.

邪智暴虐: While not a phrase with much practical use, examining the Kanji for the two words 邪智 and 暴虐 gives you a very good idea of its meaning: Evil+Knowledge and Violent+Tyrannize. The kanji itself are useful to know for words like 「風邪」、「邪悪」 (used in the same paragraph)、「暴力」、and 「残虐」. 「智」、 another version of 「知」 is also a great character to know for many names.

王を除かなければならぬ: The 「ならぬ」 is an old-fashioned version of 「ならない」. You’ll see a lot of 「ぬ」 instead of 「ない」 in this story since the text IS old. 「除く」 is a creative use of the word “remove” here. I leave it to the reader to interpret exactly what is meant by “removing the king”.

人一倍（ひといちばい）: This is an interesting expression to me because it means “more than others” but the math doesn’t seem to add up. If 二倍 is double, shouldn’t 一倍 be exactly the same as the original amount? Well if you consider that 一倍 is one share and 人一倍 as an extra person’s share, I guess it makes sense. It’s an expression anyway so who cares right?

Have fun with the rest of the story because it is quite long. If anybody knows of other good literature in the free 青空文庫 collection, please let me know in the coments with links!!!

φ(ｏ_ｏ ;)うーん How do I make Japanese emoticons?

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I don’t know how other people make those cute Japanese (or Korean? …whatever) emoticons. This may sound shocking, but personally I just copy them from another site.

ｶﾞ━━Σ(ﾟДﾟ|||)━━ﾝ!!

This site should be a good start to get you on your way to making the most basic emoticons.

(^0^)

If you’re excited now, let me tell you about 顔文字ナビ, a site with a HUGE collection of emoticons. The only problem is that it’s all in Japanese and finding the smiley you want might be a bit difficult.

（｀ヘ´）

Now now, don’t get upset. This could be a good opportunity for some simple vocab practice. Unfortunately, I can’t link directly due to the stupid frames so I’ll have to walk you through it.

Happy

Let’s start with the standard happy smileys. Go to 「よ」 and select 「喜ぶ」. You’ll get all types of happiness such as 「わーい」 (Yay) or 「キャー」 (Omg!).

(^-^) ワ～イ

Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏキャー！

You can even get smug smileys under 「自慢」 -> 「えっへん」. Aren’t you so cool?

<(｀ー´)>エッヘン！

Sad

Another common one is for sadness or crying, so let’s look at 「な」 for 「泣く」. You can get the standard crying emoticons as well as some more specific ones like 「クスン」 (sniff) whether you’re crying from just a little bit of sadness or at the end of a good cry.

(/ _ ; )クスン

Sorry

Another common scenario is saying you’re sorry. You can find those smileys under 「こ」 for 「ごめん」 or 「あ」 for 「謝る」. Instead of going for the standard bowing apology, try putting your hands together for a less serious apology.

(^人^;) ゴメン

There’s obviously a lot more emoticons to play with so go to the site and look around to up your online expressiveness AND increase your vocabulary.

。。。。。。。。(ノ゜◇゜)ノ

システム開発における用語

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I remember when I was trying to get a computer job in Japan, I tried to learn some computer terminology worried that I wouldn’t understand any of the technical words in Japanese. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find such a site on the Internet. And so, in an effort to improve the usefulness of the Internet by .00001%, here’s an informative post (hopefully) for the up-and-coming programmers wanting to work in Japan.

General Terminology

オブジェクト指向 （しこう）- Object-oriented
継承 （けいしょう） – inheritance
カプセル化 （か） – encapsulation (black box programming)
抽象クラス（ちゅうしょう） – abstract class
変数 （へんすう） – variable
固定値 （こていち） – constant
値 （あたい） – value
閾値（しきいち） – threshold (often used in validation, program limits, and the like)
関数 （かんすう） – function
メソッド – method (java/c# functions)
引数 （ひきすう） – parameter
戻り値（もどりち） – return value
文字列（もじれつ） – string
配列 （はいれつ） – array
スレッド – thread (no it’s not a sled)
マルチスレッド – multi-threaded
同期（どうき） – synchronous
同期化（どうきか） – synchronize
非同期（ひどうき） – asynchronous
静的（せいてき） – static
動的（どうてき） – dynamic
実行する（じっこうする） – to execute

Design-related Terminology

定義書 （ていぎしょ） – a document that defines something （ex: XML定義書）
クラス図 （ず） – class diagram
基本設計 （きほんせっけい） – basic design (broad level)
詳細設計 （しょうさいせっけい） – specific design
仕様 （しよう） – specifications (what your program is supposed to do)
仕様書 （しようしょ） – written specifications
要件 （ようけん） – requirements
見積もる （みつもる） – to make an estimate
見積もり （みつもり） – estimate

If there are other terms you’re curious about, just let me know and I’ll add it to the list.

The various uses of 「中」

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「中」 is one of those essential kanji that anybody who knows any kanji will more than likely already know. Beginners will probably learn it first as 「なか」 and in compounds such as 「中国」. However, in this intermediate post, I’d like to discuss two other usages that I’ve had to figure out on my own. Now you don’t have to.

Using 「ちゅう」 instead of 「～している」

「中」 can be attached to a noun, in order to indicate that the noun is currently taking place. This essentially takes the place of 「している」 and means pretty much the same thing. In this usage, 「中」 is always read as 「ちゅう」. This may be obvious but the noun must be an actionable item such as “search” or “investigate”. Basically, it’s any noun that can be followed by 「する」 such as 「仕事」 or 「勉強」. You can’t say for example 「体中」（からだちゅう） because 「体する」 or “doing body” makes no sense.

検索中 – searching
勉強中 – studying
考え中 – thinking

「考え中」 is an interesting example because it is a noun that came originally from a verb. But this is not commonly done universally. For example, nobody really says 「思い中」 or 「売り中」. I would consider 「考え中」 as an expression of it’s own.

１) 今考え中だから、ちょっと静かにしてくんない？ – I’m thinking now so can you be a little quiet?

This usage of 「中」 is simply a more concise way to say [noun]をしている. You will often see it used as simple status updates such as computer wait screens (or my current Twitter status).

Using 「じゅう」 as throughout or all over

Another usage is to attach 「中」 to a noun to talk about the noun throughout or all over. In this usage, the reading is 「じゅう」 and you can tell the difference from the previous usage because the noun is not actionable. Instead, the noun must have some kind of length whether physical or in time. Unlike the previous example, 「体中」（からだじゅう） is a perfectly correct example. In this case, it means “all over the body” and not “doing body”.

１） 事故のせいで、体中が傷だらけだ。 – Due to fault of the accident, body is full of injuries all over.

Another common usage is with periods of time such as 「今日」 or 「一日中」 to indicate throughout the entire time period. One interesting thing to note is that 「今日中」 means “within today” while 「一日中」 means “the whole day”.

１） 今日中にやらなければならない。- I have to do it by today.
２） 一日中やっても終わらない。 – Won’t end even if you do it all day.
３） 一晩中カラオケで遊んでいた。 – Was playing all night at Karaoke.

Overall, this usage tend to be more established expressions so I wouldn’t arbitrarily attach it to time spans without seeing some usage samples. But at least now you’ll know how to read it properly and know what it means should you encounter it.

Also, with time spans, 「ちゅう」 tends to be used to mean “within” while 「じゅう」 is used to mean “throughout”. Both are not necessarily always usable for a given time span. It’s pretty arbitrary.

More details and examples can be found here: http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~nifongo/conv/chyu.html

Lang-8+Twitter=Awesome!

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What are you doing?
何してんの？
你在做什么？
뭘 하고 있어?

No matter what language you’re speaking in, this is a question you’re answering all the time. So naturally, your conversation skills should improve if you learn how to answer this question in your studies. And what better way to practice than by using Twitter, a service built entirely for this purpose? As they describe it, “Twitter is a service… to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” It seems to be exactly the thing for some quick language practice. You can even set it to bug you if you don’t update it for 24 hours.

So I decided to give it a try by signing up and posting some stuff in Chinese. So far, the experience has been very positive and I even put the latest status on my blog sidebar under “Quick Update”. Answering the simple question, “What are you doing?” motivated me to look up lots of new and useful grammar and vocabulary while helping me apply the stuff I already knew. In addition, the 140 character limit helps keep me focused and motivated. I find it much easier to write a quick sentence or two in Twitter compared to journals (Lang-8) or blogs where there is more pressure to write something more significant.

One thing I did before I started was to make sure I had ready access to update whenever I felt like. Unfortunately, updating from my phone was not an option since my phone can only send English messages. (I’ll try not to rant here on the poor state of mobile technology in the US where you don’t even get a freaking email address for your phone let alone multilingual messaging!!!!!) Since I check all my stuff on iGoogle all the time anyway, I added BeTwittered, a Twitter gadget for the iGoogle homepage. There are lots of other options that might make more sense depending on your habits but you’ll definitely want to set it somewhere where you’ll see it all the time.

This is all fine and dandy but the major problem I have is that nobody reads my Twitter updates. Granted, they’re not all that interesting but it would sure be nice to have native Chinese speakers read them and reply with their comments. In turn, I can do the same for them if they’re learning English or Japanese. Hmm… does this sound familiar? Yes in fact, I have a whole list of friends that fit that criteria in my Lang-8 account. Wouldn’t it be cool if Lang-8 had Twitter integration?! What if you and your friend entered your Twitter account information into your profile and Lang-8 automatically set the appropriate followers based on you and your friend’s native and target languages? It certainly seems possible based on the Twitter API.

Until Lang-8 decides to introduce such a feature, if you speak Chinese, please follow my Twitter account! In exchange, I promise to follow yours. (I wish I could write this in Chinese but it’s too hard and I’m too lazy right now.)

In any case, if you are a Twitter user and you’re using it for language practice, leave a comment with your Twitter link! I write Japanese updates as well so feel free to follow me if it sounds interesting to you.

Update
I didn’t know this but to reply to somebody, you have to start your Twitter message with @[username]. You can tell this is an organic feature and not fully designed as it will reply only to the user’s latest Twitter update. If you want to reply to an older message, you’re out of luck.

Link: My Twitter account

Language is about people, people!

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We can get wrapped up in language study just like anything else in life and lost sight of the bigger picture. Whether you’re taking class, listening to podcasts, watching TV programs, reading books, etc., after awhile it can get tiresome. I’ve taken breaks in my Chinese studies myself because I just had other things I’d rather do than study. And I’m sure I will again.

If you’re in a similar situation, take some time to write something in your target language, and here’s the most important part, get direct feedback from somebody. Pick one of the suggestions from below and do it today! Then come back and tell me how it went.

  1. If you know a friend who actually replies in a timely fashion, send him/her an email or message saying, “Hey, what’s up? Here’s what I’ve been up to. What about you?”
  2. Pick a place where native speakers visit and write what’s been on your mind lately. Here, you can even use my forum for Japanese, if you want.
  3. Send a message or friend request to a native speaker on Lang-8 or if you have lots of friends already, write a journal entry.
  4. Write a comment on this post. If you’re learning Japanese or English, I promise to reply.

Sometimes, we forgot that the whole point of learning a language is to communicate with people. The reason why we talk or write is because we expect somebody (maybe even just ourselves) will listen or read what we have to say. We are social creatures and I guarantee you’ll feel better and maybe even excited about learning the language when you’re actually communicating with somebody. I know I did once I started getting comments and messages in Chinese on Lang-8.

Make sure to let me know in the comments what you’ve done today to communicate with somebody and how it felt!