Tae Kim's Blog, page 4

Anki 2 review

So since I did a review of Anki, it seems only fair that I revisit it now that Anki 2 is out. I’ve been using it for the past few weeks and my overall impression is that things have improved significantly.

Overall, the look and usability have been greatly improved. There is no longer a popup per deck, which is great because popups SUCK. Though browsing a deck is still a popup, it’s not as annoying as Anki 1. Though it’s still in Beta, AnkiDroid is much better as well in that it’s actually usable now. Before, it would crash on my phone at least once basically every time I’ve used it. In addition, Synch can now actually SYNCH (ie “synchronize” not just whack one set of changes with another).

I would highly recommend upgrading (even to the Beta AnkiDroid). It’s much better once you get going. However, I must warn you that getting setup initially is very confusing. The UI can still use a lot of improvement in that regard.

No menu option to login. You do this by synching for the first time, which also doesn’t have a menu option. You have to use the icon on the top-right. Not very obvious.
Do not use the Default deck! It disappears when you add another deck. As you can see, the Default deck is nowhere in the desktop app even though it appears in AnkiDroid.

“Full synch” is a misnomer. What it means is basically, scrap everything I have locally, and replace it with what’s online. This caused me lose my changes several times before I realized what was going on. This should be called “Reset”.

Once you get over the initial confusion and get all your decks setup and ready to go, it’s not too bad.

You may be wondering, didn’t I recommend against using SRS? Well, while I still think it’s an inferior way to memorize things, I have to admit, it’s nice to have something to study when I’m waiting in line at the grocery story or whatever. I don’t have much time nowadays to sit down with a book or watch a show so it’s a convenient way to review something when I have a few minutes to spare. Also, I was previously using iGoogle, which is going away, so it’s also a convenient way to store interesting words to share on twitter or facebook later.

By the way, my main deck had only one side and it completely failed to migrate over to Anki 2. Obviously, I’m not using it like most people.

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Finding time in a busy life

I must confess, I’m a pretty fickle person. I usually start work on something, ignore it for a long time, and come back to it when it’s fresh and exciting again. I’m sure some of you have noticed long periods of neglect on certain projects of mine (such as this blog). As it is, it’s pretty much impossible to work on everything I have going on at the same time with a (completely unrelated) full-time job and a family. I could decide to just work on a single thing at a time but since Japanese is my hobby, I have no obligation or inclination to work on anything unless I feel like it.

Lately, my speaking has been getting very rusty so I’ve been trying to find a conversation partner via mixxer. However, I found out that the west coast is pretty much the worst in terms of time difference for conversing with people in Japan. Also, most of my activities are done in small spurts, 5-10 minutes at a time (like this blog post) so allocating a contiguous block of time is difficult.

On the other hand, I’ve also been reading/listening a lot and learning tons of new vocabulary. I probably learned hundreds of new words and expressions in the last year. These include words in my twitter feed and more such as: うなぎのぼり、くまなく、鬼が出るか蛇が出るか、甚大、にっちもさっちも、もどかしい、色白、往生際、大往生、雑然、しらばくれる、張り子の虎、森羅万象、波乱万丈、前途洋々、後悔先に立たず. So how much has this improved my speaking?

Not one iota, zilch, nada, zip

まったくまるでぜんぜんちっともこれっぽっちも

So don’t fool yourself into thinking studying hours and hours with classes, dictionaries, and books will enable you to speak Japanese.

Anyway, my (admittedly poorly-made) point is that while you might not have as much as you’d like to devote to something, the important thing is to do as much as you can and to get enjoyment out of it. I listen to podcasts on my commute and read things online here and there whenever I have the chance. This morning, I learned the word for fuse （信管）, reading this short article. This word in particular took no effort to remember because I know the kanji and it’s a memorable combination (“a pipe I believe/rely on” = fuse).

What did you learn by doing what today?

PS: Lately, I’m totally addicted to Disgaea. It’s evil. Even though the game is in Japanese, even I have to admit that the education value vs time spent (wasted) is extremely low.

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プチ嬉しい

This made my day.

No way to respond, though. Maybe I’ll respond in my next submission. It’s getting really hard to find words not already in edict though nowadays.

Jim, I hope you live forever, man. You’re awesome!

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Who needs grammar? We all do.

This guy says don’t study grammar and I obviously disagree.

So you’re supposed to hear things until you can naturally tell what sounds right and what’s wrong and not study grammar at all. This is bad advice unless you live in Japan or speak/hear Japanese everyday with someone willing to correct everything you say. As with most things in real life, the correct solution is to use a balanced and practical approach.

The problem with anecdotes is that someone can always come up different ones to make an argument. Ok, you’ve met people who have studied grammar and still can’t speak the language, well, I have met people who haven’t studied grammar and still can’t speak the language. It proves nothing. For instance, my dad has lived in the United States for as long as I have and his English is still broken and a grammatical mess. He has listened to English naturally for over 30 years, day in and day out, and he can do anything he wants in English whether it’s conversation, filing taxes, or starting a small business. But he hasn’t studied a lick of grammar and his English still sucks.

Heck, I’ve lived in the US since elementary school and they still taught me grammar in school. I learned things like subject-verb agreement, double negatives, and how to avoid run-ons and sentence fragments. you needs to learn these stuffs; so we don’t sounds like no dummy.

The fact of the matter is, grammar is one tool of many in your arsenal that you would be foolish to ignore completely. You shouldn’t be thinking about grammar when you’re talking but it is a stepping stone or guideline you can use to reach the point where you don’t need it. If you only learn with phrases, you need to be exposed to every type of grammar, verb conjugation, and vocabulary usage to internalize it naturally. This is fine for learning your native language as a child but it will take far too long for adults seeking second+ language proficiency, especially in a non-immersive environment. Grammar can help you systematically organize the language such that you can learn entirely new words, phrases, and sentences and quickly incorporate them using the same rules that apply for all words without having to encounter them over and over again. The rules themselves are simply a means to an end, not the end result.

Grammar can also help you break down sentences you don’t understand and provide guidelines on how to structure your own sentences. I’ve often met people who know all the vocabulary they need to say something but still can’t figure out how to organize them into a sentence to express what they want to say.

Of course, you need to do lots of listening and speaking practice but I don’t see why that precludes you from learning grammar and applying it as needed. Eventually, with enough practice, you won’t need to think about the grammar anymore but until then, it can help you figure out how to say what you want. Sure, it may be slow, but it’s better than not being able to say anything at all. Japanese classes often spend TOO much time on grammar with very little actual conversation practice. That’s obviously a problem but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t learn ANY grammar.

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Rocket Japanese review

Ok, so I was asked to review Rocket Japanese several months ago and totally forgot about it. So before I forget about it some more, here it is.

My first impression was wow, there’s a lot of marketing and no clear picture of what products are available at what price. You have to scroll through various links and pages of marketing to even see what’s for sale. A simple product matrix would be nice.

Signing up for a free trial shows a checkbox: “YES! I want to try Rocket Japanese for free!”. Ok, why would I want to uncheck that? Anyway, once you’re in, there are 5 major sections, parts of which are inaccessible in a trial.

Interactive Audio Lessons

I could only force myself to listen to the first few lessons. Overall, it’s a nice introduction to some useful Japanese phrases but Kenny’s pronunciation is so bad, it’s really a mystery why anyone would want to learn Japanese from him. Unfortunately, he drives the lessons instead of the native speaker. JapanesePod101 had the same problem in the beginning but they now have much better hosts on their staff. (I should do a review of JapanesePod101, they’ve come a long way.)

The grammar explanations are useless and creating your own sentences from these lessons is impossible. For example, they mention things like the stem or te-form but offer no explanation on how one would go about conjugating a verb to these forms. The explanations also sound like they came out of a 20 year-old Japanese textbook including instructions on how to bow and the overuse of 「あなた」. Let’s review the definition of 「あなた」.

From 大辞泉:

あなた

１ 対等または目下の者に対して、丁寧に、または親しみをこめていう。「―の考えを教えてください」

２ 妻が夫に対して、軽い敬意や親しみをこめていう。「―、今日のお帰りは何時ですか」

◆現代語では敬意の程度は低く、学生が先生に、また若者が年配者に対して用いるのは好ましくない。

1. Address someone of equal or lower social status politely and/or with familiarity.

2. Wife addressing husband with light respect and/or familiarity.

*In modern Japanese, the level of politeness is low so it’s not preferred for student or young people to address a teacher or elder （with あなた）.

Plus

Exposure to Japanese phrases

Minus

Kenny’s pronunciation is terrible
Quizzes use romaji
Grammatical explanations are terrible
Cultural notes are outdated
Kenny

Basically, if you want to get some exposure to Japanese and get to repeat some phrases, ignore everything Kenny says and you might get some value out of it.

Language & Culture Lessons

Once again, there’s no real explanation of how the example sentences are constructed so you won’t be able to make your own sentences but you can hear the pronunciation of the sentences that are there. Some of the culture notes are informative but romaji is used in quite a few places including most of the quizzes.

Plus

A smattering of words/sentences with audio you can use to practice listening and pronunciation
Some informative culture notes

Minus

Frequent use of romaji
Grammatical explanations are nonexistent

Writing

There are tons of websites that teach Hiragana and Katakana because it’s an easy thing to learn and teach. Rocket Japanese’s version has nice videos for the stroke order though it only covers up to 「な、に、ぬ、ね、の」 in the trial. I also don’t see any mention of long vowel sounds in the menu (though I can’t verify). It’s a very important and often overlooked part of Japanese pronunciation. Considering how many free resources there are for learning kana such as Memrise‘s innovative approach, it’s surprising that you get so little with the trial.

Games

The games are really cool! But it uses romaji. Darn. I haven’t progressed far enough to know if they switch to kana/kanji at a higher level.

Other

On the left nav panel, there’s a section called “My community” which is basically an online forum and “My motivation”, which has some good learning tips worth perusing.

Conclusion

It’s not clear which of the five sections on the top I should start with and when to go from one to the next. Replace Kenny, teach the full kana in the trial, kill the romaji, and make the navigation and progression clearer and you might have a decent package for practicing and learning phrases. However, if you want to learn grammar and how to construct complex sentences from scratch, you won’t get it with their teaching methodology, which basically consists of translating bits and pieces of pre-constructed sentences.

To sum up: Rocket Japanese is a confusing mishmash of audio lessons, culture notes, writing lessons, and unhelpful quizzes with no clear ordering or curriculum covered up by a mountain of marketing. You can find some useful learning tips and nuggets of good audio phrases buried in a confusing interface, romaji, and Kenny’s horrible pronunciation.

Verdict: Try out the trial if you’re really bored but keep your money.

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Pocoyo Japan

My daughter (now 1.5 years old) is obsessed with Pocoyo. She has watched Pocoyo on Netflix like 20 million times. Recently, I wondered, “Hey, since she likes it so much, I wonder if it’s available in Japanese?” The Great Internet has answered and here it is.

Interesting phrase I noticed in this episode at 5:15: 「ポコヨを慰めてあげてくれる？」

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Let’s hang out in Tokyo!

I will be visiting Tokyo in September so let’s hang out if you happen to be there and free Friday night, September 7.

If you’re interested in hanging out, sign up for either event below (not both!)

Will update with more details the week of.

９月、東京に行きます。９月７日金曜日の夜は、暇だったら、一緒に遊びませんか？

興味がある方は下記のイベントどちらかに登録してくださいな。詳細は後で更新します。

場所は多分渋谷・新宿辺りになります。

Facebook Event

Google+ Event

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Personality change by language?

Have you ever felt like your personality changes slightly depending on what language you speak? For example, in Japanese, I feel like I’m a little bit more polite. For example, I might say “shit” or “damn” sometimes in English but I have never felt like saying 「くそ」 or 「ちくしょう」. The kind of jokes I tell are different too. I’m a 天然ボケ in Japanese but a sarcastic wise-cracker in English. Do you think you control language or are you controlled by it?

話している時に、言語によって自分の性格が微妙に変わってしまう気がしませんか？私は、日本語で話している時に印象が変わると言われたこともあります。確かに仕草や表現の仕方は言語によって必然的に変わるから、性格も変わるといっても過言ではないでしょう。

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Who doesn’t like comics?

So my last blog post really paid off because I got contacted by a very talented artist who offered to draw up some comics for learning Japanese! He’s been going full steam and I’ve been barely managing to keep up with the lines. It’s really hard to come up with lines for an interesting comic when, for example, you can’t use any verbs.

Here’s the first one but the rest are (mostly) in Japanese. They are scattered throughout the complete guide. Make sure to check out the hover text too.

The further along it goes, the easier it is for me to write because I can use more grammar but probably harder for Japanese learners. Which is kind of the point. I hope you like them! Also, check out Martyn’s site. He’s really good!

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The 10 year plan

It’s been almost a month since the the grammar guide has been on Amazon and you’ve been buying at least one copy everyday! Thanks everybody for your support! I’m so excited that I’ve decided to take all the royalties and put it away along with the Paypal account to contribute back into the site.

I have lots of bold plans and very little time but hopefully I can put the money to good use to make it even easier for people to learn Japanese. Here’s what I’d like to accomplish in the next 10 years.

Finish writing the complete guide. I’ve been making good progress on this recently.
Make more Youtube videos. I’d like to get some native speakers for the examples so it’s not just me.
Start a lecture series at a local library and post on Youtube.
Get audio for all the dialogues in the complete guide.
Add Yonkoma comics to the site. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no art skills.
Put everything above together in a monster, awesome, interactive eBook for iBooks.
Start a podcast show for Japanese learners. I have some ideas on how to make an awesome show.

Unfortunately, I have to do all this in my free time so if you want to help me out, here’s how.

Time

Make a link to www.guidetojapanese.org with the phrase “learn Japanese”. I want to be #1 on Google when you search “learn Japanese”.
If you’re good at drawing, I’m looking for simple manga style drawings like あずまんが大王、ダーリンは外国人、 or even just stick figures like xkcd. Email me at: taekim.japanese@gmail.com
For native Japanese speakers, anybody interested in contributing audio or co-hosting a podcast show, email me at: taekim.japanese@gmail.com

Buy the book (if you want one) or donate

I do not know what I’m going to do with the money specifically yet but it’s definitely going to be used to improve the site.

CreateSpace: It’s kind of hassle to order from and you have to pay for shipping but it will save about $5 on printing costs.

Amazon: They will take a bigger cut but you will get free shipping. Also if you like the book, I would love to see some reviews on Amazon.

PayPal: The donate button is on the right side of the main site.

Special thanks goes to Sven ($200), Sergey ($100), and Eric ($200) for their generous donations! (Eric bought the book too!)

It’s been about 10 years since I started this site in college and I hope to bring you more exciting stuff. Thanks for your purchases, donations, contributions, emails, comments, feedback, suggestions, and corrections. Here’s to another 10 years!

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