Author Archives: taekk

Finding Conversation Partners

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In my post about Language Learning Tips, one of my main points is that you actually have to engage in a certain activity if you want to get better at it. For example, if you want to learn how to talk in Japanese, you need to find Japanese speakers and talk with them as much as possible. However, as with all things in life, that’s easier said than done. So, I’m here to talk about how you (yes, YOU!) can go about finding language conversation partners.

I’ve become very familiar with this topic because I recently moved back to the US and am finding that you really have to go out of your way to find people to practice with even in an international city like Seattle. However, within the past few months, I have found not only Japanese people to chat with but also Chinese people for my burgeoning (ie poor) Mandarin.

Finding real life partners

Real life language partners are better than any form of online partners because of the real-time interaction and improved physical inputs (ie gestures and facial expressions). That all sounds like techno mumbo-jumbo but it just means the best 3D environment can be found by turning off your computer and (gasp!) actually going outside.

Personally, I’ve had great luck with www.meetup.com, which is a site for creating meetups on any topic. I met a bunch of great people by going to meetups like the Seattle Japanese Language and Culture Meetup or the Seattle Chinese Language Meetup.

Meeting in a group is always a great opportunity to practice speaking and listening to the language of your choice but you can’t beat 1 on 1 language exchange. It is the best way to really ask questions and practice at your current language level. In Japan, because English is such a popular language, it’s a cinch to find people willing to teach you Japanese in exchange for English lessons. You can check out your local 市役所 for activities or bulletin boards at your school. Or if you can navigate through the Japanese interface, you can also check out language-related communities at mixi.jp, the biggest Japanese social network site. (You can ask me for an invite if you’re interested.)

If you’re not living in Japan, there are still some ways to find offline language partners depending on where you live. You can post or look for an ad on Craigslist . You might also want to check with your local community, nearby schools, etc. for events and opportunities to meet with people who speak Japanese.

When I was learning Japanese, it was easy for me to find Japanese friends on the college campus. However, now that I’m already out of school, I have to do a bit more work to find people to practice my Chinese. I found my first language partner (English/Chinese through Japanese) in Japan through international activities held by 川口 city. （国際化 is kind of a fad at the moment for municipal governments.） In the states, I found a language partner through Craigslist (English/Chinese through English) and another through a Chinese meetup (Chinese/Japanese through English). Because everybody speaks English in the States, you have to be a bit more aggressive and enthusiastic to get somebody to want to learn English from you. Unlike the case in Japan, people won’t be like, “Please teach me English!” because they see English everywhere. Now that the shoe’s on the other foot, you need to be like, “Please teach me Japanese! I can teach you English!”

Finding online partners

While real life partners are great and at some point indispensable, you might want to find online conversation partner if some of the conditions below apply to you.

  1. There are very few to no Japanese speakers in your area.
  2. You want to talk from the comfort of your home without spending the time and/or money on transportation.
  3. Your schedule or those of other people makes finding the time to meet with people in real life difficult.
  4. Your time with real-life language partners are just not enough and you want more practice! More! More!

Mixxer is a great site for finding a conversation partner on Skype. Now Mixxer has its downsides such as almost no search capabilities and not being able to sort search results but it gets the job done, which is simply to get in contact with somebody to do language exchange. And it’s free so you really can’t complain.

All you have to do is register and fill out your profile, which is very simple (because it doesn’t try to be an international dating site), look for people that match your language profile, and contact them via the site, Skype, or email. That’s it. It’s simplicity is it’s best feature and it really does its one job well: finding somebody who wants to learn your language and speaks the language you want to learn.

I tried out the site and there are surprisingly a large number of people registered. I’ve had all sorts of Chinese speakers contact me either through the Mixxer or Skype. As a native English speaker, I’m sure you won’t have much trouble finding a Japanese speaker to talk to. The only drawback is that the time lag makes it difficult to arrange a time and it’s far too easy to slack off. There’s nothing like having to actually go out to meet somebody to really motivate you to keep studying. Another thing to be careful about is if neither of you speaks a language in common to some degree, there can be a bit of communication breakdown. If you are a complete beginner at Japanese, you really need to find somebody that speaks at least some English.

Conclusion

I hope you got some good ideas on how to go about finding your own language partner because you’ll never learn how to speak Japanese until you actually go out and practice speaking it for real. I’ll also talk about how to make the best of your time with your language partner once you’ve found one so stay tuned!

Because I feel guilty when I don’t post anything for ages

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Over a month has gone by since my last post, which means the guilt trip is baaack! Ok, since nobody barfed at me the last time I did this, here are some personal updates that just might have interested you if any of you cared.

I’m back in the States!

Yes I know, you’ve seen it countless of times. These so-called “Japan” blogs always ends with: “Ok, I’m ending this blog since I moved out of Japan and there are no more freaky, crazy things that I can blog about.” But don’t worry! I’m different because my life in Japan consisted of sitting at a desk for 10-12 hours. I didn’t have anything interesting happening in my life to begin with! They should make a t-shirt that says, “I worked in Japan and all I got was this lousy t-shirt and a tattered, bruised remnant of my soul.” I would totally buy that.

But seriously, while I don’t use Japanese as much as I used to, the city I live in (Seattle) is large enough that I managed to find Japanese people to hang out with once in a while. What’s even cooler is I found someone to teach me Chinese in exchange for teaching Japanese! (I’ll talk about finding language partners in my next post so stay tuned!)

My Chinese got good enough to suck

Speaking of Chinese, yes I’m still working on it. I’m proud to say that my Chinese has improved from being virtually nonexistent to just really, really bad. Since I’m not a big fan of structured classes (or more specifically, too cheap to pay for classes) meeting with language partners every week really helps me to stay motivated and keeps me thinking if not in at least about Chinese.

It’s contextual spam so it’s OK

Finally, to make this post at least semi-related to Japanese, I’d like to talk the startup I’ve been working on these past few months: MegaBuzz.com. I haven’t talked about it until now because the site itself has nothing to do with Japanese. However, we just launched a new feature today that allows you to create a page about any topic. You can make and answer questions, post YouTube videos, and all that good ol’ Web 2.0 stuff. I’ve already created the Japanese page so I hope you guys will join in and we can quiz each other in Japanese.

Last but not least

Before I go, I’d just like to mention that we got a dog a little while back. He’s four months old and his name is Chewy. He’s very, very whiney.

Chewy, my dog

Bet you didn’t know it even existed, well… it doesn’t

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I’ve been meaning to write about this topic ever since I first purchased the book 「日本語教科書の落とし穴」, which I first talked about over a year ago. (Wow, time does go by fast!)

Chapter 9 in the book talks about a very interesting topic that I had never really thought about before: the empty particle or 「無助詞」 as it’s called in the book. Like every other chapter in the book, this chapter begins with a small dialogue between the teacher and a student that illustrates the problem.

Ｌ：先生、こんにちは。
Ｔ：あ、ハナさん、久しぶりですね。
Ｌ：先生、これを召し上がってください。
Ｔ：これはどうもありがとう。（でも、何となく変・・・）

Have a hunch where the problem lies? (The bold font is a clue.) The book makes a distinction between particles that are simply left out (primarily in spoken Japanese) with situations where you leave the particle out in order to avoid the nuances of particles. In the case of 「これを召し上がってください。」, because the 「を」 particle has a distinctive function of making 「これ」 into a direct object, the sentence has a very strong emphasis on eating 「これ」. The book describes the nuance as 「これだけを召し上がってください。ほかのものは食べないでください。」　In other words, it essentially sounds like, “Please eat this,” which sounds kind of desperate when you’re offering someone something to eat.

Ok, so you might think to try the topic particle instead: 「これは召し上がってください。」. But again, this doesn’t work because the 「は」 particle also has its own function of making 「これ」 into the topic of the conversation as if you were saying, “As for this, please eat it”. The book describes the nuance as 「ほかのものは食べなくてもよいけれども、これだけは何としても召し上がってください。」

The most natural thing to do in this case is to not use any particles so that you can talk about something without any of the nuances and meanings that go along with 「は」、「を」、and 「が」.

Here’s another example from the book.

コーヒー、まだある？

Again, there is no suitable particle for 「コーヒー」 in this sentence if all you want to know is whether there is any coffee left. 「コーヒーはまだある？」 sounds like you want start a conversation about coffee and 「コーヒーがまだある？」 sounds like, “The coffee! There’s still some left?” Any time you want to call attention to something minor without making a conversation out of it is a good candidate for the empty particle. Situations such as realizing you’re out of cash at the cash register and asking your friend, “Hey, do you have money on you?” （お金、持っている？） or flipping through an album with someone and saying, “Hey, look at this.” （ねえ、これ、見て。） are good examples.

Another great example is when there is no strong relationship such as, 「誕生日、おめでとう」. You don’t want to say, 「誕生日はおめでとう」 (As for your birthday, congratulations) or 「誕生日がおめでとう」 (Your birthday is the thing that is congratulatory) because there’s nothing specific or particular about the birthday that you want to congratulate. You just want to say, “Hey it’s your birthday. Congratulations.” without any specific relation between the two.

Based on the context, if all the particles add a meaning or emphasis that you don’t want, you’re better off not having any particle at all.

Debunking yet another myth

Students often ask their Japanese teacher, “Sensei, I noticed that in real life people leave out particles a lot. Is that Ok to do?” Whereupon the teacher will always reply, “Yes grasshopper, people leave out particles sometimes but you are not ready for that yet. You should use particles every time because it is more proper and correct.”

Actually Sensei, you obviously haven’t thought enough about the empty particle because sometimes it is not correct to insert a particle. Ahhh, I love the sound of myth debunking in the morning.

Conclusion

It is interesting to think about the empty particle, and when you can and cannot use particles. But as I mentioned in the beginning, I didn’t even think about the empty particle until I read this book. Ultimately, omitting particles is something that naturally comes with conversation practice and doesn’t require deep analysis to get right. What it all boils down to in the end is getting a firm grasp on what each particles mean so that you know not to use them when they say something you don’t mean.

Part 2 on the non-existent 「たい」 form rule

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In the previous post, not only did I to get away with being too lazy to finish what I was writing but I managed to make it an excuse for more comments. I’m a genius! The only downside is the increased pressure to actually come back and finish what I started. (As you can see, I easily managed to withstand the pressure for almost a full week.)

Rule? What Rule?

Getting down to business, I noticed that a couple people commented that they did not know there was a rule saying that you can’t use 「を」 with the 「たい」 form. You’re right, there is no rule! Forget I said anything! (Waves hand) These are not the rules you’re looking for… this is not a real post.

Gah! They’re all the bloody same!

There were some people that said they couldn’t tell the difference between 「を」, 「が」, and 「は」, so let’s take a look each example sentence from the last post.

１） 続きを読みたい。
２） 続きが読みたい。
３） 続きは読みたい。
４） どうでもいい。

The way I see it, ２） and ３） are nothing special. They just go back to the original question of what the difference is between 「は」 and 「が」. In my very first post, I mentioned that the 「が」 particle is used to identify something unknown to the speaker or listener. So ２） is simply identifying what somebody wants to read. It’s like saying, “Oh you want to know what it is that I want to read? Well, it’s 「続き」”. A more literal translation would be, “「続き」 is what I want to read.” When people say that 「が」 places emphasis on 「続き」, that’s just another way of saying the same thing. The problem with the word “emphasis” is that you can emphasize anything by saying it with a heavy accent. With 「が」, it may seem like emphasis is being added to the thing you’re identifying but that is just a side-effect of the true meaning of 「が」.

As for ３）, the 「は」 particle indicates that we are talking about 「続き」 as a topic. 「は」 works well for situations where you want to discuss, describe, or talk about a specific topic. For example, 「続きは読みたいけど、まだ読めない」 talks about 「続き」 as a topic; saying that you want to read it and that you can’t yet (because I’m writing it right now).

Finally, we get to real question, “When or why would we want to use 「を」?” The answer is so simple, you’ll want to ask for your money back. (I’ll do that as soon as I get some money to begin with.)

Use 「を」 when you don’t want to use 「が」 or 「は」.

「を」 is very neutral and simply says, “this is the object” without all the extra nuances of 「が」 or 「は」. If I say, 「りんごを食べたい」, all I’m saying is “I want to eat an apple.” There’s nothing else to infer. The apple is the object of my desire and that’s it. With 「は」, you are inferring, “Well, on the topic of apples, yeah, I want to eat it. Maybe not other stuff but apples, sure. As long as we’re talking about apples, I feel like it’s something I want to eat.” With 「が」, you are inferring, “You know what it is that I want to eat? Apples. Yeah. I thought about all the other stuff but no, an apple is what I want to eat.”

Thinking about these distinctions can make you feel confused and make Japanese seem complicated. Often times, one or more particles will make sense but can’t be used in other situations. Context will sometimes clear up which particles you should really be using. However, when the context is vague enough to allow multiple choices, it’s really important to get a sense of what each particle is really saying in order to decide how you want to come across to other people.

As for ４）, c’mon, let’s be nice. You wouldn’t be reading this if you really thought that, right?

Conclusion

In reading the comments, it was obvious that some of you knew what each particle meant. Some of the answers are not exactly how I phrased things but describing these particles perfectly in English is impossible because the words don’t exist. So as long as you have a feel for how each particles work, that’s all that matters in the end.

And finally, yes Laura, I do have a girlfriend. What a strange question. Why do you ask?

Ssh, don’t tell anyone but… you can use 「を」 with the 「たい」 form

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I remember reading or hearing a long time ago that you can’t use the object particle 「を」 with the 「たい」 form of the verb. (If you are unfamiliar with the 「たい」 form, click here.) Now that’s complete rubbish but I can see where the logic came from. When a verb is converted to the 「たい」 form, it becomes an adjective describing that somebody or something wants to do the verb. Grammatically, it conjugates and works just like any other adjective. Subsequently, because the object particle describes the object of an action, it doesn’t make any sense to have an adjective have a direct object, ie “Bob big apple”. So in conclusion, using the object particle with the 「たい」 form is grammatically incorrect because the 「たい」 form is an adjective. You should use 「が」 or sometimes 「は」. So all was well, and we could flog students for making that mistake in peace.

But reality tells a different story. Maybe it was modern Western influence on the language or maybe some crazy grammar-fanatic educators forgot to check reality when creating the rule. I’m not an expert on the history of Japanese linguistics so I don’t really know. But whatever the case, all I know is that people today use the 「を」 particle with the 「たい」 form all the time.

I can already see the next question about to come out of your mouth. You want to know what the difference is between using 「を」 and something else right? Well, I’m going to see if anybody is still reading this blog by letting you peeps try to figure it out in the comments. I’ll write the answer in an another post.

Here are some example sentences for you to chew on.

１） 続きを読みたい。
２） 続きが読みたい。
３） 続きは読みたい。
４） どうでもいい。

涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱

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そうそう。前回の投稿では、ブログを日本語で書くって約束したから一応何かを書いてみることにしました。俺は、仕事で臨時作業依頼書だの障害報告書だの、普段何の役にも立たない文章しか書かないので、ちょっぱし苦労はすると思うけど、それはいわゆる「成長」というやつかな？とにかく、何か間違いがあったら是非教えていただきたく。

まぁ、俺にとっていい練習にもなるし、みなさんのためにもなると思って今これを書いているわけだが、肝心の問題は・・・
　
何について書けばいいのか？
　
こういう時は、たいてい自分がやったことや思ったことを書くんだが、俺の普段の生活はとんでもないぐらいつまらないということもあり・・・。

そうだな。例えば、先週末に何をやったかといえば、「涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱」というアニメを部屋一人で全部観ました。情けねえな～。

でも、アニメ自体は本当におもしろいですよ！最初は、ＤＶＤを買おうと思ったんですが、一枚で６０００円・・・　L(･Ｏ･;)」オーマイガーッ
　
んなもん買うか？！
　
あ～あ、やめた、やめた。
　
幸い、Youtubeに全部載っていました。どうやら、klisa0506という物凄い親切な方が１０分置きに分けてPart 1,2,3という形で１４話を全てあげたみたい。ありがとうよ、klisa0506さん！Youtubeだから、画像はもちろん小さいのだが、タダだから文句はいえねーな。
　

朝比奈ミクルの冒険 Episode 00 – Part 1

つづき
朝比奈ミクルの冒険 part2
朝比奈ミクルの冒険 part3
　
テレビ番組のサイトもまたおもしろい！なぜなら、アニメの中でＳＯＳ団というクラブがサイトを作るんだが、そのサイト（もしくはそのようなサイト）が番組のオフィシャルサイトとして実際に作られているんです！うん、うん、なるほど。どうりで、サイトがしょぼいわけだ。

もし、「涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱」を観ていない方がいらっしゃったら是非観てみてください。俺みたいなお金のない方は今の内にYoutubeで観るといいですよ。（いつ消されるかわかんないから）

個人的には放送順に観ることをお勧めします。（話の順番はこのサイトの「サブタイトル」という部分から参照できます。）

んなわけで、どうでもいいことでずいぶんと自分一人で盛り上がったんですが、次回はもうちょっとまともな内容を考えてみますんで、またきてね。 ♪(#^ｰﾟ)v

（そもそも次回があるというかなり怪しい前提だが・・・）

And then… (scroll… scroll… scroll…) …never mind

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Japanese blogs are good reading practice if you can find some interesting ones.
　
Most share some unique characteristics.
　
I don’t know who wrote the rules of Japanese blogging…
　
…but you have to use the “Enter” key a lot.
　
The writing tends to be kind of aimless as well.
　
I think celebrity blogs are probably the biggest in Japan.
　
If you’re an attractive celebrity who also happens to be an オタク geek like しょこたん, you’re bound to get a huge following of fantasizing geeks.
　
It’s like the ultimate fantasy.
　
Sometimes, I wish I was a hot, geeky celebrity. Then my blog would be popular.
　
But I don’t want geeky, fantasizing fans. Yuck! ＼(≧≦)／
　
Oh yeah, don’t forget to use lots of cute smileys.
　
Here’s another one:
　
( ^ーﾟ)bグッ! All right! (Pat myself on the back!)
　
There’s one more crucial aspect to writing a Japanese blog…
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　

　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　　
　
Frickin’ make you scroll forever to see what comes next!!!
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
It’s supposed to build suspense but it’s…
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
SO ANNOYING! ＼(*＞＜)／
　
I enjoy a number of Japanese blogs like うまのホネ.
　
For instance, one of her posts is about strategies for milking herself reserves for the baby so that she can drink alcohol.
　
That’s my kind of wife!
　
Another one I enjoy is by yet another hot, (kinda) geeky celebrity: 眞鍋かをり.
　
You can tell she’s geeky from the following excerpt:

凌南戦でメガネくん（小暮）が決めたスリーポイントシュートくらい絶妙なタイミングだったんですよ。

　
That won’t make any sense unless you’ve read Slam Dunk, which I think is one of the first steps to becoming a geek.
　
Of course, I have read all 31 volumes. <(｀ー´)>
　
Those are supposed to be arms tucked smugly behind my head, in case you didn’t get it.
　
This next blog is so popular, they made a drama of it and a PSP game: 鬼嫁日記.
　
13 millions hits on the counter! (゜_゜;)
　
It’s very funny but has lots of scrolling. (;´ヘ｀) はぁ～
　
Tell me your favorite Japanese blogs in the comments!
　
Next time, I’ll try writing a real Japanese blog post in real Japanese!
　
またきてね！♪(#^ｰﾟ)v

“Overflowing with leftover goodness…”

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I love to write about parts of Japanese that are almost always left out of the standard Japanese language curriculum. This usually applies to vocabulary that can be considered “inappropriate” for the classroom. I also like to talk about topics where the explanation is usually glossed over or oversimplified because the concepts are too difficult to explain in English. I say “bah humbug!” to all that, which is why you can come here after class to get the full, unadulterated version.

So when I thought back to Japanese 101 and the time the teacher told us to only use the negative with 「あまり」 I thought, “Hey, wait a minute!” I now know that you can use 「あまり」 with the positive, the only difference is that you get the opposite meaning of the negative version. Makes perfect sense, right? Of course things aren’t actually that simple, so read on if you want to get the full scoop on 「あまり」.

Sorry, we’re all out of whatever it is you’re looking for

「あまり」 is a pseudo adverb/adjective version of the verb 「あまる」（余る）, which means for something to be left over. So, when you use 「あまり」 with the negative, you are essentially saying there is nothing left over. For example, 「あまりよくない」 literally means there is no “goodness” left over. Ok, so that doesn’t make much sense. A more natural definition would be the one we all learned in Japanese 101, “not very” or “not that much”. However, it is useful to know where 「あまり」 originally came from to see how the meaning changes if we don’t use the negative tense.

Those leftovers are excessive, man!

If the negative tense means there’s no leftovers, the opposite would obviously mean that there are leftovers. In other words, something is so excessive that there are leftovers you can’t deal with. As opposed to 「あまりよくない」、 「あまりにいい」 means that something is so good that the goodness is just overflowing with leftovers. For example, 「あまりにいい天気」 means “weather that is excessively good”. This is slightly different from 「天気がよすぎる」 meaning that the weather is too good, which has a negative connotation. 「あまりにいい天気」 just means that the weather is really, really good. It’s so good that the goodness is just overflowing and the leftover goodness is just strewn about all over the floor.

１） 天気があまりよくないので、散歩するのをやめた。
– The weather wasn’t very good so I quit going for a walk.

２） あまりにいい天気だったので、１時間も散歩をしました。
– The weather was so good that I took a walk for a whole hour.

You may have noticed the positive version uses the 「に」 target particle as in 「あまりにいい」. This is normal because you need to use the target particle in order to make adjectives into adverbs such as 「上手に」 or 「簡単に」. The irregularity instead comes from the lack of any particles for the negative case. I first described 「あまり」 as a pseudo adverb/adjective because you don’t need to use any particles when using it with the negative tense. It is very similar to 「同じ」, which also doesn’t require any particles to use as an adverb/adjective. Words like 「あまり」 and 「同じ」 are difficult to categorize for this reason. However, with 「あまり」, when you are using it for the non-negative tense, the normal rules apply and you do need attach the 「に」 particle in order to use it as an adverb.

A) 日本語はあまり難しいよ。
– Japanese is so difficult, you know. (grammatic error)

B) 日本語はあまりに難しい。
– Japanese is so difficult.

A) ほら、難しいでしょ！
– See, it is hard!

More fun with 「あまり」

Since we’re having so much fun, I thought I’d mention a couple other things related to 「あまり」. First, because the Japanese are always trying to come up with easier way to say things, we have the casual equivalents: 「あんまり」 and 「あんま」. I would say 「あんまり」 is used even more than 「あまり」 in conversational Japanese while 「あんま」 sounds a bit masculine due to it’s short length.

１） 時間があんまりないんだよね。
-Hmm… there’s not much time.

２） 時間があんまないんだよな。
-Hmm… there’s not much time.

As for using this slang for the non-negative case, while googling for 「あんまりに」 did yield a sizable number of results, 「あんまに」 didn’t turn up much so I suggest using 「あんま」 only for the negative tense.

Finally, 「余」, the kanji for 「あまり」 is also used in a some very useful words like 「余裕」 and 「余計」. 「余計」, in particular, is a word you’ll see all the time once you learn it. It’s very useful for when somebody says or does too much. Essentially, you can use it to tell people that it’s none of their business.

１） 余計なお世話だよ！
– None of your business! (lit: You’re unnecessarily taking care of me!)

２） 余計なことを言うんじゃいよ。
– Don’t say things that are none of your business. (lit: You don’t say unnecessary things, you know.)

Conclusion

As we have seen, there is a lot more to the word 「あまり」 than what is normally taught to beginning Japanese students. I suspect this is the case because 「あまり」 is most often used with the negative tense and covering any more would confuse the poor students. Apparently, Japanese students are very easily confused and should not be exposed to the scary parts of the language so that they can stay in their safe and comfortable cocoon of polite, “proper” Japanese (whatever that means) .

Tae Kim’s Language Studying Tips

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Now that I’m studying Chinese from scratch, I’m back to where I was when I started learning Japanese six years ago. (My god, has it been that long already?) It’s great because it really reminds me of what it was like to be completely lost in a new language. In fact, I think foreign language teachers should study a new language every now and then to really see what it’s like to be the student.

Anyway, since this is a blog about Japanese, I thought I’d share with you some common ideas and strategies I found to be effective in learning a new language whether it’s Japanese, Chinese, or any other language. While some of these ideas might seem obvious to those who have studied foreign languages, I mention them here because it is very easy to forget and to fall back into bad habits (including myself).

Language is drawing a line in the sand near the tide (TM)

Ok, I didn’t actually trademark anything but that’s how clever I thought the title was. We should spread the phrase by saying it was first said by a wise Chinese monk or something. The conversation would look something like this.

Some Dude: Hey, can you teach me Japanese?

You: I would but “Language is drawing a line in the sand near the tide”.

D: Huh?

Y: It means that you must constantly be studying a language in order to learn it. If you stop, it’ll all just fade away.

D: Isn’t that like, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”?

Y: Not exactly. What I said was first said by a wise Chinese monk.

D: Whoa… that’s deep.

Don’t fall for the “Master Japanese in just XX days/weeks” gimmick. Learning a new language is a long-term commitment. It’s different from learning how to ride a bike or how to whistle. No matter what your goal is, whether it’s native level or just some travel phrases, if you don’t keep practicing, you will forget.

You only truly learn a language with continual practice. It’s like biking up a series of hills and plateaus. As soon as you stop learning or practicing, you’ll start to slowly roll back down. Once you’ve reached a plateau (long-term memory), the knowledge will fade less quickly but if you ignore it long enough, you will eventually slide back down, eventually going back all the way to the beginning, leaving all your efforts in vain.

Even native speakers often complain of how they’re forgetting their native language once they stop using it. What chance do you have of retaining a foreign language then? Of course, by now, your native language is deeply rooted in your long-term memory so it’ll soon come back as long as you don’t neglect it for too long. However, new, short-term memory of a foreign language doesn’t stand a chance.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you have to study every minute of every day. It doesn’t have to be a big commitment just a consistent long-term one. In fact, I would advise going your own pace rather than trying to study too much at once and burning yourself out. It’s a marathon rather than a sprint… a very long marathon that never ends.

In my case, while I had the opportunity and luxury to study and practice Japanese virtually every day with native speakers during college, I’m taking a more conservative pace with Chinese due to the constraints of my full-time job. I usually only study during my commute once every couple of days, probably no more than 2 to 4 hours a week. I also spend about 3 hours every Sunday with a native Chinese speaker practicing for about an hour and a half in exchange for teaching English. Even though I only spend a total of about 3 to 5 hours a week studying Chinese, I am fairly satisfied with my rate of progress. The most important thing is to keep at it with consistent study and practice.

You have to grab language by its horns

During my college days, I spent my first trimester of Japanese doing what every college student is supposed to do: go to classes, do the homework, and study for tests (all at the last minute of course). If you do just that, you might do ok in class (I got a B+), but that doesn’t mean you’re learning the language! No matter how great the teacher might be, the classroom format is simply not enough.

The biggest problem with the classroom format is that you never use the language for your own purposes. You are always being told which grammar to use, what vocabulary to memorize, how to say something, etc., because after all, that’s what teaching is. With homework and tests, you have to come up with the “correct” answers as well. The only difference is that it’s done at home instead. Unfortunately, while there are a whole lot of wrong answers or things that make little to no sense, there are no right answers to good communication. But with classroom material, you never learn how to express your own thoughts and feelings in the way you want to express them. If you never get the chance to make the language your own, it always feels like a language that is… well foreign.

At my school, the Chinese students were required to meet with a language tutor every week, which I think is a great idea. Unfortunately, meeting with a language tutor was optional for us Japanese kids. I did it anyway though. It was great. I got to meet and talk with fellow students who also happened to be Japanese. They got paid, I got practice, learning how to say what I wanted to say, and we had a great time overall (or at least I did). As a bonus, all of my tutors happened to be female and some were even cute! I can’t believe most of my fellow classmates didn’t even sign up. If you would turn down a great opportunity like that, it probably means you’re doomed to fail for reasons I will describe at the end.

Now that I’m out of college, I no longer have such a wonderful opportunity to practice Chinese but I did manage to secure a tutoring session once a week by hanging out at local international events. Although it’s free, I have to teach English in exchange and she is at least over 15 years older than me but she’s a nice lady so I can’t complain. The moral of this story is that you should take advantage of the resources available to you to make opportunities for speaking the language.

Practicing [A] doesn’t improve [B]

The fundamental reason why it’s absolutely necessary to go out and actually use the language for your own means is because practicing one thing doesn’t automatically improve something else. This may sound obvious but many students learning Japanese are under the illusion that taking tests, answering questions in class, and filling in worksheets will somehow magically enable them to learn how to read, write, speak, and hear Japanese. This is not the case!

If you’re wondering why you can hardly speak Japanese after taking Japanese classes for so many years, ask yourself this, “How many hours did I spend speaking Japanese? How many books have I read? How much Japanese have I written?” You need to ask yourself the same type of question for each aspect of the language because practicing one thing doesn’t automatically improve something else. It might help but each aspect of the language is only improved by actually practicing and refining it in the real world.

If you want to improve your reading skills, go read some books. If you want to improve your writing, find something to write about. Speaking and listening often go hand in hand so go find somebody to talk to if you want to improve those skills. It seems obvious but many students at my school couldn’t understand why they weren’t improving even though they haven’t spent a single minute outside of class speaking Japanese or even meeting anyone who can speak Japanese. They also haven’t read a single book, magazine, comic, short story, anything, much else write something on their own. All I can say is, “What do you expect, man?!” Of course it’s not completely their fault. After all, none of us were required to do any of those things for class. So, unless you are in an immersed environment such as living in Japan, you have to motivate yourself to go out and use Japanese.

Input before Output

Those who are new to learning languages might be under the mistaken impression that languages make sense. You might think that if you learn the vocabulary and grammar, you can string the vocabulary together with the correct grammar to make sentences. This might work to some degree for some languages, but with Japanese, it’s almost guaranteed to not work. Japanese is not a language you can figure out with logic, which is why finding somebody you can ask questions and learning vocabulary with context is so important. Take a look at what might happen if you try to figure things out for yourself.

Method 1: “Figuring it out”

You) I want to say, “I miss you,” to my girlfriend so let’s see… according to my dictionary, “miss” is 「欠ける」 so “missing” is 「欠けている」. Great, now I just need to make “you” the direct object with 「を」 particle and the verb goes last so “I’m missing you” should be 「私はあなたを欠けている。」 Great!

What a disaster! While the sentence is grammatically correct, it doesn’t make any sense and worse, it’s kind of insulting because 「欠ける」 means something is “lacking” with a very negative connotation. Now, let’s see what would have happened if you were smart enough to learn from example.

Method 2: Asking a native speaker

You) I want to say, “I miss you,” to my girlfriend. How do I say that?

Native Speaker) Well, we don’t really say “I miss you,” in Japanese. We usually just say we’re lonely or “I want to meet you”.

Y) Oh, how do you say that?

N) “Lonely” is 「さびしい」 or 「さみしい」. “Wanting to meet” is 「会いたい」.

Y) Great, can you write the kanji for me?

N) Sure.

Awesome. Now that you are able to express your dire need and endless love to your girlfriend, hopefully next time you meet, she’ll be all over you like hot butter and syrup on a pancake. Way to go!

Of course, in real life, things don’t always go so smoothly. You might not know enough of the grammar or vocabulary to understand the answer. You also need to go home, sit down and study the grammar and vocabulary using textbooks, workbooks, dictionaries, the grammar guide, whatever you prefer. But the important thing is to get input first before you try coming up with your own output. And even then, it’s a good idea to get somebody to look at your output to make sure it’s correct.

Learning old material with new material

Now that I talked about what you need to do, let’s look at some ideas on how to go about it.

Generally, you need a lot more input before you can generate output of similar quality. In my case, I usually have to see something about five or six times in completely different contexts before I can internalize it enough to use it myself. Of course, it all depends. Fundamental concepts and conjugations require a lot more exposure and practice than simple vocabulary.

So the best way to internalize material is by running into it here and there over a long time span. You can optimize this by overlapping new material with old material. This is called pipelining in computer chips and is used extensively to increase the performance of your computer. You can do this too by learning new material even if you haven’t completely memorized the old material. When old material shows up in new material, you will start the process of internalizing the new material while you’re reviewing the old material.

What you should never do is stop learning new things because you haven’t completely mastered something else. You might hear people say, “Oh no, I can’t learn the next chapter because I don’t completely understand the last one.” or “I’m not going to learn that because we haven’t gone over it in class yet.” or “Learning that now will just confuse me.” This is pure bollocks because looking at just one thing over and over doesn’t increase comprehension. You need to look at it in different contexts, used in different ways for different purposes. You need to look at all the angles before you can say you really understand the material. And if you can start learning new material at the same time, that’s another bird with the same stone.

You shouldn’t underestimate your brain’s ability to absorb new material. You might hear a word and think, “Oh, I’ll never learn that” but on the contrary, you’re already learning it! If you ever thought, “Hey, this word sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before?” you’re closer to memorizing it than words you’ve never heard before. If you do this often enough, you’ll be remembering words you don’t even remember learning! This is essentially how you learned your native language. Let’s take a look at the continuation of the previous dialog asking how to say, “I miss you”.

Y) Is 「会いたい」 an adjective?

N) It acts like an adjective but it’s the 「たい」 form of the verb 「会う」, which means “to meet”.

Y) Oh yeah, I remember! We learned that form in class last week. What was the conjugation rule again?

N) You change the 「う」 to 「い」 and add 「たい」.

Y) Ok, got it.

See? In that short exchange, you managed to review the 「たい」 form while at the same time learning 「会う」. The next time, you might learn, for instance, 「飲み会」 and you can use that opportunity to review and reinforce 「会う」. Keep repeating the cycle and you’ll start making all sorts of connections and memorizing things left and right in no time.

It’s the attitude that counts!

In the end, the thing that matters the most is your attitude. If studying or practicing Japanese feels like a dreadful chore, you are doomed to failure. I can attest to this because I hated learning Spanish in High School and the only Spanish I know now is, “Donde esta el bano”. But hey, you’re in luck because Japanese is much more interesting than Spanish!

Nevertheless, if you somehow find that learning Japanese is boring or a chore, you need to incorporate things into your study that will make it fun right away! In my case, I enjoy reading, playing games, drinking, and eating so I study by doing those things in a way that incorporates Japanese such as reading Japanese novels. (And all my games are strictly for “educational purposes”. Honest.) I also enjoy hanging out and chatting with friends so making Japanese friends and hanging out with them improved my speaking and listening skills. And if I can get drinks and food into the mix every so often, even better! (Fortunately, many Japanese people love to eat and drink.)

To give you another example, I don’t particularly like watching TV that much but a friend of mine does and that’s how she learned Japanese; by watching a lot of Japanese TV. It must have worked because her Japanese is quite excellent.

Whatever floats your boat, you should incorporate it into your studies to make learning more enjoyable. For example, lots of people on my forum are learning Japanese with anime because that’s what they enjoy. This is great because it often leads them to explore and become interested in other areas of Japanese lifestyle and culture, which in turn increases the incentive to learn more Japanese.

Also, I think it’s pretty much a given that we all enjoy making friends and socializing so that’s one activity we can all do. If there are very few or no Japanese people in your area, you might try finding a conversation partner online, study abroad, or just move! C’mon, get out of that rural backwater and go someplace more international!

If you’re socially inept, making friends while learning a foreign language is perfect for you. It levels the playing field because it’s hard to be suave when you can hardly speak the language. Hey, that’s a great strategy for getting a girl, I bet. Cleverly hide your lack of social skills with your inability to speak the language. I don’t know how wise this is for serious relationships though…

More personal stuff that nobody cares about

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Sorry, I don’t have the time to maintain a personal blog so you’ll have to put up with me as I talk about personal stuff that has nothing to do with this blog. I think I’m breaking rule #3* of blog writing or something but I don’t care. La la la…

How does a puzzle become so popular?

I saw an old man on the train the other day doing a sudoku puzzle. This is the first time I’ve seen anybody doing sudoku in Japan. I was totally blown away at how popular that puzzle has gotten when I was visiting the US last month. Barnes&Nobles had a whole sudoku section with its own tag and everything. I think the sections in that area of the store were like: Health, Cooking…, and Sudoku. I’m totally puzzled with it’s recent popularity since it’s supposed to come from Japan and yet I’ve never seen it or heard anybody talk about it here. I couldn’t even tell you where to go to buy some puzzles. I mean, the Brain Training Game for the Nintendo DS is originally a Japanese game but they added sudoku puzzles for the American version. That would be like McDonalds adding fries to their menu in their Japanese stores while American get stuck with 枝豆 or something. Pretty crazy, if you ask me.

Anyway, I was guessing that maybe sudoku in Kanji would be something like 「数解」 using the characters for “number” and “to solve”. On reflection, I guess that was unlikely because 「すう」 is the on-yomi and 「とく」 is the kun-yomi. 「数解」 would probably be read 「すうかい」 or 「かずどき」 instead. I was surprised though when I found out that the actual Kanji is 「数独」. I got the “number” kanji right but the second one means, “alone”. I guess those numbers are just alone and lonely until you solve the puzzle by filling in the rest of the numbers. Aww… those poor, lonely numbers. You have to help them!

Yet more random thoughts

I ate a コンビニ弁当 for dinner tonight and it was supposed to be a 中華弁当. I think almost every country probably has their own version of Chinese food. I’ve had American-Chinese, Japanese-Chinese, and Korean-Chinese so far. As usual, when it comes to food, I like the Korean version the best. (The one version I’ve never had is, ironically, Chinese-Chinese). You can tell when Chinese food is Korean in disguise when they bring out the Kimchi, 沢庵, and raw onion with the mysterious black sauce. To this day, I have no idea what that black sauce is but it doesn’t stop me from eating it with sliced, completely raw onions. (I think you have to kind of get used to it from birth). Also for some reason, you almost always eat 짜장면. It’s called ジャージャー麺 in Japanese but the Korean version tastes much better. Again, I have no idea about the actual original Chinese dish.

Rule #1 is “you don’t talk about blogs” and rule #2 is… ok, this joke is overdone so nevermind.